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Reflecting on a year of remote teaching and learning

Transformative Learning | Strategy 11: Education Renewal
Theme: Innovation
Photo credit: Paul H. Joseph / UBC Brand & Marketing

One year after the pandemic shuttered many in-person classes and workplaces, we take a look back at how UBC made the rapid pivot to remote instruction. Over this year, the vast majority of courses at UBC were delivered entirely remotely, requiring them to be redesigned, rebuilt and re-taught in wholly different ways. It has been an incredibly challenging effort for all: for the faculty who lead these courses; for staff and teaching assistants who supported their development and delivery; and for our students, who have had much of the experience of being a university student radically disrupted.

In an editorial with CTLT’s Edubytes, Dr. Simon Bates, UBC Associate Provost, Teaching and Learning, reflects on the experiences of the last year. As we contemplate and plan for a return to campus, including a return to much more in-person instruction than has been possible over the last 12 months, conversations are beginning to turn to what the ‘new normal’ may look like.

From what we have learned through this experience, what should we keep? What should we drop and revert back to? What now might be possible that we simply couldn’t have imagined doing in the pre-COVID teaching and learning landscape? These are complex questions for our community to discuss and suggest ways forward.

Please read the story on the CTLT website.

These reflections are a key demonstration of how now, more than ever, UBC is committed to a focus on online and blended education, and in evolving efforts to support faculty in the ongoing integration of evidence-informed pedagogies into their classrooms, and encouraging innovations that have the potential to improve upon traditional learning approaches (Strategy 11: Education Renewal).