Educator Spotlight: a conversation with Dr. Launa Gauthier

In 2019, as soon as LUMSx was established as part of the LUMS Learning Institute, we were met with the onset of COVID-19 and, thus, immediately began the groundwork to resource educators during this difficult and uncertain time. In this process, we were immensely grateful to have had the support of Dr Launa Gauthier who collaborated with LUMSx to create her course, Course Design and Development.

Dr. Launa Gauthier has played a multifaceted role within the LUMS community where she not only worked as a faculty member at the School of Education, but also spearheaded various initiatives to improve the overall quality of learning available at LUMS in her role as Senior Advisor to the Office of the Vice Chancellor. She co-founded the LUMS Learning Institute and has an immense passion for teaching and learning, with a career that spans over 20 years of experience in the field. Known for her dedication, charisma, and love for pets, we are delighted to have Dr. Launa join us for this conversation.

You began teaching as a primary school teacher and eventually ventured into adult teaching and learning. How did that shift happen?

Dr Launa: Teaching was something I wanted to do since childhood and I started my journey, as many educators often do, by working as a primary schoolteacher. I taught for a bit initially in Canada, but soon moved overseas to China and Korea during my early career.

That was quite an exciting adventure for someone so young in her career but gradually I found that I wanted to try out teaching different grades and moved up to eventually teach older students. Soon, I happened to come across someone who wanted an instructor for adult education courses, and I found that I was able to draw on my skills as an educator to work effectively with this new set of students. It was one of the most memorable experiences in my career that really set the stage for what came next. I ended up doing my Masters in Adult Education and here I am today as a university professor, and I just want to keep learning more.

How different is teaching children and adults pedagogically?
At one point, I would have said, there’s actually very little difference. One of the lovely things about children is that there are less constraints around their learning children learn from play a lot. They don’t think as much about what they’re doing or feeling the weight of the pressure to learn.

With adults, there’s that whole notion of what’s expected of me? How am I going to be assessed? There’s a lot more societal pressure on adults to perform. However, one of the things I love about working with them is that they bring so much experience to learning which is very different from working with children. Adults are more independent learners. I really enjoy, as an educator, drawing on that – on people’s lived experiences – and bringing that into my teaching.

You’ve taught in classrooms around the world with quite a diverse pool of learners – what are some of the common challenges you’ve found in these settings?

You know, students are students, everywhere. You get used to the difference in the classrooms, or in the supports and resources available. Getting used to the cultural nuances of how students and teachers interact in school settings is challenging. In China, for example, I would walk into my classroom and everyone would be sitting in straight rows, and it was very uncommon for them to reconfigure and work in groups. I would often be that teacher who would come in and get everyone to move their desks around.

I believe, you have to not be afraid to try something new, but also with respect for the way things are done in a culture. Another challenge is the notion of respect that exists between teachers and students. Sometimes that means that students will hold back from really engaging in class, or asking a lot of questions, or sharing their opinions to avoid being disrespectful” to their teacher. I found that by putting in time with my students – getting to know them, giving them space, opportunities, encouragement, and showing them, through my responses and feedback, that I welcome their participation – slowly, they start to open up and become a lot more empowered in class.

What are some of your achievements at LUMS?

I am very proud of the work I’ve done with the people here at LUMS. One of the projects we started was the Learning Institute, which has come leaps and bounds since 2019 when we started envisioning some of the programs for it.

Under LLI, we started a very robust faculty development program, and now my predecessor, Dr. Hamad Alizai, is all taking all this work to educators outside LUMS so even more faculty in Pakistan can benefit from what we do here. One program I’m particularly proud of is our Pedagogical Partnership Program, where we have been developing these working relationships between students and faculty who co-create projects that are designed to improve learning and teaching at LUMS. Recently, we’ve also launched a Research Grants Program.

I’ve also contributed to the university at large. I worked with the Provost and a committee of colleagues from across all schools to really articulate and revamp the Tenure and Promotion Policy. Now LUMS recognizes teaching excellence as part of the Tenure and Promotion career progression, which I’m really proud of.
And then, finally, I think just this initiative with LUMSx of creating an online course that’s going to be available to so many people.

And we are proud of you too! What motivated you to create Course “Design and Development” with us?

During COVID, The Learning Institute was called very early on to help students and faculty in any way possible. There was an urgent need for support for faculty and teachers all over during that time. And not just any support – good quality support. I had been teaching online for a couple of years because I really enjoyed the medium and was learning to be more effective at it. I also started to realize that there’s so many people out there who don’t have access to what we do here while I had the skills to create a course that was widely applicable and that many people could benefit from.

I believe, as an initiative, one of the main thrusts of LUMSx was to improve access to quality learning for people across the country and maybe even beyond, and I wanted to be a part of that.

How were you able to adapt your pedagogical techniques to suit the online environment?
No matter what your environment is, whether online or in-person – but especially if it’s online – the thing to remember is that you can give all the great content you want to in the world but if people don’t feel connected to you as an instructor or to their peers, that really impacts the quality and the effectiveness of the learning experience. A great deal of learning is social and emotional, and not just cognitive.

It seems a sense of community is quite essential to learning and teaching. How were you able to build moments of connectivity in your own course?
I had a lot of help from the LUMSx team in this regard and wherever I feel I might have had gaps in my experience of designing online courses for a very different diverse audience, they filled those gaps quite nicely.

One very simple thing my colleague Talha and I did in the video content of the course was that we thought about talking to the camera as if talking to a learner. I used language that was very inclusive and inviting and gave several opportunities for collaboration through peer-to-peer feedback, discussion board prompts and reflections on peer responses to create a sense of connectedness in the course.

If you were to create a toolkit for course design, what are three essential components you believe every instructor should have?
Number one is a mindset to put learners first in the design of your course – in your planning for the content, in curating the learning experience, in the assessments – everything! In our course, we keep talking about learners because it’s that mindset that allows you to think of what people need to have an effective learning experience. You need to be willing to put that before your own desire to just teach everything.

The second is good assessments. Assessments drive learning and they’re also the first thing students look for in a course syllabus. So in my own course design process, I try to think about what ways to assess are most meaningful. And it’s the more creative assessments, the ones that take a bit more time and investment which students remember. The last thing, honestly, is good support. I think people could do this on their own, but to do it at the level of quality that we’ve been able to do it, I could not have done that by myself at all.