3 University of British Columbia: Flexible Learning Initiative
Conceptualization of Flexible Learning:
The concept of flexible learning at UBC has gone through a number of changes over the past 10 years beginning with what we initially defined under our Flexible Learning Initiative (2013) as a focus on using learning technologies to actively engage students within and beyond the traditional classroom (with experimentation with blended/hybrid and online courses, experiential and community engaged learning, and initiatives to expand the reach of career and personal education), to more recent work on concretely defining course modes of delivery to include in-person, online, hybrid and multi-access to provide guidance for faculty and students about options for course delivery, and to draw upon experiences during the COVID 19 Pandemic, where we moved through successive stages of online emergency teaching, through to forms of hybrid, online and multi-access delivery in the course of changing constraints on access to the physical campus. Our campus community has gained new experiences that provide opportunities to continue to focus on active student learning across these delivery models, though the specific course and program level decisions relating to changes in modality still require local and discipline-based decision making. Broadly, UBC continues to encourage and develop infrastructure and support to help faculty, staff and students effectively engage across these flexible modes of delivery.
Initiative: Flexible Learning Initiative
UBC no longer uses “Flexible Learning” as a branded initiative, but has incorporated the general practices and concepts of flexible learning (as it has been evolving in our practice over the past 10 years) in alignment with the Universities strategic plan, where the focus is on transformative learning, with strategies aimed at education renewal, program redesign, practical learning, interdisciplinary education and student experience. In relation to these strategic priorities, we have a number of key funding opportunities available to faculty, staff and students in order to promote activities that align with UBC’s broader strategic commitments. A few examples of such funding include:
- Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF): each year we provide approximately $2.5 million dollars for large transformation and small innovation projects to faculty, staff and students at the UBC Vancouver campus. Last year, the TLEF included special calls focused on hybrid and multi-access course redesign projects and Universal Design for Learning, and we have recently used TLEF funding to support pilots in hybrid learning, experiential learning and interdisciplinary teaching approaches.
- Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Seed Fund: funding to promote the scholarship of teaching and learning by supporting faculty members to conduct research relating to their interest in exploring the impact of their pedagogical approaches with the goal of promoting contributions to research in the field.
There are several other programs and initiatives that support particular priorities and commitments within the strategic plan and that have a direct impact on ways in which faculty, staff and students continue to innovate and improve the context for teaching and learning across the university.
Critical success factors:
(Elements or areas of your activity or project that are vital to successful achievement of program goals)
- Broad engagement across Faculties and with both research and teaching stream faculty participating in projects, with points of input and feedback at the local Faculty/unit level to provide guidance on program structure and proposals.
- Student reach/engagement – beyond just reaching large numbers of students through projects that focus on flexible learning, we need to also gain an understanding of the potential impacts on their learning experience, outcomes and opportunities to develop their personal/academic and career goals (particularly in relation to broader program level outcomes).
- Propagation and expanded uptake of approaches – We look for opportunities to share and attract interest from across the university to promote additional faculty to engage with innovative or impactful teaching practices, and look for ways to align evolving supports and infrastructure to ensure that the UBC community is supported in their work (with well-trained staff and a robust and agile learning technology ecosystem).
Challenges:
- The past few years have been exhausting for everyone! We continue to see people coming forward to commit time and energy to help to improve the quality of teaching and learning at UBC, but people have been tapped out by the extraordinary efforts that have been required across the board to keep the university operating during a global health crisis.
- There is a lot of pressure on budgets/capacity that also makes some of this work difficult at this time, so there is a lot of care needed when considering taking on new projects/areas of support in relation to the growing demand for more flexibility in the model for delivery. While we continue to offer development funding to support innovations and enhance aligned with flexible learning activities, on-going sustainment can be challenging, and requires strategies to build capacity in local and central units.
- There are a lot of challenges associated with academic integrity that have been exacerbated in recent years due to the sudden switch to emergency teaching, more flexible delivery options, and on-going technology changes, and we are still evolving our strategies and infrastructure (as well as our strategy for engaging faculty and students around this issue through a relatively new Academic Integrity office – https://academicintegrity.ubc.ca). This challenge has grown in the last few months due to the sudden emergence of generative AI, which will likely be highly disruptive (in potentially good and bad ways) for the foreseeable future. As are most institutions, UBC is focusing on the development of resources and workshops to engage the community around this new technology.
Evaluation or assessment of impact:
(If available, describe approach to evaluating impact)
- We have embedded evaluation processes into a number of our funding programs (such as the TLEF – https://tlef.ubc.ca/evaluation-reporting/project-evaluation/) and are encouraging reflective and scholarly practices for our faculty to expand their own research interest around teaching and learning practices (within their own classroom), such as through the SoTL Seed Funding.
- We have done a number of large campus-wide surveys relating to teaching practices (https://ctlt.ubc.ca/resources/teaching-practices-survey/) and expect results from the most recent 2023 survey sometime in August.
- We continue to draw upon recent community wide consultations that have included the publication of reports and recommendations to help identify priority areas of concern for the UBC community.
Next steps:
(What future plans or iterations are on the horizon)
- We have a new incoming President this fall, which may trigger some new work on UBC’s overall strategic priorities.
- We are working to immediately put in place resources and generate community interest and engagement around the challenges and opportunities of generative AI