 Hello everyone and welcome to our fireside chat with our associate provost of teaching and learning Simon Bates from UBC Vancouver and Brad Rutherick who's just joined us at UBC Okanagan at the start of this month. I would like to start by acknowledging that many of us are joining the session today from many different traditional ancestral and unsuitable territories personally I would like to express that I'm very grateful to be able to live work. And join you today from the ancestral traditional and unto the territory of the Salics as an uninvited guest. Prior to having our provost share the reflections I just wanted to review a few housekeeping notes. Please feel free to keep your cameras on if you like we are hoping that this will be a little bit more of an informal chat. The best that we can do in a virtual environment. The session will be recorded as you just heard and available to view after the session in our CWL wiki. But our chat comments will not be recorded. We've enabled zoom closed captions so please feel free to turn these on or off as you like by clicking the CC bottom CC buttons right at the bottom of your screen. I would like to require any technical assistance during the workshop CTLT event coordinator Clis Roblox is available to provide support so as I mentioned our social provost are each going to take a few minutes to share some of their reflections over the past year and then we'll open it up to some Q&A and discussion. So over to you Brad. Thank you. Wow. My name is Brad whether it is an absolute pleasure to join you today. I am actually joining you from from Halifax, which is the ancestral and unseated territory of the Mi'kmaq people. And I'm looking very much forward to making the move to the Okanagan in a few months with my family. This year is how you know it's a when when I was when Tanya said you know we've got you on this fireside chat to talk about some reflections on the year thinking what are the lessons that we've learned. It seemed almost overwhelming to think back and and think on what what's you know how to even begin to kind of bring together thoughts about you know what has been such a unique and you know trying at times and exhilarating at times and you know experience that that that that many of us have kind of gone through this year. The first thing I wanted to start with is just by by taking a step back and saying you know more than any other time in my career and I know this is more than two decades of working in in higher education teaching and learning. The this year has shone a light on the commitment and the and the resilience of my faculty colleagues and and the students that we have the joy of teaching in our institutions, more than any other period of my career so I just wanted to start by saying that that admiration about the commitment of and that everybody has put into to this year with the first pivot online with the thinking through of what the last academic year might look like. And in many cases really understanding you know how we can actually take the best of this opportunity to think differently about teaching and learning and support student success in different ways. So I just wanted to start with that. The second thing that I, I think you know this is an interesting conversation and teaching and learning for a long time has been around. How do we create community around teaching learning how can we make it so that teaching and learning isn't as much of a private activity. And this year, again, more than any in 20 years I've worked in in in this area has shown the importance of connection and community and in relation to teaching learning about the support that that faculty can get in through their courses, whether it be, you know, from an educational consultant helping think through what's possible online that the technical support that that's happening to the, the, to the engagement with peers about, you know, our collective, you know, efforts to kind of move into this new environment that teaching being a to the importance of TAs as you which in many places in many parts of our campuses became so instrumental to us being able to kind of deliver the kind of experience that we wanted to try and deliver first and kind of kind of this taking a community approach to teaching and learning is something that I really, really appreciated. And, and kind of the third main area that I think about is really this how much this year has shown a light on the importance of equity, inclusivity accessibility in when we think about teaching and learning. So, what are the needs of our faculty, when it comes to equity and inclusivity and accessibility, but what also what does it mean for students like what are the how do we overcome some of the systemic barriers that many face and participating and learning and this year. So, we, you know, it's shown a light on so so many of the things that we might have taken for granted before around, you know, everything from kind of technology barriers to to housing insecurity and food insecurity to like there's so many which this this year kind of shone a light on how we think about what it means to to provide equitable and inclusive access to our programs and so at Dalhousie over the last year I've been great years I was the executive director of learning and teaching in the provost office at Dalhousie and I worked with the Center for Learning and Teaching there. We as a community kind of adopted six core principles at the beginning of the pandemic and I find it really valuable because I now that I think about it, this was a conversation early that happened with our deans with our associate deans academic and as our, with our faculty at our senate committees with our student leaders. But the six principles were, you know, how do we create an accessible and inclusive experience as much as we can in this, in this moment in time. How do we create an accessible inclusive experience. How do we ensure that there's flexibility in our approaches, not only flexibility and how we engage with others for flexibility and our assignment deadlines how are we responsive to the needs of people. How can we think purposeful about interactivity what does it mean to be interactive in these environments. How do we kind of double down on communication how do we make sure that there's clear communication and organization and structure to the processes that were that we're trying to implement. What do we think about the role of instructor presence in our teaching and learning environments. So what is the, how do we help ensure that kind of faculty, you know, are part of a learning environment that is not just a recorded talking head or some materials put online that there is actually the ability to actually create presence in relationship between faculty and students. And, and then how do we, you know, ensure that there's a supportive environment around that. And thinking back on these six principles I think you know those are six principles that I think we can continue to to kind of focus on as we move into the future. I'm, you know, there are some, this year has actually created some amazing examples of what's possible when we think creatively about about teaching and learning. You know, a couple classes at Dalhousie that I had the privilege of engaging with, you know, we're things like where we focused on an interdisciplinary and international development studies class at Dell had, you know, was was often kind of global situations like pandemics in their work and, and the the faculty member worked with our team to kind of create this immersive simulation, using kind of the board game pandemic as kind of an inspiration for how they kind of got students to work together in in relation to thinking about the ways of responding to global pandemics, and the ways that we could think about immersive simulations as part of learning where, you know, was was really inspiring to an earth sciences class where the faculty member had always taken the students out into the field to explore the landscape, and instead was able to this year kind of use drone drones to film video footage that actually created a whole way of of engaging students with the landscape in his courses that he has said is never going to stop using because that that whole perspective of how he was able to kind of demonstrate to students the features of the landscape that he often taught about. You know, these are things that I see, you know, so there's so many examples of like that across across the disciplines across the across the different institutions. But, you know, I, I really, I wanted to close by just gonna reflecting on some thoughts that I came from the faculty and student panel today that that you know I think are so critically important and one is, you know, what does it mean to engage with materials what does it mean to engage with others and, and this year is shown that there's lots of different ways that we can engage with materials there's lots of different ways we can gauge with others. What does it mean to provide flexibility and learning and how can we actually think productively about kind of that flexible environment moving forward. How do we think about kind of program level conversations and what does it mean to think about, you know, what the student workload is or what the student, you know, experience of being a learner. I don't like to, to not just be in my class but in, in multiple classes and how can we actually think about those kind of conversations, and, and how do we center the student and and compassion and empathy into the work that we're doing. So I think this idea of, you know, these lessons that we've learned have been so critical and I think can really shape the ways that we think about teaching and learning moving forward into the future so thank you and I'll turn it over to Simon. Great thanks Brad good morning everyone. Great to see so many of you I hope everyone's doing well and staying safe. So, I'm joining you this morning from from my home in the Fraser Valley. I want to start by acknowledging that it's situated on the traditional ancestral lands of the Catsey First Nation and the Quantum First Nation. So, my reflections I'm going to try and offer to two complimentary perspectives wearing two different hats, if you like so. And I did think briefly about actually bringing hats as props, but decided against it. The Oracle First Hat is my hat as an educator. And I can say in 25 years of teaching this was the most extraordinary, challenging and energizing year I've had. And all of those things in approximately, approximately equal measure. The full semester, the full semester, it feels like a long, long time ago now back in September. I co-taught my first year physics course online. Like many of you, I spent a good part of the summer thinking not how I could just translate the things that we did in a classroom and put them online. Don't infuriate me. In the early stages of the pandemic, people would glibly talk about moving things online, as if this was somehow sort of transactional you just loaded things into a box and put them online but of course as many of us know and as more of us have found out, I think for online is rethinking a lot of the assumptions that you make in designing and teaching an in-person course. And one of the first things I had to grapple with was my course enrollment went up 25%, which was kind of unexpected. Maybe you will remember the early time in the pandemic when UBC and other universities were concerned about enrollment and would our students come given that we'd have to make this rapid move to fully online. Well, certainly for many of our programs, they did come and they came in large numbers. And within that course context that was a first year course of about 350, 370 students. They were all over the world. They were literally in almost every time zone that is populated on the surface of the surface of the planet. And you know, one of the many, many heartwarming things that I found from interacting and talking with my students, I had a group of students who were based in China and that time zone. So at the time when our lectures were taking place scheduled for 11 o'clock in the morning was two o'clock in the morning for them. And a bunch of these students, to Brad's point about community, they found community. They sort of self-aggregated into what they called the 2am club. And this was students who would meet prior to the classes and a little bit of time together and then attend the classes. It was 2am in the morning for all of them. They'd attend the synchronous classes. I had the challenge of supporting other students. One of my students emailed me and said, I can't take the midterm exam when it's scheduled. My village where I am has a scheduled power outage for that evening or for that morning. Just the complexity, the, you know, the diversity of the challenges that our students were facing in all the locations that they, that they were was, was, you know, it really brought it home to me, how much they were giving up how much they were investing in trying to continue their, their learning. And these were predominantly first year students, how much they were losing from the essence of an experience of being at university, which of course is so much more than the time that you spend in class or in, or in classrooms. I'm pretty sure that the, the experience of teaching in that way has, has changed me as an educator and still kind of working through and thinking through as I contemplate. What does that look like for a full semester when we, we dearly hope that we're going to be able to resume in person instruction and thinking through what that might, that might look like. So I'm going to change my metaphorical hat now and put my associate provost hat on. And again, Brad, Brad covered some of these same sentiments. I think over the last 15 months we've witnessed an absolutely astonishing process that none of us would ever have thought our institution faculty and our students were capable of navigating. On the Vancouver campus pre COVID or in the before times, we've come to call them. I think we had a couple of hundred fully online courses in the in the course portfolio. I think over the last academic session. There've been something like 8000 courses. This is maybe a number across both campuses. I'm not sure. That's a huge change. And you think about all the conversations, the discussions, the development and challenge that people have had in navigating redesigning those courses because as I said it's not just putting them online. We've created thousands, probably 10,000s, tens of thousands of hours of digital learning materials, videos, new assignments, and many of those artifacts remain and can be reused as we think through what does what was teaching and learning look like post COVID. I think looking back on that process and how we tried to support faculty members and departments through that process. It was certainly not perfect. It was chaotic. It felt like there was a continual sort of progression of challenges coming over the horizon as soon as one of them was dealt with or you navigated a fresh set came over the over the horizon. I think we did a number of things right that I'm proud of all of us as a as a community for navigating. I think we tried as much as possible to approach the way that we were rethinking teaching and learning from a commitment to care and compassion for everyone involved students faculty and staff. I think as an institution, we got resources down to the places where they were most needed. And that's within the departments and the course teams who were doing most of most of that redesign work. We had to learn as we went along, and we had to adapt and change because it's certainly the case that when we started this 15 months ago. I don't think any of us realized we'd still be doing this for a year or even 18 months later. I just want to close with looking a little bit further ahead. I really think we are as an institution as a community at an inflection point for teaching and learning. I think ahead of us like multiple possible futures. I think we can be deliberate and strategic as an institution in helping identify which of those possible futures we might want to try and we might want to try and move to. And that of course is is a conversation that needs to involve all our teaching and learning community so staff faculty and students. I think Brad's already touched on a couple of these I think some things are changed and we're probably not going back to the way things were pre COVID. I think all the colleagues in the provost office. I think actually is present on this session today so we recognize this phrase that I've come to borrow from him. There's a number of areas where the toothpaste is not going back in the tube. Right, so we've sort of changed and we're not going to go back. Brad mentioned equity and inclusion, active access in all its myriad of forms over the course of the pandemic. So it was also in that session with faculty and students this morning and the students spoke compellingly about the flexibility that aspects of online learning have brought to them the ability to rewatch recorded materials to slow down recorded materials to review them and things like that. I think that's something we want to try and keep. I think fostered into campus collaborations in the online environment in a way that we simply know certainly in my time at UBC we've never had that degree of connection and collaboration between the two campuses so I think that's something we want to, we want to try and keep. And Brad to alluded to this idea as as teaching of teaching as a community activity or teaching as community property. The number of people who've been engaged and mobilized to support teaching and learning in the past 15 months, I think is a fantastic resource that we need to, we need to retain and find ways to keep those conversations progressing forward within faculties and departments. So, you know, it's a pivotal 12 months coming ahead at least me energize also a little bit daunted as well because the scale of what lies ahead I think it's going to be a different set of challenges to those that would face the last, the last 15 months or so. So Tanya I'll hand it back to you. Love to get into the questions and comments. Thank you, Simon and Brad. So let's kind of, I think for the question and answer period I'm happy for you to raise your hand and turn your camera on if you feel comfortable. And I'll call on you or you can put a question in the chat. You know things that I think a lot of people have talked about both in the panel earlier today which many of you were, were part of is this idea of flexibility or thinking about how we can better connect. You know, kind of how we can redesign courses. So I'm just curious, as we wait for people to put questions in the chat or raise their hand, based on your own experiences interacting with students and faculty if you were to teach in the fall and Simon maybe you are going to teach again in the fall. You know kind of what is that one thing that you plan to take forward because I think a lot of faculty here I know myself personally and really thinking about this a lot as I prepare to reach to teach my research methods course in the fall and, you know, is there something that is that one thing that you want to share. Yeah, I can, I can have a stab at that one of the things I was, I got support from my department to be able to hire some extra TAs for the course last last September. And we actually hired undergraduate students, we hired students who take in the course the previous year so these were four students going into their second year. And we hired them as undergraduate TAs with the explicit requirement or mandate to them to think about ways to build community with students we knew that was one of the challenges that we would face in the online environment we wouldn't have those, you know opportunities for students to connect before the lectures or before the tutorials or walking between classes so we wanted to try and deliberately deliberately build that. We gave them a lot of free space. So that we said it's entirely up to you as a team of four undergraduate students how you want to configure and design these support activities. You're not teaching the students you're not doing what complement of TAs were doing in terms of leading tutorials and supervising tests and things like that. And, and you know they designed a fantastic program it really instilled a sense of belonging within the course the students felt supported they connected with these undergraduate TAs who 12 months previously were in their shoes right they were taking the taking the course so I would love to be able to combine that component of support for students that that community will look slightly different if we have predominantly in person and maybe some students who are still remote for whatever reason. But my undergraduate TAs were just astonishing, they really were. And they did that on top of trying to navigate their own second year courses remote through the pandemic as well so this was, you know they had their workload and then they were contributing in in this way to courses as well so I'd love to be able to keep that. Thanks, I'm glad you have anything to add before I go to tomorrow with a question. Yeah, I just wanted to add that I think one of the things that I think was was really interesting on this year was how everybody and I know in some of the deal of my own active what we were working on. This is true thinking about, what does it mean to be purposeful about the design of our courses and I think one of the things that I think the biggest lesson I've learned is, you know, thinking about how do we be purposeful about the what why how what we're doing in terms of the learning activities we're trying to create the engagement we're trying to create. I think it's, you know, for many, for many faculty there, there is, you know, this this year kind of, you know, and for myself to this year forced me to kind of think in question, almost everything that I was doing about, you know, what how I create how I engage learners with material how I engage in assessment practices that that can actually really help or have students demonstrate their learning. And I think that that to me is going to be one of the most important things that I hope we can sustain into the future as as we return to fully online, fully face to face some blended for a blended learning moving forward. And actually thinking about purposefully what does it mean to take the best of these different environments and how do we be purposeful about what we what we're doing with students to create community to create engagement with with their learning activities and I think that is this year has been really, I've heard it so many times for faculty that they often took for granted kind of just the design of their courses in the in the past and and this year kind of forced a reflection on it that that I hope we can sustain so. Thank you. Thank you. First, I want to thank you for doing the session and for taking the time with us today I mean we're all busy people but some of you have a role that doesn't doesn't ease off when some of us are not in the classroom so thank you for doing this, and I also want to apologize. The irony of us being in a an online world is I'm having tech issues that are not allowing my webcam to keep me on so this is I'm not trying to be rude I just actually can't get my webcam we're working for some meetings recently. But I want to I want to acknowledge the importance that the fundamental importance of students and student wellness and and student learning and student success. And we've all I think really strive to focus on that. We've we've pivoted very dramatically in a very difficult time, which continues on to be a difficult time, we don't know what's happening so we're talking about planning forward and bringing the best forward but we don't really know what the classrooms look like in September and what the vaccine rollouts look like and how that affects our international students. And honestly it's like anything we get this adrenaline pump when we're in the middle of something and we have to be caring for others and we have to be doing for others. I still worry and I know that I'm a squeaky wheel on this and a lot of meetings but I worry that we may not be giving enough focus to our faculty and our staff. And the toll this has truly taken on us and while I appreciate their resources available. The reality is that I don't believe, many of us myself included have done a good job of looking after ourselves to be able to continue to sustain looking after others so. And the thing that really heightens me and you know you get on this adrenaline high and then you kind of have a crash after and then you. And I worry that we're either starting to feel or will be fear feeling the crash. But my big thing is then we're looking at a world where we keep telling me all this blended this hybrid. That is not a small thing hybrid. If we are talking about still being able to deliver to many international students in different time zones who are not physically here. While we are potentially physically delivering in person in classroom and finding a way to do that effectively hybrid wise. That is a whole nother new challenge which can be exciting and wonderful and we've learned a lot so far. But I worry about the whether we're able to sustain that as faculty and staff. I do not want to underestimate the undervalued staff keep us going as well. So I'm just wondering if you would speak to that and I don't mean to pull this away from the importance of student wellness because I am all for that always but we can only continue to focus on student wellness. If we're also able to sustain wellness for ourselves and I worry that we haven't done as as good of a job and I worry that our planning, including I'm a well I'm aware of the beyond covid project that is that is about to roll out and I'm really excited for that but I don't see a piece in there. I don't see a dedicated place in there for faculty and staff wellness and sustainability and connection our students connecting and us finding ways for students to connect is different from us connecting we have lost a lot of connection so I'm just I'm curious whether you speak to either the hybrid, the staff and faculty wellness, the, you know, the potential burnout that maybe we haven't even felt yet. This is really, I think a piece that isn't voiced enough. I'm going to brand either one of you want to. I'll let you start Simon. Yeah. Thanks, Tamara for those for those comments. You know, I think, in many ways. They're all really good comments in many ways. There's this inherent tension between trying to support the students in all the multiplicity and complexity of challenges that they face and how distributed and diffuse those challenges are that's really intention intention against trying to take care of ourselves manage our own workloads. And, and, you know, I have to say, I, I taught one course this year. It took an awful lot out of me in that semester. I, I, my heart goes out to faculty who've done this to forces per semester for what for semesters. And now if they're six semesters. Yeah, thanks. It's relentless, right, and the brakes, they're not breaks between semesters. Right. For those of you who are teaching in the summer teaching now. You've had what one week, two weeks since putting your final grades in from from winter to two. So it's that relentlessness. The support will go some way to that but you know sometimes it's just on the course instructor. Right, there's only so much you can use teaching assistance can use staff in learning support roles to be able to do a lot of it falls on the instructor. Another thing I want to say tomorrow, I do want to recognize that the point you made about staff. I often think sometimes people, you know, focus on students, focus on staff, sorry, focus on faculty. And I say this as someone for whom in my portfolio, there are largely staff based units within it CTLT and extended learning on the Vancouver campus. And the staff there have had incredible workloads for the same amount of time, and they've stepped up and they've delivered because they're every bit as committed and passionate about the educational mandate of the institution as we are as faculty. And they too have been doing this for 15 months. You know, I don't have any, any sort of concrete answers. What I can say is, we need to and I'm committed to making sure that we can continue to provision that support, but also recognize, as you said, that's that's not a magic bullet for the pressures and the risk of burnout that people are facing. Thanks for the comments. Just to add, I think, you know, I think, Simon, you touched on several of the things that I was thinking of responding with. But I think, you know, I think it is true that support goes a long way to helping as much as we can and continuing to think about support in, in, in, in terms of, you know, for example, more TAs more all the kinds of ways we think about support is really important but I love the word that you use Simon because relentless and that is actually a word that I've heard many, many people say over this last year. Even for those of us that have, so I actually didn't have to teach at all this past year which I was lucky in that sense but, but even in all of the meetings that that has been part of this year and many of my faculty colleagues over and above teaching. They have been in all sorts of meetings and administrative work associated with with thinking about how we're responding to the pandemic. It has been relentless and I think we do need to really acknowledge that when you know, and it goes beyond teaching and so you know people that are trying to also sustain research programs people that are also dealing with caregiving possibilities I have three kids who I'm also trying to help learn from home and you know they're at home learning during the day and I've had, you know, my, I had a parent who had cancer and actually passed away this year that these are all things that the people are grappling with this year and we need to really understand that human kind of dimension to to to being part of this community at you at DBC. No, I don't think there's a simple magic bullet, but the more we talk about and center wellness in conversations, the better. So, you know, I really wanted to just thank you so much for bringing this up because it is such a critical and it's a conversation we probably should have been having before this year, more and and haven't been. You know, what does it mean to really center wellness I you know a Dalhousie. Our academic staff relations at Dalhousie and their human resources department ran a survey of faculty, trying to get a sense of kind of the hours work during the week. Before COVID this is so this is not in this in this era where relentless became the most common word I think people were using to describe their, their work. You know, and people were working 6070 hours a week consistently and that that sustaining that kind of effort over time is is is something that we, I think we need to have serious conversations about some. I wish there was a simple solution to it but it is something that that I'm really glad was raised today. Thanks Brent Simon and then tomorrow we'll make a quick comment after and then we'll move on to the next question. Yeah, thanks I just wanted to specifically respond to tomorrow's question about hybrid and hybrid for the fall and I want to be absolutely clear certainly on the Vancouver campus and I think this is one area where I could speak for Brad because I'm sure it's the same for Okanogan. There is absolutely no expectation that faculty offer both in person and online versions of a course, right, because we've had some experimentation with hybrid over the last 15 months on the Vancouver campus and it's challenging. It's challenging not just because of a workload issue. Well, there are many reasons why it's challenging. That said, we do think that there were planning for largely in person in the fall, but we recognize that some students are going to have challenges in being able to engage in in person activities. At the start of the semester or maybe during the semester and there are many reasons for that it could be delays in getting study things are looking a lot better than a month ago. But there may still be students who are not able to get their study permits and travel to our campuses by September. We may have Indigenous students who are remaining in community because of additional health and safety requirements within their communities as the pandemic goes on. We may have isolated outbreaks. We may have students needing to isolate because of seasonal ailments. I think we're going to be a lot less tolerant of colleagues turning up to work with a cold and saying, oh, I'll just sort of power through it. So all of these things present barriers to students being able to be present and engage in in person activities. We're working hard to try and find solutions to that that don't pass the workload down to faculty members to say, well, you've got a bunch of students who can't make it. Could you just develop an online version of yours because it's far too much work so I can share more details of that offline. I know we've got a bunch of other questions, but we are thinking about how we can sort of thread that needle of supporting those students who through no fault of theirs are not able to be present on campus without downloading all of the work on to onto faculty members. Thanks, I mean, do you want to see your quick comment in a moment. Yeah, thank you. I just I want to thank you both because I kind of threw you a Molotov cocktail there. A little bit, but it's just it's something that is so important and I just want to acknowledge I'm not even able to keep up yet but I will respond. I my direct message in the chat blew up when I started speaking earlier, and my email is exploding right now. So I think there's a piece of this where people don't want to. It's not being posted in the everyone chat. So there, people have stories, people, but there is some level of discomfort with having the open conversations about where people are at right now. And I think that that that's very telling so I just wanted to share with you that this has started like a really quick big conversation in my direct chat in this session as well as in my email. So people want to talk about this, but people are not posting this in the everyone chat and I think that's a story in itself that we need to be aware of. Thanks. I'll pass over to an array for a question. Hello and thank you, Simon and nice to meet you Brad and thanks, Daniel, I am. I'm a son that's actually in your tooth, going into your three and a question from his experience with the with the studying and doing his cop side online his major online. He found it very positive a positive experience. I was concerned about now that we have to go back in September he and he's getting like 90s doing way better than when he was on campus so he is he's a bit concerned about his health as well. He asked me about airflow and lecture halls with 300 students, you know people who had colds prior to the pandemic, we're already like getting sick constantly. What is the UBC going to house UBC going to address this and I'm trying to calm him down and say don't worry this is going to be dealt with because we're following the guidelines that the health ministry is providing. But he does have a concern that are we just going to go back to just lecture based teaching like I'm just sitting there in a big lecture hall and, and you know we have the professor just talking to us and then I have to scramble after the fact to find share notes or he really liked the benefits of the online experience, which is having the content available able to slow down videos so that he could, you know, if he missed something in the actual lecture he can go back to that and then he felt that he was way more connected with students, because of, I guess the gaming culture. It's faster to text someone and chat with someone then when you're in a big lecture hall it's like who's this person beside you and there's little clicks over here and so he was telling me that he's going to miss that aspect so I have a background in online learning and I'm hoping that the hybrid model is something that we can aim towards. And I know that it's difficult I know that faculty it's teaching online is it depends if it's not if most of the content isn't built into your online course or the online piece of the course so that the lectures lecture part of it is, is more of the interactive piece with students, you're teaching to a camera, and it is difficult but I'm hoping, because we have expertise here at UBC Vancouver and at UBC O and so I'm a staff with the teaching and learning support units that support all the faculty. I think the model has to change and a hybrid is something that I mean it used to be called flip classroom. I think that's still a model that we can attain to and I'm hoping that there's some infrastructure some incentives, like some funding incentives like we had the online learning advancement fund. That was an incentive to help people think about how to teach, maybe in a more flexible format in an online format. I'm thinking, is there other incentives like that that we can actually change the model that we're not just throwing TAs at something that we can actually truly have content in an online format to help ease the teaching for faculty so that they can be more engaging in the in the in the classroom. And that's just all I had to say. Thank you, Simon, did you want to or brand. I'll maybe jump in first and say, I think this is actually something that that that we, you know, I don't know about UBC scenario but the house that we actually, you know it was interesting, you know when we sent out several surveys to students over the past year. There were often two groups and one was the group that really struggled with learning in this modality they struggled from a time manager perspective they struggled from a structure and organization perspective, and others that thrive that they really thrive in this environment that I love this environment and, you know, at Dalhousie we only had about 3% of our courses fully online prior to COVID and went to about roughly 95% of our courses fully online. You know, Dal will never go back to just 3% of its courses fully online they they are now thinking differently about what does it mean to engage learners what does it mean to be strategic about kind of the pathways in and how online learning can support that. It's also going to be, I think the, what, you know, when we move back to fully online and I see this conversation already happening at UBC Oh for sure. We're starting to see well what. What are some of the things that we can sustain and one of the things that that students have consistently said the panel today, the students said it was was a great one and Simon brought it up. And some of his reflections is is the flexibility that comes with being able to kind of pause rewind, rewind, you know, in in their own kind of way, you know, engage with material in different ways to engage with their peers in ways that they, they perhaps is better at it in different ways. We, we, you know, there was evidence in some of our programs at Dell when we did some of this analysis that, you know, some of our international students for example found it easier to engage with Canadian students in this past year than it was prior to cove it because some of the immediate barriers of accent that that seemed to kind of make difficulty or make the difficulty or the engagement difficult in the classroom. It weren't present in the chat features in some of the ways that people were engaging. And so, you know, I think there are absolutely lessons that can be learned on how we move forward. And just from a note of this is a this is going to be an ongoing conversation just to reflect on language. I think we need to be really purposeful about the language that we use and in all of these environments. So actually at our joint Senate curriculum committees last week, we were actually talking about this very thing that there is this idea of moving forward with a limited approach what does it mean to actually take some of the best of this online experience some of the best of the face to face experience and bring it together into a class. You know, and then, and then, you know, so how do we actually do that I think that's going to be a really interesting question. But it is more and more I hope that some of these conversations also happen at the program level so that across programs we're thinking about how do we actually ensure that different students that thrive in different kind of types of environments are able to experience kind of some some of that that diversity of approach. But it's a it's a big question around how do because it. I suspect you see had the exact same dual modality of feedback from students from those that that really liked it to the students that really struggled and Thanks Brad Simon Jeremy quick to add before we move on to Steven who's been happy to move on I know Steven said his virtual hand up. Go ahead Steven over to you. Thanks, Tanya. In particular hi Brad. I'm glad you're here in spirit if not in body and hopefully that will be corrected soon I'm looking forward to meeting you actually in person. I can I can say looking back over the last year and a bit that to the extent that I've done anything right moving to online teaching it's because I had conversations with people who were smarter than I was before I got going. And, and so I really appreciate that we've had this event, particularly that it's been an opportunity for people on both campuses to talk to each other. I think we all agree that that's something that we haven't done nearly enough of in the past and should keep an eye on and try to agenda moving forward. But I did have a question about specifically an event on the Okanagan campus for for over a decade we were running our own learning conference about this time of year run run out of the CTL. And it was a really it had grown actually into something that that was far beyond our campus that attracted people from below or mainland and attracted people from universities and colleges across the interior. People from Alberta and even even sometimes people from Ontario. And I think it had become a really important venue on the Okanagan campus, particularly for our junior educational leadership faculty. Because it was a place that they could take those initial steps toward having an impact outside their classroom and disseminating some of the scholarship that they had been doing. And it's a and particularly for those faculty those were opportunities that that often were few and far between. And have it three years ago for reasons that I forget or weren't made clear to me and then of course the last two years we haven't done it because of the pandemic. Are we going to have that conference again are we going to have the the an Okanagan specific learning conference in the form that we were running it for since we became UBC. Maybe I can talk a little bit about some of our conversations we've had already in this for in so you know and planning this celebrate learning and I think Brad has his. I mean as well. So what it's I guess in some ways it's very similar to the teaching piece that we've been talking about we've we've seen that there are some really great benefits of this online virtual. We get to connect more with some of our Vancouver colleagues and our working groups and some of our committee work has been more effective. And I think many of us who have been involved in the celebrate learning week planning across both campuses have started to think about how do we. Join forces potentially have some shared virtual events where we get to continue these really good connections. But then also post things in our own campuses in person that allow us to kind of also benefit from the in person. Pieces and maybe that's something where you know there's a couple of days of the Okanagan and if people from Vancouver want to come down and enjoy that and from other places they can. You know there's some virtual pieces and then maybe there's time spent in Vancouver with some of the bigger CTLT events that are on different days and then you know people can also. You know my door to Vancouver if they want to sometimes it's nice to kind of get out of your own home or your campus to experience that so we definitely started those conversations I think that's really important. Point and trying to figure out how do we take the best of both worlds moving forward. So that's kind of some initial discussions that have been happy to chat with you about this. Yeah, I think I think encouraging a blended model where there are some shared stuff that's online and and that can be an important opportunity for a lot of people but but so many valuable conversations happen just. When you've got people informally in the room angling for the last croissant and you realize you're standing by somebody that you wanted to talk to. Particularly it was an annual opportunity for me to speak to my colleagues at at you know the local colleges or, or, or somebody came in from Calgary because they had some base hustling was really important. And, and having that that in person piece it was turning into something that was really quite remarkable and was attracting a lot of attention and participation from from a pretty wide audience not, you know, outside of UBC. And again, particularly for Ed leadership faculty who are looking for ways to demonstrate that impact beyond their classroom being able to say well I gave this talk or I gave this workshop and, and 50 people from four different universities attended. It's those kinds of things that that can really help start building those portfolios and so yeah I would absolutely encourage that we go back to some kind of in person thing that can that can, you know, gather people in from a broader, from a broader range but open up more informal conversations. Well, I just wanted to add so then it said, most of what I was going to say already, but far better than I because I was actually learning it from her about all these conversations that have been started. But the, I think, you know, I'll give you some context. And the last thing I did at delhousie the last couple days that I was at delhousie I was hosting the 24th annual Dalhousie conference on University teaching and learning and it, it was an amazing regional event that that brings together, you know, people from all over the region this that this year because it was virtual and because our provost gave us some additional funds we actually made it freely available and we ended up with over 600 registrations. So it was, it was amazing. So those opportunities to bring come together regionally do matter and now so what format that takes moving forward I think Tanny has already highlighted some of the conversations about wanting to really benefit from the connections with Vancouver where possible, but still make sure that the institution has its opportunity to also kind of feature things. The other thing I would add is that I'm really excited about some of the conversations we're having with Simon and Christina and Jackie and others in Vancouver about how we really bring attention to research on teaching and learning scholarship of teaching and learning on the Okanagan campus and benefit from what is many years of experience kind of supporting this with this work in Vancouver. The Vancouver Institute for the Scholarship Teaching and Learning was one of the first such institutes in the country and really thinking about, well, how do we actually learn from some of the things that Vancouver has done to really build those opportunities for their faculty and actually start to think about what does it look like to do some of that more in the Okanagan beyond a conference because I think there are lots of things that we can do beyond a conference to build those opportunities for faculty. So, Vancouver has got tremendous experience doing that for their own community for a long time. Great. Thank you, Brad. Well, I am aware at the time it's 12.27 and we had the goal of ending at 12.25 to give you a little break, but hopefully three minutes will be enough if you need to rush off to a 12.30 meeting. I appreciate everyone taking the time to come and hopefully you've taken away one little piece that you can use in moving your teaching forward as we kind of move into a whatever this next year may look like this transitional time. I also want to take just thank Brad and Simon for taking the time to do this and our CTLT events team who are behind the scenes and working super hard this week to make sure that all of these events go smoothly. So thank you very much everybody. Thanks everyone.