By consulting with mentors, creating data visualizations and deliberating on challenges, the students developed unique, diverse, relevant and feasible solutions within just 24 hours.
Some groups pitched working with industry stakeholders and partners to bring media literacy campaigns into elementary schools, high schools and universities.
Others proposed collaborative, community-held information archives that offer more equitable, accurate, inclusive and representative knowledge sources online.
Another group presented changes to social media algorithms that reduce polarization through filter bubbles, which occur when users only encounter content that reinforces their pre-existing beliefs.
A jury of experts from Wikimedia Canada, professors from uOttawa and a journalist with Le Droit had a slight favourite. One group’s policy solution called for a more robust legal framework to prevent and criminally prosecute deepfakes, or non-consensual sexualized images and videos generated by artificial intelligence.
Wikimedia Canada’s executive director, Louis Germain, says he was impressed by the students: “There’s many good ideas on the table.”
“I think what’s interesting in this kind of weekend course,… there [are] so many things that people might have in mind, but now, they have the chance to talk about it openly, and that’s how the most crazy idea comes to life,” says Germain. “I think that is super cool.”
Cross-disciplinary collaboration on pressing issues at the heart of the lab
It was Alain Malette, senior director of career development and experiential learning, who reached out to Jada Watson, vice-dean of academic affairs and educational innovation at the Faculty of Arts, about launching what would become the first-ever Arts Innovation Lab. She knew it was a no-brainer.
The University’s Telfer School of Management already had its Innovation Sprints, and the Faculty of Social Sciences offered the FSS Challenge.
All that was left was for the Faculty of Arts to create its own version: the Arts Innovation Lab. Intensive, collaborative and innovative, this 1.5-credit course unites students from all areas of study over three days.
“The whole goal around these courses is to bring students from across all faculties together to work on a real-life problem,” says Watson.
She says different disciplines may feel far removed from each other, but the reality is the opposite.
“When we get in the same room, we realize we’re actually really thinking about and curious about similar issues, but from different perspectives,” says Watson.
To kick-start the Arts Innovation Lab, Watson says she “knew almost immediately” what to focus on because Wikimedia Canada “offered us this fantastic opportunity to explore” the pressing issues of misinformation, disinformation, fake news and distorted representations online.
For students who missed the first innovation lab or who want to do more, Watson has good news.
“We’re absolutely going to do this again,” she says. “I think the beauty of these types of courses is that we will always be able to look at the world around us and think, ‘What are the pressing needs that haven’t been covered in other challenges or other sprints?’ and present them from an arts perspective.”
“Great way to get involved”: Innovation lab fosters student engagement
Janisa Visutskie, a second-year political science and history student, says she registered for the Arts Innovation Lab to broaden her horizons in the uOttawa community.
“I think it was a great way to get involved a little more on campus, especially [to] connect with peers,” she says.
Visutskie says the course pushed her outside of her comfort zone since she’s used to working independently in her program.
“It’s a very fast-paced environment,” she says. “You have to learn how to think on your feet. You have to make ideas quickly. You also have to find a way to work with your teammates.”
The challenge paid off for Visutskie. She smiled while receiving her first-place certificate from Germain for her contributions to her group’s presentation on legislating against deepfakes.
Yannis Affoum, a second-year environmental studies student, says the weekend-long course was the first academic event he has attended since becoming a student at uOttawa.
“I got the chance to meet many more people than I normally meet in my regular classes,” he says, “and also meet people from different faculties … from the Telfer school and science departments too, so it’s pretty nice.”
Ella Mante, a second-year finance student, says the Arts Innovation Lab was also the first collaborative workshop she participated in at the University.
“Being interactive with other departments is a really great way [of] getting myself out there,” she says.
Accounting student Kim Athens Mendiola says her highlight from the weekend was working hands-on and receiving feedback from academic and industry experts in media, communications and civic education.
She says working with mentors from Wikimedia Canada helped her understand the process for verifying information on open knowledge platforms like Wikipedia.
The course’s emphasis on collaboration was put into practice. Affoum, Mante and Athens Mendiola worked together to develop a plan for partnering with organizations to offer school boards a media literacy workshop, educating middle and high school students on how to detect biased and harmful information online.
Understanding structure and thinking outside the box
Pascale Dangoisse, program officer at Wikimedia Canada and part-time professor with the Department of Communication and digital cultures program, led the Arts Innovation Lab. She says one of its main goals is to teach students that there are nuanced structures underlying contemporary issues around how information is produced, used, shared and understood.
“You can have judgments on a person or on a situation, but if you take a step back, you realize how much pressure and how many power points exist, and how it’s very seldom an issue of one person. It’s really an issue that is systemic, that is structural,” she says. “Unless you see that, you can’t really change things that much.”
Dangoisse illustrated this to students through an example about how encyclopedias commonly credit German inventor Johannes Gutenberg with inventing the printing press. But other research reveals that a Chinese man created it centuries earlier. That finding is excluded from the dominant Western historical account due to structural factors.
She says helping students identify gaps and issues within systems of knowledge is essential to finding solutions.
“I want them to think outside the box,” says Dangoisse.
Needless to say, Dangoisse is proud of how the students responded.
“The solutions they are having, I’m going to cry today for sure.… It’s very positive,” she says. “It feels really good in the kind of situation that we have right now around the world, and to see all of this creativity.”