We Are Orbis
Weekly news & insights for our community
As we slip past the halfway point in June and push full steam ahead into the long days of summer, we are heavy into some really exciting new developments at Orbis. The next few weeks promise product and company announcements that will have a major impact on our campus partners. Summer has traditionally been our busiest period, and this year is shaping up to be no different. This week's newsletter highlights a few of the platform options for validating off-campus volunteering and experiences managed by outside organizations.
We would like to extend a thank you to everyone who has started participating in the new Community of Practice. We are still getting our feet underneath us, but there are lots of comments and feature requests coming in. With all the ideas coming forward, we will be starting to limit how long requests will be open for voting before taking them down - so make sure to log in and have your say. This week's update also contains two additional free training session announcements, another installment from our I.M Possible series, and a great story on the work Okanagan College has been doing around inclusivity with their Positive Space Committee.
Until next week, stay safe, and take care of each other.
Cameron
Okanagan College Launches New Positive Space Committee
Okanagan College has launched a Positive Space Committee. Comprised of members from all corners of the college, this group is dedicated to creating and fostering positive spaces that support gender and sexual diversity on all OC campuses.
“The purpose of the Positive Space Committee is to challenge the patterns of silence and inequity that continue to marginalize lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, two-spirit, and queer students, staff, and faculty even in environments with anti-discriminatory and inclusive policies,” explains committee Chair Jewell Gillies. “It’s about awareness, but it’s also about action. This means proactively creating opportunities to educate, engage, and actively promote the inclusion of LGBT2QIA+ persons in every area of campus life".
The Positive Space Committee also exists to engage in the prevention of discrimination through engagement, education, awareness, and celebration of our diverse population.
"We recognize this work will be ongoing and always reflective of the needs of our community", adds Gillies. "The Positive Space Committee welcomes folks to the conversation with questions, concerns, or ideas on how we can achieve a truly positive space and experience on all of our campuses."
Unfortunately, due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, an initial soft-launch and student/employee feedback event scheduled for March 31st, 2020, had to be postponed. However, Gillies notes that the committee will be continuing to meet digitally and thinking through ways to foster positive spaces even while students and many employees aren’t physically on campus.
Given the current social strife we are all experiencing in North America, and globally, Pride associations from coast-to-coast have put aside their agendas, and utilized their platforms, to include anti-racism messages in support of Black Lives Matter movements focused on eliminating the discrimination of Black People in any community. “Positive Space is about more than waving a rainbow flag during Pride month, it is about creating equitable access to safe and inclusive spaces for all members of the Okanagan College community," Gillies concludes.
This Week's I.M Possible Series Career Spotlight: Rebecca Hay, Founder & Creative Director of Rebecca Hay Designs Inc.
This week we interviewed Rebecca Hay, Founder & Creative Director of Rebecca Hay Designs Inc; an internationally published, full-service residential interior design firm with a passion for creating sustainable, classic, and inviting homes.
Rebecca is a graduate of Political Science and English Cultural Studies, from McGill University. She is also a graduate of Lasalle College International, in Vancouver, where she studied Interior Design.
Like so many of us, Rebecca's journey to find her 'career calling' was anything but linear. In fact (like so many of us) when she graduated from university she had no idea what she wanted to do. Her path toward interior design, and ultimately starting a thriving interior design firm, was one of trial and error. For Rebecca, her adventure started in Spain, as an ESL (English as a second language) teacher, which took her to Vancouver, for film school and acting, and finally led her toward interior design.
Read her full Q & A for our I.M Possible Series by clicking on the button below.
"Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing."
Join Today's Recovery Ready Training: Everything You Need to Know About Permissions
When: TODAY - Friday, June 19th, 2020, from 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM (EDT)
In this training session, you will learn how to set-up, manage, and assign Permissions. In fact, you will leave this training knowing everything you need to know about Permissions. We know, it's kind of a big deal (but so are you).
This training is hosted by Tom Riis. Register here. We can't wait to "see" you there!
Join Next Week's Recovery Ready Training: Everything you Need to Know About Events
When: Friday, June, 26th, 2020, from 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM (EDT)
In this training session, you will learn more about Simple vs. Advanced Events, Public Registrations, Event Visibility by Permissions, and Payments.
This training is hosted by Jay Krause. Register here.
We can't wait to "see" you (and all of your "roomies") there!
Product news: Validating off-Campus/External Positions
We are excited to have made two additions to the product - designed to increase flexibility for tracking student experiences that occur off-campus and with volunteer organizations.
Co-Curricular: The co-curricular record can now be extended to allow for the collection and validation of off-campus volunteer efforts. Inside the co-curricular record, you can now add an off-campus volunteer activity that students can update with their respective volunteer organizations. The workflow allows a student to add the details of the organization they worked with, including a required supervisor name and email address. The experience is then validated by the supervisor, followed by the institutional validator - essentially introducing a two-step verification method. Students can still indicate the number of hours volunteered and add their competency development.
Experiential Education: Within the Experiential Module, both courses and programs can now be marked as occurring outside the institution. These experiences can be organized into existing typologies or can be created as new ones and displayed on the student's Experience Transcript. To differentiate these experiences, the Experience Transcript displays a description of the experience - indicating it occurred outside of the institution. A logo of the affiliated organization can be displayed to add visual legitimacy. Students can add all relevant information into a created form on the placement/experience record - including hours, competency, reflection, and have it approved by a co-ordinator or volunteer.
Adding the ability for a student to include their experiences they are having off-campus onto an Experiential Transcript better prepares students to articulate and explain their learning to future employers. Since we predict a higher number of students may choose to take a gap year in 2020/2021, adding the ability to promote, track, and capture experiences for students, from all sources, will become even more necessary to be relevant and useable by your students. We are excited to offer students an easy and verifiable way to capture their learning.
What's Generating Activity This Week in the Community of Practice
Feature Board: Requests for automated updates to application statuses, blogs, and global tag searching.
Knowledge Sharing Board: Posts on managing reflections, co-curricular, and co-op admissions.
What We're Reading This Week
"[U: Android too] Google Chrome team moving away from the words ‘blacklist’ and ‘whitelist’ to be more inclusive", by Kyle Bradshaw, 9 to 5 Google, Read it Here
“Dear White Boss…”, by Keith A. Caver and Ancella B. Livers, Harvard Business Review, Read it Here
"If everything's opening up, why am I so Anxious?", Jordan Heath-Rawlings, The Big Story, A podcast, Listen to it Here
"We’re Entering the Age of Corporate Social Justice", Lily Zheng, Harvard Business Review, Read it Here
Our Weekly Recipe: Coffee-Rubbed Baby Back Ribs with Honey Skillet Cornbread & a Citrus Kale Side Salad
This weekend we have you covered with the perfect weekend menu - fusing coffee with meat, sweetness with carbs, and citrus with salad. This is a culinary combination that will leave everyone full, happy, and (highly) fuelled - maybe, even, doing some leap-frogs or high kicks. Enjoy!
Important P.S.A: Father's Day is this Sunday, June 21st, 2020.
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