This month, the Edubytes editorial team looks back on the resources, articles, and stories that stood out across the year in teaching and learning. The Edubytes editorial team consists of Sunah Cho, Manuel Dias, Will Engle, Jeff Miller, and Jason Myers.
For the first edition of the year, we take a moment to look back at what resonated most with you over the past year. As you engaged with Edubytes throughout 2025, four interconnected themes consistently stood out: the expanding role of Generative AI (GenAI) in student learning, teaching practice, and institutional strategy; a sustained focus on accessibility and inclusion as essential to effective learning environments; ongoing pedagogical innovations that rethink assessment, course design, and classroom practice; and the growing importance of digital literacy in an AI-rich academic landscape.
Together, these themes reflect a shared interest in not just adopting new tools, but in using them thoughtfully to support equity, integrity, and meaningful learning at UBC and beyond.
Thank you for reading, reflecting, and engaging with Edubytes this past year – we look forward to sharing more topics and insights with you in 2026!
GenAI at UBC
Generative AI is no longer a speculative technology at UBC – it is an active and evolving part of students’ learning practices, instructors’ teaching approaches, and institutional strategy. Seen in the January, February, and August editions, the following articles illustrate this theme from complementary perspectives: how UBC students are actually using GenAI in their studies, how educators can be supported in integrating it thoughtfully into teaching and assessment, and how UBC is articulating a broader vision for shaping learning technologies in alignment with institutional values.
How are UBC students using GenAI?
This study from the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology reports results from a late-2024/early-2025 survey of over 3,000 UBC students on their use of GenAI. It found that 61% used GenAI at least weekly, while 22% have never used it. The most common uses included searching for information (64%), checking for grammar/style (55%), and summarizing documents (51%). Students also used AI for exam preparation, exam-study tools, clarifying lecture content, drafting outlines or code, and other tasks. Notably, many students said they were unsure whether GenAI use was permitted in their course – underscoring a need for clearer policies and communication across campus.
GenAI in teaching and learning toolkit
BCcampus released a toolkit designed to guide educators in navigating the integration of GenAI tools into their teaching practices. This resource addresses key aspects of GenAI, including its capabilities, ethical considerations, and practical applications in the classroom. The toolkit aims to demystify GenAI for educators, particularly those who may feel hesitant or uncertain about its use. By providing a foundational understanding and practical guidance, the toolkit empowers educators to make informed decisions about how to leverage GenAI effectively and responsibly within their specific teaching contexts. Modules within the toolkit include GenAI basics, prompt literacy, teaching GenAI ethics, designing assessment in the age of GenAI, and supporting digital wellbeing.
LTIC and the vision of utopian learning technology
This opinion article form Learning Technology Innovation Centre (LTIC) Academic Director Dr. Elisa Baniassad invites us to imagine what learning technology might look like at a “utopian university” – seamless, joyful, stable, and empowering for both educators and learners. At UBC, LTIC has set three strategic goals: ensuring teaching tools “keep users working,” maintaining a vibrant and reliable infrastructure that “keep the lights on brightly,” and accelerating innovation in pedagogy and learning technology. With GenAI and other emerging tools transforming what is possible, LTIC states that UBC must actively shape its educational future – not passively adopt commercial technology, but define how technology supports scholarship, equity, accessibility, and pedagogical values.
Accessibility and inclusion
Accessibility and inclusion are foundational to effective teaching and learning, shaping how students engage with course materials and participate fully in academic life. Highlighted in the February, March, and October editions, the articles below collectively showcase how accessibility and inclusion are being advanced through emerging technologies that reduce barriers, professional learning that deepens understanding of neurodiversity, and practical resources that support the design of accessible digital learning environments.
Using Generative AI to make learning more accessible: Insights from Ontario post-secondary education students and staff
The Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario conducted a study to determine how GenAI can be used to make learning more accessible for all students, including those with disabilities, and the barriers to its use faced by students, instructors, and staff in Ontario’s post-secondary education. This study involving over 500 Ontario students highlights ways students with disabilities have used AI tools and how this has reduced workload for centres like the UBC Centre for Accessibility. Notably, 38% of students indicated they used GenAI when an instructor was unable to adapt course material into alternative formats.
Supporting neurodiversity in higher education: A two-part workshop series
This BCcampus series offered a two-part workshop in early 2025 designed to help higher-education faculty and staff better understand and support neurodivergent learners. The first session – Introduction to Neurodiversity in Higher Education – explored the history, theory, and lived experiences behind neurodiversity, introducing key concepts like “neurodivergent” and “neurotypical” through first-person perspectives. The second session – Applying Your Knowledge of Neurodiversity in Teaching, Learning, and Advising – provided practical strategies through case studies, policy context, and reflection exercises to help educators foster inclusive, flexible, and supporting learning environments.
Accessibility 101 website
The Accessibility 101 website serves as a practical guide to designing digital course materials that are accessible to all students. It explains key accessibility concepts, offers step-by-step guidance on making text, images, multimedia and documents accessible, and helps instructors build a strategy for accessible content creation. The site emphasizes that improving accessibility – for students with vision or hearing impairments and similar learning barriers – benefits everyone by enhancing clarity, usability and inclusivity in online learning.
Pedagogical innovation
Pedagogical innovation is increasingly defined by how intentionally we design learning experiences to deepen engagement, equity, and relevance for today’s students. Highlighted in the June, July, and September editions, these articles illustrate this innovation in action: reimagining grading and the syllabus as a collaborating learning tool, using simple instructional choices to better support student learning during class, and redesigning assessment to balance academic integrity with meaningful engagement in an age shaped by GenAI.
The practice of ungrading
“Students don’t read the syllabus,” Jesse Stommel notes, then asks, “why would they, if we haven’t written it for them?” In this article, Stommel describes his shift in using restrictive, stock syllabi to creating living documents that evolve with student input. He emphasizes that syllabi should be written honestly with students as the primary audience, and he shows how his syllabi grading policies evolved to include language that challenges the idea of grades as competition, expresses his hopes for the class, and empowers students with active roles (“engage,” “determine,” “reflect”). Most importantly, he explains the pedagogical intentions behind these choices. This evolution, grounded in his “ungrading” approach, resists the inequities of traditional grading and advocates for assessment practices that promote access, inclusion, and deeper learning.
Sending the slides ahead of class
This article from Beyond the Scope explores the practice of sending lecture slides to students before class. The author argues that sharing slides ahead of time can serve as a scaffold – freeing students from frantic note-taking so they can focus on understanding, reflecting, and engaging more deeply during class. It positions pre-class slide sharing as a tool to support student agency and more thoughtful learning, rather than just passive content delivery.
Aligning our assessments to the age of GenAI
This article from Teaching@Sydney outline how the University of Sydney is reworking assessment practices to reflect the growing prevalence of GenAI tools. It describes their “two-lane” model as secure assessments (in-person, supervised tasks) to assure learning outcomes, and open assessments (AI-friendly, unsupervised tasks) to encourage students to use GenAI as a support for learning. The change aims to balance academic integrity with real-world relevance – ensuring degrees remain rigorous while preparing students for a world where AI is ubiquitous.
Digital literacy
Digital literacy has become a core academic competency as students and institutions navigate AI-driven systems, pervasive information, and rapidly changing information landscapes. This topic, explored in the March, August, and September editions, highlights different dimensions of digital literacy in practice: anticipating how AI reshapes higher education and the skills graduates will need, embedding fact-checking and critical evaluation into large-scale teaching, and developing shared, discipline-informed resources to support thoughtful engagement with GenAI in teaching and assessment.
How will AI influence higher education in 2025?
This article from Inside Higher Ed examined how AI evolved into essential infrastructure across universities in 2025. Experts predicted institutions adopting AI to support teaching, personalize learning, streamline administrative processes and enhance student services. AI literacy would be a key priority for graduates, while concerns about equity, ethics, governance, and academic integrity drove new safeguards. Overall, they envisioned that campuses would shift from experimenting with AI to integrating it broadly, positioning the technology as a central part of the academic experience.
College students are bombarded by misinformation, so this professor taught them fact-checking – Here’s what happened
This article describes how a lead instructor for an American Government course with more than 3,400 students incorporated six short asynchronous fact-checking modules adapted from Stanford’s Civic Online Reasoning curriculum. Designed to fit seamlessly into the existing structure, the modules introduced students to lateral reading techniques – evaluating sources, verifying credibility, and questioning viral claims. By semester’s end, students showed measurable improvement in identifying misleading information and reported gaining valuable skills. This initiative highlights how even small, well-designed curricular additions can significantly strengthen digital literacy and critical thinking.
We’re Only Human… project website
The We’re Only Human… project website serves as both a hub for faculty and staff to collaboratively address the evolving challenges of GenAI in the UBC Faculty of Arts, and a repository of the team’s work. It features team-tested learning and instructional resources and readings for faculty interested in this approach, along with the overview of principles and options instructors might consider when planning written assessments.
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