Jerry Achar is an Assistant Prof of Teaching in the UBC-EOAS’s Environmental Science program. He is passionate about creating learning environments where students feel seen and supported, and actively play a role in creating learning experiences that prepare them for life beyond their degree.
Meshack Achore is an Assistant Professor of Public Health in the School of Health Science. Meshack possesses a Ph.D. in Kinesiology and Health Studies from Queens University, Canada. Before his doctorate, Dr. Achore completed a Master of Public Health degree from McGill University, Canada, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Ghana. His research broadly focuses on health inequities and the socio-environmental production of health.
Jane-Frances Agbu is Adviser: Higher Education at the Commonwealth of Learning, working with regional, national and institutional stakeholders to strengthen authentic assessment practices in open, online and blended learning. Some of her contributions in this area include the “Authentic Assessment for Online Learning” MOOC, “Authentic Assessment in a Changing World”, and “Advancing Authentic Assessment in ODL: Implications of Human–AI Collaboration”
David Anekwe is the Academic Site Lead for the University of British Columbia’s Master of Physical Therapy (North) Program at the University of Northern British Columbia. His academic interests include distributed health professions education, interdisciplinary learning, and student education in rural and remote contexts.
Gage Averill
Elisa Baniassad is Academic Director of the Learning Technology Innovation Centre at UBC.
Megan Barker is a Senior Lecturer in Biological Sciences at Simon Fraser University, where she teaches large intro biology courses, upper-level cell physiology, and a graduate science teaching&learning course. Having had her sci-education career jumpstarted during a postdoc here at UBC, she now focuses on bringing authentic research and meaningful collaboration into undergraduate science courses, working with students as partners.
Simon Bates is Associate Vice-Provost, Teaching and Learning, at UBC. He is responsible for the academic leadership and support to faculty and departments creating credit and non-credit learning opportunities spanning areas of undergraduate, graduate and lifelong learning at the university. In addition, he oversees learning technology provision, new program development and academic integrity support to faculties. He has current research interests in the areas of advancement and impact of education-focused roles within universities and how institutions are responding to the challenges posed by AI in teaching and learning.
Jon Beasley-Murray teaches in the programs in Spanish, Latin American Studies, and Romance Studies at UBC. He has always hated grading. He was the recipient of the 2026 OER Excellence and Impact Individual Award at UBC Vancouver, which provided the seed money for this symposium. He has also repeatedly been nominated (and repeatedly rejected) for a Killam Teaching Award.
Kristjan Bondesson is a lecturer at California State University, Monterey Bay, where he instructs first-year composition courses across the disciplines. Kristjan gained interests in antiracist writing assessment ecologies and conducted survey research of experiments with ungrading by instructors of stretch and studio models at Monterey Bay. Starting in 2022, Kristjan began doctoral studies in educational leadership for social justice at California State University, East Bay, and is preparing to defend his dissertation, A Critical Discourse Analysis of Stretch Writing Assessments at a Campus of the California State University for Habits of Whitely Language. Kristjan hopes to draw upon the conceptual framework of antiracist writing assessment ecologies and habits of whitely language and implement labor-based grading in the courses which he teaches first-year composition which are offered by departments of social and behavioral sciences, liberal studies, and humanities and communication.
Carellin Brooks is a lecturer in the Department of Wood Science, Faculty of Forestry & Environmental Stewardship, at UBC. She has taught in Wood Science since 2021, at first online and then, once students returned to class, in person. Before teaching in Forestry she taught in Women’s Studies (now the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice), Continuing Studies, the Department of English, and Arts Studies in Research and Writing. She has published five books.
Miranda Burgess is Associate Professor of English at UBC. Their work considers the formal, figural, and infrastructural ways people have understood, represented, and organized themselves in community, especially in the time of early democratic revolutions and the nascent age of empires. They are working on two books, one on transport and figural infrastructures in the period 1780-1840 and the other on global networks of and in media history, with a focus on the codex and noncodex material book, from the 1780s to the 1910s. Miranda holds UBC Killam Prizes for research and teaching. For the English Department and the Program in Media Studies, they designed and authored an online media history course that marries hands-on learning projects in historical book arts with reflection- and documentation-based assessment and collaborative capstone research.
Jasmine Choi
Donna Chowdhury is an Assistant Professor of Project Management at Yorkville University, with a background spanning civil engineering and doctoral research in construction management. She holds a CPHR, PMP, PIDP, and CMBE, and her current work focuses on critical AI literacy and institutional AI strategy in higher education, including the 4V Framework (Verify, Validate, Value, Voice) featured in this presentation.
Michael Corman is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of the Fraser Valley. His research focuses on paramedicine education and teaches courses on medical sociology, sociology of families, sociology of health and illness, and gender and gender identities.
Clare Haru Crowston
Hessam Dehghani is Associate Professor of Teaching, Persian Language and Culture, Asian Studies, UBC.
María Eugenia de Luna is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Linguistics at the University of the Fraser Valley. Her teaching and research interests include language pedagogy, sociolinguistics, linguistic landscapes, and the role of assessment and emerging technologies in higher education. Her current pedagogical work explores approaches to assessment that emphasize process, student agency, and meaningful learning.
Robin DeRosa (https://robinderosa.net) is the Executive Director of the Open Education Network. Based at the University of Minnesota, the OEN is a collective of institutions and consortia that work collaboratively to make higher education more affordable, equitable, and engaging for learners. She has previously worked as a professor of literature and Interdisciplinary Studies, the founder and director of a faculty development center, and as the library director at a public university. She is the co-editor of Open at the Margins: Critical Perspectives on Open Education (2020).
Will Engle is a strategist for open education initiatives at the UBC Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology. He works on a range of initiatives that include helping to support open pedagogy-based assignments that emphasize students as collaborators in the production of knowledge as well as projects that support the effective integration of open educational resources (OER) into individual courses
Sheri Fabian is Director, Educational Leadership and Teaching Inquiry, at Simon Fraser University
Christine Goedhart
Kristy Hancock is a librarian at the University of Northern British Columbia. She provides library and research support to the distributed University of British Columbia health professional programs and collaborates with researchers on knowledge synthesis projects. Kristy holds a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University.
Claire Hay is a Learning Specialist for Curriculum and Assessment at the University of the Fraser Valley. She is also a sessional instructor in the Department of Planning, Geography, and Environmental Studies at UFV. Claire’s teaching and research focus on intentional course design and assessment practices that center learning and inclusivity through decolonial practices.
Christina Hendricks (Philosophy, UBC)
Asao Inoue is Professor of Rhetoric and Composition in the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts at Arizona State University. His research focuses on antiracist and social justice theory and practices in writing assessments. He is the author of Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing for a Socially Just Future (2015), which won the 2017 NCTE/CCCC Outstanding Book Award for a monograph and the 2015 CWPA Outstanding Book Award, and of Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom (2019).
Tara Ivanochko is Associate Vice-Provost, Teaching and Learning, and Academic Director of the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology at UBC.
Surita Jhangiani
Belinda Jin is a Learning Technology Specialist with Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies and a doctoral candidate in Learning Sciences at the University of Calgary. Her research focuses on online learning, student engagement, professional learning, and instructional design in higher and continuing education. She works with instructors and learning designers to create practical, engaging, and learner-centred online learning experiences.
Kayli Johnson
Pam Kalas
Jessica Kalra (Pharmaceutical Sciences, UBC)
Jared Khalifa (he/him) is a fifth-year BA Interdisiplinary Studies student with a program focus on Health Accessibility. Jared returned to UBC following a career as a Canadian National Team gymnast and as a dancer and stunt performer in film, television, and Cirque Du Soleil. With over ten years of teaching experience across local and international platforms, Jared is passionate about education, community development, and fostering collaborative approaches to learning.
Celeste Leander is a Professor of Teaching in the Departments of Botany and Zoology at the University of British Columbia, where she explores innovative approaches to collaborative and alternative assessments. Her teaching and scholarship focus on student agency, belonging, and creating university classrooms where curiosity and creativity replace the legacy of grades. She writes about her teaching experiments on her blog, On Teaching and Pie.
Anna Zi Lin
Rachel Lin is a PhD candidate in educational psychology. Her dissertation is on understanding student perceptions and experiences of failure, through the lens of student anxiety. As a former K-12 educator and current sessional instructor, she believes in cultivating authentic learning experiences that empower students to develop skills beyond traditional academics. She is newer to the world of alternative grading as she is trying it out for the first time this semester, but extremely enthusiastic to find an assessment method that matches her educational values.
Chuan Liu is an Assistant Professor at the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI). He holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum Studies, with research focusing on language and literacy education as well as technology integration. Prior to joining UPEI, he worked as a language teacher, curriculum manager, and school director.
Tony Mays is Director: Education at the Commonwealth of Learning in Vancouver, Canada. He has oversight of COL’s programme work in Higher Education, Teacher Education, Small States of the Commonwealth and Open Schooling. He has published and edited journal articles and books on AI, ODL practice and research, and Curriculum Design and Development.
Miranda Meents is a Lecturer in Biological Sciences at Simon Fraser University. Miranda was a PhD graduate of the Botany Department at UBC, a former teaching postdoc of the UBC Biology Program, and is now an enthusiastic advocate for plant, algal and fungal biology education. In addition to teaching large introductory and upper-division organismal lectures and labs, her work explores strategies for promoting affective learning outcomes, implementation of alternative grading, and options for decolonizing and Indigenizing teaching and learning in science.
Jeffrey Meyers has studied law in Canada and the UK and practiced in Canada and the US. He is most well-known for his research and commentary at the intersection of law and politics domestically and internationally, as well as the creativity, iconoclasm, and insistent interdisciplinarity of his research. Areas of interest include comparative legal theory and culture; the intersection of law and politics; the relationship between the rule of law and popular democracy; law and literature; legal mis and disinformation in the popular media. Professor Meyers is published in multiple peer-reviewed journals in the UK, the US & Canada.
Firas Moosvi
Yumiko Murai is an Assistant Professor in the Educational Technology and Learning Design program at Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University. Her research focuses on designing and studying learning environments that support making-oriented, creative learning experiences in formal school environments.
Liam Murray
Thuy-Anh Ngo works as an Educational Developer in the Office of Teaching and Learning at the University of Guelph, where she partners with the Ontario Veterinary College on curriculum development, assessment, accreditation, and faculty development. Her work focuses on competency-based education, learner-centred and inclusive teaching practices, and advancing educational research in equity, diversity, and inclusion. She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology and have previously supported medical education and accreditation initiatives at McMaster University
Mitra Nikimaleki
Wendy Norman is Director, Center for Accessibility, UBC
Christiana Okyere Folson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University. Her research focuses on the well-being and community participation of children and youth, particularly those with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), as well as racialized and other marginalized populations. As a Faculty Accessibility Fellow, Christiana also examines how diverse students experience asynchronous learning environments and strategies that enhance accessibility, engagement, and belonging.
Jako Olivier is an Adviser: Higher Education at the Commonwealth of Learning in Vancouver, Canada, where he leads the Activating Commonwealth authentic assessment for change, innovation and AI (ACAACIa-AI) project. He has published and edited books on self-directed learning and assessment, and open educational resources and assessment.
Emmanuel Omoarebu Lawani is a digital learning specialist and assistant lecturer at Kampala International University. He is pursuing advanced research in curriculum studies, learning sciences, and instructional technology with a focus on learners’ self-regulation, AI in education and assessment to enhance pre-service teachers’ professional development.
Louise Olivier serves as full-time Liberal Arts faculty in the Bachelor of Business Administration program at Yorkville University BC Campus. She is a multi-skilled educator and researcher focusing on multimodal pedagogy, alternative assessments, and experiential learning. She fosters inclusive and interactive classrooms, strong student support, and collaboration among colleagues, bringing scholarly rigour and practical creativity to every learning environment.
Jessica Pace is a Lecturer (education focussed) in The University of Sydney School of Pharmacy (Sydney Pharmacy School), and a registered pharmacist with experience in both hospital and community pharmacy. Her PhD research examined stakeholder perspectives of accelerated medicines approval and funding processes. She is also an experienced and passionate educator and strives to make meaningful and practical changes to the learning and teaching environment and processes to enhance the quality of teaching and the overall student experience. She is an Advance HE (formerly Higher Education Association) Senior Fellow, Fellow of the Society of Hospital Pharmacists Australia (SHPA), and Associate Fellow of the Australia and New Zealand Association for Health Professional Educators (ANZAHPE).
Maia Palka
Elly Park
Cassandra Pereira is a recent graduate and new sessional instructor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Simon Fraser University. She also works as a Research Assistant on several projects exploring Ungrading in the Life Sciences. As she begins her teaching journey, she is excited to explore how she can share her curiosity about science with students and create learning experiences that encourage them to be curious too.
Richard Price, a Professor of Political Science, is currently Director of Graduate Studies, Faculty of Arts. He has been awarded the UBC Killam Teaching Prize, and has recently developed undergraduate and graduate pass/fail courses to advance students’ personal growth and professional development skills.
Shayla Raine
Serene Rodrigues (she/her) is a PhD student in Interdisciplinary Studies. Her research focuses on assessment practices in university STEM classrooms. She is interested in uncovering pathways to help instructors adopt evidence-based assessment practices.
Alex Samur is a curriculum consultant at Langara College. She brings more than a decade of experience in higher education, journalism and digital learning, with a current focus on helping educators respond thoughtfully to generative AI.
Michael Schandorf (Journalism, Writing, and Media, UBC) works in the areas communication and media theory with an emphasis on practices of languaging. He teaches courses in academic writing, comparative knowledge-making, and media theory.
Jackie Stewart
Jesse Stommel (https://www.jessestommel.com) is a faculty member in the Writing Program at the University of Denver. He is also co-founder of Hybrid Pedagogy: the journal of critical digital pedagogy and Digital Pedagogy Lab. He has a PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is author of Undoing the Grade: Why We Grade, and How to Stop and co-author of An Urgency of Teachers: the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy.
Bronwen Tate (she/her) is an Associate Professor of Teaching and Undergraduate Chair in the UBC Vancouver School of Creative Writing, where she teaches poetry, literary translation, and creative writing pedagogy. She is the author of the poetry collection The Silk the Moths Ignore and co-author with John Vigna of A Practical Guide to Teaching Creative Writing: Supporting Inclusive Pedagogy, newly available with Bloomsbury Academic.
Timothy Taylor
Katja Thieme (Journalism, Writing, and Media, UBC) studies contemporary and historical genres of academic and political writing. She teaches courses on discourse analysis, research writing, and inclusive language practices.
Kaitlyn Watson is an Educational Research Developer with Transforming Inquiry into Learning and Teaching at Simon Fraser University where she supports faculty to investigate their teaching practice through the scholarship of teaching and learning. She holds a PhD in Education Studies and is a former classroom teacher. Kaitlyn is passionate about decolonial approaches to learning and teaching, social justice, and trauma-informed instruction and how these connect to instructional design and classroom practice.
Jay Wickenden
Erin Woodford (Indigenous Studies, University of Lethbridge)
Calla Zhang is a Liberal Arts faculty member at Yorkville University, where her work centers on academic literacy and scaffolded, authentic assessment design grounded in a dialogism-inspired approach to teaching.