This year, 66 projects teams, comprised of faculty, staff, and students, have received funding to advance innovation and enhance teaching and learning through the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF). A total of $2.44 million will support these new and returning projects at the UBC Vancouver campus.
In support of UBC’s strategic priorities, the TLEF enriches student learning by supporting innovative and effective educational enhancements, and is financed entirely by a portion of tuition paid by UBC Vancouver students. Each year, the Office of the Provost invites all UBCV Faculties and Colleges to apply for funding for initiatives that improve student learning experiences.
This year’s funded projects include 13 Large TLEF Transformation projects and 53 Small TLEF Innovation projects. These initiatives span a range of themes reflecting the creativity and diversity of UBC’s teaching and learning community.
Providing means and infrastructure to experiment with GenAI in teaching and learning
This year’s funding round included a special call for Generative AI (GenAI) Collaborative Cluster Grants to support UBCV project teams interested in experimenting with GenAI in teaching and learning. $1.3 million in GenAI Collaborative Cluster Grants is being invested to support UBCV project teams interested in experimenting with GenAI in teaching and learning.
Among them, Associate Professor, Computer Science, Faculty of Science Dongwook Yoon’s Large TLEF Transformation project, Preparing for an Automated Future: Building Automation Resilience in Computer and Data Science Education, received funding to continue reshaping the curriculum for Computer Science and Data Science courses at UBC: “Our ‘Automation Resilience’ project is addressing the urgent need to prepare our students for an AI-integrated workforce by revising curriculum in Computer Science and Data Science. What’s particularly exciting is how we’re creating a balanced approach that teaches students to leverage AI tools effectively (AI-integrated learning) while also reinforcing the foundational knowledge that remains essential regardless of technological advancement (AI-invariant learning).”
In the Faculty of Arts, Professor of Teaching, English, Laurie McNeill and Associate Professor of Teaching, Political Science, Andrew Owen’s Large TLEF Transformation project, We’re only Human? Educative Frameworks for Artificial Intelligence, Academic Integrity, and Writing in the Faculty of Arts, extends an educative framework to new challenges and opportunities presented by GenAI in the Faculty of Arts, in courses in which writing plays a key role in students’ understanding of foundational, discipline-specific knowledge and practice, including academic integrity: “Over its first year, our project has been hearing from faculty and students about the challenges and opportunities that GenAI represents in the context of writing-based assessment and courses. We’ve been reminded of the importance and value of open discussion in class about these tools and what role they may or may not play in the kinds of learning students need to demonstrate in our courses – and what agency we can bring as teachers and learners about our use of these tools.”
These GenAI projects received support from UBC Academic Leadership, due to its strategic importance in shaping the future of teaching and learning at the university and beyond.
“We wanted to provide a safe space for faculty to experiment if, how and where these tools may fit in their courses,” said Dr. Simon Bates Vice-Provost and Associate Vice-President, Teaching and Learning. “There’s been considerable interest from other institutions who want to learn from our approach, not just around what we have done but how we have provisioned it in a relatively short period of less than one academic year.”
This space was made possible thanks to preliminary work form the CTLT’s Learning Technology Incubator and Development Team to provide project participants with the necessary infrastructure to experiment.
Dr. Elisa Baniassad, Deputy Academic Director, Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, said: “The CTLT Learning Technology Incubator team moved with a sense of real urgency to spin up infrastructure to support the pedagogical research and development. They devised an architecture, a costing model, an on-retainer development team, and even a way for non-technologist Project Instigators to specify software requirements, all to ensure that technology didn’t become a barrier to this exciting and vital inquiry and investigation.”
An additional $130,000 in TLEF funding was awarded to support 13 project teams as part of the Special Call for the Universal Design for Learning Fellows Program. These projects were nominated by UBC Vancouver Faculties to participate in the third cohort of the Universal Design for Learning Fellows Program in Spring 2025.
For a complete picture of the 2025/26 TLEF funding round, as well as enrolment reach from projects funded in by the TLEF in 2024/25, please review the 2025/26 TLEF Snapshot.
Congratulations to the project teams who received funding for their projects