About the session
As a learner and educator with disabilities, the digital accessibility of published research, cultural production, project management and collaboration tools, and knowledge-sharing environments is viscerally significant to me. When information, digital practices and environments are accessible, I can move with ease, breathe deeply with the work, and listen to, and for, the spoken and unspoken discourses.
When I encounter digital inaccessibility, my field of inquiry becomes extrinsically limited. Over and over, I face the same dilemma. Do I surrender my momentum to troubleshoot a barrier? Or do I surrender my agency to delimit the bounds of my own research? Digital accessibility is central to my workflow, my construction of knowledge and my ability to construct knowledge with others. I am not alone.
In this session, we will talk about digital accessibility relative to research inquiry, production, and dissemination. We will look at a crip hack for literature collection and sorting that is now an open resource on digital accessibility, as well as some digitally accessible examples of knowledge-sharing and research production.
Everyone is welcome, but I want to put a special call out to disabled educators, learners and others working in the field of digital accessibility, including disability services staff and librarians. Let’s use this session to talk about the messiness of digital accessibility and co-create some pathways toward centering digital accessibility in research praxis.
Speaker
Kim Ashbourne (she/her) has worked as a learning experience designer focusing on accessibility, a digital project manager, and a digital writing instructor. She is a graduate student in educational technology in the department of curriculum and instruction and graduate affiliate of the technology integration and evaluation research lab in the faculty of education at the University of Victoria.
Register Now!
This session will be recorded, archived, and made available publicly on BCcampus.ca. By participating in this session, you acknowledge you are aware your participation will be recorded and the recording will be openly available.
About the series
The Research Speaker Series offers participants and presenters an opportunity to learn and share knowledge on research methods, approaches, and pedagogies around accessibility, access, Indigenous engagement, and equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in teaching and learning.
These livestream webinars take place every month from September to December and will allow you to learn about new research directly from the researchers.
Sessions
- September 10, 2024 – Arts-based research as paradigm, manifesto and mission for volatile times, Geo Takach, Royal Roads University
- October 29, 2024 – Centring digital accessibility in research praxis, Kim Ashbourne, University of Victoria
- November 26, 2024 – Using the 5Rs as an Indigenous research framework, Dr. Jean-Paul Restoule, University of Victoria
- December 10, 2024 – Creating communities of care for academic spaces: a critical, collective, and pragmatic approach, Petra Boynton
Learning outcomes
By the end of this series, participants will be able to:
- Broaden their knowledge and research skills in the B.C. post-secondary context.
- Learn about Indigenization, EDI, decolonization, and accessibility in research.
- Be inspired to participate in research communities of practice or explore themes in their work.
- Connect with academics and community members who share similar interests.
About the session
Let’s get back to some basics! In discussing the utility of a 5Rs framework for engaging in Indigenous research, it is helpful to remind ourselves what is meant by research, Indigenous research, decolonizing research, and how the 5Rs might help us achieve these goals.
By situating self in relation to spirit, family, community, and nation, Anishinaabe researcher, Jean-Paul Restoule, reminds us that we are known in relation and what can be known is also approached through relationship. In Indigenous research, the process is as important, or more important, than the product or outcome. Therefore, it is important to be conscious of how we come to know.
Based on Verna Kirkness and Ray Barnhardt’s description of the 4Rs needed for Indigenous success in higher education, this research approach prioritizes respect, responsibility, relevance, and reciprocity as ways to ensure our research is responsive to Indigenous communities.
In sharing an approach that includes the 4Rs plus relationship as a critical fifth ‘R’, Restoule will also touch on some other key Rs like reverence, refusal, and responsiveness.
In Anishinaabe approaches, underlying values like wisdom, love, respect, honesty, bravery, humility, and truth are helpful in grounding the researcher. Restoule will touch on the importance of connecting to underpinning local values in conducting Indigenous research as well as implications for Indigenist vs. Indigenous research.
Speaker
Dr. Jean-Paul Restoule (he/him) is professor and chair of the department of Indigenous education at University of Victoria. He is Anishinabe from Dokis First Nation in Ontario, and his research includes Indigenizing and decolonizing teacher education and investigating the use of Indigenous knowledge in online learning environments. Restoule is also co-editor of Indigenous Research: Theories, Practices, and Relationships (Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2018), a ground-breaking collection for students and scholars interested in learning how Indigenous research is carried out in practice.
Register Now!
This session will be recorded, archived, and made available publicly on BCcampus.ca. By participating in this session, you acknowledge you are aware your participation will be recorded and the recording will be openly available.
About the series
The Research Speaker Series offers participants and presenters an opportunity to learn and share knowledge on research methods, approaches, and pedagogies around accessibility, access, Indigenous engagement, and equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in teaching and learning.
These livestream webinars take place every month from September to December and will allow you to learn about new research directly from the researchers.
Sessions
- September 10, 2024 – Arts-based research as paradigm, manifesto and mission for volatile times, Geo Takach, Royal Roads University
- October 29, 2024 – Centring digital accessibility in research praxis, Kim Ashbourne, University of Victoria
- November 26, 2024 – Using the 5Rs as an Indigenous research framework, Dr. Jean-Paul Restoule, University of Victoria
- December 10, 2024 – Creating communities of care for academic spaces: a critical, collective, and pragmatic approach, Petra Boynton
Learning outcomes
By the end of this series, participants will be able to:
- Broaden their knowledge and research skills in the B.C. post-secondary context.
- Learn about Indigenization, EDI, decolonization, and accessibility in research.
- Be inspired to participate in research communities of practice or explore themes in their work.
- Connect with academics and community members who share similar interests.
About the session
Although understandings about mental health are ancient and varied, over the past three decades, conversations about wellbeing have grown. These stem from charities, healthcare, therapy, social/media, and more recently, from wellness and influencer cultures.
Simultaneously, while awareness of (some) mental illnesses has increased, barriers to accessing diagnoses and care have also grown. In many settings, including academia, mental health and wellbeing support is not always available, affordable, accessible, or appropriate.
The reasons for this shift are numerous and far bigger than the university where, over the past five years, the burgeoning discourse of “academic mental health” now includes awareness days, research of varying quality, vague and confused definitions, unclear boundaries around duties of care, a specific genre of self-help books, multiple interventions with varying theories and approaches, and the inevitable wellbeing webinar.
The backdrop to this is, of course, the systemic problems within academia that may cause, or worsen, danger or distress. Factors like climate change, pollution, the impact and legacy of the pandemic, political unrest, war, conflict and displacement, poverty, historical abuses, inequalities, and access barriers compound the problem.
For some these issues are acute, while for others the impact is minimal, with minoritized students and staff disproportionately affected. However, many approaches to addressing academic mental health adopt a ‘one size fits all’ model that consistently fails to meet the needs of diverse students, staff, or wider communities and is detached from wider systems of teaching, learning, research, or performing other labour within academic institutions.
Our session will review existing evidence, policies, protocols, manifestos, and concordats. Then, using pre-submitted participant questions, it will reflect on who is brought in, and left out, by existing discussions around academic mental health. This will be used to produce pragmatic, supportive, sensitive, and inclusive ideas allowing us to consider how we might integrate a community of care across our campuses, research, teaching, and pastoral provision.
This session aims to leave everyone feeling comforted, validated, and aware of different approaches to caring for oneself, others, and the wider environment.
Speaker
Petra Boynton is a social psychologist who supports universities, charities, research organizations and government departments to undertake and use research in pragmatic, inclusive, accessible, ethical, and safe ways. She specializes in teaching the often neglected or forgotten ‘how tos’ of research. Petra’s key focus is on mental health, rights, and wellbeing, described in her PEEPS Model for prioritizing safety and wellbeing in teaching, research, and pastoral care.
Petra’s background is in international health services research, and she has applied this through working as an Agony Aunt (advice columnist) for print, broadcast, and online publications. Using that experience to create self-help resources for researchers including The Research Companion: A practical guide for the social sciences, health and development (2nd ed., 2016); Coping with Pregnancy Loss (2018); and Being Well In Academia: Ways to feel stronger, safer and more connected (2020).
Register Now!
This session will be recorded, archived, and made available publicly on BCcampus.ca. By participating in this session, you acknowledge you are aware your participation will be recorded and the recording will be openly available.
About the series
The Research Speaker Series offers participants and presenters an opportunity to learn and share knowledge on research methods, approaches, and pedagogies around accessibility, access, Indigenous engagement, and equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in teaching and learning.
These livestream webinars take place every month from September to December and will allow you to learn about new research directly from the researchers.
Sessions
- September 10, 2024 – Arts-based research as paradigm, manifesto and mission for volatile times, Geo Takach, Royal Roads University
- October 29, 2024 – Centring digital accessibility in research praxis, Kim Ashbourne, University of Victoria
- November 26, 2024 – Using the 5Rs as an Indigenous research framework, Dr. Jean-Paul Restoule, University of Victoria
- December 10, 2024 – Creating communities of care for academic spaces: a critical, collective, and pragmatic approach, Petra Boynton
Learning outcomes
By the end of this series, participants will be able to:
- Broaden their knowledge and research skills in the B.C. post-secondary context.
- Learn about Indigenization, EDI, decolonization, and accessibility in research.
- Be inspired to participate in research communities of practice or explore themes in their work.
- Connect with academics and community members who share similar interests.