VIU’s Esthetics Program – On the topic of Community:

Lesley Osborne, Chair & Instructor, VIU Esthetics Program, speaks about what happened when COVID-19 halted progress in the Esthetics program:

“The Class were in their last few weeks of the program, which is pretty much a time when students hone their practical skills in the teaching and learning public clinic located at the Parksville campus.

With the clinic now closed, the big challenge for the Instructors was to find authentic ways for students to finish off their practical quotas, while self-isolating in their homes.

An Ah-hah moment!

One of the set of quotas that needed to be completed was day and night make-ups. So, we created an assignment requiring students to select a decade, determine the make-up requirements of that time, then to come to the Zoom classroom with their make-up done in that theme. 

The students were super excited to take part in this assignment and they all looked forward to class. They loved seeing each others work, had a good laugh and shared their positive feedback to each other.

As instructors we have found our students feeling very isolated and a bit down. But with this project we saw the spark back in their eyes and they were all on board!”

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Applied Business Technology: Building an ABT community

teacher ask GIF

Deanna McNaught, Instructor of Applied Business Technology at VIU, shares her ideas for building community online:

“One of the things I am doing is posting lecture videos on VIULearn (using Zoom to record), and if nothing else, the feedback I am getting from the students is that they feel better when they hear and see me and it calms them down.

Students are under immense pressure through all of this, and when I hear comments like that, I am reminded that they are scared and struggling.  A few of my students are home schooling their young children, so it’s hard for them to find time during the day to do school work, so I make myself available in the evenings.” 

Deanna recommends that you take care of yourself too by “taking Sundays off to recover from the busy week.

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#AskVIUHorticulture how to build a community, and they will put it in to action!

Ask Horticulture #VIUHorticulture #AskVIUHorticulture
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/askviuhorticulture/?hl=en

Christine Quist, Instructor for VIU’s Horticulture Program, writes to let us know what is new this week in Horticulture, and tells how both learning and community are being enhanced through the creation of a new innovative online assignment.

“This week in Horticulture, in addition to our regular classes, we have been focusing on how to create and build community while working and learning remotely.

Jessica Gemella, our social media leader, has been working to set up our new plant query section on Instagram for members of the community to submit their plant questions.  

Each week the students will select a question from the public and use the knowledge from this semester, their backgrounds and group discussions towards preparing an answer and replying on Instagram. 

Jessica’s “#AskVIUHorticulture” idea has enthusiastic support from students and will carry on throughout the summer to help keep students, instructors, and our large community of followers connected over the out- of-session months.

We hope some of our fellow VIU faculty members will follow us on Instagram and submit garden questions of their own!

#VIUHorticulture #AskVIUHorticulture