Connect Arts’ disciplinary learning to students’ futures—help students see how classroom learning can be applied in other contexts, including workplaces and the community.
Arts Alumni Engagement and Arts Work Integrated Education, in partnership with Arts ISIT, the UBC Career Centre, entrepreneurship@UBC, and the Centre for Teaching Learning and Technology, offer a collaborative, interdisciplinary team to support Arts faculty members interested in exploring and designing discipline-specific learning experiences for your teaching practice.
Our work is informed by examples from current UBC Arts faculty members and best practices. We bring experience and contacts with alumni and professionals working across various sectors and roles inside and outside UBC, offering you an easy starting point for this kind of curricular innovation.
By integrating practical learning and connections with alumni in the classroom, we directly support faculty to further connect course concepts and professional skills, helping students build toward their futures.
Benefits
Our recent 10+ Year-Out UBC Faculty of Arts Alumni Survey suggests that alumni wish they had been better equipped to communicate their skills and the strengths of their Arts major and degree when they graduated. By integrating practical learning and connections with alumni in the classroom, we directly support students to connect course concepts and professional skills.
There have also been many studies about integrating practical learning into the classroom, especially for Arts students.
Access
It makes practical learning more accessible and inclusive for all students.
Enriched learning
Enriches the learning and understanding of course concepts and helps students achieve course and program learning outcomes.
Student recruitment
It attracts students to learn your discipline and helps them see how they might leverage their classroom learning to build meaningful lives after graduation.
Work with us
Questions our interdisciplinary team can help address include:
- How might I engage alumni in course activities?
- How might I design assignments that teach transferrable skills?
- How might I integrate career skills/tools in my course?
- How might I develop student workplace competencies (team work, presentation skills, peer to peer learning).
- How might I develop collaborative learning …?
- Develop effective groupwork activities.
- How might I help students reflect on their learning?
- How might I bring could technology and tools support practical learning outcomes (ePortfolios, UBC Blogs)?
- How might I include bootcamps or hackathons in my class?
- How might I adapt elements of the entrepreneurial toolkit in my course?
- How might I include entrepreneurial thinking tools in my course that are values aligned with Arts students?
- How might we purposefully enhance student competencies and transferrable skills in our program/major?
- How might I bring disciplinary linked EL into our program/major?
- How might I bring applied research into our program/major?
- How might we include capstones in our program/major?
- How might I apply for funding to support...?
- ePortfolios: provide a platform for students to illustrate connections between experiences outside of the classroom and course concepts.
- UBC Blogs: a simple and creative way for students to share their work and demonstrate their learning publicly
- Reflective Activities (Canvas Assignments): journaling or collaborative reflection assignments allows students to articulate and explore the real-world application of academic concepts
- Examples include Telling the Story of Your Arts Degree in a Job Search and Job Search Skills with an Arts degree
- Examples include workshops on using entrepreneurial methods, such as making a pitch, to define your unique value and communicate to diverse audiences
- This includes TLEFs, SoTL, or other teaching and learning related funding when practical/career learning/alumni component is being considered
Contact us
Our interdisciplinary team can help you apply practical learning strategies to your courses. Book an initial 30-minute consultation with an educational designer to get support.
Our team offers a range of support:
- Consult and educational design
- Facilitation in the class
- Connection to networks
- Recommendations to the literature/toolkit
Please consult with our partners, entrepreneurship@UBC, on incorporating entrepreneurial thinking and skills in your course content.