Hybrid and Multi-Access Course Redesign Projects

This year the TLEF will accept applications for new Large TLEF Transformation Projects as well as returning Large TLEF Transformation Projects seeking year 2 or year 3 funding.

Renewal applications for projects funded in previous years are due on October 12, 2023 at 3:00pm.  You can find templates to use for your renewal application on the Templates page of the TLEF website.


The details below relate to last year’s Large TLEF Special Call.

The 2023-24 Large TLEF Transformation projects funding round will be a special call to UBC Vancouver academic units interested in experimenting with hybrid and multi-access course redesign projects. Approximately $1 million will be made available to support teams whose goal is to redesign multiple courses within a program to maximize flexibility and accessibility for students by combining both in-person and online elements within and/or across course activities.

Focus on Hybrid and Multi-Access Course Redesign Projects

As we (cautiously) emerge from the main disruptions brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, the UBC community has been turning its attention to consideration of what post-COVID-19 teaching and learning look like across our various academic disciplines. Pre-COVID-19, our educational offerings were principally in-person with technology-enhanced learning, where digital tools and resources were used to supplement and enhance in-person learning activities. During the COVID-19 outbreak, our approach needed to pivot rapidly to emergency online instruction as well as hybrid activities: online sessions with some limited in-person activities.

Now we are charting a path somewhere between these two extremes, involving more hybrid (a mix of in-person and online activities), fully-online, and multi-access learning opportunities—as and when appropriate to the needs of the discipline, the learners, and the chosen pedagogical approach. This Special Call focuses on these “more flexible” modalities and their potential to enhance learning opportunities for UBC students.

Leveraging Flexible Modes of Delivery

For this Special Call, we are using UBC’s recently updated definitions for mode of delivery for activity types: Hybrid courses have been designed with a mixture of mandatory in-person and online activities; multi-access courses have been designed to allow students the choice to attend either in-person or online.

Hybrid

  • Learners are required to attend some activities in-person to complete learning outcomes for the course.
  • Learning activities are a mixture (a hybrid) of in-person (on-campus) and online activities, such that the online activities contribute to a significant fraction of the total credit value or credit hours, in a pattern or course design that is determined by instructors.
  • The online activities may be asynchronous, synchronous or a combination of both.

Multi-Access

  • Based on how the course activity is intentionally designed by instructors, learners may choose (or their locations may dictate) whether they attend in-person or online to complete learning outcomes.

Examples of Hybrid and Multi-Access Projects

This Special Call is for projects intending to redesign existing courses to support Hybrid or Multi-Access offerings with the goal of increasing flexibility and accessibility for students. We hope that there are diverse ideas put forward by the applicants to this special call, so that UBC has an opportunity to experiment with approaches that best support specific needs within disciplines and activity types.

Approaches might include:

  • Hybrid: Coordinating offerings of multiple courses such that online components for all of the courses are scheduled on a specific day of the week (for example, on Wednesday and Thursday) to give students potential scheduling flexibility by reducing their commute to campus for classes by one day a week.
  • Hybrid: Multiple courses that sequence an extended block of online activities (e.g. 2-4 weeks) at a common time in the semester.
  • Hybrid: A design of multiple courses to organize activities either online or in-person as best suits the disciplinary context and pedagogical approach: lecture components online with in-person assessment, in-person labs, etc.
  • Multi-Access: A specific combination of in-person and online learning options co-existing within the same activity, giving students a choice as to how they engage with a course, and options to change this mode of engagement throughout the course.
  • Multi-Access: Distributed cohort programs where cohorts join either in-person or online, dependent on their location.

The focus of this Special Call is the redesign of existing courses, not the development of new courses. Priority will be given to projects that are able to implement the redesigned courses within the funding period of the project (2 years). While this Special Call will accept proposals for projects that focus on undergraduate or graduate programs, priority will be given to undergraduate programs that have a significant student impact across multiple courses.

Financial Support for Departments

  • The maximum amount of funding available through this Special Call is $200,000 across the life of a project (2 years), though we expect most applications to request less than this amount in direct relation to the size and scope of the proposed project.
  • Faculty course releases are eligible for funding based on one course release per course that is being redesigned. The cost of course releases will be split between the Faculty / department and the TLEF.
  • Funding for project coordination support can be requested.

This funding is not intended to support Learning Technology (LT) tool procurement, licensing, software development, or audio-visual tools. UBC has provided significant funding to expand LT and audiovisual resources to support hybrid and fully-online teaching and learning, and applicants are encouraged to engage with Faculty and Central units to ensure they can leverage these tools.

Central Support

In-kind support will be provided by the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT), including support for: Learning Design; Curriculum Development; Evaluation; Professional Development; Consultation and Facilitation; and Learning Technology Support.

Applicants will need to consult with the CTLT to discuss in-kind support needs before submitting a full project proposal in October. The CTLT cannot guarantee this support to teams who do not consult about the scope of their project’s support needs.

Application Process – Renewal Applications

Renewal applications for projects funded in 2023 are due on October 12, 2023 at 3:00pm.  You can find templates to use for your renewal application on the Templates page of the TLEF website.

For more information about this Large TLEF Transformation Project Special Call, please contact tlef.info@ubc.ca.