About this Course
ePortfolios
What is an ePortfolio?
A good ePortfolio is generally considered a product and a process. It is a digital collection of artefacts (i.e., images, video, audio, text) and reflections that allow you to demonstrate your learning with various types of evidence unique to you. This ePortfolio, hosted on WordPress, will be shared with your instructor, and if you so desire, can be made public to help establish yourself as a scholarly voice within our information-abundance digital ecosystem.
Purpose
The purpose of this ePortfolio is two-fold:
- a demonstration of your learning for assessment purposes (6 reflections at 5% each)
- a conduit for your learning journey and reflection to be used throughout the course
This platform will allow you to curate and maintain a portfolio of artefacts and reflections demonstrating your development and relevant skills, and is something that you can continue to build on after this course, and even after graduation. ePortfolios are often used for self-marketing purposes, and a way to engage as a scholar; helping you prepare for your professional career as well. Although there are six assigned topics, you are encouraged to use the ePortfolio weekly to help reflect on your learning and complete engagement exercises in preparation for our live class time together.
Learning Objectives
This course uses a self-reflexive approach to learning. ePortfolios enable learners to creatively engage with the learning process throughout the course. The goal of reflective entries is to help learners reflect on their own perception of course concepts and anti-racist perspectives. It is an opportunity for learners to consider their feelings, their own lived experiences, and to think critically about their own world views in relation to new insights gained as part of the class. Your ePortfolios are also an opportunity to creatively document different ways of knowing (e.g., poems, song lyrics, pictures, artwork, videos, etc.).
Expectations
You may choose to submit any type of entry that is able to be embedded into WordPress (videos, podcasts, artistic creations, poems, etc.). If the relation to the prompts is not clear to the instructor, they may wish to meet with you so you can explain the entry and discuss how to better contextualize it within your ePortfolio. In an effort to be mindful of the power of language, you are encouraged to use language that affirms your culture and helps you express your ideas – this includes the use of Black Vernacular English (BVE), Caribbean Creole, and others.
Each entry should be carefully thought through and designed intentionally, with consideration for the the potential impact on viewers (who is your audience?).
WordPress Sites
- Start here: https://uwindsor.icampus21.com/wordpress/
- Make sure you choose a URL that you will want to keep over time – your name is usually a safe bet.
- Once you have set up your site, you can access it by visiting the UWindsor WordPress Site and logging in using your UWindsor credentials.
ePortfolio Assessment Schedule
Each of these assessments are also embedded within weeks they are assigned within this course guide, so you do not need to return to this page each time a submission is due.
Unit One (Week 1): Racial Narrative Reflection
Purpose: This reflection is meant for students to critically evaluate their own social location and racial socialization, to expand awareness of racial biases, and to examine the ways internal perspectives about race influence our relationships and experiences. Students are encouraged to grapple with discomfort, not as a means to an end, but as a recognized part of their intellectual growth and understanding of their own emotional responses. Students can choose one of any of the following questions. See ePortfolios for examples.
- What/how did you first learn about race?
- How do race, ethnicity, and culture intersect for you? How are they different? How are they similar? How do you know?
- When do you first learn that you were a member of a racial group? What/how did you learn about your racial group?
- When did you first learn that there were racial groups other than your own? What/how did you learn about this/these groups?
- How do you perceive your own race, and how is your race is perceived by others?
- Select a significant institution in your life (i.e., educational, religious, media/cultural, etc.). What have you learned from this institution about race? How might this have impacted relationships and identity?
- Scan your relationships with people who have been socialized into a different racial group than yourself. Thinking back to your childhood, what has been the nature of these relationships (i.e., friends, family, teachers, service providers, mentors/coaches, charity recipients, etc.)? Have the types of relationships changed over time? What do you notice about the relationships in your life today?
Alternatively, learners may want to explore the following questions for their first ePortfolio Reflection:
- What did you learn about race when you were younger?
- Where did those messages come from?
- What kind of impact did those messages have on you?
- Have your views about race changed over time?
- If so, what has caused that change?
- What things do you want to learn more about?
Unit Two (Week 4): Points of Encounter with the N-word
Students are asked to watch Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor’s TedTalk (Why it’s so hard to talk about the N-word) and then complete the following exercise for the ePortfolio submission.
- Did Dr. Stordeur Pryor’s TedTalk expand your understanding of the N-word?
- Why is it hard to talk about the N-word?
- What is your personal history around this word?
- What are your points of encounter with the N-word?
Unit Two (Week 6): Black Agency
Unit two explores the erasure of persons of African descent from Canadian history. This ePortfolio invites students to identify and complete a submission on an important Black historical figure in Canadian history. In so doing, students are asked to underscore how that figure was an agent in their own life. Bringing awareness to any of the following questions:
- How did they encounter whiteness?
- How did they encounter Othering and how was this used to sustain Black exclusion?
- Identify how they showed resistance?
- Identify how they showed resilience?
- Why is their story important to the order of Canadian history?
- How does their story help you understand histories of exclusion and marginalization of Black Canadians?
- How did learning about this individual enhance your awareness of Black Canadian presence?
We have considered how the institutions of education are implicated in upholding the status quo, reinforcing, and reproducing systemic white supremacy. This submission asks students to explore how contemporary images/imagery of Black people, reinforce and reinscribe the ‘white gaze’. Students’ submission must 1) demonstrate your understanding of the ‘white gaze’; and bring awareness to any of the following questions:
- In what ways does structural racism make the white gaze invisible?
- In what ways is whiteness a powerful backdrop against which Black, Indigenous, and racialized people must ‘prove’ their experiences of systemic racism?
- Where and how does the white gaze dominate images, videos, and social media posts? In what ways is whiteness centered?
- In what ways are students encouraged to adhere to white-centered norms and standards in education?
- How can the white gaze be disrupted?
- Why is it important to recognize that the white gaze is not exclusive to white people?
- In what ways does examining the white gaze, help white people critically examine their whiteness?
Youth advocates and practitioners are promoting a shift to healing centered engagement (HCE), “an approach that is akin to the South African term “Ubuntu” meaning that humanness is found through our interdependence, collective engagement, and service to others.” (Ginwright, 2018). This submission asks students to consider how we might go about addressing the root causes of racial trauma in Canada for example, rethinking the policies and practices that create the environmental contexts that cause harm in the first place (i.e., in workplaces, in classrooms, at the doctor’s office). In other words, how do we intentionally foster well-being? In exploring this context, learners may want to address the following questions:
- How can post-secondary educational settings enhance conditions that contribute to well-being?
- What role does collective action play in positive racial identity formation and collective healing?
- What role does culture play in positive racial identity and collective healing?
- What role does spirituality play in positive racial identity and collective healing?
- Why is it important to highlight the ways in which racial trauma and healing are experienced collectively?
- How is healing from racial trauma found in an awareness and actions that address the conditions that created the trauma in the first place?
- Is building awareness of anti-Black racism sufficient to contribute to overall wellbeing, hopefulness, and optimism? Or is more action needed to create healing? What kinds of action?
- How does social advocacy contribute to a sense of purpose, power, and control over life situations? How does this advance well-being and healing?
