SCETUG 2014: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Contributed by kele fleming, UBC
This year the Steering Committee for ETUG (SCETUG) gathered at BCIT Downtown for our annual planning meeting just ahead of the Fall 2014 Workshop.  It was a full and productive day with most committee members attending in person, and a couple participating online.  Our committee is very committed to continuing to bring quality professional development and networking opportunities to our ETUG membership.  So, our day was filled with thinking about programming our main activities for the upcoming year, plus developing an engagement survey.
Over the last couple of years, SCETUG has done a lot to establish solid communications with the ETUG community via Etug.ca, the monthly ETUG newsletter, use of our Twitter account (tweets with #etug) and good old fashioned email communiques.   So, not a lot of need for augmenting our work here, but we did take some time to map out the annual schedule for featured ETUG news content like our institutional reports and member profiles.  SCETUG has also worked tirelessly to bring you professional development opportunities outside of the two annual workshops, via our T.E.L.L. Sessions. These online lunch and learns are running tickingly well with good participation from across the province from both facilitators and attendees.  The first T.E.L.L. session of the season was done this month by SCETUG-ger Grant Gregson (ECUAD) on “Creating Your Personal Cloud Storage Network”. Here is a summary of the session if you missed it. Additional exciting monthly T.E.L.L. sessions on a variety of topics will be coming your way soon starting in January!
One new initiative worked on during our SCETUG planning day was an ” ETUG Top 5 Survey” on
key issues in teaching , learning and technology.  A nod to our Educause Learning Initiative (ELI)  colleagues in the U.S.: the idea for the ETUG survey grew out of a review of the ELI top issues survey that went out earlier in 2014.  The data gathered from our survey  will be used to inform us on  themes and topics of ETUG’s programming for the coming year.  The survey is open now until January 16, 2015. Please add your 2 cents to the mix and complete the survey…Gathering input on teaching and learning needs from our community members is at the heart of ETUG’s mission!
Looking back over the year, ETUG hosted two very successful workshops that broke new ground in topics and facilitative processes. Our Spring Workshop was hosted at Langara College and featured Jentery Sayers from UViC’s Maker Lab as keynote plus interactive improv theatre that tackled teaching and learning challenges, as well as, an inaugural ETUG musical reflection of key takeaways at the end of the conference.
Our Fall Workshop featured an unconference program and process. This was the first time we attempted to do something like this and it turned out to be a day that was wild and wooly and participatory and full of creativity!  It may have appeared on the outside to be smooth and well-structured in an unplanned kind of way, but your SCETUG-ers were busy guiding the chaos on the day of and spent many hours planning for the spontaneity of the day. The feedback from the unconference participants was overall very positive with the request that we repeat it for Fall 2015. (Here’s some of the resources if you missed the event.)
And, looking to the future…Hold the dates for the Spring Workshop to be held on June 4th and 5th, 2015 at SFU Burnaby.  Watch for the Call for Proposals which will be out in February.
Happy New Year and I look forward to seeing you all in 2015!
kele fleming
SCETUG Chair
UBC-Vancouver