Welcome to EDCI 136! I love teaching about digital literacies, educational technology, learning design, and digital, online, and open education. I am a professor in educational technology at the University of Victoria in the Faculty of Education‘s Department of Curriculum and Instruction, where I am also the undergraduate and graduate educational technology area advisor. I am also Director of the Technology Integration and Evaluation (TIE) Research Lab, which was funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the University of Victoria, TELUS, and many other sponsors. You can explore the UVic calendar to learn more about the other courses we offer in our area (EDCI 335, EDCI 336*, 337, 338, 339) and about our graduate programs in educational technology at the MEd (project-based), MA (thesis-based), and Ph.D. level. I am also president of the Open/Technology in Education, Society, and Scholarship Association (OTESSA).

To give you more about my academic background, I have a BA (English) and a BEd from UBC. I began a Master’s in Educational Psychology (specialization in Educational Technology) at the University of Alberta, and was fast-tracked to the Ph.D. program in Educational Psychology (specialization in Educational Technology), where I was a Government of Canada SSHRC doctoral fellow.

Personally, I am a mother to two amazing girls, now 18 and 21. We have two fun and troublesome Havanese dogs, Raven and Gracie. I am an early adopter of an electric vehicle and still drive the original Nissan Leaf.

My current interests span teacher education, digital, networked, and open literacies, technology adoption and integration, how technology scaffolds inquiry-based learning, educational reform, and multi-access learning (where modality and access is at the choice of the learner), and open education. I have worked on what I call cyberproxy, where telepresence robots are used to provide accessibility for the 50% of learners with disabilities, for whom the cement ramp doesn’t help. I have been teaching open and online since 1998 and supervise/d MA and PhD graduate learners on topics such as technology-integrated assessment, open pedagogy in higher education, open scholarship, inquiry in K12 education, modality in post-secondary, technology adoption in teacher education, and educational change theory. My MEd learners from have focused on more diverse topics related to educational technology. All graduate work can be accessed from the UVic repository.

I am a founding member of the Government of BC Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills’ Digital Learning Advisory Committee, where we created the new Digital Learning Strategy for all post-secondary education institutions in the province. It was from this initiative that the new BC Digital Literacy Framework was developed. This framework is used to guide the learning in this course. I created this course years prior due to the need to support post-secondary learners in developing important knowledge, skills, and attitudes in this area. I am not aware of any other university offering an equivalent. I have created this course with a complete/incomplete assessment design, so learners can worry less about the grades and focus on the learning. Technology can be frustrating as it is without adding another layer of stress on top, and hopefully we can make this course a lot of fun in the process! We bring in some of the best and brightest minds globally and encourage all of you to enjoy the ride, keep an open mind, and lean into the process.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me anytime. My full contact information is on the syllabus, but these can get you started:

Email: diglit at uvic dot ca

Office tel: 250-721-7778 (cell will be provided directly)