Tag: blog

Peer Review of Draft

June 18, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Mental Health in Sports and Wellness of Athletes

Parker P

https://classroom.google.com/c/ODY3NzkzNTc0Mjg1

Kevin McNamara (Pod i)

Overview

This is an important topic, and I appreciate how thoughtfully you delivered it. I have never been a student athlete, so I can’t speak from experience about the mental health issues that exist within competitive sports. Nonetheless, your explanations of the issues, rationales, and strategies regarding the topic are insightful and engaging. As a draft, this learning design environment is highly functional and contains sufficient information to accurately educate your audience. Your use of interactive engagement tools was helpful. With a few tweaks, I think this could be a highly valuable teaching tool for young student-athletes.

Strengths

The Google Classroom format worked quite well for organizing all the information you were delivering. The integration of quizzes and discussion posts was helpful for learner engagement. The educational videos were well-selected and offered valuable insight into the ways mental health in sports has already begun to change. Your focal topic was concise, but you did a good job teaching it. 

I appreciate that you chose a topic which is specific but pervasive in sporting communities. Mental health is very important, but competitive sports have such a long history of unhealthy coaching and training routines that ignore mental anguish, if not seek it out. Your inclusion of prominent pro-athlete voices helps make this learning design impactful for young people, because the performance stress often comes from comparing themselves to these global sports icons.

Areas to Improve

I had difficulty navigating some parts of Google Classroom. I’m not sure how to proceed to the next unit after completing the quiz or discussion post activities. Some of the readings you assigned seem a little above the level I would expect 14-18-year-old student-athletes to engage with. You might want to consider abridging them to highlight the most critical information. 

I also felt that some activity prompts could use more explanation. I really like the idea behind the Personal Wellness Plan assignment, but I think it was too open-ended. Consider expanding on it to include a template or checklist for what the plan should include, so that student-athletes can personalize it to their sport’s expectations. The plans could prompt them to develop mental health strategies for weekly training, as well as specific mindfulness strategies for before big events, and healthy unwinding strategies for after wins and losses.

Learning Design Draft

June 15, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Race, Racism, and Antiracism: The Impacts of Racialization in Our Lives

Jessica Chow, Maximillian Jules Gabriel, Tommy Lee, and Kevin McNamara

Introduction

Rather than understanding race as a fixed biological category, this learning resource introduces race as a social concept shaped by historical, political, and economic forces (Omi & Winant, 2014). It also explains that racism is not only based on individual attitudes or prejudices but can also be embedded in social systems that shape access to power, resources, and opportunities (Bonilla-Silva, 1997). By exploring the chapters, the history of race, racial capitalism, intersectionality, and anti-racism, students will develop the knowledge needed to recognize how racism is produced and maintained in society, and what it means to be anti-racist.

This educational curriculum is designed for high school-aged teens and young adults (ages 16-19). The information being taught is sensitive and must be delivered accurately and respectfully. While it is just as important to have anti-racist education offered to all age ranges, this specific age range is an inflection point for the development of ideologies and social awareness.

Course Outline

Summary of all modules

Key concepts

Key terms crossword

  • Final exam

Blog post 4

June 15, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Using video embeds and H5P interactive learning tools to enhance education about race, racialization, and anti-racism

What activity could you suggest that they do after they have watched the video? What type of knowledge or skill would that activity help develop? What medium or technology would students use to do the activity?

Even though this video is only 3 minutes long, it is very dense and covers many topics quickly. To encourage learners to internalize the information in the video, I would include a few informal quiz questions to reinforce the most crucial points. This format usually helps me keep the most important information in the front of my mind, especially after very long or dense educational materials. H5P interactive tools allow me to insert a variety of formats for these quizzes, including multiple-choice questions, true-or-false questions, term-definition matching questions, and even some fun ones like crosswords. I have included an example of a quiz question I plan to use in the project here:

How would students get feedback on the activity that you set? What medium or technology would they and/or you use for getting and giving feedback on their activity?

H5P interactive quiz elements allow for feedback upon answering questions with set answers. I’ve experimented with having specific feedback depending on which answer they selected, explaining why it was correct or incorrect.

How much work for you would that activity cause? Would the work be both manageable and worthwhile? Could the activity be scaled for larger numbers of students?

The goal of these knowledge check quizzes is not to grade the learner’s understanding, but to encourage them to remain engaged and invested in the content of the video. The questions will not be difficult or require any research outside of the material presented to them. This format encourages individual asynchronous learning, which reduces the need for equitably accessible teaching that is required for in-person teaching. This is a topic that should be taught face-to-face to accommodate group discussions and allow for personal life experiences to inform the learning of others, but this Learning Design is primarily concerned with how this knowledge can be made as accessible as possible.

How could the video have been designed to generate more or better activity from viewers or students?

This particular video is not my favourite resource for debunking race, because it spends a while explaining the fluid nature of racial categories, and not enough time cataloguing why race was invented. It also does not emphasize how central race is in perpetuating inequalities in employment, medical care, media representation, and politics. If these elements were included, it would align more conclusively with our overarching Learning Design topic. Even if the video was trimmed down to remove the information I mentioned was less crucial, it could be supplemented with built-in summary quiz questions that reduce the need for H5P interactive elements.

Blog Post 3

June 7, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Inclusive design is substantially important to our Pod’s learning design process and our goals for our final assignment. Beyond the obvious importance of equity-minded teaching principles, our chosen topic is about racialization, racism, and anti-racism. Equity is central to anti-racist education. We are being careful to consider how our learning design can be universal and inclusive for learners with diverse relationships to race and racism.

For example, we are not designing our learning environment based on any assumptions about our learners’ race. Our goal is to provide valuable knowledge about the ways racism complicates life for racialized people. Many students will already be aware of concepts and histories we will explain because of their own lived experiences. To teach about racism as if it were a new topic would be alienating for non-white students, just as white students would be alienated by not highlighting how pervasive structural racism is in every facet of life for racialized people. Every individual has a relationship to our topic, but those relationships are not easily comparable. Our inclusive learning design will not assume the lived experiences of learners, but will instead offer the necessary information for all individuals to contextualize their own lived experiences of race and racism.

As someone who has ADHD, I am personally well acquainted with the invisible gorilla. I understand the importance of learning environments which utilize multiple forms of engagement, representation, and expression. Our learning design will have frequent checkpoints after each learning module to test learners’ understanding with short multiple-choice quizzes and term-definition matching activities. I have found this format especially helpful for online asynchronous learning environments, especially when the checkpoints are designed to inspire recollection, rather than being firm roadblocks. If a learner gets a quiz question wrong, they are offered the correct answer, along with a justifying explanation. Don’t get me started about when I spent sixteen hours being forced to watch eight-minute onboarding videos over and over again until I got every quiz question correct for a summer job at Home Depot. The rigidity of Home Depot’s training design made freedom my goal, and ultimately, I retained nearly no knowledge from the entire program.

Learning Design Blueprint

June 1, 2026 /

Race, racism, and antiracism: The impacts of racialization in our lives 

Jessica Chow • Maximillian Jules Gabriel • Tommy Lee • Kevin McNamara

Part 1: Introduction

Description

Rather than understanding race as a fixed biological category, this learning resource introduces race as a social concept shaped by historical, political, and economic forces (Omi & Winant, 2014). It also explains that racism is not only based on individual attitudes or prejudices but can also be embedded in social systems that shape access to power, resources, and opportunities (Bonilla-Silva, 1997). By exploring the chapters, the history of race, racial capitalism, intersectionality, and anti-racism, students will develop the knowledge needed to recognize how racism is produced and maintained in society, and what it means to be anti-racist.

Misconceptions

Many people believe race is something humans are born with. The biological markers we associate with race, such as skin colour, facial features, and hair texture, are features of ethnogeographic ancestry, but not race. Race is not real. Rather, racialization is a social process of assigning emotional, ideological, and behavioural traits to groupings of people who share similar physical traits. 

While race itself is a myth, racism is very real. For some reason, some people in Canada believe that racism stopped existing after slavery was outlawed and segregation laws were overturned. These are important milestones towards racial equality, but institutional racism is still very present and actively prevents racialized people from accessing the same social and financial privileges as non-racialized white people.

Critically, racialization and racism manifest differently for different people. The racism that an Indigenous man faces is entirely separate from the racism a Black man faces, and importantly, is separate from how a Black woman is discriminated against. Like race, the concepts of gender, sexuality, disability, age, location, and socioeconomic class are socially constructed spectrums by which people are either marginalized or privileged. Intersectionality is a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe the differential ways discrimination is specifically intensified against people caught between multiple intersecting identity marginalizations (Crenshaw, 1991).

Rational

This learning resource aims to educate high school-aged students about the history of racialization and racism. By breaking down the foundations of racism, we hope to provide young adults with the necessary knowledge to recognize the harms of perpetuating racism and the tools to practice anti-racism.

References

  • Bonilla-Silva, E. (1997). Rethinking racism: Toward a structural interpretation. American Sociological Review, 62(3), 465–480. https://doi.org/10.2307/2657316 
  • Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039 
  • Omi, M., & Winant, H. (2014). Racial formation in the United States (3rd ed.).

Part 2: Learning design plan 

Audience

This educational curriculum is designed for high school-aged teens and young adults. The information being taught is sensitive and must be delivered accurately and respectfully. While it is just as important to have anti-racist education offered to all age ranges, this specific age range is an inflection point for the development of ideologies and social awareness. Learners between the ages of 16 and 19 are old enough to understand the information and young enough to internalize it effectively.

Core Education Units

  1. The History of race, racialization, and racism
  2. Racial Capitalism: The evolution of racism
  3. Intersectionality: The links between racism, misogyny, classism, and more
  4. Anti-Racism: Working towards an equitable future

Learning Outcomes

Understand and explain the roles that racialization and racism play in everyday activities, interactions, and institutions. Knowing how to make conscious decisions that do not uphold racism is vital to the process of eliminating it. Furthermore, each unit will offer unique insights and learning outcomes:

History of race: Learners will be able to identify how historical race identities and relations have shaped how we see race today.

Racial capitalism: Learners will be able to make connections between race identity and capitalism, and understand how the two concepts influence each other. 

Intersectionality: Learners will be able to identify intersectionality and interpret how differing and overlapping identities can influence and shape experiences. 

Anti-racism: Learners will be able to define anti-racism in their own words, explaining the key characteristics of anti-racism.

Activities and Assignments

Reflection: Learners can think of their own experiences and relate them to what they’ve learned, and make connections between historical examples and their influence on modern race identity and relations. 

Research: Allow learners to find their own examples, support them through their learning journey, since people with different identities and interests may learn more from different perspectives and examples. 

Discussions: Give learners an opportunity to discuss with one another, share ideas, gain and exchange knowledge, and reflect on others’ experiences and opinions.

Educational entertainment videos: To engage learners, some educational videos will be used to explain complicated course concepts that learners may struggle to make sense of from reading alone.

Reading comprehension quizzes: Alongside assigned readings of academic texts, historical texts, theoretical texts, and educational videos, learners will be asked a few short quiz questions, which ensure they have caught important passages from the readings.

Part 3: Resources

Textbooks: 

Scholarly Articles: 

  • Patrick Wolfe (2006) Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native, Journal of Genocide Research, 8:4, 387-409, DOI: 10.1080/14623520601056240 
  • Kishimoto, K. (2018). Anti-racist pedagogy: From faculty’s self-reflection to organizing within and beyond the classroom. Race Ethnicity and Education, 21(4), 540–554. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2016.1248824  
  • Grosfoguel, R., Oso, L., & Christou, A. (2015). “Racism”, intersectionality and migration studies: framing some theoretical reflections. Identities (Yverdon, Switzerland), 22(6), 635–652. https://doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2014.950974
  • Patrick Wolfe (2006) Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native, Journal of Genocide Research, 8:4, 387-409, DOI: 10.1080/14623520601056240

Grey Literature Resources: 

Technology Tools:

  • Microsoft teams
  • Word document
  • Brightspace
  • Quizlet

Part 4: Project plan 

Week 1 (June 1st – 8th):

  •  Complete the first part of the learning design resource. We will discuss the plans for the inclusion of diverse learners using UDL and CAST principles as well. 
  • Each pod member has chosen one of the 4 core topics and will research and design their learning module separately:
    1. The history of race: Kevin
    2. Racial Capitalism: Maximillian
    3. Intersectionality: Jessica
    4. Anti-Racism: Tommy

Week 2 (June 8th – 15th):

  • Complete the second part of the resource. We will first work on organizing the modules and learning objectives for each of them, then we will think of effective learning activities and assessments that suit learners’ needs. 
  • We will check each other’s work to confirm that we remain synchronized with the overarching goal of the Learning Design Assignment.

Week 3 (June 15th – 22nd):

  • As a group, we will review and edit all sections, patching any gaps or inconsistencies.
  • All 4 learning modules will be combined into a final culmination. We will rotate responsibilities during this period to ensure each pod member establishes familiarity with the entirety of the topic.

Blog Post 2

May 29, 2026 /

Inquiry-Based Learning for Race, Racism, and Anti-Racism Education

Overview

Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) is a branch of active learning design which prompts students with questions or scenarios with minimal background information. Instead of receiving information via lecture, students are asked to practice deductive reasoning and problem-solving. IBL can be more rewarding and engaging than traditional teaching techniques. IBL is very effective for teaching certain concepts, but it is not universally applicable to all educational fields.

What does inquiry-based learning look like?

  • Students are assigned a task (Construct a tower out of popsicle sticks and glue)
  • They are given peramitters to guide their learning (the tower must be at least 1 foot tall and stand freely)
  • They are given resources to experiment and uncover knowledge (popsicle sticks, glue, time, and collaboration)

With limited instruction, students are prompted to use their own research and experimentation to construct knowledge. By working together with other students sharing the same task, they can observe their approaches, learn from their techniques, and develop their own practical application of the assigned task. By the end of the IBL assignment, the students will have built a deeper understanding of the course content than if they had been simply told to accomplish the task. In the tower building example, students learned about structural design principles, and are more likely to want to learn further than if they had spent the same amount of time being lectured about the topic.

How might inquiry-based learning teach high-schoolers about race, racism, and anti-racism?

Inquiry-based learning can be highly effective for teaching hands-on topics like physics, chemistry, mathematics, and so on. While there is room for IBL in social sciences and humanities topics, there is a degree of sensitivity required when educating about a topic as politically contentious and deeply personal as racism.

The goal of this learning experience is to debunk some deeply ingrained myths about race, to explore the ways daily life if fundementally altered for racialized people and deracialized people, and to educate learners on the importance of practicing anti-racism.

IBL demands that students spend a significant amount of time developing a smaller range of knowledge. IBL is also best practiced in group settings with hands-on applications. These factors make IBL a poor fit for this education initiative, because there is a substantial amount of information to convey to learners in a limited time, and the means of this course make in-person activities impractical.

Optional reading: an example of IBL being used to teach about “race.”

I have linked an example of inquiry-based learning being used to debunk the myth that “race” is genetic. This video is an excellent resource to include in our unit of “the history of race”, but as it is only one unit of our ciriculum, the video itself would be a more adiquite source of education that the experiment being practiced within.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8MS6zubIaQ

Citations

California Newsreel. (2014, April 24). Race – the power of an illusion [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8MS6zubIaQ

Friesen, S., & Scott, D. (2013). Inquiry-based learning: A review of the research literature. Alberta Ministry of Education, 32, 1-32.

Orosz, G., Németh, V., Kovács, L., Somogyi, Z., & Korom, E. (2022). Guided inquiry-based learning in secondary-school chemistry classes: a case study. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 24(1), 50–70. https://doi.org/10.1039/d2rp00110a

Blog Post 1

May 19, 2026 /

Back in December, my partner and I bought our first car. I had never owned a car before, and while I am confident in my driving skills, I was concerned about my lack of mechanical knowledge. Before we decided what car to buy, I committed to researching as much as I could about our specific vehicle to become an expert, capable of handling any minor issues that may come up.

We ended up buying a used 2009 Hyundai Accent. Less than an hour after the sale, the first issue arose. When we tried inserting a CD into the CD player, it jammed and refused to eject the disk, all while creating a loud grinding sound every few seconds. After at least thirty minutes of troubleshooting, I was able to get the grinding to stop. Knowing I had not fixed the issue, I spent the rest of the evening and the next morning learning all I could about potential causes. I looked at advice columns from other people who had experienced the same issue. I sought instruction manuals for my vehicle and CD player. It did not take long for my confusion to turn into frustration, and just like that, I realized my aspiration to be an expert on every facet of the 2009 Hyundai Accent was abandoned.

The biggest issue with this self-guided learning experience was the insufficient access to educational materials. Without a strategically designed learning system, my learning needs were neglected, and my motivation quickly diminished.

Autonomy:

I had full autonomy to find the information I needed online, but with too few constraints, it was difficult to find specific information since I didn’t know exactly what I was searching for.

Competence:

My difficulties in finding the right information meant I spent hours researching without any applicable knowledge. I was not able to develop any practical competency in repairing my car.

Relatedness:

The issue with trying to learn the mechanics of an entire car is that it consists of several components that often operate independently from each other.

Relevance:

The information about repairing 2009 Hyundai Accents is already limited, but because it was bought used and filled with aftermarket part replacements, most aren’t relevant to my needs.

A more thoughtfully designed learning experience might use a Behaviourist model to instill valuable information about the 2009 Hyundai Accent, separated into modules. One module could explain the most basic functions and mechanics of the car. Others could be dedicated to teaching learners how to overcome certain issues that may arise from driving the car. Essentially, I would have loved an interactive technology-mediated owner’s manual, instead of relying on trial and error or paying thousands to a mechanic.

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