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Tim Carson: Welcome to the BCcampus Mixtape. This podcast is a remix of our previous live recordings and our other BCcampus offerings such as Lunchable Learning, Open Knowledge Spectrums, Praxis Pedagogy, and many more. If you love to learn, you’ve come to the right place.
My name is Tim Carson and I’m the provincial trades rep for open education at BCcampus. And I’m coming to you today from the unceded territories of the Katzie and Kwantlen peoples in Maple Ridge.
This episode is an opportunity I had to sit down with Chad Flinn, who is the dean of Trades and Technology at Medicine Hat College and is entitled “Pedagogy Over Technology” and it was great to have Chad Flinn on the show. He’s a great friend. He’s an awesome colleague. He’s also an amazing educator and an emerging leader and advocate for the evolution and reformation of trades, vocational education, and training. It is my honour to present this episode for you today.
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Tim: Hey everybody, welcome back to Praxis Pedagogy podcast. It’s been a minute since we’ve been on the show had a bit of a break, an extended break, so it’s been good to have that break, but it’s also good to be back and good to have you with us. Today we have a very special guest, a colleague, a friend, and all-around good guy. Dean from the Medicine Hat College in Alberta, dean of Trades and Technology, is that right Chad? Dean of Trades and Technology?
Chad Flinn: That is correct. Yep, Dean of Trades and Technology.
Tim: Well perfect, Chad Flinn. Welcome to the show.
Chad: Thanks, good to be back. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been on the show. So, it’s good to finally [laughs] We’ve been talking about doing this, and we’ve tried a couple of times.
Tim: That’s right.
Chad: But yeah, it’s come a long way from when I was actually on, more often than not.
Tim: Yeah, that’s right. I was going back and listening to some old episodes and we’re like, wow. I remember getting together and doing all those things.
Chad: Remember doing that live in the basement or at BCIT, there back in the day. [laughs] And now here we are on zoom.
Tim: [laughs] Yep, and we did a few episodes live on YouTube with the famous Ed Logan from Ontario. Shout out to Ed.
Chad: Yeah, no doubt. It’d be good to get back into a conversation with Ed.
Tim: Sorry if you hear some strange noises in the back, that’s just my dog.
Chad: [laughs] I thought maybe it sounded like; you know those guys that chew all the time. They bring out the can and they’re smacking it to get their chew. Are you into the chew now?
Tim: No, no, not into the chew, not even close. I’m into coffee, I’m in the coffee. It’s early, but yes, it’s all good. All right, Chad. So, because it’s been such a hot minute since we’ve had you on the show, bring us up to speed and brother, what’s been going on with you?
Chad: Well, it’s funny you should mention, Tim. I just had my one-year anniversary at the college yesterday. So, because you’re in a position for a while you have to go through a probationary period. It was a one-year probation, so I met with my president yesterday just to reflect on the past year and man what a year it’s been. So previous to this I had a short stint working for Sask Polytech as a learning technologies trainer. Previous to that, you and I worked at BCIT, you were in the plumbing department, and I was an electrical instructor. So, over the past year, the amount of learning that I have had to go through stepping from a learning technology edtech fanatic, into an administrative role has been absolutely mind-blowing.
Tim: Oh, I can’t imagine. [laughs]
Chad: And that’s one of the things the president asked me yesterday. He was like, so what were your expectations going into it and how were they different? And I was like, OK, well.
Tim: You ready?
Chad: Yeah exactly. Well, my expectations going in, I said honestly having come from industry and working as I was an operations manager for an electrical instrumentation firm in Fort McMurray. I was an assistant area manager for electrical instrumentation up in Fort McMurray. I had management experience at a [yada, yada] and I had all this management experience in industry. Never having managed in academia before.
Tim: Right.
Chad: I said so coming on board and I had it in my head what I thought a dean did because of my time at BCIT basically. And then I said it’s like that meme where you got those four quadrants like what my mom thinks I do, what my friends think I do, and what I actually do. What I thought going into it was I thought I was going to be just an operations manager. I thought I was going to make sure that the day-to-day of the Trades and Technology Department would move forward. And yes, that’s true. That is one small aspect of the job, it turns out. I’m very very lucky in the fact that I have such a fantastic faculty that I don’t have a lot of problems with that. I don’t like to say they run themselves, but they self-manage a lot and they’re really open to new ideas, and we have great discussions, and I don’t have a lot of issues in that regard. So, also because we are at a small college, we wear a lot of hats, and we were talking about that yesterday as well. So typically like at BCIT you would have a dean, then you have an associate dean, and some schools have chairs. Where at BCIT we have a dean and then we have our coordinators. Not BCIT, at Medicine Hat College.
Tim: Right, right.
Chad: And so, all those other positions that are in between there, like the chair and the associate dean, we don’t have that. So, I have to kind of take on that aspect of it. So again, operationally I have a lot of stuff, but again, thank goodness that I have such a faculty that I don’t have to worry about that. But then there’s the other stuff where we don’t have AVPs, like associate vice presidents. So, a couple of things that got put on my plate, because I love technology, I love innovation, I love creativity. Whenever something would come up like the work-integrated learning was a huge thing that came across Alberta. Alberta got this Alberta 2030 report where they want all the PSIs or post-secondary institutes that have some form of work-integrated learning in absolutely every program. So even if you’re…
Tim: Really?
Chad: Yeah, even if you’re in like social sciences, they want to make sure that you have some touch to industry, which is very interesting. So again, we have work-integrated learning, we’ve always had work-integrated learning when we talk about trades. I mean, that’s what we do, right? So, I thought, OK, I’m going to jump in on the work-integrated learning initiative. Medicine Hat College had a very rudimentary one. So, we’ve been working the past year really stepping up the game and getting a framework built and now we’re getting policies in place and procedures, and I got a team working on that. So typically, that wouldn’t have been something that fell in my wheelhouse, as a dean. Luckily for me that it did. We also have a center of innovation that we’re starting up. So that’s because I’m in trades and technology and I had just a love of innovation that was an area that kind of fell into my portfolio as well. So again, building a strategic plan for that, working in industry. We’ve got a few people that are actually working with us now on projects, which is super exciting. So those are the kind of things that really kind of push forward. And so, like I said to my president yesterday, I love the operations. I love my faculty. I love that side of the house, but I also love that I get to play in these sandboxes as well. And so, my expectation for the job was high going in and it’s far superceded and exceeded anything I ever thought it could be.
Tim: Right. Wow.
Chad: Long story.
Tim: No that’s good, man. That’s good. Yeah, because you know, having a role like you do, I imagine that you could get bogged down in a lot of the operational details and aspects of what you need to do and all that, and/or personnel issues, right? I imagine that could bog you down pretty quick. But having lots of people taking kind of the self-directional perspective on what they’re doing sure frees you up a lot, right?
Chad: It does, and not also micro-managing. I’ve never, in any role I’ve ever had, I trust the people that are working with me, and so I don’t sit there, and I don’t require them to have to always tell me or come to me the decision. There are certain things that obviously are higher level things that might affect the entire institute or entire school. Yes, you have to talk to me about it. But within your own program, that’s your program. Yeah, I’m an electrician by trade. And then I’ve got a master’s in Learning and Technologies, if you’re a heavy equipment trainer or technology, or AST or carpenter, I don’t know that, I don’t know how to teach that. So, you have the freedom in which you want to run with that. If you want to run those ideas past me, we’ll have a conversation about it for sure. I don’t need you to come to me and ask if you should be doing this part asynchronous, or this part synchronous or you know, can I make videos for this, or should I be blah blah blah like there’s that’s up to you and I trust you, right? And so, and again, because I’ve got such a great faculty that they do that sort of stuff, and they’ve come up with really innovative, crazy, good ideas. And it’s kind of spilling out.
Tim: That’s awesome. That’s really good. And you know, because we’re friends and we talk a lot offline and online and I’ve seen your posts and all that other stuff. It’s amazing to see what can happen when you have a group of people who don’t need that real close management style. Yeah, right, they’re used to working in groups or without a lot of oversight. That’s really good. So, it probably didn’t take a long time to develop a foundation of trust between you and your teams when you first started, am I right?
Chad: And little, I mean, yes and no. I mean some people, because there had been previous.. I mean I’m stepping into a position that somebody else had. So there’s those relationship building that you have to go into and then like you do things differently than the previous, my predecessor did, so. Some people are very comfortable with that. Some people not so much so. Having those conversations of just being, trying to be authentic, trying to form relationships, really getting to know people. I made an effort to spend time with every single one of my faculty and staff. And get to know them as people, not just as an AST trainer or carpentry or plumbing/gas fitter, just as people. And so I made a big push on that, and so yeah trust built after, I was actually talking to my assistant yesterday about it, my trust is built over the past year, but, it’s like it has taken a lot of work because there has been those previous expectations and they didn’t know me. And I do do things differently than like, quite differently, than others had done it, and I give a lot more rope than others, and so they weren’t used to that. And so it did take time for them to realize that, like I don’t have to check in or I can go in to talk to him about this. So like any day and any kind of relationship., it takes time to build up and to prove that you’re authentic, yeah?
Tim: Yeah, no for sure, for sure, that’s good. So what’s on top your mind for this coming year then?
Chad: This year it’s, I think we’re really focusing on Alberta is going through a huge change with their Apprenticeship Act. I think you and I have talked about this offline before too, but they’re looking at trying to create this parity of esteem between trades, education, or TVET and academia. So typically you can go two years into a program. You get a diploma, and four years you get a bachelors and after that you can go into grad or with trades typically what will happen is you get your trades ticket. And that’s it. It’s kind of, yeah, I hate to say it, but it is a dead end. Now you can go find other institutes. There are some out there- shout out to Royal Roads – that will take previous life experience and then work with that right? And you and I have both gone through the Royal Roads program, having not had an undergraduate degree but what they really want to do here in Alberta is that if you get a trades ticket because of the amount of time you’re in class, they want to look at that as an equivalent to a diploma. So when a student comes out with their ticket. And whether it’s whatever like gas fitter, electrician, plumber, they get their Red Seal. They get their certificate of qualification, but they will also get a diploma so that you’d come out of Medicine Hat College with your ticket and a diploma in electrical technologies or whatever. Still trying to figure..that’s all getting worked out, so then you actually have those two years of credit. So if you want to go on to get a bachelors. You can take that, or if you want to go on to a masters that accept diplomas, then you have something to back that up. So that’s an area that really, we’re looking at doing. Also, we’re looking at how the industry and they’re really trying to tie together industry, post-secondary institutes and the students and the government is in there, but they’re trying to become more of a liaise than just telling us how to do things much like in B.C. we have the ITA that kind of controls all that. Here in Alberta we have what’s called AIT. AIT, we’re looking at partnering with the post-secondary institutes where we will have control of the curriculum. We will have control of the actual resources that are being put out and so we will work together. So right now, I’m part of a working group and just how that’s going to look, which we’re looking into things like the log book, which I know we, like the blue book, or whatever you want to call it, but that book that most of us had going through our apprenticeship that our journey people signed off on that, whether we’d done things or not.
Tim: Yeah, yeah.
Chad: So one of the big discussions we’re having about around all that is, proof of competency should not just be a signature. Proof of competency should be proof of competency. So now with the technologies we have, we can take pictures. We can show videos we can actually provide proof that a student has a competency in an area and then from that they can get a check mark or digital badge or whatever, and then that gets into a whole other discussion around blockchain and NFTs and all that fun stuff ’cause we’re looking at how to do that. Decentralize it, as opposed to having it, you have to be stuck within a certain system, so there’s a lot of work that’s going into that over the next year here in Alberta and we’re trying to… the legislation is passed for our Apprenticeship Act to change. It’s coming into effect now in January, but it’s the other work behind the scenes to get all this curriculum building and the new model of how we want to do these things. And then also, we’re trying to make sure that we are holding industry more accountable as well. Because like with trades, some you get some people who go out and have a great experience. I had an amazing experience during my time where I got a lot of great hands-on experience. My boss would take side jobs on residential stuff just so I can touch on a little bit of residential, but then you hear these horror stories of students that are treated like labourers and not students. Apprentices that are treated like labourers and don’t get that experience, so we’re really trying to hold industry to be more accountable for that as well. And bringing them into the educational process ’cause with apprenticeship is so siloed it’s you know you work for a bit, you work for your 50 weeks or whatever, but then you go to school but they don’t really connect. I mean, there’s this school, yes, and it’s.. you’ve got the theory and all that, but it’s we don’t tie it all together. And at the end we just kind of say, OK, you’ve got all this now your 6000 hours, like 5000 hours, whatever it is. 4500 hours. Then you know, you pass the theoretical side of things at the school. So let’s mash those two together and call it a certificate of qualification. Then you go on to write a multiple choice test and you are now a Red Seal whatever, right? So we’re trying to move outside of that, which I mean I’d love to get rid of that multiple choice. A friend of mine, Mike Smith, from an undisclosed college would talk about burning it down and getting rid of that because what does that really prove other than they get really good at memorizing? But again, it’s really easy, it’s really easy to mark.
Tim: No kidding.
Chad: So I see the value in it, but Mike would want to get rid of that, yeah?
Tim: Yeah, I don’t think Mike’s alone in that adventure. So a ton of stuff there. When you’re looking at bringing back the book and going into almost like a digital log where apprentices can track their progress through the system through not just year to year, but almost essentially job to job and skill to skill, task to task. Is there any talk or is there a hope to use that as.. in combination to the Red Seal exam or even because I know in Alberta you guys have the provincial TQ? So is there any talk in marrying that together where apprentices can essentially get credit for certain aspects of their exam where they don’t have to quote unquote, write that piece.
Chad: That hasn’t come up in the conversations I’ve been, but I think it’s a natural progression like I think it will end up in that direction. I think ’cause there has been like little quips about the Red Seal exam, and I think anybody who’s on that working group that I’m part of was, they say that it’s problematic, but there’s a reason for it. But I could see that Tim. I mean, I’d love to hear your thoughts on that too. Like what do you think if we had eportfolios? Do you think that gets rid of like having to prove the Red Seal. And what would we do with that Red Seal? Like, how can we assess for it? Because it becomes.. here in Alberta, you can get your…you can pass your TQ and you don’t even have to get a Red Seal. Right, you can. You don’t have to take that Red Seal exam.. you you’re still a plumber here in Alberta and you say, OK, I’m never leaving Alberta, so why even bother getting my Red Seal.
Tim: Yeah, and that’s been a problem, I think, nationally, when it comes to people being able to move from one job to the other and I’ve seen that from two arms lengths away where you know apprentices have moved from one province to the other to even go to school and then go back to their home province to work. And I think having a digital portfolio is probably the best of both worlds, and I look at trades like cook and hairstylist and we have a good friend, Sally Vinden who’s been on the cusp of that whole change with hairstylists where they actually have a practical and a written for their Red Seal. Which really just makes sense, because it’s a natural progression from the practical theoretical experience that apprentices have when they come to our schools, right? They’re going to be sitting in the classroom, yes, but they’re also going to be going to a shop or some kind of lab and not just in trades, but you’re seeing that in other areas of vocational education too, like nursing and lab tech and X-ray and all these, all these different subsets of that. There’s lots of hands on that happen, and the question that I think you and I wrestle with as well as a lot of other people is how do we assess that properly, right? Yeah, we can create a rubric and have all that stuff and check boxes off, and that’s great. But how does that integrate into their final mark, right? And traditionally, those practical exams have been weighted low compared to the theory. And I wonder if there’s room in the dialogue to see those numbers balance out a bit more. You know, because we could all say that there are people in the trades where they wouldn’t even need to come to school, they can just write the exams and off they go. And then there’s people who come to trades because they’re, for whatever reason, they’re not really good in the theory, right? But they’re great with their hands, and so why would we want to penalize apprentices with, uh, with an exam that’s meant to be more of a gate than an actual assessment tool. And you know our good friend Nikki-shout out to Nikki- would be shouting from the rooftops right now about all the assessment stuff that’s going on. But I think that there’s going to be have to be some kind of progression to proving that you can do the work outside of A,B,C,&D.
Chad: Mmhmm. Agreed. Even when I was in industry as an operations manager and I had a resume come across my desk and somebody would say they could bend pipe. But then when so you look at the resume, sometimes you have time to call the references, sometimes you don’t. You don’t call all the references, whatever, at the end of it you hired this person because you know they checked all the boxes, but then you get out and their pipe bending is absolutely horrific. And so if I had had access to somebody’s portfolio like when somebody goes for advertising or for marketing or art, fine art, they bring that in. They show their portfolio. Well why can’t we do that in trades? And sometimes they’re called artisans, right? So why not? Why don’t we have these portfolios? And I have had people bring their photo albums in to show me some of the work they’ve done and that makes a difference. So why can’t we put that in there? And it’s now so easy, our students can take pics. Our students do take pictures. They’re snapchatting and TikTok-ing all their work. Half the people I follow on TikTok now are tradespeople that are electricians. They’re posting almost every day about some of the amazing work they do well that becomes something. And if we could somehow link that to a portfolio, well, then they’ve got proof that they could do it.
Tim: Yeah, and this is part of that wholesale burning down and rebuilding of the trades education system because I think that we miss the boat educationally sometimes because we’re behind in the curriculum that we’re teaching. You know where, in the plumbing world, materials have been evolving and new technologies have been brought into the construction world so much, that why would they come to class and learn about a joining method that they have never done and never will do. And yet it’s part of this archaic, archaic may be a strong word, but archaic curriculum package that they have to read through and then write an exam on something that you know very few people actually really do, but somehow it made it into the curriculum.
Chad: Well, aside from like humanities, I mean this could go broad over almost every single discipline in a post-secondary institute. The moment, the curriculum is always outdated, always. I don’t care what field you’re in. You can be in nursing. You can be in electrical, you can be in informational technology the moment you show up and you buy that obscenely expensive textbook, it’s completely out of date. So maybe we need to rethink education, this is Mike speaking now, education as a whole, and think about well, do we..are we here to teach our students about the latest technologies? Because we can’t, we’re always behind, or are we here to help facilitate to learn how to learn? It’s this discussion you, Sally, and Lucy and Mickey and I have had ad nauseam. Should we work on those metacognitive skills, should we be working on those essential skills, and yes, we do it under the context of plumbing or we do it in the context of electrical or information technology or architecture. But we’re teaching our students more holistically, as opposed to the technologies and the hands-on stuff they should be getting out in industry. The same thing goes for like here in Alberta, too, with this apprenticeship stuff that they’re going through, they’re doing what they’re calling an apprenticeship expansion where they’re trying to bring in other disciplines into the apprenticeship model as well. So somebody who’s working in data analytics, well they could come to the college and we could teach them about algorithms and all that. And then after two years they get a diploma and try to get a job or we can partner with industry and we teach them how to do certain things that the industry is telling us that they need. Then they go out and they work for a bit in data analytics. So much like we do in industry except for now we, our, curriculum is always so behind on everything. And that’s what I’m saying. That’s one thing I could say as a dean, in having my feet in trades and in technology and being part of all these other committees, we’re seeing that in everything, aside from like a course on Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, like that maybe doesn’t change, but everything else is rapidly changing all the time. So why are we so focused on this curriculum when we need to be focused on other things I think, like we’re in this area where we can actually do some good for people.
Tim: Yeah, so do you think the curriculum needs to be um… well, there’s probably two parts to this question. One, do you think curriculum needs to be released regionally-that it can evolve and adapt regionally-as well as, do you think curriculum should be built or could be built with more interested stakeholders at the table A.K.A students or recent grads?
Chad: Yeah, I think what needs to happen is a opposed to- and this is I think a problem across PSI’s everywhere-is we have us sit down as our subject matter experts who’ve been in the college system now, I haven’t been on the tools for 12 years, but then I think that I’m part of committees where they’re designing curriculum for trades, right? And so, but I don’t see a lot of industry there, and I definitely do not see students there, and I don’t see former students there. So how powerful could it be if we actually have the students having a voice in there and industry having a voice? And yes, we have articulation communities and we have our program advisory committees and all that sort of apprenticeship committees. But it’s not the same as if we get them in there as an actual stakeholder as opposed to just like showing up to a meeting once a quarter and giving their two cents, it would be very interesting to see if we could design curriculum around that sort of thing.
Tim: Yeah, I absolutely agree. What do you think are some of the barriers to getting industry to the table to help with curriculum development? Because I don’t think Alberta is unique in the challenge.
Chad: I think it’s an old school mentality. The big thing that I think we’re going to run into is it’s always been done this way, why? Why are we changing it? It’s working. They’re getting students coming through, you know, apprenticeships. It’s very busy. Yeah, we have low… I can’t really…You’d know the stats better than I would, but from the time an apprentice starts, to the time they get the Red Seal. Is what? 50% actually make it through, so, but they look at that number and celebrate it.
Tim: Yeah, Yep.
Chad: And so I would say that’s 50%, it’s great we got a lot. If you have 700,000 start then you can have 350,000 people at the end of it, but I think that we got to get past that idea and it’s just it’s very different, like the change is hard and trades traditionally, even in the time that you and I’ve been in the trades over the past 30 years, we’ve seen it change substantially. But even like the mindset of you always treated your apprentice like they were garbage, because that’s the way you were treated. We’re starting to finally see that change, even though it’s taking some time. It’s just I would love to like, well, we always will burn it down and then build it up right away, but I think it’s going to be slow changes and getting the right people in the right positions and taking those students, moving them into faculty positions, moving them into administrative positions, moving them into government positions. That’s how that’s going to be a slow change, and I think that’s how we’ve got to where we are right now, just all that slow change from before, so I think we keep working ahead. I think in having these types of conversations, but not just with you and I, but with everybody that is interested in having them, then we can do something about it.
Tim: Yeah, I totally agree. Talk to me a little bit about the perspective that industry has of post-secondary in your context there in Alberta.
Chad: Well and how? Like as far as trades is concerned or…?
Tim: Yeah, as far as far as trades is concerned like what’s the perspective of industry to post-secondary?
Chad: It’s.. I mean for in my area, let’s just talk about Medicine Hat then, which is a small city about roughly, with the surrounding areas, we have 170,000 people here, right? The college, it has a presence because it is the college right? Everybody talks about, they don’t say it’s MHC or whatever. They always talk about this over-arching brand of “the college”, so I think there is an understanding that it’s there, it’s necessary. But it’s been islanded, and I think a lot of institutes are like that in this, and the ones I’ve been involved with anyways… and I don’t say that it’s a bad thing, it’s just, is the way that these things are, but… they will…an institute will design things and then go out to industry and say OK, here’s what we’ve designed: What do you think? Or are you on board? Or here’s what we’ve designed: Please enroll. Now that it’s, it’s been the way things have been done, it’s the way things are done internally in colleges. Today we have, and I think we’ve talked about this too, the problem is you have these instructional designers that will build things and then they will go to the trades department, say “here use this” and they… “But don’t worry, we’ve got a workshop for you.” Whereas how many times, how do we have people being brought in? BCIT was good. They had a great team there that would start to bring people like yourself in or me and to have conversations right? But what we need to do and what I think I’m excited about Medicine Hat College is. They’re really trying to like, yes, they maybe have been an island because that’s the way post-secondary institutes have been, but now they’re laying down a lot of bridge work and trying to bring in industry before they even come up with one single outcome for a course. Because that’s, I mean, if we talk, I mean Sally and I, we’ve talked about this, about backwards design. You need outcomes and work backwards, right? It would be interesting, or it is interesting and this is already starting to happen in our colleges, what is… what would the difference be from something that we as a college would design versus what an actual industry stakeholder would want. And it’s, sometimes they’re aligned, but there’s some things that we miss, and it goes back to my point about our curriculum will always be out of date because our fingers are not always on the pulse of what’s going on in industry. So, if we could put those bridges down, bring the stakeholders in before we even design a course. If we bring the stakeholders in just to say, “what are your needs?” And then from there, we decide OK, you know you need something in a sustainable energy professional. OK, well, let’s talk about that. What would that look like to you? And so, having those discussions then building something and having them go OK, let’s…we’re going to go away for a bit. You come back and then you build it and you bring it to them. And you say, what do you think? And when they say, “I wouldn’t have that part in there,” then take that part out. As opposed to just these stakeholder consultations that sometimes happen where we just show and we say “OK, well, thank you for your input” and maybe just go ahead with what we want to do anyways. It’s interesting when you actually listen to them and start moving things around because of the things that they’re saying and, boy, wouldn’t it be interesting to see what kind of institute you would have doing that? Where are you actually bringing the stakeholders in as opposed to being prescriptive, you’re being collaborative.
Tim: Yeah, it’s always more powerful when you’re collaborative like that, and it certainly goes a long way in building trust between the two entities, right? Because I mean there’s a…I think there’s a long history of mistrust from industry to post-secondary education. And you know, I’ve heard this statement tons of times where, you know, we’ll send you to school to learn the book stuff, but I’m going to train you how to really do it?
Chad: Yeah, totally.
Tim: And even that whole language behind are we educators, or are we trainers? Right, that’s a huge shift for a lot of people who are teaching. Because they come out of a system where they were trained to do certain things and now, they’re looking at teaching and it’s like well, I’m training them to do tasks. And it’s like, well, I’m not sure that that’s why we’re here, but okay, and then you move on to try and change that perspective.
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Tim: Thanks again, Chad for the wonderful time we spent together on this episode talking about pedagogy over technology. I also want to thank you the listeners for taking the time to listen to this encouraging episode. And I also want to encourage you to register for the Trade Summit series happening later this month at BCIT where you can attend either in person or virtually and you can register for that event at bccampus.ca/events. I also want to take some time to encourage you to sign up for our newsletter, you can go to bccampus.ca and sign up for our newsletter there. Visit the website and take a look around. There are some great tools there for you to use and consider in your own praxis. If you like this content, show us some love on our socials. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn under @BCcampus. We’re also on Instagram at bccampus.ca. Now again visit BCcampus.ca for more information and to subscribe to our newsletter to get all the latest BCcampus information and offerings. And you might be able to catch one of these episodes live. Tune in next week for BCcampus Mixtape, you’ll find more episodes on BCcampusmixtape.com and subscribe wherever you prefer to listen to your podcasts. Thanks again! Have a great day.
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