Pedagogy without Borders: New Frontiers of Teaching and Technology

Schedule May Be Subject To Minor Changes

A short preview video that outlines the day ahead.

Join us for our opening session which will include opening remarks from Kristy Buccieri, Acting Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning at Trent University, and a Land Acknowledgement from Mitch Huguenin, Indigenous Pedagogy Educational Developer. (9-9:15)

Following that will be the Student Keynote Panel as we explore the theme of Pedagogy Without Borders: New Frontiers of Teaching and Learning. The panel will feature current college, and university students who will share their experiences and insights on how technology has been integrated into their learning experiences. They will discuss how technology has enhanced or hindered their engagement and motivation in their classes, as well as the challenges they have faced. The panel will be moderated by Terry Greene. In general, the panel hopes to provide insight into the student experience as we all navigate a pedagogical landscape without borders.

What new frontiers have you travelled in your learning journey?
What is your approach to using tech in course work?
What advice would you give to teachers integrating technology in the classroom?
What is your worst experience with educational technology? Why?
What is your best experience with educational technology? Why?

Virtual High School (VHS) is a year-round, asynchronous online, private school inspected by the Ontario Ministry of Education (BSID #665681) that offers Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD) credits to thousands of students around the world each year. It offers students the opportunity and flexibility to take a single credit, multiple credits, or their entire OSSD. The origins of VHS date back to the 1990s, when owner and principal, Stephen Baker wanted to supplement classroom learning with an online component. Initially these courses were mainly text based, however over the years, as technology and the internet developed, the school has grown and evolved to meet the needs of the student. Currently, VHS provides a full classroom environment with students learning through written text, videos, visual media, and interactive elements. However, the misconception of online education being a text-based classroom has not changed. 
One of the statements VHS often hears when people first discover the school is “Oh, so you are just a digital textbook.” The idea of asynchronous online education as a virtual textbook is a misconception that we try to break with every course we create, and we are continually trying to find new ways of improving the way we teach so that we are more than just a “textbook”. 

In-person education involves elements like instant feedback, demonstrations, assessment as learning, and lesson engagement, which are all things that are more challenging in an asynchronous online classroom. To try to achieve these same elements VHS uses interactive elements, media assets, and features of our preferred learning management system (LMS). We have explored how we can use interactive elements to allow students to conduct self-assessments of their understanding as well as provide instantaneous feedback that is linked directly to the course content. We have included more videos demonstrating skills but making sure to limit these to three-minute in length. These videos are also supported by written content. We have also considered how we can use our interactives and multimedia to present information in a more diverse way, engaging students, chunking information, and providing study resources. 

These features have been incorporated into our most recent courses. We continually monitor these courses and us feedback from students, parents, and teachers to determine the success of each strategy as students’ progress through these courses. Some of the main takeaways from this are that when students have smaller chunks of text, more videos, and more interactivity, they are more engaged and more successful as independent learners in an asynchronous online environment. This has changed our course development to create smaller, more concise courses that work towards very explicit assessments. The aim to move beyond the stigma of “just being a textbook” has created an understanding that to support the evolution of the student and their learning needs, we must also continually evolve, adapting how we teach, develop lessons, and how we apply our resources, to continue to meet students’ needs.

This session describes a recent collaboration between the University of Glasgow and the University of Washington that explored and celebrated creative teaching practices. Inspired by the spirit of #AcWriMo, the project aimed to create a small community of educators passionate about reimagining the traditional classroom. We believed that by sharing personal stories, innovative classroom techniques, and creative approaches to teaching, we might both inspire and empower faculty to embrace risk-taking and classroom experimentation. That was the goal.

We worked through collaborative writing and reflection, and we had the opportunity to not only meet colleagues from another university, but to develop and share new pedagogical insights and strengthen our teaching practice. The resulting work took various forms, such as reflective essays, case studies, podcasts, videos, or interactive online tools.

This session shares how we got started, the structure of the collaboration, what we learned, and how we will improve it next year.  The aim is not only to describe our event, but to help others learn how they can offer a similar experience for their faculty and staff.

Many models of AI literacy have emerged in the past few years, which emphasise the need for educators to understand the fundamentals of AI technologies, use AI tools effectively, analyse the output critically and make ethical decisions on use (Kassorla et. al., 2024; Hibbert et. al., 2024; Ng et. al., 2021). However, very few of these frameworks explicitly engage with the emotional impact of Generative AI, and how the discomfort, distrust, and uncertainty that these technologies can present influence the development of new teaching and learning practices. Developing Generative AI literacy requires a level of emotional intelligence, both recognizing our own emotional responses to Generative AI technologies and empathizing with the emotional responses of others, including learners and peers. Although discussion around uniquely human skills and how these need to be considered in educational and assessment design are on the rise (Oregon State University Ecampus), AI literacy also requires engaging with the existential questions that Generative AI raises about what it means to be human and how Generative AI technologies fit into our relationships with each other, society, and the environment.

At Western University, our Generative AI programming explicitly addresses these additional considerations through a holistic framework for AI Literacy. A holistic approach to Generative AI literacy for education requires engaging with multiple intersecting lenses: knowledge, skill, morals, values, affect and interconnectedness. To make an informed decision on if and how to integrate Generative AI tools into teaching and learning practices, educators need to understand how Generative AI technologies work (knowledge), how to use them (skill), the ethics of AI development, training and use (morals), the pedagogical potential of General AI technologies (values), our own emotional response to Generative AI (affect), and our beliefs around how Generative AI technology and use connects with our own humanity and our place in the world (interconnectedness). Our approach to helping instructors foster Generative AI literacy engages with all of these elements, through a reflective self-assessment on “AI-Readiness” built into our asynchronous training modules and through fulsome discussions being facilitated in our Community of Practice. In this session, we will share this holistic framework for Generative AI Literacy, briefly reviewing the domains of knowledge, skill, morals and values, and focusing on the additional complexities of affect and interconnectedness. We will explore some of the ways that we have engaged with these elements of AI Literacy through interactive activities.


Hibbert, M., Altman, E., Shippen , T., & Wright , M. (2024, June 3). A framework for AI literacy. EDUCAUSE Review. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2024/6/a-framework-for-ai-literacy#:~:text=Academic%20and%20technologies%20teams%20at
Kassorla, M., Georgieva , M., & Papini, A. (2024, October 17). AI Literacy in Teaching and Learning: A Durable Framework for Higher Education. EDUCAUSE. https://www.educause.edu/content/2024/ai-literacy-in-teaching-and-learning/executive-summary
Ng, D. T. K., Leung, J. K. L., Chu, K. W. S., & Qiao, M. S. (2021). AI Literacy: Definition, Teaching, Evaluation and Ethical Issues. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 58(1), 504–509. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.487
Oregon State University Ecampus. (2024) Bloom’s Taxonomy Revisited.

Digital transformation (DT) is often perceived as a technological challenge, but what it is really about is effective leadership and change management. Successful DT requires empowering people to adapt, thrive, and lead while riding the post-secondary merry-go-round of digital uncertainty. This talk reframes digital transformation as a fundamentally human endeavour, focusing on the pivotal role of culture, leadership, and care for individuals while undertaking institutionally necessary DT.

Post-secondary institutions are traditionally heavy investors in technology, believing that tools and platforms can deliver transformation. However, many initiatives falter not due to technological shortcomings but because they fail to address human stakeholder needs. Education stakeholders are many and can include staff, faculty, students, administrators, and external partners who must learn and re-learn the use of new technologies. Concerns about change, lack of alignment with strategic goals, and insufficient communication can be tremendous barriers to the success of DT initiatives. This presentation explores strategies for overcoming these barriers and consultative, collaborative methods for putting people first.

The importance of ongoing support, clear communication, and iterative feedback loops to ensure long-term success for DT initiatives will be explored. Participants will leave with actionable frameworks for embedding change management principles into their DT work, ensuring these efforts resonate deeply with teaching and learning stakeholders. By shifting the narrative from technology-first to humans-first, this session highlights the power of supporting people to be technology transformers.

For years, educators have recognized the benefits of hands-on learning, successfully integrating active learning opportunities into physical classrooms. However, creating similar experiences in an online learning environment presents unique challenges. How can educators effectively engage students in hands-on learning when teaching through an asynchronous digital medium?
Virtual High School is a year-round, asynchronous online, private school inspected by the Ontario Ministry of Education (BSID #665681) that offers Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD) credits to thousands of students around the world each year. It offers students the opportunity and flexibility to take a single credit, multiple credits, or their entire OSSD. The origins of VHS date back to the 1990s, when owner and principal, Stephen Baker wanted to supplement classroom learning with an online component. Over the years the school has grown and evolved to meet the needs of the student. Currently, VHS provides a full classroom environment with students learning through written text, videos, visual media, and interactive elements.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the demand for quality online education and reinforced VHS’s commitment to refining our approach to online teaching to meet the needs of the modern-day student. Over the last year we have been exploring how we can meet this need through creating active learning opportunities to develop a hands-on learning environment for our students. To achieve this, we have taken a project-based approach to learning in three of our newest courses: Mathematics of Data Management grade 12 course (MDM4U), Building the Entrepreneurial Mind-Set grade 9 business course (BEM1O), and our Green Industries and the Skilled Trades grade 10 technology course (THJ2O), with the outcomes of each course informing the development of the next.  To help support the project-based approach and teach many hands-on skills in an online environment, we have incorporated the use of videos, media, and interactive elements. 

As we have approached each new course, we have considered the feedback we have received from both our students and our teachers. Key learnings to date include only presenting small sections of the projects at key points throughout the course. This has been successful in making sure the students are working on the projects throughout the duration of the course and allows for ongoing meaningful feedback. Additionally, we ensure the theoretical information presented is far more focused to tailor all lessons directly to the projects. Finally, we strive to use media and interactive elements to promote positive student engagement.
Project based learning and its use in developing a hands-on learning environment for an asynchronous online classroom is something that we are continuing to develop. We will continue to monitor our existing project-based courses and use this information to inform our ongoing evolution.

The emergence of ChatGPT and other Large Language Models (LLMs) has created challenges for educators seeking to assess student writing skills and critical thinking abilities. This presentation describes the experience of an educator at a community college who implemented choice in reflection assignments, consistent with the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

Several assignments in general education electives were augmented to offer a choice between text or video submissions. Using a learning analytics approach to track completion rates across multiple terms, an initial default bias was observed, with the dominant format shifting as the default option was adjusted. Following the introduction of ChatGPT, there was a notable shift towards text-based submissions, raising important questions about the influence of AI on student behavior.
This presentation will explore the implications of these findings for educators designing assessments, including the need to balance UDL principles, authentic assessments, and the use of AI tools. The trends observed in the data will be reviewed, and questions for future research will be posed, aiming to foster a deeper understanding of how to navigate these new frontiers in teaching and technology.

As the theme and description of this conference suggests, technology has transformed educational opportunities and allowed us to transcend pedagogical borders in new ways, but have you thought about how technology also allows chances to cross national boundaries while participating in a virtual classroom from the comfort of our own home?  This session will provide a tour of a new developing Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) course in Comparative Criminology that features an international partnership between Trent University and Swansea University.  

Built on the pedagogical approach of COIL as a form of virtual exchange, this presentation will help to demonstrate how technology allows us to create new opportunities for students to engage in international experiences without some of the barriers of traditional exchange programs. Throughout this presentation, the benefits of COIL virtual exchange opportunities for students, faculty and institutions will be highlighted, showing how this is an emerging and growing approach to internationalizing education. While benefits of COIL abound, consideration will also be given to some of the obstacles or challenges that educators and institutions should bear in mind when entering COIL partnerships. In providing an overview of our COIL initiative, we hope to inspire you to think about what boundaries you may want to transcend with new future international COIL exchange opportunities.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming higher education, and its applications to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) are no exception. In this interactive 40-minute virtual workshop, three teaching and learning experts, working at multiple institutions in Ontario, will guide participants in exploring how AI-based tools, such as ChatGPT, scite_, or others, can enhance SoTL-related work. We will delve into the possibilities generative AI offers for supporting literature reviews, research design, data analysis, and the dissemination of findings, while also addressing the challenges and ethical considerations that come with adopting these tools. Participants will identify practical ways to integrate generative AI into their SoTL workflows and engage in critical discussions on responsible generative AI use.

The workshop will begin with a 10-minute introduction and overview where the facilitators will briefly introduce themselves and outline the capabilities and limitations of generative AI tools relevant to their own SoTL. This will be followed by a 15-minute interactive exploration in breakout rooms, where participants will engage in hands-on activities to explore different generative AI applications. Each breakout room will focus on one of three topics: leveraging generative AI for generating research ideas and questions, using generative AI for data analysis, and employing generative AI for dissemination tasks such as generating abstracts, presentations, or written materials.

After the breakout sessions, participants will reconvene for a 15-minute debrief and group discussion. This segment will provide an opportunity to share key takeaways, insights, and concerns with facilitators highlighting common themes, opportunities, and ethical challenges. The discussion will cover important considerations such as academic integrity, transparency, and the responsible use of generative AI in research on teaching and learning.

Participants will leave the workshop with a deeper understanding of how generative AI can support SoTL activities, along with practical ideas for implementation and a critical awareness of ethical responsibilities. The session will use Zoom features like breakout rooms, screen sharing, and chat to ensure an engaging and interactive experience. This workshop is ideal for faculty, educational developers, and students interested in the intersection of generative AI and SoTL. Join us for a dynamic exploration of how generative AI tools can inspire, assist, and challenge our SoTL work!

As Indigenous Peoples face significant health inequities driven by systemic racism in healthcare systems. Addressing these biases through education is critical for fostering empathy and cultural humility in future healthcare providers. This abstract explores the development and implementation of an immersive virtual reality (VR) simulation aimed at depicting the racism experienced by Indigenous Peoples within healthcare settings.
 
The VR experience transports nursing students into two realistic scenarios, where they witness or experience microaggressions, discrimination, and inequitable treatment directed toward Indigenous patients. This immersive simulation encourages students to reflect on how bias and prejudice affect patient care and outcomes. The project utilizes Indigenous voices and collaborators to ensure authenticity and cultural sensitivity, adhering to ethical guidelines in storytelling.
 
Preliminary findings suggest that students who participated in the VR simulation reported increased awareness of their own biases and a deeper understanding of the unique challenges faced by Indigenous patients. Many students demonstrated a shift toward greater empathy and cultural humility, essential attributes for providing compassionate, equitable care.
 
This abstract discusses the VR design process, the role of Indigenous partnerships in creating culturally accurate representations, and the evaluation of the simulation’s effectiveness in nursing education. This innovative approach can significantly impact how nursing students understand and confront racism, ultimately contributing to better health outcomes for Indigenous communities.

Since the advent of the digital-interactive era of communication, new educational technologies have transformed higher education, increasing both the possibilities and the challenges related to learning. While the internet and hypertext are the core elements that underpin remarkable educational resources, such as Wikipedia, the copy&paste function noticeably facilitates plagiarism. And with the advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI), higher education has been transformed yet again; because generative AI allows for assignment prompts to generate texts from a bank of texts (ie. new data from training data) thus by-passing a student’s learning curve altogether. While some courses and instructors permit the use of generative AI tools on an ad-hoc basis or for specific tasks and activities, others strictly prohibit it pursuant to Trent University’s Academic Integrity Policy 1.5 that explicitly includes “the presentation of work from an AI generator” (2024:p.640) its definition of Plagiarism.  

For teaching and learning, the core issue derives from the technological asymmetry between infraction and detection, because the same AI technology that facilitates plagiarism does not correspondingly facilitate the detection of plagiarism. It is a fact that popular plagiarism detectors, such as Turnitin or SafeAssign, have at best limited success in detecting plagiarism accurately let alone demonstrating plagiarism conclusively. This difficulty is in no small part compounded by the availability of free paraphrasing software that can transform machine-generated text into text that “appears” to be written by humans.

Thus, from a pedagogical perspective, the main challenge is neither the detection of plagiarism nor the application of appropriate penalties, but about prevention. As the “Pedagogy without Borders: New Frontiers of Teaching and Technology” conference asks how faculty are “navigating challenges in teaching and learning”, it is an ideal forum to present the preliminary findings of my research project on analog learning methods in the digital age. Ever since a sudden and dramatic use of ChatGPT was detected in a first-year course in the fall of 2023, I have carried out an experiment in my courses, substituting digital assignments with analog assignments in the following three terms (winter 2024, spring 2024, fall 2024). I have collected data on student performance, adherence to instructions, and feedback. And I have analyzed the data. And therefore, I would be happy to present the preliminary findings on the role of analog assignments in the digital age at the KTT conference in the “contemporary issues related to educational technologies” conference track. And I look forward to the feedback and comments fellow faculty members can provide.

The value of moving away from traditional exams and toward alternative forms of assessment is well established in the literature. Indeed, alternative assessments have been shown to relieve students’ anxiety about exam conditions, encourage them to be more invested in the outcome of the assessment, and promote higher-order thinking and reflection (e.g. Sulzinski, 2021; Williams & Wong, 2009). However, some faculty rely on traditional exams due to concerns about the feasibility and reliability of alternative assessments as well as the time demands of crafting quality alternative assessments.

The Teaching Exchange supports the development of alternative assessments by providing instructors with an online platform to share, search for, and find concrete exemplars of assessments that have worked in their courses. For example, if an instructor was considering adopting a new assessment, such as a video essay or poster presentation, they would be able to search the Teaching Exchange for exemplars, guidance, and inspiration.  The collaborative nature of the exchange provides ways for faculty to learn from one another and promotes discussion of creative and effective assessment in higher education.

In this presentation, we will discuss our process for creating the Teaching Exchange, including defining our goals, collaborations between eLearning Designers, Education Developers, and instructors, and creating and seeding the site. We will also showcase key elements of the Teaching Exchange and discuss our ideas for its future growth. Participants will also be invited to share their own submissions.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing open pedagogy, transforming how educational resources are created, personalized, and distributed (Ossiannilsson et al., 2024). This session explores the transformative role of AI in Open Educational Resources (OERs), emphasizing ethical considerations and the importance of inclusivity. It investigates how AI tools can enhance OER development, support personalized learning, and expand accessibility, ultimately promoting equitable educational practices.

The session highlights how AI can contribute to content creation, such as automating the generation of learning materials and offering real-time language translations, making educational content accessible to a broader audience. AI also plays a key role in personalized learning, tailoring content to meet diverse learning styles and needs while supporting Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles that prioritize flexibility and inclusivity in education.

However, with the integration of AI in education comes the responsibility to address ethical challenges. Algorithmic bias, data privacy concerns, transparency, and inequality in representation remain significant hurdles. This session will explore how bias can influence AI-driven content and ways to ensure greater fairness in educational material generation. Transparency and accountability are crucial to maintaining trust in AI-powered tools, and the session will propose strategies for educators and developers to enhance ethical practices.

A focus will also be placed on strategies for ethical AI use, including bias mitigation techniques, inclusive design principles, and the use of open licensing models that encourage collaboration and adaptation. The session will emphasize the importance of global collaboration in AI-driven OER development, showcasing how diverse content creation can lead to richer educational experiences for all learners.

Key tools and technologies currently supporting ethical AI integration in OERs will be reviewed, offering participants a clearer understanding of platforms that prioritize inclusivity and responsible content development. These tools demonstrate how AI can be harnessed to create scalable, high-quality educational resources that meet diverse learner needs while upholding ethical standards.

The presentation will conclude by reflecting on the future expectations of AI in open pedagogy, exploring emerging trends and the ongoing challenges that must be addressed to ensure responsible AI implementation. Key areas for future development include enhancing algorithmic fairness, improving data privacy measures, and fostering greater educator involvement in AI tool development and evaluation.

Overall, this session aims to inspire educational stakeholders to leverage AI tools responsibly and inclusively, empowering them to create OERs that reflect diverse perspectives and learning needs while upholding the highest standards of equity and ethical practice.

This workshop addresses a problem we face in the classroom. For instance, I always introduce Ai to my students and have assignments for them where using Ai is a part of the work. However, some students use Ai to produce meaningless results - for instance, a student who played an entrepreneurial simulation and was required to write a "lessons learned report" - asked Ai to write the report for them - and as a result, the report was like: you probably asked the Venture Capitalists for this and they offered that ... etc., and she ended up having the report just like that! This paper will explore training students on using a holitsic approach where prompt engineering is only a part of wider process to integrate AI meaningfully in academic tasks. It will provide provide guidelines for selecting the appropriate strategies, designing the process, recognizing when AI should or should not be used in specific tasks. It will introduce case studies on the productive use of AI for tasks like first drafts or writer's block and metrics for evaluating the quality and authenticity of AI-enhanced outputs.

Classerly.com is an innovative learning support platform designed to bridge the gap between students, teachers, and parents, fostering a collaborative environment that enhances student success from grades 3 to 12. Built on the principles of accessibility, engagement, and empowerment, Classerly.com serves as a centralized hub for academic resources, communication, and personalized learning support.

The platform leverages technology to address key challenges in education, including the need for individualized support, clear communication channels, and effective collaboration among stakeholders. With user-friendly interfaces and robust tools, Classerly.com enables teachers to share resources, assign tasks, and monitor progress, while parents gain real-time insights into their child’s academic journey. Students benefit from personalized support, curated learning materials, and a community that encourages active participation and accountability.
This presentation will explore the key features and functionality of Classerly.com, including:

• Dynamic Resource Sharing: Teachers can upload and organize resources tailored to their class needs, ensuring students have access to relevant materials anytime.
• Real-Time Communication: Integrated messaging tools allow seamless interaction between teachers, students, and parents, fostering transparency and immediate support.
• Progress Monitoring and Feedback: Comprehensive dashboards provide insights into student performance, enabling timely interventions and constructive feedback.
• Scalability and Accessibility: Designed to adapt to diverse educational settings, Classerly.com supports a range of academic goals, ensuring inclusivity and scalability.

During this presentation you will be guided on how Classerly.com transforms traditional education by enhancing collaboration and driving better outcomes for all stakeholders. Attendees will get access to the portal and be guided through how it works. They will get a clear understanding of how this platform can be integrated into their educational ecosystems to support student learning and engagement in meaningful and measurable ways.

Join us to discover how Classerly.com is redefining educational support by fostering a connected and empowered learning community.

Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique® (IFAT®) provides opportunities for students to answer a multiple-choice question till the correct answer is revealed. This process is claimed to promote self-learning while testing, less test anxiety and provide teachers with partial knowledge recognition. Scratch cards-based IFAT® was developed by Epstein and made available to the teaching community through a commercial channel. Despite several advantages, the application of IFAT cards for a final exam of a typical first year physics course requires several manual hours. To ease this tedious process, we have developed software for automatic grading of final exams conducted using scratch card-based IFAT®. This involves scanning all the IFAT cards and developing a pattern recognition software to automatically grade a scratch card-based IFAT ® exam.  

The fundamental principle in our design for automated IFAT ® grading software was to develop an application with features such as fast, efficient, accurate, reliable, scalable, platform agnostic, fulfilling user defined goals, and being intuitive and easy to learn. Java programming language and the Open CV image processing library were chosen to build the software. The architectural design patterns were implemented through the model-view-controller (MVC) design pattern. The MVC pattern also enables effective use of data abstraction and encapsulation, two of the core object-oriented principles. To achieve the accuracy and scalability functional goals, a purpose-built algorithm was constructed to perform the main image processing task of the application. Through various image processing techniques and careful pixel data analysis, the constructed algorithm was capable of detecting (i) scratched, (ii) unscratched and (iii) varying degrees of partially scratched boxes with high accuracy to create a logical representation of the IFAT card. The application also makes use of image registration to properly align the IFAT cards in preparation for pixel analysis. The software in its current form, is being tested for accuracy. Previous measurements demonstrated the capability of high degree of accuracy (> 99%).

Davian Todd ¹, Sergei Chernitsyn ¹, Jun Haong ¹, Ruth Nwankwo ¹, Sindhuja Suresh ² , Omar Alam ¹, Balaji Subramanian^2
1Department of Computer Science, ²Department of Physics and Astronomy,  Trent University, 1600 West Bank Drive, Peterborough, ON, K9J 7B8 CANADA.

This theme focuses on the return on investment (ROI) for accessible online learning, highlighting how inclusive design benefits not only students but also faculty, institutions, and society. It invites faculty to explore how accessibility improves course quality, enhances student success and retention, and broadens reach, all while fostering innovation in teaching and learning.

The rapid adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as ChatGPT, has created new opportunities for transforming the learning experiences of graduate students. Drawing on my personal experiences as a graduate student and a graduate teaching assistant in Big Data Analytics, this presentation will explore the integration of AI as a "study partner”, and the ethical considerations of using AI in academic work.

I’ll discuss how these resources are used to summarise and simplify complicated ideas, automate research processes, and interact with the academic content in a more engaging way. The discussion will focus on practical applications of AI in learning, ethical considerations, and strategies for responsible use of AI in graduate learning.
AI technologies provide enormous benefits, but the ethical issues surrounding its application are severe, ranging from over-reliance, the risk of academic dishonesty, and the challenges of unequal access. The conversation will aim to establish a healthy equilibrium in which students can use AI responsibly while maintaining academic integrity.

This talk will look at what is possible and unfavorable about generative AI and add to the conversation around how higher education should deal with the new frontiers of teaching and technology. Insights gained from this session will ensure that AI’s utility is maximised, and the moral risks are mitigated.
 

ePortfolio practices and technologies have enjoyed increased notoriety through the COVID-19 pandemic and continue to be offered (sometimes incorrectly) as a potential solution to mitigating risks of student use of AI. Regardless of their feasibility for academic integrity, ePortfolio practices and instructional design can help us in redefining the purpose and pedagogies relevant to higher education in an AI-driven world (Lodge et al, 2023).

ePortfolios are however not without their challenges in implementation. Arguably, they are challenging because they require dramatic shifts from educators and support teams – philosophically, pedagogically, technologically, ethically, and logistically/administratively. They often require a whole of program and teaching team approach to see impactful results (Watson, Kuh, Rhodes, Penny Light, & Chen, 2016), the logistics of which can be a challenge in the often siloed and reactive world of higher education. The technologies involved may also place barriers in the way – whether through overly complex design, or insufficient functionality. 

Drawing on literature and my own experience as a learning designer, I plan to highlight these challenges as a launching point to discuss practical strategies for scalable, sustainable and systemic ePortfolio implementation. I will discuss the ways in which we need to consider ePortfolios as entangled pedagogy (Fawns, 2022). I will then share examples of reflection activities and templates using tools such as H5P as a low-barrier to entry point for ePortfolio practices. I will also share some approaches to learning design and partnership that may work at programmatic and systemic levels - needed not just for successful ePortfolio implementation, but for robust assessment and holistic student experience.

In today's dynamic educational landscape, teachers are often challenged with the dual demands of meeting diverse student needs while managing their own stress and time constraints. This seminar offers practical solutions to these challenges. Participants will explore effective techniques for differentiating instruction that cater to varied learning styles and abilities, ensuring all students can thrive. The session will also cover streamlined project planning methods that save time without sacrificing quality or creativity. Additionally, we will delve into efficient assessment and evaluation strategies that provide meaningful feedback while reducing the workload on educators. By the end of this seminar, attendees will be equipped with actionable insights and tools to enhance their teaching practices, improve student outcomes, and foster a more balanced professional life. Join us to discover how small changes can lead to significant improvements in both teacher well-being and student success.

A moderated panel of members of OUCeL, in which we will discuss varying approaches to ed tech use, including AI, at various institutions.
Planned questions:
Briefly describe your institution’s current stance or strategy regarding generative AI (Gen AI) in teaching and learning.
What is your institutional response to ethical and social considerations with gen AI? Environmental, human impacts as well as bias and misinformation?
How are instructors at your institution adapting their teaching practices to account for the presence of Gen AI tools like ChatGPT in the classroom?
What advice would you give to institutions as they explore how to respond to the rise of Gen AI in education?
How do you approach collaborations with other units or individuals across campus (Technology Services, Libraries, Student Experience, faculty champions) to develop programming or resources?

Following years of advancement, Generative Artificial Intelligence (Ai) came out in fall 2022 as a disruptive force in the post-secondary education sector. Students, professors, and administrators were immediately faced with questions around appropriate use in teaching and learning with the initial focus being on academic integrity. Since then, we have been grappling with these and broader questions around the use of Ai in PSE. How, when and where should Ai be used in teaching and learning? How can we use it ethically and effectively in research and administrative tasks? From the initial polarity in perspectives and the cautious stance on the part of institutions, things have thawed into more of a pragmatic orientation towards Ai use.  In this talk we will share our response at Trent, discussing our strategy and process as well as challenges and early insights gained from consultation with students, faculty and staff. Links will be provided to a survey tool we used to gather data on practices and attitudes towards AI use in teaching, learning and administrative roles.

Digital distraction has become a chronic behavior problem for university students that interferes with their attention and learning within personalized learning environments. Applying a randomized control block trial with a counterbalanced experimental design, we investigated the effect of note-taking strategies and time pressure on students' task-irrelevant browsing behaviors and online search performance. Students were randomly assigned to a matrix note, conventional note, or note-free condition and then to one of the four experimental blocks, counterbalancing the order of online search topics and time pressure. Results of the study showed that 44 out of 60 participants (73.33%) conducted at least an irrelevant browsing. Students in the matrix note condition and those under high time pressure exhibited a lower task distraction rate. Moreover, students taking matrix notes demonstrated better online search performance. Note-taking strategies and task distraction rate were significant predictors of participants' online search performance controlling for their prior knowledge. Study results are consistent with the load theory of attention and cognitive control and have implications to reduce student distraction and improve learning effectiveness.

When teaching went online in 2020, the opportunity came up to redesign the core, first year undergraduate course in the Trent Social Work Program as a full ‘bells and whistles’ online course in collaboration with colleagues at Trent Online. In addition to a suite of asynchronous online Modules, an additional tool was created for the course that aimed to engaging students in the course in accessible, creative, flexible, and social ways while they learned online. This tool, named “The Community Center” was a stand-alone website built with the goals of reducing the isolation, disengagement, and confusion that both online and first-time undergraduate students often feel. The site included a range of ungraded, optional opportunities for engagement, such as discussion boards, a drop-in video meeting with student peers, the virtual office hours of the instructor and TAs, file sharing, and academic skills resources, and its design was deeply informed by scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) around fostering a community of learners. However, the site was not a success; engagement with the site was low and decreased annually over the past 6 years, despite ongoing efforts to adapt or further develop its elements.
Based in the notion that 'failures' can be as instructive as successes, we seek to understand why students did not use The Community Center as expected, why something built on key SoTL principles and praised by colleagues did not produce anticipated benefits, and how students' identities and approaches to learning may have impacted their use and experience of the tool. In this presentation, we’ll discuss the tool, the ways students appeared to respond to it, and our preliminary ideas about why it didn’t work as expected. We’ll discuss the survey we are in the midst of using to collect data from student about their experiences of The Community Centre in its recent, final offering, and query whether the needs, interests, and learning approaches of first year undergraduate students in large survey courses are well attended to in current SoTL and Educational Technology discussions.

Scenario-based learning asks learners to exercise judgement while applying knowledge. This approach gives a certain freedom to students to engage in realistic decision-making relevant to their study, in a low-stakes environment. In this presentation, we will walk through how decision-based branching scenarios, developed using tools like H5P, enhance critical thinking and reinforce procedural knowledge in a veterinary medicine class.  

Through a collaborative design process involving instructional designers and faculty, we developed branching scenarios that shift from traditional knowledge recall to decision-based questioning. These scenarios allow students to practice applying the knowledge and skills developed in classes and labs, offering immediate feedback and emphasizing the consequences of their decisions. Narrative elements, realistic feedback mechanisms, and the integration of characters further immerse learners in simulations that mirror professional practice.

Often, digital simulations may be cast as individual learning experiences. While our scenarios are available for students’ independent review, the transformative teaching practice developed involves group participation, reflection and debriefing discussions, and student feedback. Following the pilot, refined features such as a ‘how-to tutorial’ and animations illustrate the iterative design process and the value of collaboration between IDs, a subject matter expert, and user testing.

By sharing lessons learned and our “top tips” for adopting branching scenarios into teaching practice, we will invite educators and designers from various disciplines to consider adopting such scenarios in their own teaching contexts. This instructional method not only promotes critical thinking and provides a means of authentic formative assessment, but also supports self-directed and collaborative learning.

This session will be co-presented by:

• Jen Loewen, DVM, DACVECC, Western College of Veterinary Medicine (WCVM)
• JR Dingwall, Instructional Designer, MacEwan University
• Julie Maier, Instructional Designer, University of Saskatchewan

As generative AI becomes a more significant part of our world, the need for technical literacy and adaptability in teaching and learning is more critical than ever. In addition to concerns about privacy, ethical use, and equitable access, educators must navigate the challenge of understanding and applying these transformative technologies. This session introduces the concept of running AI models locally on personal devices, providing a safer and more accessible way to explore AI’s potential while building technical skills and fostering adaptability in an evolving educational landscape.

Key discussion points include:

1. Building Technical Literacy: An introduction to the foundational skills required to set up and use AI models locally, helping educators gain confidence in engaging with AI technologies.
2. Educational Applications: Examples of how locally-run AI can support activities like content creation, formative assessment, and real-time feedback, while ensuring transparency and control over outputs.
3. Ethical AI Use: Addressing the challenges of bias, misinformation, and over-reliance on AI tools while emphasizing the importance of fostering AI literacy among faculty and students.
4. Hands-On Setup: A step-by-step guide for participants to deploy a small AI model on their own laptops or a classroom computer, along with troubleshooting tips and resource recommendations

Session Goals:

1. Demystify the technical process of running AI locally.
2. Equip educators with actionable strategies for implementing AI in a secure, ethical, and accessible way.
3. Foster dialogue around the role of locally-run AI in creating inclusive and equitable learning environments.

The increasing prevalence of mental health challenges among students in K-12 and other spaces has placed a renewed focus on the role of technology in supporting well-being within these varied educational environments. This presentation, titled Technology-Enhanced Classroom Supporting Mental Health, explores the integration of digital tools in K-12 classrooms to foster mental health and resilience. Drawing from current research, the presentation highlights how technology can be harnessed to identify at-risk students, deliver mental health interventions, and promote social-emotional learning (SEL).

Key technologies such as mental health applications and adaptive learning systems can provide real-time monitoring of student well-being and offer personalized support. Moreover, classroom technologies that support mindfulness and gamified learning programs create engaging and accessible methods for students to develop mental health skills, strategies and emotional awareness. By leveraging digital technologies, educators can also tailor interventions to meet diverse student needs, improving both mental health outcomes and academic success.

This presentation will also address the challenges of digital equity, the importance of educator training in using these tools effectively, and considerations around student privacy. Ultimately, the goal is to demonstrate how technology-enhanced learning environments can create more supportive, inclusive, and mentally healthy classrooms in the K-12 space and beyond.

The Civics of Technology project aims to empower educators and students to critically inquire into the effects of technologies on their individual and collective lives. In this session, you'll learn more about how we approach this work through conducting research, developing curricula, and hosting professional development. For more information about Civics of Technology, visit our website at https://www.civicsoftechnology.org/

In this session we’ll explore learning from failure in different higher education contexts, focusing especially on power and privilege and the importance of surfacing the systems. We’ll explore intersections with pedagogies of kindness, and also look at the impact generative AI is having on the learning through failure landscape.