As indicated in the November 2022 TLS newsletter, TLS is celebrating its 30th anniversary. To help recognize this milestone, we thought we’d share stories of teaching and learning from our past.
This is our second story in the series. Catch up on the previous story, Early Innovation, here.
The opening of the Future Learning Lab on the 4th floor of the MacOdrum Library marks the return of Carleton’s teaching and learning centre to the Library. In 1992 the Teaching and Learning Resource Centre (TLRC) opened on the 5th floor of the Library in two small spaces, a couple of offices, and a computer lab. This story relates to the Student Technology Assistant (STA) program which was led out of the 5th-floor TLRC offices. The STA program was designed to build partnerships between instructors and students, centred on supporting technology and teaching. The student staff members would handle the technical aspects of early teaching technologies, allowing instructors to focus on their teaching with the tool.
The program launched in 1999 with a cohort of seven students (Lisa Carnahan, Limor Zimor, Chris Duguid, Laurie Gaines, Susan Ampleford, Jodi McMurray, and Dao Luu), and was supervised by Nestor Querido.
Incidentally, Nestor is still with TLS, and after a turn as the supervisor Carleton University Online student and instructor services group, he is now the supervisor of the Future Learning Lab (and so back in the Library)!
The STA program under Nestor’s guidance was responsible for some of Carleton’s first course websites, scanned photos and 35 mm slides, taught instructors how to use Powerpoint and Hypercard, and even built a virtual microscope for first-year biology labs. The STA program became something more than just a team – it became a community for students who were part of the program. International students found friends, and the STAs built substantial friendships and networks with Carleton’s academic community – with several STA students completing graduate work because of their interactions with an instructor.
The STA program was also an early incubator of future teaching and learning talent – Ryan Kuhne, the university’s Learning Environment System Administrator, and Matthew Di Giuseppe, TLS Web Application Developer both got their starts as STAs.
The STA program evolved over the years as technologies and the services of the TLRC (and later its replacement the Educational Development Center (EDC)) changed and grew. From building course websites in HTML, STAs supported the use of WebCT, Carleton’s first learning management system, helped instructors with digital photo editing and formatting, developed documentation on a host of teaching technologies and resources like the use of media in classroom or early classroom response systems (‘clickers’) and trained instructors through technology workshops. In time, the STA program ended – in part due to funding cuts, but also because educational technologies matured and instructors became more self-reliant and comfortable with these tools.
Yet – like many initiatives in education, good ideas and programs find a way of resurfacing and being re-imagined. Almost 30 years later, TLS’ Students as Partners Program (SaPP) launched in 2019/20 and shares some similarities and roots with the TLRC/EDC STA program. While the SaPP initiative is designed to bring the learner’s voice to teaching problems and to foster collaboration between an instructor and student, it also shares the idea of connecting students with instructors to support teaching and learning and creating a sense of community, much in the same way the STA program did.
If you’re interested in working with a student on a teaching project or activity, check out the SaPP program – applications for Spring/Summer will open in February 2023!