CTLI History

Early Years

North Island Col­lege orig­i­nal­ly had a teach­ing and learn­ing com­mit­tee for many years work­ing togeth­er to bring in keynote speak­ers, spe­cial pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment ses­sions, work­shops and learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. The com­mit­tee shared resources, held gath­er­ings to plan upcom­ing ses­sions and had a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sit on the BC Teach­ing and Learn­ing Coun­cil. Addi­tion­al sup­ports were giv­en to short term posi­tions to explore the impacts of the new BC K‑12 cur­ricu­lum on NIC cours­es and oth­er teach­ing and learn­ing ini­tia­tives.

BEGINNING a centre

The teach­ing and learn­ing cen­tre offi­cial­ly began Jan­u­ary 2020 with 3 staff mem­bers and a direc­tor and was named the Cen­tre for Teach­ing and Learn­ing Inno­va­tion. The staff jumped in to sup­port instruc­tors mov­ing to dig­i­tal deliv­ery dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, as well as offer­ing numer­ous learn­ing expe­ri­ences to enhance instruc­tors’ dig­i­tal com­pe­ten­cies. With the launch of an insti­tu­tion­al pro­gram review process in ear­ly 2020, the Cen­tre staff worked with instruc­tors to gath­er evi­dence, write self-stud­ies, orga­nize exter­nal review pan­els and engage in action plan items.

Technology upgrades

The Cen­tre also helped train and sup­port instruc­tors using new­ly imple­ment­ed tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms includ­ing Blue­Jeans web con­fer­enc­ing (Feb­ru­ary 2020), Kaltura video plat­form (June 2020), Bright­space dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment (Fall 2021) and Kaltura Vir­tu­al Class­room (Win­ter 2022). This Teach Any­where web­site was launched in June 2020 along with the Learn Any­where web­site for stu­dents in dig­i­tal learn­ing. Over the past years near­ly 220 pages of con­tent, resources, videos and links have been devel­oped on both web­sites.

Office Space

In the ear­ly hours of a day in June 2023 a fire took out the phys­i­cal spaces for the teach­ing and learn­ing cen­tre includ­ing all teach­ing, tech­nol­o­gy and learn­ing resources. Staff had to tran­si­tion to work­ing from home until the cen­tre could be relo­cat­ed and fur­ni­ture pur­chased. In Jan­u­ary of 2024, the staff were able to move into their new spaces locat­ed in the Trades Train­ing Cen­tre in the for­mer Adult Basic Edu­ca­tion offices. One of the two small class­rooms was repur­posed into 5 cubi­cle offices and 2 exam rooms were used as offices. The com­put­er area was redesigned into a gath­er­ing space, cof­fee bar and lounge space with white­board and data pro­jec­tor for all sorts of uses. Dur­ing the sum­mer of 2024, the sec­ond small class­room under­went an upgrade to be a HyFlex/­mul­ti-modal train­ing room and train­ing space for Cen­tre activ­i­ties. Most of the mate­ri­als lost in the fire a year ear­li­er were repur­chased and set up and so by June 2024 the Cen­tre was open and func­tion­ing.

Quality Enhancement

In 2023 and 2024 the Cen­tre shift­ed its pri­or­i­ties to div­ing more ful­ly into sup­port­ing the work of aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­ty enhance­ment to ensure our pro­grams and cours­es are cur­rent, rel­e­vant and time­ly with new process­es, poli­cies and pro­ce­dures about cur­ricu­lum, learn­ing out­comes and evi­dence of stu­dent learn­ing. The Cen­tre staff work with Insti­tu­tion­al Research and Plan­ning and the spe­cif­ic role of Senior Research Ana­lyst — Pro­gram Qual­i­ty (Wayne Hop­wood) to sup­port the pro­gram review process. In addi­tion, the Cen­tre led the Qual­i­ty Assur­ance Process Audit (QAPA) deployed by the Min­istry of Post-Sec­ondary Edu­ca­tion and Future Skills involv­ing an exter­nal review pan­el of our peers, an insti­tu­tion­al report and the Aca­d­e­m­ic Qual­i­ty Enhance­ment Work­ing Group. The insti­tu­tion­al report was sub­mit­ted in Fall of 2023, the site vis­it was in Novem­ber of 2023 and by March 2024 the response to the QAPA pan­el report was sub­mit­ted to the Min­istry.

Growing from Within

Also in 2023, the Cen­tre explored a new mod­el of grow­ing tal­ent from with­in the Col­lege. Five lim­it­ed term (10 month) posi­tions were cre­at­ed to allow for explo­ration of the field of edu­ca­tion­al devel­op­ment by NIC instruc­tors. Many learn­ing expe­ri­ences, obser­va­tions and train­ing activ­i­ties occurred through­out the year. At the end of the 23/24 aca­d­e­m­ic year, those tem­po­rary posi­tions were con­vert­ed into 2.5 FTE reg­u­lar posi­tions and 3 peo­ple were hired in reg­u­lar posi­tions. One of those posi­tions is focused on Trades and Tech­ni­cal Pro­grams and anoth­er one on Health and Human Ser­vices to pro­vide spe­cif­ic sup­ports for those areas need­ing dis­ci­pline exper­tise.

Year ahead

As of Jan­u­ary 2025, the Cen­tre has 8.0 FTE staff and are most­ly locat­ed on the Comox Val­ley Cam­pus in the Trades Train­ing Build­ing with 2 staff locat­ed in offices at the Camp­bell Riv­er cam­pus. The Cen­tre moves for­ward with all reg­u­lar­ly fund­ed employ­ees with a focus on two areas: Teach­ing and Learn­ing Inno­va­tion (teach­ing, learn­ing, tech­nolo­gies, course devel­op­ment, reflec­tive prac­tices, assess­ment etc.) and Aca­d­e­m­ic Qual­i­ty Enhance­ment (qual­i­ty learn­ing fun­da­men­tals, pro­gram enhance­ment, pro­gram review, pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment, schol­ar­ship of teach­ing and learn­ing, evi­dence and feed­back etc.). The Teach Any­where web­site aligns with these focus areas.

In 2024–2025 the Cen­tre led work in enhanc­ing prac­tices of instruc­tors through a vari­ety of sup­ports and ser­vices, con­tin­ued to advance qual­i­ty learn­ing through pro­gram review process, led the devel­op­ment of a teach­ing and learning/digital learn­ing insti­tu­tion­al plan (called the Roadmap for Qual­i­ty Learn­ing), worked on the action items from the QAPA process and took on GenAI through guide­lines and learn­ing expe­ri­ences.