Introduction and About me

My name is Caelum, and I am in my 3rd year of Software Engineering at the University of Victoria(UVic). I started my first semester at UVic in the fall of the 2020 academic year, in the middle of the global SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic, from my computer in Trail, British Columbia. During the following semesters, e-learning was utilized to continue instruction at the university, and it was during this time that the shortcomings of technology-mediated learning became prescient. In Software Engineering, my peers and I were keenly poised to recognize and work on solutions to improve the poor state of e-learning. However, despite how much we all wanted to make a change, our collection of first-year engineers lacked both the skills and domain knowledge to make any real change. Now that I’m in my third year of courses and I am approaching my final years of school; I finally have the knowledge and experience to where I could actively work to improve the technology that supports and facilitates learning digitally.

Improving the access and quality of technology-mediated learning is something that I am very passionate about. Before the Pandemic had shut everything down, I had been a tutor for local high school students. While I enjoyed the work, I felt the impact I was making could have been greater if I had been able to utilize technology to continue helping students through the lockdown. By taking EDCI 335 I hope to learn more about what makes online learning effective to make online learning technology more effective and accessible.