“Push yourself beyond your little confirmation network,” said Gary Poole at the end of the BCcampus symposium on teaching and learning scholarship last Friday, November 14. “Seek out people who will challenge you sometimes.” Hundreds of B.C. post-secondary educators were there to do just that, and so it was a fitting end to two days of conferences hosted by BCcampus last week.
ETUG “Unconference”
First, on Thursday November 13, was the ETUG fall workshop, this year organized as an “unconference” where proposed sessions were pitched by attendees in the morning, a schedule made based on those sessions, and then participants went to the sessions of interest to them. By all accounts, the unconventional meeting structure was a success, as participants had a hard time choose which sessions to attend among many quality ones on offer. The organizing committee, headed by Kele Fleming and supported by BCcampus’ manager for open education, Leva Lee, did a tremendous job in making an “unconference” work so seamlessly.
Symposium on teaching and learning research
Next day, November 14, saw the inaugural BC Symposium on Scholarly Inquiry into Teaching and Learning Practice. The sold-out conference offered dozens of opportunities for post-secondary educators to learn more about best practices.The day was sponsored and hosted by BCcampus and planned by a provincial teaching and learning committee consisting of:
- Peter Arthur – University of British Columbia Okanagan,
- Grant Gregson – Emily Carr University of Art and Design,
- Maureen Wideman – University of Fraser Valley,
- Gary Hunt – Thompson Rivers University,
- Liesel Knaack – Vancouver Island University
The opening and closing keynote presentations for the Symposium were recorded: you can see them online.
We have hundreds of photos taken of both events, all CC-licensed: just attribute them to BCcampus (photographer was the very talented Dennis Yip).