Wising Up: Learning to Share Knowledge between Canada’s Northern Communities and Southern Classrooms

TitleWising Up: Learning to Share Knowledge between Canada’s Northern Communities and Southern Classrooms
Faculty/College/UnitArts
StatusCompleted
Duration2 Year
Initiation04/01/2015
Completion04/01/2018
Funding Details
Year 1: Project YearYear 1
Year 1: Funding Year2015/2016
Year 1: Project TypeSmall TLEF
Year 1: Principal InvestigatorPatricia Johnston
Year 1: Funded Amount25,000
Year 1: Team Members

Patricia Johnston, PhD Candidate / Sessional Lecturer, Social Work, Faculty of Arts
Frank Tester, Professor, Social Work, Faculty of Arts
Greg Henry, Professor, Geography, Faculty of Arts
Mark Stoller, Researcher, Geography, Faculty of Arts
Jonathan Luedee, Researcher, Geography, Faculty of Arts

Year 1: Summary

The UBC Polar Club is a community of student researchers who promote cross-disciplinary dialogue around issues impacting the Arctic, Antarctic and subarctic regions. Now partnered with Green College on a 3-year ARCTIC-WISE consultation, the UBC Polar Club is working with UBC faculty to enrich student learning by developing educational course modules.

Based on What I Learned in Class Today, we propose a pilot project titled Wising Up to be conducted within the Faculty of Arts.

With support from the UBC Polar Club and Green College, two faculty members working with graduate assistants will create resources related to the sharing of knowledge between North and South. From these resources, two modules will be developed for use by UBC faculty interested in Arctic studies. These modules will be shared with colleges in the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut and made available to ARCTIC-WISE partners, the Vancouver Aquarium and Canadian Polar Commission.

Year 1: TLEF ShowcaseYear 1: TLEF Showcase
Year 2: Project YearYear 2
Year 2: Funding Year2017/2018
Year 2: Project TypeSmall TLEF
Year 2: Principal InvestigatorPatricia Johnston
Year 2: Funded Amount25,000
Year 2: Team Members

Patricia Johnston, PhD Candidate / Sessional Lecturer, Social Work, Faculty of Arts
Mark Stoller, Researcher, Geography, Faculty of Arts
Jonathan Luedee, Researcher, Geography, Faculty of Arts

Year 2: Summary

The Wising Up education program promotes engagement with issues in northern Canada and the circumpolar Arctic at UBC. Through a series of online modules, students and instructors gain access to a wide variety of resources that can be easily integrated into existing curricula. These modules serve as an important first step in creating awareness of the issues in northern Canada. Modules on caribou co-management and language revitalization have been successfully piloted to students at the 300 and 400 levels. For 2017, additional modules will be created to include topics related to climatic and biophysical change, Indigenous politics and governance, and Arctic circumpolar politics. All modules are developed in collaboration with professors at UBC, with participants from northern Canada, and with the UBC Polar Club. Aligned with the 2017 TLEF priorities, the modules will be open educational resources available for all UBC instructors for use in their respective classes and departments.

Project Report2017-TLEF-Final-Johnston-WEB.pdf