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[Institutional Report] BCIT

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Contributed by John Born, BCIT
BCIT has approximately 18,000 full-time students enroll annually and 28,000 part-time  students enroll every year. BCIT has 4 main campuses and 10 satellite campuses. The main campuses include: Burnaby Campus, Marine Campus, Aerospace Technology Campus and Annacis Island Campus. Supporting these campuses is the Learning and Teaching Centre’s (LTC) Educational Technology Services (ETS) team on the design, development and delivery of BCIT’s educational technologies. The core business of the ETS team consists of:

  • Advising on the appropriate use of educational technology in the design of online courses
  • The coding and development of online course material (including the incorporation of multimedia)
  • The delivery of educational technology workshops and training
  • Supporting the Institute’s educational technologies through the Technology Service Helpdesk

What of interest are we up to right now?
We are currently offering a series of workshops for instructors that combine the teaching and learning skills of Instructional Design Consultants (IDC), Multimedia Developers, and the ETS team. It includes 27 workshops spanning January to April. We found this to be a great combination for answering the Why? And How? of educational technology use. An example of some of the topics include: D2L Basics, Respondus 2 – Formatting for Upload, Using Multimedia for Learning, Digital Storytelling – Overview and Process, Writing Effective Questions, Assessment Design for Blended or Online Learning, ResponseWare – Virtual Clickers, Reflective Gaming – Using StudyMate.
Some of the main technologies at BCIT are Desire2Learn version 10.3 SP13, Blackboard Collaborate, Respondus, Respondus Lockdown Browser, and ResponseWare – Virtual Clickers. The backbone of our educational technology is Desire2Learn (D2L) and we try are best to make sure that every new type of technology can somehow be integrated with D2L.
Two noteworthy new happenings at BCIT include:

  • BCIT recently ran #TEDXBCIT on January 24th, 2015 at the BCIT Aerospace Campus.
  • BCIT released the new Perinatal Pal iPad as a joint venture between BCIT’s School of Health Sciences Specialty Nursing Faculty and the Learning and Teaching Centre:

BCIT Perinata lPal
http://cube.bcit.ca/sites/marketing/health/perinatalpal/#contact-info
We are constantly looking at new ways to support educational technology at BCIT, both in the physical classroom and online. ETS currently only offers day time hours, but we offer extended hours during term start. We maintain an online support website that offers screen capture videos, multimedia job aids, and links to download BCIT licensed software.

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