2021 marked the second year Navitas Canada conducted its Virtual Instructor Conference. The Virtual Instructor Conference was created to provide instructors from our Canadian colleges the chance to share knowledge, tackle challenges, hear from experts across different industries and celebrate success in a time of great change.
In this second year of the conference, we aimed to consolidate our learning from this past year of remote instruction and look ahead to a future where a hybrid of in-person and remote learning will predominate.
This year’s conference was held on July 20th with the theme of “Learning and Teaching Strategies for a Post-Pandemic Campus”, with 45 instructors in attendance and 15 invited speakers scheduled for the day. There were several key sessions. To begin the day, each college discussed the emerging provincial requirements and understand how this might impact their own college.
The middle of the day focused on the instructor and student experiences of the past year, beginning with a panel discussion of invited instructors who shared lessons learned during remote teaching and highlighted emerging practices that they will continue to use during the transition to in-person classes.
This discussion was followed by a student-lead panel. Students from
the International College of Manitoba and Fraser International College were invited to share their thoughts on what they enjoyed about remote learning, what they would like to experience as they transition to learning on campus and what they are looking forward to experiencing once they arrive in Canada.
The afternoon session began with an exploration of how to maximise student engagement regardless of student location and mode of learning (in-person vs. remote). The discussion then moved to crowd-sourcing ideas for tackling emerging issues such as how to provide appropriate support to students as they transition from recorded class material to more in-class discussions.
The day concluded with our invited speaker, Peter Matheis (UPA Learning & Teaching Services) providing us an overview of how Navitas Core Moodle can be used to enhance the student (and instructor) experience by incorporating subtle, yet important design changes for how to build courses in Moodle.
Our thanks to the instructors who volunteered their time to share their successes, to our student panellists for their unique insights and enthusiasm, and to our staff who were instrumental in organising such a successful event. We look forward to hosting future events and welcome any feedback or suggestions.
Lincoln was a
recipient
of the 2021
Life-changing Lens
INSPIRE Award.