 We're excited to talk about social impact lab, but before we do that, I would like to acknowledge that I live and work in the ancestral unceded and Traditional land of muskland people As subtle as we express our gratitude and respect for the muskland people in recognition of their presence Both in the past and in the present and their contribution to VC as a learning institution Institution as we talked about social impact today I invite you to deliberate on history of colonization and reflect on the ways in which UBC can advance the colonization with that introduction I would like to pass The conversation to Susan Brossman the director at the Center for Community engaged like Thanks first. Yes. Hello and welcome I am Susan Grossman the director at the Center for Community engaged learning here at UBC and my colleague Bruce and I work together quite closely And we'll be presenting today for those that don't know the Center supports The engagement with community organizations and faculty and students. So we support faculty to integrate community engaged challenges questions concerns projects into courses and help Faculty know how to help their support the students to actually apply the disciplinary learning to those challenges So in any given year, there's probably about five to six thousand students who are engaged in some form of community engaged learning Not all of that through our office some of that happens outside of us But that's just where we're tracking it for the entire institution. And so The university as a whole Likely works with four to five hundred partners a year on community engaged projects. So that gives you some of the scale Bruce next slide So we're here to talk about the social impact lab curriculum So at the end of today, you'll have a better sense of what that is How you might utilize it in a course or a context that you have as an educator We will share with you some information about some pilot courses We ran last year to start to build the curriculum and test its efficacy And we'll offer you the opportunity to explore the curriculum yourself to see kind of what resonates for you And if this is something that you might want to actually apply in a course-based or project-based context So what is a social impact lab? I was playing my own slide a social impact lab is a part of me it's a suite of multi-format curricular materials designed to integrate content about social issues and systemic change into courses These curricular materials allow faculty students staff any educator to design and participate in collective impact projects We have collected pre and post surveys from students involved in the pilots and last year's pilots and while we're sharing preliminary results in this workshop We're also planning to recruit new faculty members To expand our pilot so part of this is to share the curriculum But also entice those of you here to think about this is something you want to try out and partner with us and then a social impact lab is It prioritizes innovation experimentation to find solutions so we use social impact labs to help students think systemically from kind of understanding the issue to the whole project co-creation and Social labs exist in the world. So we didn't create that concept But ours are different in that we embed pedagogy and values that are related to community-engaged learning around reciprocity ethical engagement Those kind of things our labs are also encouraging students to think about Social problems and identifying kind of inequity where inequities exist root causes and pathways for action to challenge pre-existing solutions Pre-existing systems with community-led solutions. So ours are slightly different So we took the concept of social lab and we added a spin to it that in great integrates community-engaged learning And so here's what we talk about kind of how it differs So those of you who know what community-engaged learning is you understand that it's Often starts from a fully formed project where a partner said this is what I want students to do And then it's integrated into the class and students work on pre-determined goals Whereas in our social impact lab and community-engaged learning process We are keeping it more open into community partners bring a challenge forward There's not an idea of how it should be tackled rather The purpose of it is for students and faculty to analyze and contextualize and understand the challenge and Identify actual actionable path forward to tackle the problem through this work we expect Students to have an increased awareness of their own positionality and collect the responsibility We encourage the understanding of root causes of critical issues. We support issue analysis and intro interpersonal reflection And as I said before we enable collective impact projects for action on social and environmental issues and we develop resources and skills Within students so they can tackle these issues So that's sort of how we kind of think of it a social impact lab plus community-engaged learning So it kind of builds on a pedagogy that we currently support And so as I referenced In an effort to sort of build the curriculum and develop the model we actually Enlisted four faculty members this past year To work with us on on this project each was given Some financial resources to help run the course so that if that meant a student researcher or a ta They could use the money toward that. They were also given access to our staff In a very collaborative way. So normally we When we work with faculty we support them to integrate projects into courses They run the course we come back at the end to help see how evaluated how did it go We're kind of there in the middle, you know as problems arise But in this case, we were actually there throughout the whole process. So we weren't co-teaching but we were collaborating We're helping build in real time the mechanisms to integrate and test The curriculum and so this is what our pilot was trying to achieve It's identifying the supports required clarifying resources for scale testing the efficacy And the mechanisms we needed to support the program. So that's sort of a bit about the pilot Which Bruce will talk about a bit more next Thank you, Susan So that's the framework of the lab and I just want to take a minute to see if there's any questions about the theoretical background About social impact lab that we could address before we jump into the example So feel free if you have any questions about the conceptual framework to unmute And I'll give you about 30 seconds for that. If not, I'll jump into that To the examples that we have from the pilot project Okay, so maybe 30 seconds is too long But feel free to interrupt at any time as we talk It's a small group of us. So this is supposed to be a conversation. We'll be happy to answer any questions. So One of the that we have from that pilot project is a course on evaluation and a graduate study studies And so we had 16 students registered for that course working independently at home in an asynchronous Setting so the challenge about this course was they were not actually in the classroom So we had to figure out the way to integrate the social impact lab curriculum Into that course one of the solution was to it to adopt and adapt that curriculum into workbooks So we worked with the faculty member to embed those learning objective that you see Around understanding and evaluation Priorities develop evaluation plan apply evaluation theory to practice and understand organizational context and also give the students the skills about Providing In a real context rather than a theoretical context. So they get that hands-on experience with that with social impact and so the The contribution of the silk or clear integration and that was value exploration and collective impact Working across differences system thinking and identifying the vision and collaborating actively with the community partners So we had two community partners for this course and the students were grouped in group of four collaborating each Each partner worked with eight students in total Um The other course was an undergraduate Course in climate action lab. These are one credit courses So the students are grouped together as part of their laboratory learning on climate action Um, there was approximately about 50 students in that class and the learning outcome concerned applying climate literacy Critically assessing climate strategies developing practical insight and contributing to climate action The partner for that was The city of Vancouver of where the the interest was To develop aerial that increases literacy of the citizen on climate action Some of the works that we adopted from silk crook one included value alignment system thinking And visioning social action. We're also during the pilot project. We started to evaluate how Our work is impacting faculty and students. So we designed a pre and post survey with the students in four courses And they were distributed to the faculty members We also conducted semi-instructured interviews with the four instructors that were collaborating with us and We asked them to gain director and direct feedback from the community organizations to do Through those interviews with faculty. We also asked them about what was the experience of the of the community partners And whether or not we should we should stay in touch with them for future work In relation to our surveys, we we haven't got all the post surveys right now but I can show you A great example of attitude questions that we had for students around The work that might contribute to their learning. So We wanted to know actually they're interested in some of the core values of community engaged learning by asking them about applying academic knowledge to social issues But there were also competency issues that we hope that they get around What community engaged learning will provide the students such as Communication teamwork leadership. So As you see in this students at UBC seems to it seemed to be very keen on Applying learning into a specific context and they actually care about issues around social justice So, uh, this was telling before students go in there is actually interest that students want to do this kind of work and adopt it We'll see in the post surveys how actually that might change Given that they go through this process and then we have also qualitative questions from from students About their experience so they could tell us if something went wrong or not. How was that experience generally and how The structures could improve the future delivery of that course I'll be happy to talk more about our evaluation and at the end as well But I think it would be important for us to show what social impact lab The social impact web toolkit that was generated During 2022 as we worked in in collaboration with four faculty members. So In a couple of minutes, I'm going to share the website with you This is just the introduction of how the website was designed So social impact lab toolkit is designed based on certain learning outcomes lessons and central teams That will help as directors and students to embed the pedagogy of social impact into their classrooms So the organization of the website was Was developed gradually through conversation with uh our expert at center for teaching and learning technology as well as uh faculty members and students as we were designing this so Uh the first reiteration of the design Prioritized the teams and from those teams developed this lessons Um, so it would be it would be easier for you and I will Quickly share that with you, but just before I go in there It's not just like that the that the cell curriculum could be adopted either through a workbook or Um through workshops It we're open to suggestion about how faculty might adopt the cell curriculum. So one example is uh community-driven priorities Seems key to prepare students for community-engaged learning to make sure those learning Uh experiences are meaningful So one of the workshops one of the lesson plans is around value exploration which provides uh students with deep reflection on route values on systematic issues such as climate emergency or Decolonization certain topics that are important to a specific course And then it walks them through considering place and history information of those values and also Giving the students to adopt Strength of the community. So uh instead of traditional service learning, we're really collaborating with community organization to address certain social Uh issues. I don't want to call them problems necessarily, but there are pressing Uh Needs that the community and its uh its people are experiencing So it it helps the students to attend to that and then critical reflections a key Component of that pedagogy of community-engaged learning that will come So we'll I'll share uh the cell toolkit with you right now in the chat box Um, and we would like to give you about seven minutes to explore Uh the toolkit and then we'll Come back And ask you about how is your experience? I'll I'll add to Bruce's comment as you look at the toolkit think about How you might utilize it if if you might utilize it the questions that come up it is being um the website is being um user tested with four the three uh library science graduate students right now So we know we'll make some changes to it after they give us feedback on the user experience but you're seeing a very um The beta version this is our first go at creating it so And as you're exploring it let us know if you have any questions in the either in the chat or by just um Turning on your mic So I think we could slowly start If that's okay with you Susan to talk a little bit more about the website Yes, that's great. Um, and thank you. Uh, so The um the toolkit that you're looking at was um, we should say started as an idea around um, actually a series of um standalone workshops is initially how we Conceived of the idea of how to prepare students for social impact. So we applied for a uh Grant to the ministry advanced ed to build out those workshops But as we're working on the curriculum in real time with the faculty partners We learned that each had a need for something slightly different that standalone workshops Were not actually that uh easily integrated into the classes that they actually were looking for more um Modular type lessons and so what you've seen on the toolkit is those modular lessons where you can search for a learning outcome Or a theme or an idea and start to build out your own You might call the workshops or lesson plans. You can take all of it. You can take one lesson so the idea is that it can be used by any um Anyone in any discipline to advance the goals they have for their course without being so structured But allowing more structured that being said now that you've looked at it I want we wondered what reflections or thoughts or questions or comments or anything that you had that we can Start to have a conversation about so I'll leave it general for now. If no one has a comment. I might get more specific on my questions Giving it a couple more seconds Oh, great. Thanks. Julius already found some lessons you can lose using your course. Um, would you I mind sharing some of that? Yeah With a group. Yeah, I started down at the basic stuff and there's um, I'm looking through the stuff on systems thinking now But the things about uh getting students to articulate their values Um, I think would be really good at the the outset of a course. That's about um, like uh, social justice and um community projects That's great. Have others found anything that they're like, oh, this is interesting or I could imagine Utilizing this in some way Any critiques? Yes, we like critiques We know it's it's a first draft. We know it's got to have some some critiques Thanks, Lynn Yeah, the the um the way that you've uh organized the learning out comes into different levels Must be helpful for instructors so that they can know how the entry point and then how to Escalate the learning from there Yeah, thanks, Anzu. That was uh, that was very intentional recognizing that some instructors or some students may already have a certain baseline knowledge So you don't have to start at the very bottom, but if you did need to start there, you could so it gives you that modular ability to kind of pick and choose Um, one thing we're discovering is that like, you know in our in our idealized view All faculty would end up working with a community organization But we also recognize these tools in some ways could just be used Absent that they can just be used as lessons within a course That might have nothing to do with community engaged learning. So for our needs We're still supporting the community learning part, but we're also recognizing this can take a life of its own And we're not sort of dictating how it has to be used, but recognizing we're going to find this used in many different ways Yeah, I always think of community engaged learning and organizing that in a course is is, you know, not something that A faculty member that's just beginning to teach might want to do that. It's a more advanced skill, but but I agree with you like We we're all trying to prepare students to go out into the world and do these practical things so this this this Website is so useful in that way that I can I can use it in my own work as well with my own team if if I choose to That's great. That's good to hear Yeah, and if I may add because It might at the first look it might look very simple, but it actually adds This opportunity for faculty so if they're teaching higher level courses where some of this Topics and themes are sort of simplified in lessons planning It provides instructor with that opportunity to integrate their own disciplinary Outlook into it or challenge that disciplinary outlook and be more critical of it So a simplified version of a lesson to our eyes was it's quick enough to get people thinking about something And depth will follow given what level students are engaging with this topics and what What projects they're adopting and their work with the community So in that sense, it might in the first look it might be okay This is this is very short and concise, but at the same time that means it just there's room for developing it and extending it First maybe we can oh stepping sorry go for it Hi, good morning. Um Thank you so much for sharing this website. There's lots of really super useful stuff in here I'm looking at the pieces on communication planning and communication empathy Um, and I guess my question is partly to do with this and then partly a more general question About the toolkit Are there any guidelines on the length of the course that that people would be looking at because I'm just thinking about You know some of the courses that I support which are three credit courses. They're one term long And I'm thinking about the process that it would take for students to sit with a community partner and to Hear not only what the challenges are but to think through the solutions and to come up with like, you know to do this kind of planning in a really In a really good deep and meaningful way And I think to do that would take a lot of time. So I guess I'm curious about your recommendations around time frame of courses If you would have recommendations for instructors who are looking at, you know, like one term or two term courses and and different pieces like that around sort of setting realistic expectations for For people around how much time it takes to do processes like this really well First you want to take that one? That's a great question. Stephanie Well, it it's very flexible And it's very collaborative in that sense. So some of this It might take longer if you want to delve in deep into things so we're really open to conversations and in core as instructor agency around The integration of the curriculum within their courses that they suit their students because we know instructors know the students better than we do And and we're also getting feedback from them in ways that we could improve the The curriculum that is that is posted right now as it exists And I don't know whether that directly speaks to that question But it's you know, it's an open book in a sense that is not a text that is written to a stay as as tax it is It's meant to be enacted in many ways that it suits the curriculum And as it suits the faculty comfort level with some of this topic as well because not everything has to go into one course or not So it has to be very selective and and they could kind of integrate it as it suits their needs But also we we notice that second-year students have different capacities than graduate students And to what extent this could be a starting point for other activities that might follow in a course Yeah, if I can also tackle that and that is really a great question and one that we're actually Also deeply considering Stephanie like how do you because the the the goal in a kind of an ideal world is moved toward collective impact projects But in reality Depending on the year level of the students the length of the course It could really vary and so in some cases if it's a first year course It may just be introductions to the ideas and the introduction to the idea of collective impact versus actually moving all the way to a project Where as a graduate course or a capstone course that where students have the the skills and abilities Already in some cases it could actually be a really fast pivot to that collective impact stage So to Bruce's point, we're trying to keep it quite open for faculty to determine what makes sense in their context But it is one of those things that we're not always going to achieve the the end that we have in mind the the idealized end So if that's a helpful comment Um, sorry, there are two Stephanie's in the room. So I uh just to respond To your question Stephanie Hendricks. I we would love to hear more about your plan And how this so could be integrated if you want to unmute and kind of share that with us Uh, sure. Can you hear me? Okay? Yes. Thank you. Okay. Great. Well, first of all apologies to everyone for being late Um, and so I apologize if I missed things and I'm asking about things you've already spoken about but um, so I'm a Interdisciplinary graduate studies doctoral student at UBC Okanagan and I am doing a post-secondary curriculum on environmental health and environmental justice that's Meant for broadly for um, actually community colleges are my are my target group of young adults and I have uh eight modules with a podcast in each module and it's a scholarly personal narrative format sort of storytelling rather than Linear information, but having worked in environmental health and environmental justice collaboratives for many years. Um, I find this toolkit to be really wonderful because the issue of working out conflict and working collaboratively and um, and and especially with Uh, different stakeholders. So you on different issues through environmental health for example on a pesticide issue You might have farm workers, but you also might have wealthy suburban moms who don't want the pesticides coming To their homes and stuff. So so this as for instructors. I think this would be a great toolkit to um use to help However way they take my open education resource curriculum and use it if that makes sense That's a lot of information in a short period of time But this is exactly something I mean, there are some things like this Out there, but this is with the lesson plans and you've so thoughtfully Logically laid out these various elements and their relationships with one another. It's it's really quite wonderful. So I'm delighted to be able to Include this as a resource an instructor's resource for my um curriculum. So I'm very happy about that We're really happy to hear that And at the same time as you work through this, we know this is the work in progress and it's it's open for improvement So please kindly consider reaching out if there's anything that we could do to improve. We really appreciate Thank you at first blush. I I'm blown away by how thoughtful and thorough It is and like I said, I've seen a few of these before more for coming from grass roots grass roots NGO spheres that are very basic for kind of in-person workshops with multi stakeholders And this is the first one I've seen coming out of an academic environment with A very like I said thorough thoughtful the design is is really It looks like it would curb chaos In a real life scenario believe me been there done that got the t-shirt This is great Thank you All right, we don't we don't need to linger too far in but there's also the last slide And we just like to kind of share with you about what will be happening in 2023 Yeah, so um as we continue to refine the curriculum we are doing another pilot And we're looking for four ubc faculty members interested in working with us On now that we have the tools in the first pilot we were building them as we were working with the faculty Now we have them we want to see how they actually get integrated and refined and what improvements are needed So we are um going to be soliciting faculty who are interested in being in the pilot They'll have access as I said to working very closely with one or two of our staff throughout the course They'll also have access to five thousand dollars to put toward course Delivery whether that be a ta researcher however the partner stipends whatever that looks like for their purposes And so uh, there is a call for that and bruce is the lead on that process So we will be looking for faculty to sign up now with the expectation that they start working with us over the summer Either teaching in the summer or teaching in the first term or of uh of next year So even though you sign up now you're not actually we're not looking to make changes in january It you have some time to build with us Toward that course so that's where we're at now And with the goal that after we've done the second pilot we'll have eight Kind of exemplars that we can start to build from and understand how to actually make this more effective and useful And and the evaluation. Thank you, Susan and the evaluation project that I already mentioned again It's a work in progress and it stands to be distributed to the new four faculty that are joining us And we have the survey design and the focus group questions that We'll be happy to talk about though that's needed with the fact that you are important and talk about The significance of its distribution because we hope maybe next year this time we'll have better data about the post survey With the students to kind of share that with the faculty at uvc Yeah, so we could uh, if you just stop recording if that's uh, that's okay And then open the floor to a more uh informal conversation if there's any questions that we could answer