Background

Rock the Boat began as a Research-based Theatre project at the University of British Columbia. In 2019, we launched a series of live theatre performances, followed by facilitated discussions among invited graduate students, faculty and staff. Those who attended expressed enjoyment and surprise at how much they learned from the experience. Inspired by the success of these performances, and by the migration of teaching and learning activities online during the COVID-19 pandemic, we began developing an online version in 2020. With publication of the resource through Pressbooks we made the resource freely available to universities throughout Canada and internationally in 2021.

Since the initial inception of the resource, it has been used with hundreds of participants in dozens of sessions in a wide variety of contexts, including professional development workshops, for-credit graduate courses, conference workshops, faculty development workshops and EDI training workshops. The resource has not only been used in universities across Canada, but also universities in over 20 countries.

We have collected extensive feedback over the past two years using this resource. This new version is the result of a considerable overhaul to reflect lessons learned from that feedback and our experiences. We extend our sincere thanks to everyone who has participated in a Rock the Boat session, especially those that have provided oral and written feedback.