President’s Message Sept 2020
Good day faculty and colleagues,
First and foremost, welcome back! I know my traditional message is a couple of weeks late this year.
And what year this has been so far! I would like to thank Kathie and the SAFA executive for organizing the Cobb’s family event and returning us, at least in that regard, to some sort of normal. Although I couldn’t attend this year, I am sure it was a huge success and thank you the faculty that could attend.
The SAFA team, myself included, have spent most of the summer working remotely and to that end I am missing the face to face contact with them and the faculty members who drop in to see us. (Not sure that I like this new normal)
Al and I have been extremely busy this summer, after our AGM in June, with the day to day operations between SAFA and SAIT. We’ve sorted out the big immediate issues with some LOU language and agreements. The primary ones being the vacation LOU and the temporary layoff LOU.
One of the lesser ones was the ability for SAIT to schedule classes outside of the normal hours of work. We felt the collective agreement “mutual agreement” language would be sufficient to encourage the Employer to be considerate of Faculty and their work/life balance. Unfortunately, we were wrong on that and SAIT DID NOT achieve mutual agreement with faculty. A policy grievance has been filed and, depending on SAIT’s response, may have to move forward to arbitration.
One of the other things I initiated in June was to have weekly meetings with the other ACIFA Faculty Association presidents in Alberta. These meetings are well attended and happen every Thursday for 2 hours. Every faculty association in the province is having similar issues with their employers as well, particularly around the work load issues created by this fast and forced (primarily but not limited to the covid 19 pandemic) form of remote delivery of our programs.
We are not alone in this. The 3 largest institute’s in ACIFA are all in bargaining as well as a few of the others and I want to take a few minutes of your time to explain what that means.
We (SAFA) served a letter of intent to bargain with the Employer (SAIT) in the late spring of 2020, that puts us and the employer in what’s called the statutory freeze period. Basically, that means neither the employer nor the union can arbitrarily change things from the way each party normally does things. Any substantive changes would have to be bargained, otherwise, it’s an unfair labour practice and would result in a complaint to the Alberta Labour Relations Board.
But SAFA can’t fix things we don’t know about, things like your Academic Chair telling you there will be no CCH during statutory holidays or talking about roles outside of the collective agreement (Team lead, program lead or program specialist). These and items similar to this must be collectively bargained.
You – the faculty – need to contact SAFA or AL Brown or myself or your division reps or faculty council reps when these sort of things pop up.
The other issue that came to light is the increase to workload caused by the increased number of students in a class in a virtual teaching environment. I need you to document this extra work by populating your outlook calendars or keeping daily logs of these extra duties and sharing the data with SAFA regularly.
It is very hard to bargain hearsay without backing it up.
To that end I am including an email for a survey from the interim president of ACIFA and member of Nor Quest College.
See below email and links and please participate.
I know this has been a rocky (to say the least) start to the new academic year and I still endeavour to protect and guard faculty’s collectively bargained rights.
Again, please see email below from NORQUEST
Always in service of membership and in solidarity
Hello,
This is an initiative led by NorQuest faculty members, Jeff Kuntz and Viola Manokore. They would be extremely grateful if you would kindly forward this survey along to your Association’s members for the opportunity to take part in this important and timely survey.
If you have any questions prior to doing so, I invite you to reach out to Jeff or Viola directly.
Thank you for your help.
Les.
Leslie Sayer
Interim President
Alberta Colleges and Institutes Faculties Association
317, 11010 142 ST NW
(780) 423-4440
www.acifa.ca
(pronouns: he, his, him)
Gauging the Impact of COVID-19 on Post-Secondary Learning and Teaching; what lessons have we been learning?
Dear Faculty,
Are you a faculty member at a post-secondary institution in Alberta? Did you transition from face-to-face to online teaching due to COVID-19 pandemic? How was your experience? What did you learn about teaching and learning in this new online reality? Would you like to share your experience in transitioning to online teaching so that others can learn from it?
Viola Manokore Ph. D. and Jeff Kuntz Ph. D. (NorQuest College) are conducting a research project to gather information from post-secondary educators in Alberta about their experiences during the transition. While there is some overlap with a survey conducted by ACIFA earlier this spring, this survey is more interested in learning how instructors applied TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. More specifically, we would like to know more about your adjustment to new instructional environments, your use of innovative teaching tools and applications, and your feelings about the relative effectiveness of your teaching.
We anticipate sharing the findings from this study with the ACIFA membership at the Spring 2021 conference. We will also disseminate the findings to a wider audience through academic and professional presentations and publications.
If you would like to learn more about this survey, please click on the link below. The link will also allow you to give your consent and to start the survey
Educators’ Teaching Experiences During COVID-19 Pandemic
If the link does not take you to the site immediately, please copy and paste the following into your browser
https://norquest.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6maOQAcNd2boZvf
We will be keeping the survey link open till at least Sept 30, but are eager to see the responses! Please jump in at your earliest opportunity!
Your participation in this study is completely voluntary.
If you have questions about participating, please contact Viola Manokore or Jeff Kuntz [email protected] or [email protected]
We are also looking for a limited number of instructors to participate in one-on-one interviews to more fully understand and present the challenges, adaptations, successes and frustrations in moving to exclusively online teaching. Please contact Viola or Jeff if you would be able to participate in a short (45 minute) interview.
Thank you,
Viola Manokore Ph.D. & Jeff Kuntz Ph.D.
NorQuest College
10215 108 Street NW