University Continuing Education Instructor Onboarding Journey: A “Half-Baked” Training Shell & Call for Collaborative Insights2025
ETUG Spring Workshop: Show Me How You Did It – Day 2, May 23, 2025
Belinda Jin, Carol Tang-Lim | University Continuing Education Instructor Onboarding Journey: A “Half-Baked” Training Shell & Call for Collaborative Insights
This interactive session addresses the challenges faced by Canadian University Continuing Education (CE) in transitioning to online and hybrid education, emphasizing the role of CE instructors in creating effective online learning environments and the urgent need to onboard them with the necessary technological skills and pedagogical knowledge.At SFU Continuing Studies, we have developed an Instructor Onboarding and Canvas/Zoom Training Course to equip our new instructors with essential skills and knowledge in delivering courses online. Since its launch in 2023, the course has grown to 179 instructor participants, with each new instructor onboarding receiving an online synchronous demonstration with our learning technology specialists. In this 20-minute interactive session, we will showcase our five-module onboarding course, share its impact, and gather feedback and recommendations from participants to refine and improve the current course design further. Participants will engage in an interactive conversation to share their institution’s instructor onboarding strategies and best practices.
Key discussion points include:
- What types of training and support should be provided for new instructors? What essential topics should be covered in an instructor training course?
- How can we better support instructors in their transition to “teaching” online?
Our goal is to refine our onboarding course based on participant insights from this event while learning from other institutions’ practices. We welcome discussions on additional topics that could further support new instructors in their onboarding journey.
- WanQi (Belinda) Jin is the Learning Technology Specialist, Online & Flexible Learning, Lifelong Learning, at Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies
- Carol Tang-Lim is the Learning Technology Specialist and Project Manager at Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies
Attachments: Transcript (PDF, Word)
Note: If you notice an error in the closed-captions (or transcript file), please email
support@bccampus.ca with details of the error, the time stamp, and your suggested correction, if any.