UPEI E-Learning team awarded COVID Warrior Coins for supporting faculty and students
The members of UPEI’s E-Learning team—Jason Hogan, Joel MacDonald, and Kristy McKinney—have been awarded COVID Warrior Coins for their work to support faculty members when UPEI had to switch very quickly to online learning in the middle of the 2020 winter semester because of the COVID-19 pandemic. They also received the award for their involvement in the re-boot of teaching methods, course design, and use of educational technologies required for the 2020–2021 academic year.
Her Honour The Honourable Antoinette Perry, Lieutenant Governor of Prince Edward Island, is pleased to award specially made COVID Warrior Coins to Islanders and Island organizations that have gone above and beyond—through leadership, initiative, and outstanding acts of goodwill—to help others during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Trevor Jain, director of UPEI’s BSC in paramedicine program and an emergency physician at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, originally designed and commissioned the COVID Warrior Coin. Her Honour graciously agreed to take on the initiative and present the awards.
Donald Moses, University Librarian, and Dr. Charlene VanLeeuwen, coordinator of the UPEI Teaching and Learning Centre, nominated the E-Learning team for their quick and ongoing response to the needs of faculty members since the pandemic began.
The nomination states that they worked closely with faculty and instructional staff to help them with new learning technology platforms, and they developed instructional materials for students. In addition, they worked closely with other units at UPEI, such as Accessibility Services, Experiential Education, Robertson Library, and ITSS, on a variety of projects with the goal of improving the online experience for teachers and students.
“In the early phases of the pandemic, the E-Learning team responded to numerous requests for technical support and pedagogical consultation—in essence, operating as academic first-responders. They helped their colleagues to continue teaching, which in turn enabled students to stay on track with their studies and for those near the end of their programs, graduate. They rescued many faculty members and instructional staff, helping them adapt to the quickly changing instructional landscape. They handled this stressful time with practical, evidence-based strategies and advice, good humour, and patience.”
Examples of their efforts included the development of the “Teaching Online” resource portal and direct support provided to individual instructors and the delivery of a slate of relevant webinars that supported the transition to online teaching and learning.
As the realities of a year or more of online teaching set in, the E-Learning Team shifted again to help faculty prepare and deliver their courses online. They worked closely with Robertson Library and the campus community on the academic integrity portal and discipline-specific badges and engaged with the various instructional committees created in response to the pandemic, integrating those resources into the Teaching Online portal. They also assisted Holland College instructors, inviting them to webinars that applied to their needs.
“The efforts of the E-Learning Office were crucial in ensuring that instructional staff were supported throughout the pandemic,” said Moses. “I thank them for their hard work, ingenuity, and dedication to teaching and learning at UPEI. They are indeed ‘COVID Warriors’.”
