Are you feeling anxious about the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the classroom? Do you worry you might become obsolete in the face of this technological advancement? How often have you had to “prove you are not a robot”? With the massive growth of AI tools, educators are questioning what it means to be an organic and creative human. Fear not, because in this three-hour workshop, we will explore how you can prove you’re human, even in the age of AI. 
Learning outcomes for this workshop include:
- Exploring and processing educators’ practical, psychological, and philosophical anxieties about AI in a meaningful, creative, fun way
- Learning how to express complex ideas and emotions through visual storytelling
- Sharing and connecting with other educators who share similar worries and concerns
- Gaining a better understanding of the impact of AI tools on educators and our work and how to maintain our humanity in the face of technological advancement
Register now!
Presenter Biographies:
Dr. Jessica Motherwell McFarlane (she/they/not “guys”) has been teaching in the disciplines of gender, diversity, inclusion, anti-oppression, and social justice for nearly three decades. She received the 2016 Teaching Excellence Award for her work at the Justice Institute of British Columbia. Jessica recently began teaching at Capilano and Kwantlen Polytechnic universities and has been acknowledged for offering creative, innovative methods that are especially useful for working with difficult or emotional content. She regularly offers workshops for learners from elementary to university ages and presents at provincial, national, and international conferences. Jessica is director of the Life Outside the Box Institute, which offers customized programming — often using simple stick-figure comics — to help learners embrace anti-oppression practices, work toward reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, overcome implicit biases, and listen deeply to others’ stories. Jessica is also a counsellor in private practice for children, youth, and adults. Jason Toal (he/him) has been an educator and educational technologist for 25 years. From the sketchbook page to the webpage, he facilitates learning experiences on the topics of visual practice, educational/social media, open education, and more. With a background in art, design, and interaction design, he specializes in the human aspects of learning technology and the innovative use of media.
You often hear others talk about accessibility, but you’re not quite sure how to put it into practice (or maybe you just haven’t had a chance). These Accessibility Bites sessions are for you!
Join your host Helena Prins and facilitator Josie Gray in Zoom for one or all of the five 30-minute sessions taking place on the last Thursday of every month except December.
Session 1: Assistive Technologies
Our first drop-in session is designed to explore the assistive technologies and customization options available in the digital tools educators and staff often use. The goal is to explore these tools and identify what might make your work easier.
Schedule:
- 10 minutes: Demonstration of some of the assistive technologies and customization options available in some of the popular digital tools we use. These include:
- Text to speech (your device reading aloud text on the screen)
- Speech to text (your device writing down what you say aloud)
- Customizing visual displays (dark mode, high contrast, enlarging text size, readability tools)
- Automatic captioning
- 10 minutes: Everyone can try out different tools on their device. Your host and facilitator will be available for questions.
- 10 minutes: Everyone will come together to reflect on how it went, share their own experiences and tips, and ask additional questions.
Register now!
Learn more and register for other events in the series.
ChatGPT has disrupted formal assessments and caused concern among educators in post-secondary institutions. While many are approaching the topic with a policing lens, many suggest AI is here to stay, and instructors should help learners work properly with this technology. In this FLO course, you will explore ways to incorporate AI tools such as ChatGPT and other generative AI technologies into assignments. Give learners the option to use AI, teach them how to use it responsibly, and help them develop critical thinking, digital literacy, and creative skills. In this session, you will explore how to work with AI tools rather than fight them.
In this course, you will:
- Articulate concerns and opportunities for AI in student work.
- Understand the impact of AI on learner assessments.
- Design assessment strategies that incorporate AI.
- Design engaging alternative assessment strategies.
- Design feedback using AI.
This course will run for five days. Participants should allocate 90 minutes a day to work on the course and will participate in two discussion forums. There will be one optional 60-minute synchronous session on October 3, 2023 from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time.
Facilitator Biographies:
Eliana Elkhoury (PhD) (she/her/hers) is an assistant professor at Athabasca University. She has extensive experience in teaching and learning in K–12 and higher education settings both in Canada and internationally. Her work focuses on alternative assessments, education in emergencies, and innovation in teaching and learning. Her current research interests include alternative assessment in multiple disciplines, innovation in teaching and learning, and equity in assessment practices. Follow Eliana’s work on alternative assessment.
Annie Prud’homme-Généreux (she/her/hers) was one of the founding faculty of Quest University, where she developed an innovative curriculum and experimented with diverse pedagogies and assignments. After several years working in administration and leadership in and out of academia, she returned to her roots and passion: teaching undergraduate science courses at the University of British Columbia. She has engaged in several faculty development initiatives that promote the use of authentic assessments, inclusive teaching, and inquiry-based learning, and she researches current practices in alternative assessments in STEM with Eliana. She is in the final stage of a Master of Open, Digital, and Distance Education at Athabasca University, where her thesis project explores guiding principles for policies on the use of AI in the classroom.
Register now!
These sessions will be recorded and shared with participants in the course.
About The Series
Discover the BCcampus FLO EdTech Sandbox Series, an initiative that empowers educators in B.C.’s post-secondary institutions to explore innovative teaching tools through a safe online environment. In these two-hour livestream webinars, expert leaders will introduce and demonstrate cutting-edge, open, and free or low-cost educational technology tools, allowing you to experiment and gather exciting ideas for teaching activities. Our mission is to foster digital teaching innovation, encouraging faculty and staff to embrace emerging technologies with curiosity and openness, ultimately enhancing the learning experience for all.
By actively participating in these sandbox sessions, you will delve into hands-on experimentation with tools, collaborate with fellow educators to review their features, gain valuable insights into teaching activities, and discover ways to integrate these tools into your courses. If you’re unable to attend, recorded webinars of the presentations and written reviews of the tools will be available on our site after the event.
About This Session
Many of us have learned to screencast and video lecture in the past few years, but relatively few have harnessed the power of audio for teaching and learning. Audio has many benefits over video: files are small and portable, making them easy to share with rural and remote learners; audio can “fit into” the lives of many learners while they drive, walk, or attend to household tasks; and audio is an intimate medium for building connections. In this session you will:
- Discuss podcasting as a medium.
- Practice recording and editing audio.
- Learn about distribution of podcasts using WordPress.
- Explore assessment and feedback strategies that use audio.
Anyone looking for a new way to engage their hybrid and online learners is welcome to attend and explore the possibilities of podcasting.
About The Facilitator
Brenna Clarke Gray (she/her) is coordinator, Educational Technologies at Thompson Rivers University, where her research interests include the pedagogical implications of generative artificial intelligence, the history and future of open tenure processes, the role of care and care work in the practice of educational technology, and scholarly podcasting. Before her work in faculty support, she spent nine years as a community college English professor and comics scholar. She holds a PhD in Canadian literature from the University of New Brunswick. Outside academia, Brenna co-hosts Hazel & Katniss & Harry & Starr, a podcast about young adult literature and film adaptation, and pretends to be a public intellectual on social media, where you can find her in many places — but not Elon’s X — as @brennacgray.
Register now!
Other sessions in this series:
- Session 1: September 13, 2023, 10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.—Mattermost, Ian Linkletter (BCIT)
- Session 3: November 15, 2023, 10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.— Padlet, Lisa Gedak (KPU)
- Session 4: January 10, 2024, 10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.—Sticky Notes, John Churchley (TRU)
- Session 5: February 14, 2024, 10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.— H5P, John Cheng (UBC)
In this FLO Friday session, you will explore ungrading as a critical pedagogical tool that places the emphasis on feedback of student work instead of instructor-determined grades. FLO facilitator, Claire Hay, employed process letters as an ungrading practice in a fourth-year university course that used an active learning, co-constructed approach to the curriculum. At the end of the course, she anonymously surveyed students on their perceptions of the ungrading practice. In this FLO Friday session, Claire will tell the story of this ungrading experience, including a review of the ungrading philosophy, discussion of her approach, and instructor and student insights. The session will also consider ways to ensure student, instructor, and system needs are met. This will be an interactive session; you can expect to engage through polls, chats, and a short breakout activity.
Register now!
This notice is to inform you that this session will be recorded, archived, and made available publicly on BCcampus.ca. By participating in this session, you acknowledge that your participation in this session will be recorded and the recording will be made available openly.
Presenter Biography: Claire Hay, MSc (she/her), is a teaching and learning specialist for curriculum and assessment in the Teaching and Learning Centre at University of the Fraser Valley (UFV). She is a geographer by training and has taught at UFV since 2002. In April 2020 she joined the Teaching and Learning Centre, where she works with faculty who are growing their teaching and learning practice in the areas of assessment and curriculum development. Claire also teaches courses as a sessional instructor in the School of Land Use and Environmental Change at UFV. You can reach her at claire.hay@ufv.ca.
You often hear others talk about accessibility, but you’re not quite sure how to put it into practice (or maybe you just haven’t had a chance). These Accessibility Bites sessions are for you!
Join your host Helena Prins and facilitator Josie Gray in Zoom for one or all of the five 30-minute sessions taking place on the last Thursday of every month except December.
Session 2: Image Descriptions
This is a short drop-in session that will allow you to practice describing images. If you share images through documents and publications, social media, digital interfaces, or presentations, this session is for you.
What to bring: Any images you want to make accessible — preferably ones you use in your work. We will also have images to practice with if you don’t have any.
Schedule
- 15 minutes: Presentation on key things to keep in mind when you describe images. This includes:
- Who image descriptions are for
- When and when not to describe an image
- What to describe and how to describe it
- How context factors into image descriptions
- Examples of good and not-so-good image descriptions
- 10 minutes: Everyone works individually to describe their images. Your host and facilitator will be available for questions.
- 5 minutes: Everyone will come together to reflect on how it went and ask additional questions.
Register now!
Learn more and register for other events in the series.
This notice is to inform you that this session will be recorded, archived, and made available publicly on BCcampus.ca. By participating in this session, you acknowledge that your participation in this session will be recorded and the recording will be made available openly.
Are you interested in creating a safer learning experience for your students before the course even begins? The syllabus (or course outline) is often the first point of contact learners have with their instructor and the course content. By applying trauma-informed principles, syllabi can provide the opportunity for educators to begin relationship-building with learners as well as offer suggestions and information vital to their success.
This FLO MicroCourse consists of required (and recommended) readings, video lectures from your instructor and daily forum posts. The course will culminate with a final assignment where the participants will interrogate and edit a syllabus (ideally one from a course they teach) and provide and receive feedback from their participant peers. The time commitment for this course is 2-3 hours per day. We have two optional synchronous sessions planned that we encourage participants to attend:
- Session 1: October 30, 2023, 5:00–6:00 p.m. PT
- Session 2: November 3, 2023, 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. PT
These sessions will be recorded and shared with participants in the course.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, participants will:
- Explore a variety of areas within a syllabus that may be suitable for using a trauma-informed approach
- Assess and amend their own syllabus to align with trauma-informed perspectives
- Provide and receive feedback on their own and other participants’ syllabi
Facilitator Biography
Matty Hillman (he/him/his), MA (CYC), is a child and youth care instructor at Selkirk College in the beautiful Kootenay region of B.C., the traditional territory of the Sinixt People. His research interests include sexual violence prevention and response on post-secondary campuses, trauma-informed teaching, and community mental health literacy. As a muralist, he is especially interested in the intersection of youth work and public art, exploring the opportunity these complementary practices create for empowerment, community building, and social justice advancements. Readers may contact Matty at mhillman@selkirk.ca and access his full bio at http://selkirk.ca/faculty/matthew-matty-hillman.
Register now!
These sessions will be recorded and shared with participants in the course.
Session Description:
Design principles in education help improve practice and help educators design better ways of doing things. They are not rigid rules or fixed templates; they are flexible, evolving, and iterative, and they provide a foundation of shared understanding to guide and inform whatever comes next. In February 2021 the Canadian eLearning Network began engaging educators across Canada in facilitated conversations about teaching in online learning environments. This expanded into a three-phased research project focused on understanding the lived experiences of online educators and those who came to online education during the COVID-19 pandemic. This session will showcase the shared learnings from three years of conversations with Canadian K–12 educators, discuss Design Principles for K–12 Online Learning (Crichton & Childs, 2023), talk about participatory design–based research and its value for emerging collective wisdom, and provide participants with tools to create participatory design–based research projects.
Facilitator:
Dr. Elizabeth Childs (she/her) is a professor and program head in the School of Education and Technology at Royal Roads University. She is interested in the design, creation, and implementation of flexible learning environments that incorporate technologies and provide learners with increased choice, flexibility, and opportunities. Dr. Childs’s research interests include online and blended learning, openness and open pedagogy, online learning communities and digital habitats, design thinking, and participatory design approaches.
About This Series:
The BCcampus Fall 2023 Research Speaker Series offers participants and presenters an opportunity to learn and share knowledge and advocacy on research methods, approaches, and pedagogies when it comes to accessibility, access, Indigenous engagement, and equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in teaching and learning. These livestream webinars, which take place one Tuesday every month from September to December, will allow you to learn and ask questions about new research directly from the researchers involved.
Learning Outcomes:
- Broaden your knowledge and research skills in the B.C. post-secondary context.
- Learn about Indigenization, EDI, decolonization, and accessibility in research.
- Be inspired to participate in research communities of practice or explore the themes in your work.
- Connect with academics and community members who share your interests.
Register now!
Please Note: This session will be recorded, captioned, and made available publicly on BCcampus.ca after the event. You do not need to register to view the recording after the event.
Other Events in This Series:
- Session 1: September 19, 2023, 10:00–11:00 a.m., Decolonizing Data: Unsettling Conversations about Social Research Methods with Dr. Jacqueline Quinless (UVic)
- Session 3: November 21, 2023, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m., Centring Intersectional EDI in Research Practices and Approaches with Dr. Moussa Magassa
- Session 4: December 5, 2023, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. Creative Methods for Enabling the Participation of People with Disabilities in Research with Dr. Jane Seale (The Open University, UK)
Building on Studio20: Engaging Learners Online, Studio23: Reignite Your Teaching and Facilitation Practice is an in-person event for faculty, instructors, facilitators, and educators in the B.C. post-secondary sector. Studio23 is a creative space for reigniting and elevating skills in teaching and facilitation — a collection of curated, studio-based workshops to inspire and invite educators to ponder, practice, and play.
Save the date!
The user experience for education technology has greatly evolved in the past few years, thanks to the pivot to online learning brought about by the pandemic. A range of hybrid approaches now exist for content delivery, and many more instructors than ever before are using technology to both assess and increase student engagement and accessibility. Learners’ actions, expectations, and goals have also evolved, leading to new opportunities and challenges for integrating edtech into learning. 
The Educational Technology Users Group (ETUG) Fall Workshop will meet online and examine these changes and the evolution of the edtech user. Presentations will focus on how student expectations have changed and how instructors can address them. The workshop will also look at faculty expectations when it comes to technology and the institutional support (e.g., teaching and learning centres, libraries) required to meet these expectations.
Registration and a call for proposals will be announced soon. In the meantime, save the date!