Saskatchewan Polytechnic (Sask Polytech) serves students through applied learning opportunities on Treaty 4 and Treaty 6 territories and the homeland of the Métis. Learning takes place on campuses in Moose Jaw, Prince Albert, Regina and Saskatoon and through extensive distance education opportunities. Programs serve every economic and public service sector. As a polytechnic, the organization provides the depth of learning appropriate to employer and student need, including certificate, diploma and degree programs, and apprenticeship training. Saskatchewan Polytechnic engages in applied research, drawing on faculty expertise to support employer innovation and providing students with the opportunity to develop critical thinking skills.
Sask Polytech launched its Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) Plan in late 2021. The TEL Plan provides a framework for technological integration into the institution’s instructional activities. The plan’s vision is to use TEL as a platform for leading the rise of polytechnic education, which directly supports Sask Polytech’s overarching strategic vision of leading the rise of polytechnic education.
The TEL Plan contains several guiding principles and four thematic areas: learner-centric TEL, faculty support and development, sustainable infrastructure, and accessible and flexible curricula. Under each of these themes, we’ve identified several activities that will allow the institution to prioritize and focus efforts on sustainably integrating TEL across all academic endeavours.
A key priority of the TEL Plan was to increase utilization of various emerging technologies in our teaching activities. At the time the TEL Plan was created, there was some activity in the emerging technology space in various programs, but these efforts were more isolated than pervasive. To enhance the likelihood of success for this more intentional focus on emerging technologies, appropriate faculty support and development was a critical factor. We identified this factor as one of the key overarching themes within the TEL Plan. And within this theme, we identified a specific activity: creating a sandbox space at each campus for faculty and students to explore and experiment with educational technologies.
The sandbox spaces are physical and virtual environments where faculty can explore, experiment with and learn about new technologies they can integrate into their courses and programs. The sandbox spaces are equipped with various devices and tools, such as virtual reality headsets, 3D printers, drones, robots, sensors, microcontrollers and software applications. Faculty can also access online resources, tutorials, webinars and workshops to support their learning and development.
The goal of the sandbox spaces is to foster a culture of curiosity, creativity and collaboration among faculty and to provide them with opportunities to enhance their digital skills and pedagogical practices. The sandbox spaces also enable faculty to engage with students, industry partners and community stakeholders in cocreating solutions to real-world problems using emerging technologies.
Planning for the creation of these sandbox spaces started in early 2022. This planning work occurred in parallel with the full return of faculty, students and staff to campus as COVID-19 restrictions were lifted. This timing presented opportunities to repurpose and reimagine existing spaces to accommodate infrastructure such as the proposed emerging technology sandbox spaces. We consulted various stakeholders throughout the 2022 academic year to address a variety of logistic and functional considerations, such as space refurbishment, technology acquisition, furnishings and equipment, location on campus and staff development.
We soft-launched the sandbox spaces in spring 2023, with full operations and opening happening at the beginning of the 2023-24 academic year. The sandbox spaces are available at each of Sask Polytech’s four campuses—Moose Jaw, Prince Albert, Regina and Saskatoon. While slightly different in terms of space and configuration at each campus, the sandbox spaces contain a variety of instructional technologies, such as XR headsets and associated equipment, model active learning classrooms, podcast studios, remote teaching studios and game-based learning technologies, and they are staffed by learning technology trainers available to work with faculty and explore how they may integrate these tools into their teaching activities. In addition to one-on-one and small group training, we offer all faculty and staff professional development opportunities related to the emerging technologies on offer within the sandbox spaces throughout the year.
To complement the campus-based physical sandbox spaces, teams from across Sask Polytech’s Division of Learning and Teaching also created virtual sandbox spaces. The decision to create these virtual spaces came about through the consultation process for the physical sandboxes. Given the distributed geography associated with Sask Polytech’s campuses, parallel virtual sandbox spaces were created for faculty to acquire resources and support associated with the physical sandbox spaces to explore various emerging technologies virtually. We created virtual hubs for a variety of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality and game-based learning, that contain resources and links to external information. And we provided examples of Sask Polytech faculty using these technologies in their own teaching.
Faculty and staff feedback related to the sandbox spaces has been extremely positive. The resources, support and professional development opportunities have been beneficial to faculty, as they intentionally look to incorporate emerging technologies into their teaching as part of the wider TEL Plan implementation taking place institutionally. There has been an increase in the number of courses and programs in which we’ve started to embed these technologies. And discussions with leadership point to plans for further expansion in the upcoming academic year.
Overall, creating and implementing emerging technology sandbox spaces has been an institutional success. Next steps for their continued success will include creating strategies to maximize academic faculty and staff’s active engagement with these spaces, create training and laboratory spaces dedicated to specific emerging technologies (labs dedicated to game-based learning and XR are launching during the 2024-25 academic year), continued technology acquisition for faculty to experiment with in the sandbox spaces and expanding the suite of professional development opportunities on offer. These spaces continue to raise awareness and the profile of emerging technologies as a key consideration in delivering programs to students. And they are an exciting component of the institution’s continued evolution as a leader in technology-enhanced learning provision.