Documentation:CTLT programs/CTLT Institute/2024 Winter

2024 CTLT Winter Institute

The 2024 CTLT Winter Institute will take place in-person and online from December 9-11. This year, we’re reimagining the Winter Institute as a “wellbeing potluck,” co-created by the UBC teaching and learning community. Hear about the “secret ingredients”—ideas and strategies for fostering and enhancing learning environments that benefit everyone: faculty, staff, and students.

Session materials and relevant resources will be added below by the workshop facilitators to support your ongoing learning.

Date	Title	Description	Facilitators	Resources
All Days	Wellbeing slides	You can use these wellbeing slides in your classroom to support wellbeing in yourself, and your students. We have included slides that support movement, focus and even some ways to strengthen your immunity. Try them out in your class!	Ainsley Camps Educational Developer, CTLT	slides
December 9, 2024	Deepening Our Understanding of Wellbeing: Reflections from the UBC Community	At UBC Vancouver, we often focus on educating our minds and leave our hearts and wellbeing on the margins. The visit by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, in 2004 brought wellbeing back to our attention; and wellbeing was officially recognized as a key initiative when UBC adopted the Okanagan Charter in 2015. Since then, at the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, we have supported many classroom wellbeing projects and initiatives, and a number of initiatives have sprouted around campus as well, bringing resources to UBC teaching communities to support faculty in creating learning opportunities that address sustainability and wellbeing. This panel discussion brings together staff and faculty who support various wellbeing initiatives in their classrooms or at UBC. Beyond learning about their contributions, we will invite them to reflect on how the teaching and learning community has expanded its understanding of wellbeing and where challenges persist for individuals and systems.	Judy Chan, Faculty Associate, Faculty Liaison (Land and Food Systems); Ainsley Camps Educational Developer, CTLT
December 9, 2024	Unlearning Scarcity: Building a Culture of Flourishing and Reciprocity at UBC	The CTLT invites you to join a World Café discussion designed to spark deep reflections and collaborative dialogue around wellbeing at UBC. This year, we are exploring what it means to approach wellbeing as a shared, collective responsibility—one that reaches beyond individual actions and advocates for systemic change across our teaching and learning community. Through guided, small-group discussions, participants will have the chance to: - Critically examine how cultural norms within academia—such as beliefs around scarcity, competition, and career progression—affect our ability to foster a supportive and flourishing community for ourselves, our students, and our colleagues, and ask ourselves, what might we need to unlearn or reimagine to prioritize collective wellbeing - Reimagine a campus culture where wellbeing thrives through collective care and mutual support - Consider practical, actionable steps to foster an environment of abundance and connection	Ainsley Camps Educational Developer, CTLT; Judy Chan, Faculty Associate, Faculty Liaison (Land and Food Systems)
December 10, 2024	Using Labour-based Grading in Undergraduate Science Courses	Emphasizing the process of learning over the outcome, labour-based grading has been shown to reduce student stress, increase course clarity, promote risk-taking, and enhance student autonomy, fostering a more supportive learning environment. It also minimizes instructor bias and accounts for the diverse advantages and challenges students bring with them into the course, making it a more fair and more socially just assessment strategy. For instructors, it can actually make marking an enjoyable experience! In this workshop, participants will delve into the core principles of labour-based grading and explore its application in undergraduate science courses. By the end of the workshop, participants will have acquired practical knowledge, tools and strategies to incorporate labour-based grading in their science courses, creating a more engaging, flexible, supportive, inclusive, and collegial classroom environment for all.	Christine Goedhart, Science Edcuation Specialist, Botany, UBCV
December 10, 2024	Why Do I Avoid my Student Evaluations of Teaching?	At this roundtable session, we will acknowledge and honour the difficult emotional aspects of the SEoTs and provide an opportunity to discuss this in a collegial and empathetic environment. We will not be discussing the reliability and validity of SEoT, but rather will focus on what we need to do to take care of ourselves as instructors who receive SEoT reports and/or other anonymous comments about our teaching from students. Topics of our conversation will include: - Sharing approaches to reading and/or responding to anonymous student comments - Managing emotional reactions to SEoTs - Reaching out to colleagues for support - Instructor wellbeing	Judy Chan, Faculty Associate, Faculty Liaison (Land and Food Systems); Ainsley Camps Educational Developer, CTLT
December 10, 2024	Making Teaching, Learning, and even Meetings more Joyful Through Improv and Theatre Games	Are you tired of sitting and suffering through boring and unproductive meetings or dull lectures? Are you feeling blurgh in your teaching? Do you want you and your students and colleagues to become more receptive to new ideas, take risks, and feel more connected to one another? If you answered yes to any of these questions, come join us! In this 90-minute workshop, we will share our experiences as educators, students, and staff in bringing embodied exercises, improv and theatre games into our practice. And, more importantly, we will lead you in some improv activities you can bring back to your respective contexts. These theatre games and exercises are designed to be quick, fun, and accessible to all. Bio of presenters: We are both educators with an interest in getting people into their bodies as a way to facilitate learning, foster individual and collective wellbeing, promote connection, and be more joyful. For more info contact: jude.walker@ubc.ca	Jude Walker, Associate Professor, Adult Learning & Education, Department of Educational Studies; Erica Mohan, Adjunct Professor, Educational Studies, Faculty of Education (and Founder and Acting Director of Community Education Partnerships)
December 11, 2024	Safer Spaces – Practices to Support Safety and Wellbeing in Learning Environments	What does classroom safety mean? What does it feel like to students and instructors, and how is it cultivated? Join members of UBC’s Workplace Wellbeing and Student Health Equity and Education teams for a dynamic session focused on showcasing some essential ingredients to create sustainable, inclusive and flexible classrooms. Participants can expect to leave with a number of evidence-based, practical resources and practices that centre safety and wellbeing, specifically from the lenses of health equity, psychological health and safety, and trauma-informed practice. The safety and wellbeing of everyone who engages within working and learning environments at UBC, is a key prerequisite to meaningful, transformative learning and growth.	Miranda Massie, Worksplace Wellbeing Practices and Learning Consultant; Erica Altomare, Workplace Learning Specialist; Kelsey Wright, Coordinator, Student Wellness Centres; Louella Monaghan, Health Promotion Specialist; Sarah Carten, Workplace Wellbeing Practices and Learning Consultant
December 11, 2024	Social Wellbeing in the Classroom Environment (Findings from Voice 6): Find Your Ingredients to Create a Classroom that Supports Student Retention, Social Wellbeing and Success	We will present the findings of an on campus Community-Based Participatory Action Project (Voice 6) exploring factors that influence social wellbeing. Research methodologies and results will be presented, followed by interactive discussions to consider how to use these data to enhance the classroom environment.	Melissa Feddersen, Manager, Campus Wellness & Education UBCO	slides
December 11, 2024	Tracking Mastery of Learning Outcomes in Canvas	While professors work hard to formulate clear and specific learning outcomes (LOs) for their courses, assignments and tests are typically not setup for teachers and learners to adequately monitor the fulfilment of course/program learning outcomes. For accredited programs, detailed demonstrable competencies are required for completion. In this context, the Canvas Outcomes tool and has the potential to become a particularly useful pedagogical resource for educators and learners to identify knowledge skill gaps or skill deficiencies in learning outcome fulfillment. Join us in this workshop to learn how to link learning objectives with specific assignment questions and rubrics in Canvas, resulting in an individual Learning Mastery Gradebook for each student. This supports student and instructor wellbeing by providing updated feedback throughout the term on how students are progressing toward the course/program learning objectives and allow instructors to make practical adjustments to their lesson plans if necessary. In this workshop we will: - Provide step-by-step instructions for the implementation of the Canvas Outcomes tool and its Learning Mastery Gradebook - Share lessons learned from our experience with Canvas Outcomes in an undergraduate course - List the limitations of Canvas Outcomes and share tips for overcoming them	Andres Verhola, Program Director of Forest Management and Forest Operations programs, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of Forest Resources Management, UBCV; Bosung Kim, Educational Consultant: Learning Design, CTLT	Recording
December 11, 2024	Developing Learning Ecosystems	There is a large body of literature that supports the idea that developing mastery of a subject can be achieved through learning-by-teaching. In this workshop, we will discuss some of the ways this type of mastery can be fostered, even in traditional higher education classrooms. Participants will be introduced to a tool to aid in matching learners in study partnerships “study buddies” and we will consider situational factors that may influence the success of specific peer teaching-learning relationships. We will revisit the flow of information in classrooms, consider ways to encourage effective lateral transfer, along with the potential benefits and challenges this approach may bring to learning.	Eden Fussner Dupas, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Medicine UBCV