Meeting Minutes – April 15, 2021
| Program/Area: | Game Design and Project Leadership Team |
| Meeting Purpose: | To discuss early steps in the eCampusOntario game design project |
| Meeting Date: | Thursday, April 29, 2021 |
| Meeting Time: | 1:00 – 1:45 p.m. |
| Meeting Location: | Online Google Meet |
| Meeting Chair: | Sarena Johnson
sarena.johnson@ryerson.ca |
| Meeting Attendees | Samantha Mandamin smandamin@ryerson.ca
Jenny Blackbird jenny.blackbird@utoronto.ca Rachel Barreca rbarreca@ryerson.ca Jeremy Caribou jcaribou@ryerson.ca Michelle Schwartz michelle.schwartz@ryerson.ca Trina Grover tgrover@ryerson.ca Namir Ahmed n1ahmed@ryerson.ca Tanya Pobuda tpobuda@ryerson.ca |
| Minutes Issued By: | Tanya Pobuda |
| Regrets | N.A. |
| Agenda Items | Owner | Priority |
| Welcome and Housekeeping | Sarena | 1 |
| Review and Discussion of Share Drive Access + External Team Members https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nP4VEO92sCCWNV84IS1TYYrMPmiP_6At/view?usp=sharing | Tanya | 1 |
| Discussion of Schedule and Project Processes | Sarena/Tanya | 2 |
| Pressbooks Platform? | Sarena/Tanya | 1 |
| Establishment of Project Schedule | Sarena/Tanya | 1 |
| Discussion of Asana Portal https://app.asana.com/0/1200217224778697/list | Sarena/Tanya | 2 |
| Code of Conduct for Game Development Team | Sarena | 1 |
| Creation of a Wahkotowin Circle https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ofJSVqvxifmduOQWr13L8T9e-6DPNxsKjjVWh4SpQio/edit?usp=sharing | Sarena | 1 |
| Next Steps: (Task, Assigned to, Checkpoint Date) | Owner | Due Date |
| Full Gantt schedule for review
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/104nGN-jHKSCCP0QYhcxzQseW0u_1lPUMBxT498hEFow/edit?usp=sharing |
Tanya | Week of April 12 |
| Circulation of Meeting Minutes
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16ZHK304xygXcOP3SCNjx7O5088EH6AL5?usp=sharing |
Tanya | Week of April 24 |
| Discuss ‘What Success Looks Like’ in support of SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound) project objectives | Leadership Team | Next Meeting |
| Creating an onboarding kit for students/Elders | Leadership Team | Week of May 3 |
| Discussions: |
| Overview of $71,580 in funding for an open learning game project due Dec. 15, 2021 |
| The game will be used as a training resource aimed at instructors and student support workers who support Indigenous students attending postsecondary education institutions. |
| The team discussed the open-source platform for the game and noted that we could allow the stories and objective to decide which is best. The team discussed both Twine and H5P as possibilities. |
| The goal of the game should be to ‘open minds’ and increase cognize and affective empathy for Indigenous students. |
| The project team should prioritize getting the perspectives of Indigenous Elders. |
| The project team must become versed about the principles of Ownership, Control, Access and Possession (OCAP) https://www.afn.ca/uploads/files/nihbforum/info_and_privacy_doc-ocap.pdf (Also located here in the project folder https://www.afn.ca/uploads/files/nihbforum/info_and_privacy_doc-ocap.pdf |
| The project should include Indigenous languages to provide both Indigenous and settler users to encounter key phrases, greetings, etc. |
| The privacy of student and instructor participants should be carefully protected as there can be serious safety concerns if stories are linked to identities online. There was a discussion of possible harassment concerns. |
| The resource should link to additional resources and ways to support as a means of helping users help the whole student. |
| There was a discussion about the importance of the resource being editable, to allow for the evolution of terminology, as well as the addition of new stories. There was consensus that this resource needed to be something that allowed for customization and constant improvement. |
| The process needs to be closely linked to the Rebirthed Teaching Community. And there should be an after-care tool kit. |
| We have approached Elders and students who would be ideal for the project. We can add them to the Wahkotowin Circle. The Elders can support the student creative teams and be an ongoing resource for the project leadership team, creative teams. |
| There was a discussion of budgetary control. There was a reminder that we’ll focus budget on the creative work vs. meetings and governance so ensure the budget isn’t too taxed by internal chargebacks and there’s enough to ensure that Indigenous students, Elders are fairly compensated for their creative work, development of the game, resources. |
| Key Decisions Made: |
| The game should be created in a highly collaborative, co-creative process, centring student experiences. |
| This process should NOT ask students to recount nor relive past traumas. |
| Significant care should be taken to ensure that student co-authorship is recognized while at the same time the project team should take care to ensure student and collaborator privacy. |
| The game should be a multisensory experience with visuals, sound effects and story BUT we must be mindful of the digital divide. The game should be accessible to those with limited tech gear and limited Internet access. |
| The game and our project processes should be anti-oppressive and reflect decolonized education principles. |
| The processes should collect the perspectives of multiple stakeholders including Indigenous Elders, students and educators, and settler students and instructors. |
| The tool must be carefully marketed and promoted with a clear action and engagement plan. There was discussion that the promotional and communication process was as important as the creation of the tool as we don’t want to create something that isn’t actively used by target communities. |
| This process should be a way to provide our extended team of student contributors with key skills that will help them in the professional world as well as academia. Resources should be provided to help them onboard and get trained on the platform tools, narrative processes, the creative process and analyzing the work. |
| We will revisit whether the project should be bound by Research Ethics Board (REB) oversight to allow for later scholarly publishing of findings outside of Phase 1 or Phase 2. We will revisit in the final phases. |
| The work should be informed by anti-oppressive, decolonization principles. We will privilege Indigenous perspectives, languages, literature throughout. The supporting team is there to act as guides and supports for the student creatives. |
| This project should be a gathering of equals modelled on the Nation-to-Nation treaties. |
| There could be an option to have the learner collect items during the scaffolding/learning stages to exchange for something afterwards. Could we use rewards. |
| There should be supportive teaching around First Nation Clans and differences in stories and perspectives. There’s an opportunity to share language and cultural perspectives. |
| Debrief and discussion should be a key part of the learning module, providing support and guided learning for those who use the game. |
| Notes |
| There was a great tool recommended by Michael Mihalicz <michael.mihalicz@ryerson.ca> that is designed to replace Bloom’s Taxonomy. This might provide a framework for our work as well as a basis for developing ‘what success looks like’.
It is written about in this part of the Pressbooks Into the Longhouse, Around the Medicine Wheel https://pressbooks.library.ryerson.ca/longhouse/front-matter/introduction/ Add this resource https://clubrunner.blob.core.windows.net/00000000608/en-ca/files/homepage/7-grandfathers/7grandfathersaug2018.pdf |
