Connect Arts’ disciplinary learning to students’ futures—help students see how classroom learning can be applied in other contexts, including workplaces and the community.
By integrating practical learning and connections with alumni in the classroom, you connect course concepts and professional skills, helping your students build toward their futures.
Our team offers a collaborative, interdisciplinary support for Arts faculty members interested in exploring and designing discipline-specific learning experiences:
- Arts Alumni Engagement
- Arts Instructional Support
- Arts Work Integrated Education
- Centre for Teaching Learning and Technology
- entrepreneurship@UBC
- UBC Career Centre
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 curricular innovation.
Benefits
Access
Integrating practical learning into the classroom makes the impacts accessible to all students.
Enriched learning
Enriches the learning and understanding of course concepts and helps students achieve course and program learning outcomes.
Student recruitment
Practical learning attracts students to your discipline and helps them see how they might leverage their classroom learning to build meaningful lives after graduation.
Why Practical Learning matters
The 2022 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.
Review studies about integrating practical learning into the classroom for students.
Work with us
Questions our interdisciplinary team can help address include:
Activities for individual courses – engaging alumni and practical assignments
- How might I engage alumni in course activities?
- How might I develop student workplace competencies (teamwork, presentation skills, articulating disciplinary skills, peer to peer learning)?
- How might I introduce students to design thinking for degree and future planning?
- How might I include entrepreneurial thinking tools in my course that are values aligned with Arts students?
Support for curriculum and program renewal
- How might we purposefully enhance student competencies and transferrable skills in our program/major?
- How might I bring disciplinary-linked experiential learning into our program/major?
- How might we include capstones in our program/major?
- How might I apply for funding to support…?
Teaching and learning technological tools
- 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: journaling or collaborative reflection assignments allows students to articulate and explore the real-world application of academic concepts
Career building workshops customized to discipline/course content
- 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
Teaching and learning funding applications
- Examples include TLEFs, SoTL, or other teaching and learning related funding when practical/career learning/alumni component is being considered
Contact us
Book an initial 30-minute consultation with an educational designer to get support.