Don’t Rock the Boat began as a live theatre workshop focusing on wellbeing issues that arise within the context of graduate student supervisory relationships. In early 2020, we began a new phase of the work that involved a brand new script that brought greater emphasis to issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion and the impacts for wellbeing in graduate supervision. The dramatized scenes were professionally acted, filmed and edited and support the longer term sustainability and accessibility of this work. With the new scenes, we also recognized an opportunity to spark dialogue about the systemic as well as individual actions that could be taken to actively promote and support respectful graduate supervisory relationships. Hence we dropped the “don’t” in Rock the Boat.
Rock the Boat is an open-access multimedia resource designed to provoke dialogue about graduate supervision relationships within universities, and their impact on student and faculty wellbeing. The finished product includes 4 scenes, each running about 7 or 8 minutes, a comprehensive facilitator’s guide and relevant resources to support use of the resource in an online or in person format for student, staff or faculty workshops, orientation sessions or other events focusing on graduate supervision, wellbeing and equity, diversity and inclusion.
You can find a trailer providing an overview of the resource here.
You can access the resource on Pressbooks with this link https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/rocktheboat/
Follow the guidance you will find in the “access” section (under the Contents tab) to obtain a password for the protected portions of the site. This will enable you to view the videos and access the facilitator’s guide.
The citation for the resource is: S.M. Cox, M. Lee, M. Smithdeal, and T. Maragha (2021). Rock the Boat: Using theatre to reimagine graduate supervision. Pressbooks Open Educational Resource. https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/6v5z-ye25
Please feel free to get in touch at rock.the.boat@ubc.ca if you have any feedback, suggestions, or interest in future collaboration!