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Events, tools, initiatives

Food for Thought: Universal Design for Learning

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The final Food for Thought lunchtime session of the fall term was held November 27, 2024, at the Library Summit Centre. Michele Bridge and Claudine Warburton, both IDCs at the LTC, and Joanna Angelidis, Associate Director of Student Wellbeing and Accessibility, gave an informative presentation on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) .

The goal of UDL, as explained by the presenters, is to design instruction in a way that addresses the diversity of learners, thereby removing any barriers in either the instruction or the learning environment. At its core, UDL is a way of thinking about instruction — a lens that can be applied to the choices made around designing and delivering instruction.

UDL is not the same as the accommodations provided to individual learners. Rather, UDL adjusts the learning environment for all learners. For example, providing a private room for exam writing is an accommodation that can be provided for an individual student but is not feasible for an entire class. On the other hand, recording lectures or offering alternative options for assessment is an accommodation that removes barriers for all students, not just one individual.

It was noted that barriers also exist to implementing UDL — instructors at BCIT are already stretched for time and resources. The presenters’ recommendation is to start small: choose one practice to implement and grow from there.

Food for Thought sessions are hosted by BCIT Library and the Learning and Teaching Centre throughout the academic year, and are opportunities for faculty and staff to showcase research, learning and teaching practice, student support services, and innovation at BCIT. The sessions are hosted on Teams and in-person at the Library Summit Centre (where a light lunch is provided).

Teaching with AI Comes to the Town Square

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Last month, the LTC hosted a mini-conference for BCIT faculty at the Town Square on Burnaby Campus. The focus of the conference was to deepen faculty’s understanding of the challenges and opportunities of teaching with GenAI.

Lucas Wright, Senior Educational Consultant at UBC’s Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, presented the keynote address, Currents of Change: Generative AI’s Impact on Teaching, Learning. He began with a quick, hands-on demonstration of how to write a GenAI prompt, then identified the three factors he sees as instrumental to why GenAI is having such a profound impact on higher education: (1) rapid adoption (students are already using GenAI), (2) growing capabilities (GenAI is continually improving), and (3) the emergence of new skills (necessary for learning and working in a world that uses GenAI).

Lucas spoke about the ethical issues facing GenAI users (environmental impacts, concerns around privacy and copyright, and accuracy of output), then concluded with some examples of the opportunities provided by GenAI, including personalized learning, co-creation, and the development of evaluative judgment skills.

After lunch, attendees had the opportunity to further explore the topics and issues raised by Lucas in a variety of sessions led by BCIT faculty and IDCs from the LTC. Those in attendance were engaged and came away with a better understanding of how a world with AI can function.

A recording of Lucas Wright’s keynote address and presentation slides of the sessions are available on the LTC’s GenAI website. Another event is in the planning stages for fall 2025. Details will be posted on the website as they come available.

Upcoming Grant Application Periods

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Travel Reimbursement for Enhancing Knowledge (TREK) Grants

January 6–26, 2025

TREK grants increase opportunities for permanent faculty members (FSA and BCGEU) to attend conferences that specifically enhance teaching and support student learning.

The Learning and Teaching Innovation Grant Committee is accepting applications for a new round of TREK grants from January 6 to 26, 2025. Within the budget, we prioritize first-time applicants and award grants on a first-come, first-served basis. Application results are sent a couple weeks after the closing date.

For more information, please visit https://www.bcit.ca/instructional-development/grants/trek-grants/

Special Interest Grants (SIG)

Ongoing

The SIG provides funding for workshops initiated at the department level for BCIT instructors (FSA and BCGEU) and staff, which will enhance teaching and learning at BCIT.

Grants are awarded within the budget on a first-come, first-served basis, provided that the application fits the grant criteria. Once the funding is exhausted for the year, we will close the applications and post a notice on the webpage. More information is at https://www.bcit.ca/instructional-development/grants/special-interest-grants-sig/.

Other Grants

Stay tuned

The grant committee will be accepting applications for other grants facilitated by the Learning and Teaching Centre, such as the Learning and Teaching Innovation (LTI) grants and the Instructional Enhancement Grant (IEG), again in the spring. Stay tuned for an announcement about application dates for those in March 2025.

Course Workload Estimator

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Do you know how much time it takes students to complete your course? This calculation tool helps you estimate the workload for your students, both week-by-week and in total.

Use the tool to plan your course when you are completing your outline and syllabus, and deciding on activities and an evaluation plan. The calculator uses detailed metrics to estimate the amount of time students will need for reading, writing, projects, and other learning activities.

Once you have a course summary, you will be able to look at your course syllabus and ask yourself:

  • Is this workload achievable given the time constraints of the course?
  • Is the course workload fair given the credit count for the course?

Not only is the estimator helpful for giving you an overall picture of course workload, but you can use it to guide students on how much time they should expect to spend on homework and other components.

BCIT Scholarly Activity Week

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Join us for BCIT Scholarly Activity Week, a fully online event happening from November 19 to November 21, 2024!

Open to the entire BCIT community of faculty, staff, and students, we will celebrate and inspire scholarly activity at the Institute, as well as support everyone who is interested in pursuing scholarly activity. Taking our cue from the recently released Scholarly Activity Guideline, we aim to provide a forum for our community to connect, collaborate, and share the diversity of scholarly activity taking place at BCIT.

Presenters from the BCIT community will share insights on scholarly activity that are underway or completed. There will also be other sessions on how to engage in scholarly activity and what supports and processes are in place. We have participants from all schools, applied research, school research committees, and the library. We are very excited to see the engagement from across our BCIT community!

You can find more details, schedules and access information here: BCIT Scholarly Activity Week.

We look forward to seeing you!

Polytechnic Teaching Program for Educators

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BCIT is excited to offer the Associate Certificate in Polytechnic Teaching (POLY) program, designed for current and aspiring educators. As a premier polytechnic institute in BC, BCIT offers flexible, relevant, and future-proof education. This program is delivered by instructors with extensive experience in the field of teaching and learning. The POLY program emphasizes active and applied learning strategies, aligning with the hands-on approach valued in polytechnic education.

Who is the POLY program for?

The POLY program is designed for current and aspiring post-secondary instructors. The program is an opportunity for current instructors to enhance their teaching skills and gives aspiring instructors the knowledge and strategies to teach in an applied-skills environment. It’s also an effective way to build your resume and to make you a more competitive teaching candidate.

The POLY program can be completed in two to five years through BCIT’s Flexible Learning format (part-time). All courses are also transferable to the Provincial Instructor Diploma Program (PIDP) at Vancouver Community College (VCC), allowing program participants to further enhance their teaching credentials.

Key learning outcomes

Upon completing the POLY program, students will be equipped to:

  • Develop suitable learning outcomes for courses, ensuring that the goals fit the setting.
  • Apply learning theories to improve both teaching and the students’ learning.
  • Design online, in-person, and blended learning environments that adapt to various learning styles.
  • Apply teaching strategies using tools and technologies that meet specific goals and objectives.
  • Create strategies that promote an inclusive learning environment.
  • Evaluate instructional strategies to continually improve teaching methods.
  • Choose assessment strategies, techniques, and feedback mechanisms that align with the learning outcomes and result in effective student evaluation.
  • Create and maintain a professional development plan to stay current with trends and issues in your field and in adult learning.
  • Develop habits of reflection, self-awareness, and ongoing improvement.

Take the next step in your teaching journey. The Winter 2025 term course offerings for the Associate Certificate in Polytechnic Teaching are now available. Register today.

Want to learn more about the POLY program? Attend the online info session on November 5 from 5:00–6:00 p.m.

Teaching with AI at BCIT

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The LTC is pleased to announce our upcoming event, Teaching with AI, which is being held on Thursday, October 31, from 11:30 to 4:00 pm in the Town Square meeting rooms on Burnaby campus.

This mini-conference focuses on teaching and learning and helping BCIT faculty deepen their understanding of the challenges and opportunities of integrating Generative AI into their teaching practices.

Keynote presentation by Lucas Wright, Senior Educational Consultant, Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, UBC, will commence at 11:30 am. Lunch will be provided at 12:15 pm, followed by various sessions from 1–4 pm. Several of the sessions will provide instructors with an opportunity for hands-on practice experimenting with AI tools for teaching and course design.

Afternoon sessions include:

  • Teaching Tales from the Crypt — a panel discussion of BCIT faculty using GenAI in their teaching
  • Developing Teaching Materials with the Help of AI
  • AI and Academic Integrity
  • Ethics of GenAI
  • AI Hands-on Lab
  • and more…

This is an open event — no registration required.

Food for Thought: Work Integrated Learning Faculty Toolkit

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A new academic year of Food for Thought lunch time sessions got underway on October 9, 2024, as Joan Pascual, Program Head of the Centre for Workplace Education at BCIT, presented a session on the Work Integrated Learning (WIL) Faculty Toolkit.

WIL offers students the opportunity to consolidate their learning in the workplace environment. The 170 WIL programs at BCIT include apprenticeships, co-ops, clinicals and preceptorships, practicums and internships, and industry and consulting projects.

The WIL Faculty Toolkit assists instructors whose students are participating in WIL, and was created to centralize the information related to developing and facilitating WIL experiences at BCIT. It is particularly useful for new faculty, and during program development and program reviews.

In addition to a course overview, the Toolkit has six modules:

  • Module 1: WIL definitions and quality
  • Module 2: How do I design a WIL experience?
  • Module 3: Risk management
  • Module 4: How do I design reflective activities for WIL experiences?
  • Module 5: What funding is available for WIL partners?
  • Module 6: How do I evaluate a WIL experience?

The Faculty Toolkit can be accessed through the BCIT Employee Learning Centre at pd.bcit.ca. Select Discover, then search for the WIL Faculty Toolkit, and select Enroll.

Food for Thought sessions are hosted by BCIT Library and the Learning and Teaching Centre throughout the academic year, and are opportunities for faculty and staff to showcase research, learning and teaching practice, student support services, and innovation at BCIT. The sessions are hosted on Teams and in-person at the Library Summit Centre (where a light lunch is provided). A calendar of upcoming sessions is available on the Loop.

QCon Question Converter: Manage Quiz Questions with Word

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When asked about the best feature of the Learning Hub, many instructors name the quiz tool for its efficiency in automatically marking quizzes and calculating grading components.

However, the Learning Hub quiz tool is designed to create and update individual questions one at a time. To develop multiple questions, you’ve had to use a software program called Respondus, which lets you create questions in a more familiar program like Word and then copy them wholesale to the Learning Hub. Unfortunately, Respondus has a lot of frustrating downsides—finicky formatting requirements and compatibility restricted to the Windows platform, to name a few.

To simplify bulk question management, the LTC’s Course Production team has developed QCon as a better tool for converting questions for use in the Learning Hub. Here are the main improvements that we’ve built into the program.

Key Benefits of QCon

  1. Platform: QCon is web-based, which makes it much faster and available to users of different systems (i.e., Mac).
  2. Formatting: In Respondus, correct answers are designated with an asterisk placed before the list number, which means you can’t use automatic list numbering. In QCon, correct answers are formatted with the asterisk after the list number.
  3. Error detection: Although both programs require questions to be formatted a certain way for the conversion process, many users find Respondus’ conversion error messages confusing. QCon provides clearer feedback to help you fix your documents.
  4. Randomizing answers: Both programs allow you to randomize answers, but Respondus makes you choose one or the other and then manually change the exceptions in the Learning Hub one at a time. QCon lets you designate exceptions up front.
  5. Images: In Respondus, the Media Wizard is used after questions are imported to add images, videos, or other media. In Qcon, images can be embedded right in the question in Word.
  6. Random pools: If you’ve created a “random pool” of questions in the Learning Hub, it’s difficult to see them all at once because normally only a portion of the questions will be selected and shown. This makes it difficult to manage your Question Library. By using Qcon, you can work with all your questions outside the Learning Hub, which makes it easy to see everything you’ve developed.

To find out more about how this conversion tool works with Learning Hub quizzes, see Overview – Qcon Guide (bcit.ca).

LTC Services Featured in HR Onboarding Guide

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A new onboarding resource for BCIT instructors, Teaching at BCIT: A Faculty Onboarding Resource, includes the resources the LTC provides to supplement guidance from your school or program. Modules 2, 3, 8, and 9 in particular cover the help we provide for developing and teaching courses, using the Learning Hub, and accessing longer-range professional development. The guide’s format was designed to convey some of the learning blocks you can use to make your online courses more accessible.

Whether you’re a new instructor or you need a refresher on the LTC, here’s a rundown of the teams you can contact for help:

 

If you’re not quite sure what help you need or you would just like to talk to someone about how to get started, contact one of our Instructional Development Consultants (IDCs), who serve as points of contact for each school: LTC School Liaisons.

General LTC Contact Information