[Institutional Report] Royal Roads University

Contributed by Keith Webster, RRU

Royal Roads University has recently celebrated twenty years as a public post-secondary institution. The Centre for Teaching and Educational Technology (CTET) is the unit that provides faculty development, instructional design, educational technology, and media support to teaching and learning at Royal Roads. CTET facilitates the entire cycle of course development and revision at Royal Roads, from course proposals through design and development, to revision of existing courses. Every course section offered at Royal Roads receives a technical review and quality check prior to opening. CTET also hosts “Studio”, a drop-in centre for faculty to get just-in-time help with their technology-based teaching.
As a unit CTET is experiencing many exciting developments.

In the Fall of 2015 The Centre for Teaching and Educational Technology and the Coaching and Counselling Centre started TeamsWork, a year-long initiative to further develop team-based learning (a key component of our Learning and Teaching Model) at Royal Roads. This has included workshops, guest speakers, and a team-based theme for the 2015/16 Teaching with Technology Grants. CTET has played a leading role in facilitating these initiatives and is actively involved in each of the twelve funded research projects.
Faculty development continues to play an important role at CTET. A diverse roster of on-campus, online, self-paced, and facilitated workshops in instructional skills, teaching with Moodle and teaching with Collaborate are offered through the year. B.J. Eib is involved in developing the “Facilitating Learning Online (FLO)” workshop with BCcampus, and Ining Chao has developed and presented a new workshop: “Teaching and Learning in an Intercultural Classroom”.
In collaboration with IT services, CTET is continuing a project to improve user experience in Moodle with explorations of themes and plugins that will streamline student navigation and facilitate mobile access.
2015 has been a year of growing strengths and capacity at CTET, and with the contribution of 34 people, we are looking forward to the challenges of the coming year.