The Pulse
Oct. 6, 2022

If you have had a bad experience with online learning, says Jennifer Griffin Schaeffer, it's because an important ingredient was missing: respect.

"We don't respect our learners," she told Episode 32 of Bloom, Taproot's podcast about innovation. "We expect our learners to keep up, to get an A, to get the points you need. It's an ugly thing, really."

Her company, Onlea, aims to make learning a beautiful thing. It has created or collaborated on a wide range of learning experiences, such as an Opioid Awareness Community Based Naloxone Training for the Métis Nation of Alberta, an anti-racism course for the Coaching Association of Canada, and a transitional program called Lassonde Edge for students entering engineering at York University.

Onlea was born as the result of an experience that showed how delightful online learning could be. As part of her work in digital strategy in the 2010s, she co-chaired a committee that led to the creation of Dino 101, the University of Alberta's first MOOC (massive open online course).

Because MOOCs are free, completion levels tend to be low. At the time, 5% was the industry standard, Schaeffer said. But she blew her colleagues' minds at a Coursera conference in London in April 2014 when she shared that Dino 101's completion rate was more like 20%.

That led to the foundation of Onlea as a not-for-profit at the University of Alberta, assembling a team that could create similarly successful experiences for others.

In early 2020, Schaeffer and her co-founders — husband and AI specialist Jonathan Schaeffer and Adriana Lopez Forero, who is now CEO — spun Onlea out as a for-profit company. "We wanted to be able to have the flexibility to build the company far beyond the needs of just the University of Alberta and its needs for high-quality digital learning," Schaeffer said.

Their timing was extraordinary. Soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic thrust millions of people and organizations into online learning. Over the past two years, Onlea has grown by 50%, earning Schaeffer the Emerging Entrepreneur Award from Alberta Women Entrepreneurs.

• City council has approved the single-use item reduction bylaw. Effective July 1, 2023, businesses cannot sell or give away plastic shopping bags and must charge at least 15 cents for a paper bag and $1 for a reusable bag. These fees increase in July 2024 to 25 cents and $2. Disposable styrofoam plates, cups, and containers will be banned completely. Restaurants will be required to accept customers' reusable cups for takeout or dine-in and can only give out disposable straws and disposable utensils on request. The city wants to reduce single-use item waste by 20% by 2027.
• YEG Youth Connect is happening at the Boyle Street Plaza YMCA on Oct. 6. The annual event connects youth aged 13-29 to housing and service organizations that can help with their situation. Almost 18% of people experiencing houselessness in Edmonton identify as youth, and even more are at risk.
• The Edmonton Police Service used their annual search of the North Saskatchewan River to bring attention to Jeannine Ermineskin, an Indigenous woman who has been missing in Edmonton since January 2022. EPS said they have been looking for her throughout the year and asked the public to help to raise the profile of the investigation.
• The City of Edmonton's Permit and Licensing Improvement (PLI) Initiative received an award for red tape reduction as part of the province's 2022 Municipal Excellence Awards. The city said the initiative will collectively save applicants $5.3 million and 67,000 days worth of their time.
• Michelle Douglas, executive director of the LGBT Purge Fund, made Edmonton the first stop in her cross-Canada series to raise awareness about the LGBT purge, a period from the 1950s to the 1990s when LGBTQ employees of federal services and agencies experienced substantial harassment and discrimination. Douglas, who filed a lawsuit 30 years ago against the Department of National Defence that was dropped after the military scrapped its policy of banning gay or lesbian people, estimates 9,000 people were subjected to the purge.
• Kylee Quinn from Hockey Edmonton appeared on Global News at Noon to talk about how the Hockey Canada scandal is affecting the local level. She said Hockey Edmonton has been working with the Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton to customize a course to help players understand consent, toxic masculinity, and cultivating a culture of respect.

This year's LitFest will welcome audiences back with a broad spectrum of programming that nods to all the nonfiction festival couldn't do online during the pandemic.

"I think there really is no way to replicate that experience of people gathering in a space, exchanging ideas, hearing something together for the first time, sharing a moment together," executive director Jana O'Connor told Taproot. "There's just something in that beautiful human connection that is really challenging to replicate online."

O'Connor was hired as LitFest's new executive director in July. For her first year of programming the festival, the longtime writer and performer said she tried to focus on the "yes, and" opportunities that brought exciting authors and unique ways for audiences to engage with them.

For example, Raymond Biesinger and Alex Bozikovic, authors of 305 Lost Buildings of Canada, will be leading a walking tour of lost buildings in Edmonton on Oct. 22. They have produced an Edmonton-focused mini-zine version of their book to accompany it.

"(With) the walking tour, we'd have the ability to bring in this book, And then we'd also have this ability to take folks on a walk that helps them see their city in a new way," O'Connor said.

In Leanne Prain's workshop on crafting activist art projects, O'Connor saw a way to meet the moment, noting that "folks are really trying to do grassroots interventions to make change in the world." Prain is the author of The Creative Instigator's Handbook: A DIY Guide to Making Social Change Through Art, and the co-author of the original book on yarn-bombing.

"I just love the opportunity to bring folks ... from a bunch of different interests into the festival and have pathways in that may not be the obvious ones," she said.

For lovers of memoir, there is a lot to look forward to. Journalist Brandi Morin, comedian Ali Hassan, and hip-hop artist Rollie Pemberton, a.k.a. Cadence Weapon, will be presenting on their own memoirs, and Margaret Macpherson will lead a workshop on how to "write about your family and still have one."

The festival, which runs Oct. 13-23, is book-ended by events featuring Michael Hingston's Try Not To Be Strange: The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda, opening with a reading and closing with a pop-up exhibit at the Lowlands Project Space.

Photo: Jana O'Connor is heading into her first LitFest as executive director. (Supplied)