This course introduces students to issues and practices in a range of educational research methodologies. Through interactive modules, students learn about and engage with research strategies to promote an understanding of how research impacts our lives and educational pursuits. For more information, please see the full course description.
ETEC 510: Design of Technology Supported Learning Environments (core)
This online seminar examines research and related exemplary participatory, networked media tools, as these inform the design of technology-mediated environments. We will explore constructivist and cultural theories of mind, education and digital authoring and communication and their significance for the design of dynamic pedagogical environments that support 21C modes of making, sharing, literacies and learning. Students will author and share digital artifacts and collaboratively design a technology-supported learning environment. For more information, please see the full course description.
ETEC 511: Foundations of Educational Technology (core)
This case-based course addresses the cultural-historical, ecological-natural, ethical-personal, existential-spiritual, socio-political and technical-empirical dimensions of technology with implications for curriculum and instructional design. How, why and to what degree have media and technology been incorporated into, or changed by, education and what foundations underlie these processes? The course is designed from a basis that educational media and learning technologies are not merely tools; educational premises are neither fully durable nor pliable; and actors or agents of education are not merely humans. It begins with an exploration of instructional design and case-based reasoning, proceeds through disciplinary and interdisciplinary foundations of e-learning, educational technology, learning technologies, and new media and concludes with the relatively neglected existential-spiritual dimension. For more information, please see the full course description.
ETEC 512: Applications of Learning Theories to Instruction (core)
The overarching objective of this course is to expose students to a variety of theories, each of which has the potential to be useful in understanding learning and teaching in a variety of settings. However, for this information to be useful, educators need to have an understanding of when and how different approaches should be utilized. To this end, many of the assignments and activities of this course will focus on applying different theoretical perspectives to ill-defined, realistic learning situations. In addition, one of the goals of this course is for students to develop a coherent, explicit sense of their own beliefs about learning, and how the various theories hold together and are related to, or influenced by, other perspectives. For more information, please see the full course description.
The purpose of this course is to prepare you to plan and manage e-learning effectively in your institutions and organizations. We will do this through readings and discussions of some of the key issues. The assignments will also give you an opportunity to apply some of these ideas to practical planning activities. As the title indicates, the course is focused on the use of technology in higher education and it is aimed primarily at people with management responsibilities working in this sector or those who aspire to work as educational managers. If you don’t fit this profile, you can still benefit from this course but you might have to work a bit harder to make sense of some of material and concepts. For more information, please see the full course description.
ETEC 521: Indigeneity, Technology and Education
This course explores central concerns of globalization and Indigenous people related to educational policy and practice. As colonialism has expanded, it has taken new technological forms; Indigenous people have been uniquely positioned to both challenge technology and to utilize it for their own purposes of identity expression and political mobilization. This course raises questions about the dilemmas of cultural expression in a postmodern internet age while surveying the sites where Indigenous people have employed computer and distance learning technologies to reinvigorate languages, oral traditions, and art forms that were in decline previously. For more information, please see the full course description.
ETEC 522: Ventures in Learning Technology
This course is an online immersion in the global learning technologies marketplace with particular emphasis on the creation and assessment of original for-profit and not-for-profit ventures that seek to harness the prospective learning potentials of emerging technologies. More simply, the course is about the digital frontiers of learning, and the skills required to be a successful pioneer. This is not a “business” course. We will provide a framework for understanding how commercial and institutional ventures related to learning technologies can be successfully conceived, launched and evaluated, but the focus is on opportunity development, not management process. If you have lots of business experience, or none, you’re in the right place if you’re excited by the future of learning. For more information, please see the full course description.Listen to the podcast interview with David Vogt, on Radio EPLT, Episode 8: Ventures in Learning Technologies
ETEC 530: Constructivist Strategies for E-Learning
This online seminar will examine literature on current research and practice concerning contemporary constructivist instructional strategies considered to be canonically effective. This will be subsequent to eliciting and exchanging personal beliefs/worldviews about the nature of knowledge and truths and how these impact or influence our pedagogy of teaching and learning. Key instructional approaches and methods including project-based teaching/learning and cooperative learning, and contextualized teaching/learning will be critically discussed. The principles employed in these strategies will be considered and applied to practical experiences of designing and delivering online instructions. Existing learning sites will be critically examined through constructivist theories of instructing. For more information, please see the full course description.
ETEC 531: Curriculum Issues in Cultural and Media Studies
This course focuses on understanding media and associated freedoms of cultural expression and the press for learning, teaching, and public pedagogy. Media studies is a dynamic discipline tailored to exploring youth, culture, and education through concepts or techniques such as articulation, framing, regulation, remediation, representation, and transcoding. In addition to understanding culture, media, and the process of meaning-making, this course focuses on making and managing media across formats, cultural expression, and civic engagement. Making minimal distinction among (the) media of, on, and in education, the course provides a survey of media studies and new media with an emphasis on media education and literacy. Media education and literacy are among the most relevant challenges to “official” knowledge and represent key movements in the sociology of curriculum. Hence, this course balances practice with ethical, legal, and theoretical aspects and emphasizes the design of curriculum and courses for teaching media studies and for integrating media literacy across the curriculum. For more information, please see the full course description.
ETEC 532: Technology in the Arts and Humanities Classroom
The arts and humanities have traditionally encompassed the study of literature, music, visual arts, performing arts, social studies, rhetoric, and philosophy as a means to understand the human condition. Education has played a vital role in engaging learning in school settings as well as life-long learning through community-based organizations. The arts and humanities can be studied within specific disciplines, but it can also extend to learning about the many aspects of society around us. In this course the arts and humanities will be explored as a way to bring people together to discuss shared values and differences in communities and critically inquire about our personal and social heritages. For more information, please see the full course description.
ETEC 533: Technology in the Mathematics and Science Classroom
In the 21st century, students’ abilities to grasp complex mathematics and science concepts, collect and analyze real time data, make sense of the science- and mathematics-rich information and conduct independent investigations have become increasingly important. At the same time, rapid advances of our knowledge of how people learn mathematics and science coupled with the ever growing range of modern educational technologies allowed contemporary mathematics and science educators to have an unprecedented range of opportunities to engage their students in meaningful learning. These two trends have significantly affected the teaching and learning of these disciplines and the pedagogical skills required of contemporary mathematics and science educators in order to succeed. Teachers have to acquire not only the pedagogical and disciplinary content knowledge, but also the knowledge of content-specific educational technologies and relevant pedagogies. The in-depth exploration of this knowledge (often referred to as Technological-Pedagogical Content Knowledge or TPCK), the ways mathematics and science teachers acquire it and learn to implement technology into their practice is the main objective of the current course. For more information, please see the full course description.
ETEC 540: Text Technologies – The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing
The rise of computerized writing through the latter part of the twentieth century has precipitated extensive debate over how text technologies modify reading and writing processes. Our writing tools - whether chisel and stone, reed pen and papyrus roll, press and vellum, typewriter and paper, or keyboard and computer screen - necessarily influence the way we compose and respond to text. It is clear that alongside the developments of computerized writing tools, there have been equally extraordinary developments in the means by which texts circulate, especially in relation to the global communication network we call the Internet. Networked-based, computer-mediated communications now penetrate almost all aspects of text production, to the point that documents that are intended for print are created first in digital spaces, and any individual with access to appropriate technologies and the literacy skills to do so has the ability to publish to the world, a power once reserved to a limited few in society. In the process of examining the early development of writing and the evolution of technologies for writing from ancient times to the present, this course will offer students an opportunity to test such claims, and to consider the ways in which different technologies have influenced beliefs about, and approaches to, writing and reading. For more information, please see the full course description. Listen to the podcast interview with Jeff Miller, speaking about ETEC 510 and ETEC 540, on Radio EPLT, Episode 9: Pets! Pets! Pets!
ETEC 565A: Special Course in Subject Matter Field: learning technologies – selection, design and application
This course is an online seminar that provides several theoretical frameworks to assist educators in evaluating, selecting and using various learning technologies. Students will gain hands-on experience using a range of learning technologies and platforms: web-publication, course management systems, communication tools, community and collaboration tools, multimedia, and social software tools. Students will complete a number of small assignments using different learning technologies as well as a larger project in which they bring several of these technologies together to design materials and activities to support student learning. For more information, please see the full course description.
ETEC 565G: Special Course in Subject Matter Field: Culture and Communication in Virtual Learning Environments
Online environments, and online learning environments, are not ‘culture-free zones’. Both the signs and the tools (Vygotsky & Luria, 1994) of virtual communications are culturally shaped, and diverse learners bring to online learning environments a wide range of culturally-mediated behavioural and communication patterns. Together, signs and tools allow individuals to process and interpret information, construct meaning and interact with the objects, people and situations they regularly encounter. When these elaborate mediating structures, finely honed to navigate a specific environment, encounter a different one, they can malfunction or break down completely. Culture, Technology and Communication in Virtual Learning Environments will introduce you to theoretical frameworks and existing research that consider the potential impact of culture on communications and learning in virtual learning environments. The course investigates contemporary research and theory in the three intersecting fields shown in this Figure, and will especially seek to uncover how culture can complicate ‘what happens’ in virtual learning environments when these domains intersect. For more information, please see the full course description.
ETEC 590: Graduating Project
ETEC 590 is an elective in the MET program, designed for students who wish to meet the requirements of the Teacher Qualification Services (TQS) in the Province of British Columbia for a "capstone research experience" in their program. This is a requirement for teachers who wish to qualify for salary category six. Since this is intended to be a culminating project of your experience in the MET Program, it should be completed toward the end of the program, normally after you have completed at least five courses. ETEC 500 must be completed before enrolling in ETEC 590. The culminating project, an ePortfolio, will be a reflection of you, the student who is towards the end of a Masters of Education program. It will highlight and showcase who you are as an educator as well as a researcher into theory and practice of integrating technology into various contexts. The purpose of the culminating project is to gather, organize, analyze, synthesize and present evidence to demonstrate your competencies, values and beliefs regarding the integration of technology in various contexts.
This course is an elective in the MET program, designed for students who wish to meet the requirements of the Teacher Qualification Services in the Province of British Columbia for a 'capstone research experience' in their program. This is a requirement for BC teachers who wish to qualify for salary category six.Students do not register for ETEC590 in the same manner as other ETEC courses. Instead, please send an email to David Roy requesting registration in this course. Dave will register you in it as soon as he has determined that you are eligible. ETEC 500 is a prerequisite for this course and must be completed prior to beginning ETEC 590 (in other words you may not register for both in the same term). For more information, please see the full course description.
ETEC 565M: Special Topics – Mobile Education
This course focuses on mobile teaching and learning. The course pioneers two educational contexts that are as yet unfamiliar within the MET program, and UBC overall:Mobility: The course and its learning experience will be designed for delivery almost entirely on mobile devices. While MET students already participate in our existing courses on their mobile devices, a mobile “immersion” in ETEC 565M offers valuable challenges in interaction design.Flexibility: The ETEC 565M graduate experience will be coupled with a separate MOOC-like course (M101—A TLEF-funded initiative) on the same topic offered to the entire UBC community. The intent is for the external course to serve as a fertile scholarship ground and publishing channel for ETEC 565M students creating a feedback loop between two complementary communities of learners. For more information on this course, please see the full course description.
ETEC 580: Self-Directed Research Projects
Throughout the Faculty of Education, courses numbered 580 are listed under various prefixes and are intended to provide opportunities for students to engage in self-directed study and research on a topic or issue not otherwise included in the regular curriculum. The 580 course(s) may be taken in the Winter Session (September-April) and the Summer Session (May-August).
All 580 courses must be supervised by a MET instructor or a suitable faculty member, and all are graded. Students who wish to include a 580 in their program of study should first consult with and receive approval from the MET Advisor.