Engaging Staff in a Conversation About the Future of Post-Secondary Education
Background
Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) in Vancouver, British Columbia, offers a unique blend of hands-on training, experiential learning, and traditional academics.
With more than 48,000 students at five campuses, the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) is one of the largest polytechnic institutes in Canada. The 3,000 faculty and staff at BCIT are on the cutting edge of current teaching practices, focused on giving students the knowledge and applied skills they need to start out in the workplace.
As part of a broad, ongoing strategic planning process, BCIT engaged its staff to define the institute's future of teaching and learning—one that will keep it at the forefront of applied post-secondary education for years to come.
BCIT was looking for a way to make their discussions more engaging and productive. They partnered with ThoughtExchange because they felt our platform would elicit concise and thoughtful input from more staff members than traditional engagement methods could reach.
“I wanted to make contact with the faculty and staff as a whole, and in an institution of our size we can’t do that with town halls or one-on-one meets,” says former BCIT Vice President Academic Dr. Tom Roemer. “That’s how we ended up partnering with ThoughtExchange. I was looking for an online platform that wasn’t a discussion board. I didn’t want to end up with hundreds of threads that are all 20 layers deep and are very cumbersome to go through.”
At the same time, Dr. Roemer and BCIT Supervisor of Education Technology Bryan Fair wanted to avoid the limitations of a survey.
"Most surveys are too prescriptive, the questions or the prescribed answers may appear ambiguous. Any framework that imposes some kind of structure on the conversation implicitly influences the outcome. That’s exactly what we tried to get away from."
An open and productive discussion
BCIT leadership asked its staff four open-ended questions in its engagement so their faculty could confidentially respond in their own words, on their own time.
“Any time people had a few minutes, they could pop in,” says BCIT Supervisor of Education Technology, Bryan Fair. “They were able to engage at multiple points over a period of time, share their thoughts, and rate thoughts of others.”
“There’s not a lot you need to learn, or rules you have to follow,” adds Dr. Roemer. “There’s a certain entertainment factor because the rating is interactive.”
Along with the ease of participation and use, Fair says ThoughtExchange facilitated an open conversation that stayed productive and concise. “People are weighing in, in a very simple way, on other people’s ideas,” Fair explains. “They can say they like an idea and don’t have to go into a narrative as to why that is.”
BCIT’s faculty also appreciated the ThoughtExchange engagement process. “What I really enjoy about ThoughtExchange is the fact that I have a voice,” says Connie Evans, a faculty member at BCIT’s School of Health Sciences. “I can give an honest opinion, and track what others are thinking. There are over 3,000 employees at BCIT, and we never know what everybody’s thinking. Using ThoughtExchange really brought us together.”
Fair adds that the way the ThoughtExchange platform analyses the data significantly sped up the engagement process. In a previous engagement initiative using surveys and focus groups, he spent 80 to 100 hours over three months manually collating 18,000 comments.
With help from ThoughtExchange’s built-in qualitative analytics, Fair spent about five hours on the process and shared the results within three weeks.
"There are over 3,000 employees at BCIT, and we never know what everybody’s thinking. Using ThoughtExchange really brought us together."
Gaining "confidence credit"
The most important direct results BCIT got from their engagement were the numbers. More than 400 people shared almost 800 thoughts, far exceeding their initial goal of 100 people and 250 thoughts.
“One of the biggest positive outcomes I saw was that people really used it for what it was meant—to share ideas,” Dr. Roemer says. “After the pure number of participants, my biggest surprises were how thoughtful a lot of the input was and how collaborative the conversation was.”
Dr. Roemer adds that the engagement also validated his vision and gave him greater confidence in moving forward with it.
"It provided a bit of a mandate from the faculty, it was reassuring that it matched my own vision. And due to the fact that 400 people participated, it has some weight now. A discussion like this provides you with ‘confidence credit’ so to speak. You know you’re on the right track from the start."
BCIT continues to use ThoughtExchange to engage its staff and students, as well as the wider community, in various planning initiatives.
“ThoughtExchange has provided a platform and behind-the-scenes intelligence to immediately engage our community, and to keep them engaged,” Dr. Roemer explains. “We use it for educational and strategic planning, or to ask for input on projects like our campus development plan. ThoughtExchange allows us to assemble a roadmap of key themes and signature activities for the Institute.”
British Columbia Institute of Technology, Vancouver BC
