Bernie Gaidosch

How TLX collaborate with Bernie transforming in-class to fully online and making decision to drop a real textbook for his unique teaching experience?

Bernie is a professor from the LAS department and has taught Film Studies courses at GBC since 1998.

He has worked with Stella and Evelyn in the TLX since 2017, developing his two asynchronous online film courses GHUM 1079/Film Studies and LHUM 1201/The Evolution of Filmmaking. He has also participated in PD events sharing his experience with online course development at the Advancing Learning Conference in Ottawa in 2019 and the 2022 Open Education event in Toronto.

The reason he keeps teaching is a combination of sharing his long-time interest in filmmaking with his newfound excitement about the use of technology to bring students from around the world together in his online classroom in “real” time. “Feeling the ‘immediacy’ of having remotely detached students from everywhere work collectively on group filmmaking projects has brought a whole new freshness to my teaching experience,” he says.

It was important for him to drop the textbook in favour of Open Access resources because it removed an obstacle to students accessing the course materials, consequently increasing retention rates and overall student success.

Technology has enhanced his teaching experience through using digitally formatted elements for his courses to create a technologically enabled teaching/learning environment. These features included template development, creative use of Open materials instead of pricey textbooks and having students apply closed captions and Creative Commons licences in a move toward more authentic learning that has a place “out in the real world.”

He shares that his experience with developing his courses into an online mode has been nothing short of “transformative” for him. Having taught “forever” in an on-campus classroom setting, his initial skepticism about online teaching/learning had more to do with such ontological issues as “can students legitimately learn this way?” than it had to do with more practical questions. To overcome these challenges, Stella worked patiently with him through this phase to where “the penny dropped” and he understood its validity and its many affordances.

In the process, learning activities and assessments were transformed into more authentic experiences for students and more opportunities for Essential Employability Skills development were incorporated. Ultimately, he says, working with an Instructional Designer gave him a broad and deep grasp of ways to discuss the pedagogical aspects of newer modes of teaching.