4.9 Faculty spotlight: Janette Bulkan

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Students as creators/producers

Janette Bulkan, Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies in the Faculty of Forestry, has facilitated “students as producers” by using student-led projects on the UBC Wiki, an open-source platform. As a course assignment, students produce and share open resources for their peers, future students, and the wider community. According to Bulkan, the multifaceted projects require students to not only work together, but also to develop the self confidence to do research and share their voice. 

The “Student as Producer Links to an external site.” model emphasizes the role of the student as collaborators in the production of knowledge which helps transform students from being the object of the educational process to being the subject of it (Neary & Winn, 2009). Additionally, in this model, the university’s approaches to learning and research are closer aligned. Like researchers, students are asked to share their work with authentic audiences and not just with their immediate instructor.

According to Hendricks (2015), having students create and share learning materials is a form of authentic assessment. When students share their work with authentic audiences, such as through the UBC Wiki, they are:

  • Evaluating, creating and communicating in new ways using technology and building digital literacies.
  • Opening their work up to wider scrutiny – something which can be scary, but in doing so pushes us to a higher standard of work.
  • Learning to see themselves as contributors to knowledge and emerging scholars. 

To learn more about students as producers, please visit UBC's Open Pedagogy Toolkit.