Educational Leadership
Themes
The following key themes highlight the foundational elements of educational leadership within the Faculty of Science:
Innovative Pedagogy
Adopting new teaching methods and technologies to engage students and improve learning outcomes. It encourages creativity, critical thinking and the use of diverse instructional strategies like project-based learning and digital tools.
Student Involvement
Engaging students in their learning process boosts ownership and motivation. Involving them in decision-making and co-curricular activities helps develop essential skills like collaboration and leadership.
Community Engagement
Building strong connections between schools, families and local organizations enhances student support. Community partnerships provide real-world learning opportunities and help create a collaborative learning environment.
Open Educational Resources
Freely accessible teaching materials that educators can customize and share. They provide cost-effective, high-quality resources, fostering a culture of openness and collaboration in education.
Featured Story
Theme: Open educational resources
A Smart, Equitable, and Scalable Approach to Forming Student Teams
Dr. Bowen Hui, Professor of Teaching, Computer Science
Resource Innovation
Teamable Analytics: a web-based tool designed to support instructors throughout the team formation and monitoring process.
Dr. Bowen Hui and her team designed Teamable Analytics to support the varied pedagogical needs of instructors, making it easy to form student teams automatically with minimal hassle. The ultimate goal is to create equitable teams, improve learning outcomes and eliminate the guesswork that often accompanies team formation.
At its core it is a decision-theoretic algorithm—developed in earlier research—that scales to large classes and handles a wide range of constraints. Over the past four years, Teamable Analytics has been used in 50 interdisciplinary classes at UBC, supporting over 17,000 students. It’s fully integrated with Canvas and won the Best Demo Award at the International Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference in 2022.
Key Capabilities and Impact areas
| Functions | Outcomes | |
|
|
Dr. Bowen Hui (left) engaged in discussion.
In the tool’s initial deployment, the team quickly realized that a one-size-fits-all approach would not meet the diverse needs of instructors and classrooms. In response, two additional algorithms were developed: a graph-based social algorithm to facilitate connections among student friendships and a priority-based hill-climbing algorithm designed to promote equity-driven goals, such as minimizing tokenism.
“As an educator, forming effective teams in large classes is one of the most persistent challenges—especially when you’re trying to balance project needs, student diversity, and your own pedagogical goals. That’s why my team and I built Teamable Analytics” — Dr. Bowen Hui
Have an initiative or individual in educational leadership that you would like to see featured?
EL Stream Faculty
Faculty in the educational leadership stream focus on teaching excellence, curriculum development and play an important role in enhancing the academic experience within their departments and the Faculty of Science.
 |
Jake Bobowski Professor of Teaching, Physics |
 |
Tamara Freeman Associate Professor of Teaching, Chemistry |
 |
Lengyi Han Assistant Professor of Teaching, Data Science, Mathematics, Statistic |
 |
John Hopkinson Associate Professor of Teaching, Physics |
 |
Dr. Bowen Hui Professor of Teaching, Computer Science 2024 Killam Teaching Prize 2024/22025 UBC Open Education Resources (OER) Excellence and Impact Award |
 |
Trudy Kavanagh Associate Professor of Teaching, Associate Dean Earth and Environmental Sciences |
 |
Vikas Menghwani Assistant Professor of Teaching, Earth and Environmental Sciences |
 |
Abdallah Mohamed Associate Professor of Teaching, Computer Science |
 |
Craig Nichol Associate Professor of Teaching, Associate Department Head Earth and Environmental Sciences |
 |
Richard Plunkett Associate Professor of Teaching, Biology |
 |
Zoë Soon Associate Professor of Teaching, Biology |
 |
Paul Tsopméné Assistant Professor of Teaching, Mathematics, Statistics |
 |
Irene Vrbik Assistant Professor of Teaching, Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics |
 |
Robin Young Associate Professor of Teaching, Biology |
Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science Educational Leadership Award
In each academic year, a maximum of one award will be given to a faculty member for advancing the innovation of teaching and learning beyond one’s classroom.