Hello and welcome back to so you gotta lifesite degree We're your host Frieda and Lisa to life's I undergrad students trying to navigate our future careers. This is Episode 16. And we're talking to Alastair Tracy about being an undergraduate coordinator in the Department of Biology at McMaster University. How are you doing today, Lisa?
I'm doing good. I got a good night of sleep last night, which is unusual for an insomniac and I also have follow up. So in our last episode, our special half birthday episode number 15. At one point we talked about who would be more likely to go bungee jumping, and we both talked about how neither of us are likely. I don't remember what conclusion we came to. But anyways, bungee jumping is scary. And literally the next day, I was on my Instagram feed. And I see this photo that Alex Honnold, the famous rock climber posted, that's just him on a climb. But just to chill out between working on the climb. He's literally just swinging the rope. From the wall back. Oh, wow. Yeah. Take a look at this post. Oh, my God. We're like, yeah, we don't know if we really be down until Yeah, wow, this was like swinging but on a whole other level. Also, how does he come back when if you can't reach the wall afterwards? Well, go out there. That's terrifying. In other news, I have a really exciting life update. Yes. And I've been not telling you this, because I've been wanting to tell you about on the podcast. So we have a mutual friend who I will not name by name, but they go to Waterloo, and they're in mechatronics. And so I've mentioned before that I have some physical health conditions that make it so that I can't do certain things. So one of those things is pressing down on the sustain pedal on the piano. So like when you play like your right foot, you press down on the pedal. And it's really important for some songs to sound for most songs and sounds really bad about it. Yeah, I can't do that. And so what I started doing a couple years ago, was I was like, wait, I can do like a semi solution to this. And so we have to 10 pound weights. So what I do is I kind of just like position them on top of the pedal. So I don't think I get the full like 20 pounds of force, but like a decent amount of weight. It just like keeps it down. And then I play. But I'm moving to Hamilton soon. And so I was thinking I want to be able to play the pianos around campus. And just in general, like I want to be able to play pianos without lugging around weights. Very practical. And so I was like, wait, I can work with someone like I can hire someone to design a piano pedal clap for me. So it's all like a perfect solution. Because in an ideal world, like if I was going all out, I would be able to like, I don't know, click my tongue to change the pedal like every four seconds or something. But semi solutions are also a great solution. No, of course. Yeah. And so I saw I ran it by this friend. And they were like, yeah, like, I think I could take a shot at that. And so for the past, I think month or so, we've been kind of going back and forth and working on a design for this piano pedal clamp together. Oh my god. That's so cool. Yeah, I know, like sketching diagrams, like I've been taking measurements, I've been getting splinters on the underside of the piano where the manufacturer obviously didn't intend you to put your finger. Yeah. And yeah, it's really cool. We've decided that we're probably it's probably going to be 3d printed. And I think he's just he's like working on a prototype right now. And yeah,
that's so cool. Yeah, I've been wondering.
Cuz you told me you and this vendor working on some kind of secret? Yeah, that you're gonna. Yeah, I had no idea what it could be because of Yeah, your realm of interests besides don't overlap that much. So I was like, the site and computer. Yeah, exactly. I was like, I have no idea what this. Yeah. Also, 3d printing is shockingly cheap. Yeah. He said that they were gonna print a prototype. And I was like, oh, like, How much is it going to be? I just wanted to know, because I don't want to print a prototype. It's going to be like 10 bucks. But he did the calculations for me. It was something like 62 cents. Yeah, I think it's one of those things where like the initial cost to set up like a 3d Yeah. Yeah, no, they own a 3d printer. I did not know. But that really makes things easy. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Really exciting. Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. All your plants after now that project is Yeah. But about you. You recently had dental adventures? Yeah. So I got my wisdom teeth that she's less wise. Yeah, also, they were huge. I was like, I can't believe they fit in my teeth are scary. Like you don't think about like, like the top of the teeth. goes down all the way into your gum. It's kind of terrifying. Yeah, like as the surgeon was taking them out, and he's like, Whoa, these are really big, really wise. If you're wondering like, why was Frieda able to hear that during her surgeries because she was conscious you Most people aren't but she was. I decided to get the smallest amount of anaesthesia. So it's like just local. That's just a weird way of phrasing it the lowest. Yeah, you sure? Yeah. Yeah. They said there's three levels. And so the second one is the one that makes you kind of like loopy and like, people make videos about it. But I got the one that's even less I could smell and hear everything, but it was honestly I think I might have talked about this before, but I had three dental surgeries like in the past year for like gum surgeries. And when I booked my first one, I was initially like, Oh, of course, I want to be like, knocked out completely. But in the weeks leading up to the surgery, I have this fear of like being unconscious or just present. And so I was I started to realise I was legitimately more anxious about the actual surgery. And then I called him and I was like, Can we just not do? They were like, Yeah, sure. I was like, Okay, and then my anxiety immediately disappeared. Like, I'm ready for you to rip out my gum. Yeah, I think there's a CGP Grey video about this, or he's talking about transporters in Star Trek. Like, yeah, like the only way they could work is by like, basically killing your body and then recreating it again. And you don't know that that doesn't happen when you go unconscious. I mean, without giving away too many spoilers, if you're into that kind of thing. The movie called The Prestige by Christopher Nolan is a really good movie and it's a really underrated movie of his Yeah, I would recommend. Yeah. So, Lisa, what's the what's the squirrel the week? The squirrel of the week is family squirrel. What is family squirrel? Family squirrel is Okay, listen, I have to ask you something. It's kind of like an ask for forgiveness instead of ask for permission to do so. Okay. So what's the line with squirrels Frieda?
Like,
I know that it's like a squirrel of the week, but can we have like a group of it's like a Nobel Prize or they can only be maximum three squirrels that got this girl of the week, or can it be like a whole collection of squirrels because Okay, so I was walking back from the pharmacy through this kind of like wooded area. And then I kind of just see like these three squirrels Dart across the ashphalt path is really cute. And one of them looks considerably smaller than the others. So I was like, oh, my goodness, baby, you know, and then I watched them scamper over the fence. And then you know, being the squirrel enthusiast I am. I looked at them, like kind of like where they went, and they started running around this giant tree. And I was like, Okay, and then as I watch, there's like three or four other squirrels that emerge, and certainly clamouring around the tree with them and so I walk closer to the fence to take a look. And then there's there was definitely more than 10 it was my world was happening. I don't know they were going crazy. Like there's fallen log on the ground that was kind of hollow. And they were going like in and out of the log inside the log over the log down again. absolutely crazy. I don't know what was up. I think there was a squirrel town hall or something.
Oh, my goodness. That's so cute.
I love that idea. Yeah, it's I was just like staring at you. I was just standing there and watching all these little squirrels and it suddenly occurs to me that I'm standing like right in the middle of the path. And I look to my left to see if there's anyone coming up. Out of the way for a few metres away from me is this elderly man who's also standing there just
Yeah, me. I will be an elderly man in 30 years. Close enough. Yeah, that's very funny. This feels like that moment in Rick and Morty when more you can hear the
planning the future of humanity.
Yeah, you don't know what went on at that time. Yeah, exactly.
Very nice.
Alright, are you ready to interview with Ulster? I am so absolutely ready to interview Alistair. This podcast is sponsored by kicking back alpaca ranch chicken back alpaca Ranch is an alpaca farm near Collingwood, Ontario that's run by Carolyn and Doug Lilian. They raise beautiful alpacas offer close up alpaca tours and create wonderful products from alpaca fibre. At the moment. Other tours are in small groups and lasts between 45 and 90 minutes. During this time, you'll get the chance to pet the alpacas feed them treats and take lots of photos. You even get to learn all sorts of interesting facts about the species like why they don't like it when you touch their heads. Plus, after the tour, you get to visit their store and check out some cute alpaca products. I was surprised to see the range of items they offer including socks, dryer balls and get this alpaca plushies made using real alpaca fibre. I myself have visited their ranch this past summer. My favourite part of my tour was without a doubt seeing all the cute baby alpacas who are also known as Korea's they're just so so adorable. My favourite Korea was pipsqueak who is a small fluffy white alpaca but lately I think I'm taking a Real liking to Paisley who is a young Apakah that looks like she always has a tiny smile on her face. It's especially fun getting to feed them treats the feeling of their mouths nibbling against your palms is just such a delight. kicking back alpaca Ranch is open year round and are currently following all government protocols regarding COVID-19 you can book a tour at WWW dot alpaca tours.ca. Their alpaca products are also available for purchase online@www.lastline.com that's lslyn.com or at the link in the show notes. You can also follow him on social media at the links in the show notes for cute alpaca photos. But most importantly, book a tour and pay those q alpacas a visit. This week's guest is Alistair Tracy. Alastair is a level two undergraduate coordinator in the Department of Biology at McMaster University. He has been at McMaster for the past 12 years in 2020. He was awarded that McMaster presidents award for outstanding contributions to teaching and learning for innovative teaching methods in biology 183, a first year of cellular and molecular biology course, he's also received the highest honour of all multiple Reddit posts from students affirming that he is a lovely human being. Thank you for joining us today, Alistair. So the first question that we have for you is if you could just let us know what does it mean to be an undergraduate coordinator at McMaster? What is your job?
So my job is dealing with a lot of the student interaction, for starters. So I feel like the most important aspect of my job is doing my best to ensure that the students have sort of a positive learning experience on kind of the face of a lot of the courses, I guess where the students will come to me with questions and their problems. And hopefully I can rectify things for them. I do a lot of the administrative work, or the courses such as the work related to the learning management system, which Glasgow University is having to learn calculating student grades, answering lots of student inquiries, and also a lot of course development too. So whether that's developing documents for the course, such as the course outlines, or doing curriculum development for the labs, or the tutorials, sometimes evaluations and things like that, and from time to time, even electric content. So my job, I do a lot of a lot of things behind the scenes the students probably don't see. But my position I think is primarily student centric. And I'm really here for the students.
And so your job title is that you are the level two undergraduate coordinators. So if my understanding is correct, McMaster the biology department has four undergraduate coordinators, one for each level, do you want to just tell us a bit about are you involved in all the courses in level two, do you also work with some of the other coordinators, that kind of thing.
So in the Department of Biology at McMaster University, there are three undergraduate coordinators, actually one for level one, one for level two, and one for level three. And that's how our duties are kind of broken up, we're assigned essentially to the corresponding course level. So as you mentioned, I'm the level two coordinator. So I coordinate almost all of the level two courses we generally are associated or with the larger aroma courses. So if it's a lower enrollment course, in the departments, sometimes we don't have an association with that course, where we're the course coordinator. Prior to being the level two coordinator, I was the first year coordinator for 10 years. So I do still work within the first year courses, I guess it's almost like in a consulting position, in a sense, I don't like the students don't really see me or know me so much anymore. But I'm still part of the instructional team from the perspective of developing some content and helping with decision making and and direction for the courses, especially when it comes to course revisions and refinements and things like that. So I still, you know, answering questions, and I still do a lot of stuff. Last summer, even though I wasn't officially part of the instructional team, when we pivoted to the online delivery of the labs for biology one a three, I rewrote the entire lab manual pretty much to design it for virtual delivery, as opposed to what the students were doing in person. So that was a lot of work. And although as, as you said, like, I'm kind of level 2%, I'm still working a lot with level one and a little bit here. And there with level three, I do work a lot, certainly with the other coordinators, the level one and the level three coordinators, usually we're just helping each other out when we can, especially if we have knowledge or experience with the other courses. And we kind of bounce ideas off each other. And a lot of times you're curious as to what's going on in other courses, or how certain situations being dealt with or, you know if certain contents being taught where we should expect that students kind of know this coming into our courses or things like that. So there is there is a lot of discussion between the three of us and we do work I think quite well as a team.
Can you tell us what kind of an average day of work looks like to you? Let's say before a pandemic hits, just kind of like what time would you arrive at work, what would be the things that you're doing throughout the day, lunch break kind of thing, leave work time, that sort of thing.
I don't live very close to campus. So my work started my work day, if you're looking for like a time that I started out, but that varies, I'm about a 5050 minute commute from campus. If the weather's bad or traffic's bad, or there's an accident on one of the major highways, it takes a little longer so, but it also, you know, I have two young children, so I get them off to school, and then I had to work. So I'd say My day starts around nine o'clock, on average. And usually, depending on what's going on, on that particular day, I always like to sort of make myself available to the students while they're in laboratorial. You know, I'd like to kind of check in and just see how things are going. And I'm chatting with the teaching assistant just to see if everything's running smoothly. And not really checking up on the teaching assistant, like not at all. And I tell them that I say, you know, if you see me pop in, it's, it's just something that I've always done over the years. And a lot of the times when students see me come in, they'll kind of like me, say, Hey, can I ask you a question are are such an email yesterday, and I know you're really busy. So I'd rather ask you now in person, because your email Wait, email reply might be a couple of maybe delayed a couple of days, right? So I like to sort of check in on what's going on at the time when I arrive. After that it's oddly a very complex job, like from behind the scenes, and students don't really realise it could be pleading emails on student correspondence and making sure they get answers to their questions. That's a good good chunk of my day. Certainly, when we're on campus, My office is like a through a, I have office hours, you know, generally every day, I would dedicate like an hour, it's usually around lunchtime, the lunch hour. And that was sort of my dedicated office hour time if I was available, or if I didn't have a meeting, or it wasn't like a committee meeting or something like that. But I had always told students, you know, if you're passing by and you can't come to your office, or just stop by and if my doors open when stores open, just come in. So when we're on campus, My office is often populated with students dropping by to ask questions and things like that. So that's a lot of my a lot of my day. And that's great, because that's, as I said, that's kind of the university for a lot of ways. And then you know, scrambling sometimes to get things ready for the upcoming week, such as you know, the labs and the assignments and evaluations and getting student grades ready and getting tests marked. And organising the teaching assistants is a huge part of the job. I've tried to schedule things so that there's at least one day of the week that there aren't labs and tutorials running. And that's generally turns out to be a Monday if I can, and Mondays are at the start of the week. And sometimes I think people want to start off the week, maybe a little bit more a little bit slower than the other days, Mondays are my busiest day because I will schedule all my teaching assistant meetings that week to get the TA is ready for the upcoming week, whatever is coming up. So and sometimes it's multiple meetings per day, depending on the courses that are schedules, there was one year where it's 68 meetings in a day. So that was six hours out of my day on Monday that was gone. So lunch, I try to catch lunch, when I can, I wouldn't say there's a dedicated time, each day that I eat my lunch, I don't sit down at 1130 or 12 o'clock. I do it's it's just because I can sneak in that sometimes it's later in the afternoon. Sometimes it's I there was a time I can remember I remember when I was still the first year coordinator, I realised after a little bit of reflection that it had been three weeks since I take a lunch break. And you know, it's really just kind of grabbing a bite to eat in my office quickly as I'm working as opposed to like a dedicated time. So it's it's pretty busy. And you know, there was a time a few years ago, again, when I was a first year coordinator. And I remember hearing from people like from my colleagues, they were kind of joking around that they're going to send out a search party to come look for me because because they hadn't seen me in like six weeks, because I am in a separate building from most of them where they work within the Department of Biology. So I was in the science building. And most of the biology related things happen in the life sciences building. So they hadn't seen me in so long because I hadn't, you know, building the other building for any reason. And the joke was that they're gonna have to send a daily search party looking for me to make sure that I was okay. And so it gets a little bit crazy. And then the end of each day is kind of turns into a bit of a scramble to make sure that everything is ready for the following day. So my days are variable, some days, you know, I'm on campus till 5pm 6pm 7pm 8pm It just really depends on how much I have to do that day and what I know I need to get done to ensure that things are going to run smoothly for the next day for the teaching assistants and the students and the courses in general. I always kind of jumped around saying you need to get these things done so that the train stays on the tracks for the following day. And because of the train falls off the tracks in these big courses, it's it's kind of tough sometimes to train back on the tracks, Things Fall Apart very quickly. Yeah,
when there's 1500 students on the train, it's kind of hard to get it get it back running smoothly. I feel like that's one of the things that students don't realise. I think when I was a TA for one mo three last fall semester, it kind of gave me some perspective as to wow like it's a week before classes started. I don't know what tutorial i'm to. It's less maybe like official and like all set up and then some students may think Coming up to like a big institution like McMaster definitely a lot of behind the scenes scrambling going on sometimes especially recently, lots
of moving parts for sure. And you know, when what it's it's very interesting that you say that because when undergraduate students become teaching assistants, they might have thought back to first year and and we're kind of wondering, like, what's going on behind the scenes? Or why aren't my test grades out? Like I wrote the test, like a week ago, or something like that? Who's my ta? And why don't I have a discussion forum or why isn't, and there are so many moving parts. And when a lot of undergrads became tpas, and worked with me, I don't really know what's working for me. But when they worked with me, especially for you know, within the first year courses, they were just flabbergasted once they realised like, what was going on behind the scenes and how much work it takes to keep things organised. And even though sometimes it feels like it's not, they realised pretty quickly that it could be way crazier. Right? So there's a lot of work behind the scenes, and they realise, wow, like, I had no idea that this is what it had to do, or I had no idea that this is what the course instructors were doing. There's just so many other things and and I've had lots, of course, a number of, you know, teaching assistants at the end of the term, come and talk to me afterwards and say, like, we had no idea what was going on in first year, like, everything now makes so much more sense. It didn't seem like it did them. And I always kind of tell the team, as I said, like there is method to the madness, you know, you just have to bear with me and, and usually they realise it. And I remember one particular teaching assistant that was actually like a teaching assistant sort of project student that was that was working with me. And after the fact just came up to me and talked to me and said, You know, I, like have so much respect now for what you do. He said, when I was in first year, I used to like talk to my friends and be like, what does that guy even do? Like? Does it just sit in his office and talk to students? Like, what's that guy doing? And, and now after becoming, like, ingrained with the course, from the other side of the desk, I guess he'll side of the table. He was just loud. He couldn't believe how much was going on. And I think a lot what a lot of students also don't realise is that, of course coordinators are actually responsible for a lot of decision making as well. So being the common face between the three court, the three terms, I'm primarily the person that's responsible for keeping as much consistency as I can between the offers or offerings. So lots of things. It's a very, it's a much more complex job. A lot of people realise and as I said, I think a lot of teaching assistants, whether they were undergrads and now they're a graduate students at McMaster, or if they're undergrads at the time, and they're working as an undergraduate teaching assistant autumn, once they see the behind the scenes a little bit more, I think they realise, wow, this is really what was happening in first year. And it just makes so much more sense now. Right?
Yeah, it seems like it's not. It's not purely like the administrative side. Like, there's also like, you are also involved in designing the actual curriculum and the learning and such. And speaking of which, I was wondering if you could, you alluded to it briefly, when you mentioned your own background, but do you know anything about these positions in general, what the qualifications they're looking for, like knowledge in the subject area, teaching ability? Do you know if like, a PhD is like often a requirement? I know, it might depend on the subject and the school, but yeah, just a bit about that.
So a PhD, I don't think would be required from the perspective of you know, if you were looking at the job application, if it was posted, I don't think you would see, you know, a PhD is a requirement when I replied, I believe a master's degree was the minimum low education level. And that's what I've kind of seen, when petitions have been posted recently, like, whether it's in the form of biology or, or chemistry, there's a little bit of movement once in a while, you know, people might go on parental leaves or something like that. They need to hire somebody to cover up parental leave, or something like that. And there's a little bit of movement, retirement, things like that. That's actually why I moved into the second year level courses was there was a retirement and Department of Biology, and it was just kind of decided that I would shift into the second year level courses from the first year level courses when that retirement happened. So a lot of these positions are, I believe, looking for a graduate degree, likely discipline specific, and probably they're probably looking for somebody that has a little bit of teaching and learning experience, or teaching and learning background as well, with maybe some experience with teaching or some experience with developing curriculum and things like that. That would probably I believe the a lot of sort of the boxes that they would like to have checked off, somebody that was going to be hired for the position, I think.
And speaking of teaching and learning, based on your experiences, how would you say that you think that teaching and learning, you know, and universities in general has evolved over the past several years? And like, Where do you think it's headed in the future? If and if there's anything that's changing,
you know, so being at university for for 12 years, it's been a while since I was an undergraduate students, but even 12 years ago, things were a lot closer to my experience as an undergraduate student than they are now for sure. So 12 years ago, you know, educational technologies were not being used as widespread. In London learning things like that were sort of in their infancy. I remember realising this just a couple of years ago I was, I was in a lecture and then I was leaving the lecture hall halfway through. And I'm at the back of this large lecture hall. And all you could hear it was like Tata Tata Tata Tata.
It was like a synth. It's crazy. Yeah, no, it's absolutely insane. You know, when the professor just said something important, cuz suddenly, like the tapping and intensifies, it was
crazy. I hadn't, I hadn't really heard it in a large lecture hall in the back. And this was again a couple of years ago. So I think students that sit at the back of the lecture hall probably hear it all the time, they're used to it. I can't imagine if you're sitting at the front, just, you know, based upon the acoustics in the room, that you hear it, this is loud, and it's prominent. It was like this Symphony, it was really loud, like, I just thought I looked around on Wow, like, that is the sound of students, you know, tapping on their keyboards. And I mean, it's pretty obvious 500 students pretty obvious what the sound is, where the sounds coming from. But even thinking back to, you know, about 12 years ago, not every student had a laptop during lecture, right? I don't have any data to back it up. But, you know, being in the lectures, and just looking around, I would estimate, it was less than half probably like maybe like 40% 30 to 40% of students, I've been told years ago came to lecture with a laptop in hand. And now it's, it's got to be 90% of us, for sure. And so, I mean, you wouldn't have heard that, that that sound echoing at the back of the lecture hall, you know, even 12 years ago. So that's, that's a small thing is I think students are becoming more dependent on their their own tech, their own personal technology, whether it's their computer or their phone. And I think that's changed even in the last few years, or certainly in the last decade, for sure. And then just trends in education are changing. And blended learning is a big thing. Some students, I think, like it, some students don't develop different blended learning being the delivery of a course with face to face interactions, and also giving the students some sort of technology to do some learning on their own. So I asked her a lot of this is through face to face lectures, but also online modules, we call them basically online lectures. It's one model of blended learning. But I think, especially with what's going on right now, with the pandemic, they're shifting fully, virtually, I don't know that we're going to go back to full in person classes with these massive numbers of students sitting lecture halls together until there's some level of, you know, vaccination in the general population. So I think blended learning is kind of something that's here to stay if it wasn't already here to stay. It's a it's it's probably going to be more prevalent in a lot of the courses in the upcoming terms until the community and the universities is, is more comfortable with the students being back on campus. So I don't have any answers. I don't know what's going to happen in September. But I just, I don't think we're going to see 600 students sitting in a lecture hall together for a long time.
Yeah, yeah, I don't think so either.
So I think just trending Yeah, trending towards things in education, just more use of technology, and using different tools and things like that, I think that's going to continue to, you know, hopefully, they're beneficial to students, I hate when technology gets implemented, just because it's kind of trendy, or there's not a lot of data or a lot of evidence that it's actually beneficial. It's just like, Oh, this is kind of cool, let's just, let's try it out and see what happens, you know, and I, I'm not a big fan of that I'm I like whippings have some data to back it up. And it's not just a sales pitch from, from a company or a sales rep. And, and a lot of the times this stuff might work one place, but it doesn't work at another school. So maybe they're trying to sell you something, or they want you to use something that was used in a class of 30 at a smaller University. And, you know, this worked out great, and the students loved it. And that might work well for a class of 30. But it might not work well for a class of 1000 or 2000, or whatever it is. So you don't want 1500 guinea pigs. Yeah, so I you know, I, as much as technology is great for education, and the research does show that blended learning is beneficial for students from a lot of perspectives, you know, teaching and learning and, and even their, their grades are generally better, but you know, implementing things just for the sake of implementing them, or I'm not a big fan of that. So.
So you mentioned new learning strategies, and so is researching these things, like looking into studies on them or keeping up with up and coming you know, like education tools, is that also part of your job? And and if so, how often do you do that?
It's part of my job, I would say I probably do that a lot more when the wheels start turning and there's discussion Start to begin about major course revisions perhaps. So if there's talk of, it's time to develop some brand new suite of labs for a course or brand new suite of tutorials or this course was a traditionally taught course it was all face to face lectures and let's go we're going to change to a blended learning model. That's why I probably certainly look into that a lot more but I do keep up on the research as much as I can when I have time to do so. It's It's It's all a bit of a time crunch. For me. It's I don't set it An hour of my day or a few hours a week for that sort of stuff. But even if even when things aren't being completely overhauled, and maybe students don't realise this, on the other side is even termed a term to term. I was always making small tweaks or small revisions. And a lot of the time it was related to student feedback. The end of term surveys, students probably don't believe it. But I read every single comment, every single one, some of them are practical and can be implemented and some are crazy. Like, I hate Friday night tests, no more Friday night tests. There's actually as I was kind of mentioning earlier, there's, there's method to the madness. And there's actually a reason why the tests are Friday nights. But in first year courses in particular McMaster, some science courses on Friday night tests, which restrict chemistry course, my first year chemistry tests were at 8am, Saturday mornings, so those weren't. But yeah, it's I do keep trying to keep up with that stuff, especially.
And just a follow up question, partly for my own curiosity. Do you know when they started using Avenue at McMaster or just in universities in general because I cannot imagine being in university in such a huge class and not having Avenue so Avenue
in particular, it's actually a company a company actually, that provides audience learn which is McMasters learning management system or masters. LMS is called desire to learn, which is actually a Canadian company. And I think they've actually recently changed their name again, I just can't remember what the name changes offhand. So avenue to learn, I think has been used at McMaster since 2013, perhaps?
Oh, did they have something before that?
Yeah. So there were other systems before that there was a system that lasted for about a year prior to avenue to learn or prior to the desire to learn products lasted for I think a year, it crashed like crazy.
Oh, no, those poor students,
I remembered being in lecture, first day of class. With the biology one m three students, it was 830 in the morning, first day of the term. So it was their first for a lot of them their first university class, and I decided to show them our learning management system and try to show them where they'd be able to locate things. Just give them a little tour of Hey, when you look at your your lecture notes, It's surreal, find it sorry for your lab notes and shrink it with the with the announcements, a lot of stuff that I kind of related to students in first year when I first meet them, and it would load, it wouldn't load, it wouldn't load and nothing happened. And I thought, This is terrible. And it's so super embarrassing, because it's their first day of university for a lot of them first lecture, and I'm standing up there, it was embarrassing, like, What can I say? And I think I just said, Listen, I don't know what's going on, you just need to keep in touch with me and the number of emails that I got that term without having a learning management system up and running, because it actually, it didn't work for about six to eight weeks. And then they thought they'd fixed it. And then it crashed again in January for votes for weeks. So anyways, that one was only about a year. And prior to that there was another one called Web CT, which I think had been around for a while. And that was the one that was at university when I started. So that one even predates me. So learning learning management systems are probably close to 20 years. Now, I did not have any mentioned systems when I was
an undergrad, or kind of like reaching the end of the interviews. So one more question that we want to ask you was what did you wish that you had known before becoming an undergraduate coordinator at Mac? If anything? It's a good question.
Yeah, I think I haven't really encountered anything where I thought to myself, no, I didn't sign up for this, or I don't want to be part of my job. I think the most difficult part of my job is probably academic integrity. I deal with a lot of the academic integrity issues within the courses, which is kind of another layer of responsibility as part of the job. So I think that's probably the most difficult part of my job. As I said, I don't think there is there's any aspect of my job that I think to myself and I just I wish I didn't have to do this. Academic Integrity is my least Least favourite part of my job, enjoyable part of my job, I'm not going to by far, and I hate it, but I have to, you know, it's part of part of the job and I have to do take it seriously. And it's it's part of the expectations of the of the university. Right. So, right. So that's, that's that I think, probably prior to being in the position, I probably didn't realise how many different things are going on and how many sort of how many, how many hats, you have to wear an administrator, a supervisor, a teacher, a learner, a mentor, all these things, I don't think I realised how diverse the job was and how many how important it was to so many students and how integral you know, doing a good job in the position I think is and I'm not gonna pretend like a perfect dinner. Everything's perfect. But you know, I have worked very hard over the years and try to determine the best to give the students a really positive and enjoyable first year experience in particular, and hopefully second year experience now so I think just going in, I think if I had a more knowledge of how many different things go on in the job, that probably would have helped me get started but I've had great people to work with and a few mentors myself I needed to help over the years with things too. So I think that's, that's probably a
very sweet. And lastly, just for fun. Do you have any funny stories of something a student has done or tried to get away with or a mistake you've made or just something funny that has happened while you've been working at McMaster?
I have lots and lots of stories. Certainly.
I know there's there's been many pi a professor events that you have been a part of. I've implied a couple of times a few times now at pi Professor events.
Last year's events was interesting, because the student really took a good swing at me.
Yeah, he told me about that.
And I actually thought my nose was broken. Oh, goodness, which would be a second time. So I thought, wow, that's, that was interesting.
A second time in your life or a second second time in my life? Yeah, no. Okay. No, not from a pie. No, you would think you're learning after the first pie and not do it anymore.
No, it was the first time was playing soccer. So. But yes, that was you know, that was fun. One. I think students enjoyed seeing that. I'm trying to think there was a student years ago. It's been a few years since he graduated now. And he used to come to my office quite a lot to come in. He would just come in, stop and sit him sit down and just chat like he was it wasn't often it was of course related. It wasn't University related. He would just come in, sit down be like, Hey, how's it going? What's going on? Or, like you just talk to me like, We're buddies. And that's fine. Oh, see, there's a lie that has to be drawn sometimes. But it's one fun. So he comes into my office one time and he sits down and he looks at me. And he just says, I can't tell you. I can't tell you. So come on. Can't do that to me. He says you can't imagine what is written about you on one of the bathroom stall walls. Oh, my goodness. Come on. You have to tell me like you can't say that not follow through. He said like I can't. I can't tell you like he's like, it's so bad. And I said, Come on. Just sorry. I said, Well, tell me where it is. And I'll go, I'll go look for myself. I wasn't, I wasn't overly interested. But he just was like, No, I can't do it. I can't do it. It was very funny. Because he never he never told me what it was. And he just kind of. And I always think back to that. That students, a great, great student. Great guy. So
if it makes me feel better, I've never read anything bad about you on any bathroom walls.
Yeah, well, sure. It's out there somewhere. But that was very that was very funny. That one. That's one I'll probably always remember. I'm sure it's I'm sure it's been painted over since. Oh, yeah.
Possibly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I will say the graffiti on university bathroom stalls is much better. Yeah, that's funny. A little more creative. Probably. Yeah. All right. So that was the interview. Is there anything else you want to add? Before we wrap up?
I know, just thank you for inviting me. And it is, you know, end of March now. And I hope the rest of the term is an enjoyable and successful one for you. And I hope that you and everyone out there that's listening is staying safe. And hopefully we'll be in person and be able to see each other at some point in the fall or not to the not too distant future, hopefully before I graduate. Yes, we shall see.
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