BC TEAL 2025 Annual Conference

BC TEAL is proud to present our 2025 Annual Conference: Disruptive Educational Practices: Strategies for Transformation.

Please note that the Friday evening event, the TEAL Charitable Foundation Awards & Fundraiser, requires an additional ticket purchase. Please register here to secure your spot and join us in celebrating the awardees while fundraising for a better cause in TEAL.

Educators shine in times of change to face unexpected challenges. This is when creativity flourishes by combining proven practices with fresh and innovative ideas. These times call for transformation which can be rooted in tradition or experience, or it can arise through unexplored approaches. The synthesis of old and new ideas drives meaningful progress. Join other insightful and creative educators as we flourish within the power of our community.

2:00pm PDT

Practical GenAI Prompts for the EAL Classroom

Friday May 2, 2025 2:00pm - 2:45pm PDT

TBA

Sharing my journey from an uncertain start to discovering the power of AI to enhance both my teaching approach and students’ learning experiences. This session will begin with discussing the intrinsic value of language education, the differences between AI and human intelligence, and their unique roles in language learning.
Participants will gain insights into how AI tools can enhance language education by infusing AI into their instructional practice. I will cover practical prompts for material preparation, feedback methods, and learner activities, offering concrete examples of how AI technologies can help learners focus on the process of learning and not solely on the correct answer. I will also share the results and my implementation of AI writing task to enhance my teaching approach and students’ learning experiences. We will also address important ethical considerations, ensuring that educators are aware of the implications, such as data privacy, algorithmic bias, of using AI in their classrooms and potential pitfalls to be aware of when incorporating AI in language learning, providing a balanced perspective on this emerging field.

Speakers

Denise Lo

Full-time Faculty, Douglas College

Denise Lo teaches EAP and TESL at Douglas College and has 15+ years of experience from post-secondary institutions in Alberta and California. Denise's passion for EdTech earned her the University of Alberta Remote Teaching Award and is the current BCTEAL Post-Secondary Chair.

Friday May 2, 2025 2:00pm - 2:45pm PDT
TBA

Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence

8:30am PDT

Crafting Interactive Language Activities: Teaching Transformed Through Generative AI

Saturday May 3, 2025 8:30am - 9:15am PDT

TBA

This hands-on workshop demonstrates how generative AI can transform the creation of interactive language learning materials. The session shows how educators can leverage AI tools to develop custom digital activities, transforming traditional materials development while maintaining pedagogical effectiveness. During this session, participants will learn to create interactive online activities using generative AI such as generating web artifacts, creating H5P elements using AI chatbots, and developing HTML/JavaScript pages without even knowing how to program.

The workshop bridges AI technology with established principles of materials development (Tomlinson, 2013) and digital task design (Chapelle, 2020). The session demonstrates how AI can enhance rather than replace teacher creativity in materials development.

Participants will be given an overview of AI tools and pedagogical considerations followed by interactive demonstrations including creating single-file HTML/JavaScript activities, practicing activity creation, and troubleshooting common issues. Participants will also learn about generating web artifacts for language practice by understanding platform capabilities and best practices for chat prompting. Additionally, the session will help users leverage AI for H5P content. There will also be time to address practical considerations and limitations. Key features include step-by-step guides for each tool, prompt templates and examples, quality control strategies, pedagogical best practices, and adaptation guidelines for different language levels.

Participants will leave with practical skills for leveraging AI in materials development, understanding both the potential and limitations of these tools in creating interactive language learning experiences.

References

Chapelle, C. A. (2020). Teaching culture in the digital age: Research and practice. TESOL Journal, 11(1), e00450.

Tomlinson, B. (2013). Materials development in language teaching (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Zappa-Hollman, S. (2024). Artificial intelligence in language teaching: Pedagogical considerations and practical applications. Language Teaching, 57(1), 1-15.

Speakers

Nathan Hall

Instructor, Douglas College

Nathan Hall is an English language / TESL educator with over 19 years of experience. He is passionate about pedagogically-sound uses of technology for education.

Saturday May 3, 2025 8:30am - 9:15am PDT
TBA

Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence

10:00am PDT

AI Grader: Using Artificial Intelligence as a grading tool

Saturday May 3, 2025 10:00am - 10:45am PDT

TBA

With the increasing adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education, examining its ethical use has become essential. AI-related concerns extend beyond issues like deepfakes and biased algorithms to include critical considerations for classrooms, such as equity, fairness, academic integrity, and data privacy. Despite the growing interest, studies exploring AI in education often lack actionable ethical guidelines for educators.
This presentation aims to address this gap by critically examining the application of AI in education and providing ethical recommendations for instructors. The session will begin with an overview of the historical evolution and current role of AI in education. Next, it will showcase practical applications of AI, including a demonstration of an innovative AI Grader software developed by one of the presenters. Key ethical challenges, including equity and access, bias and fairness, and data privacy, will be analyzed in depth. Finally, the presentation will offer best practices for ethical AI implementation in classrooms and strategies to foster student awareness and engagement. This comprehensive approach seeks to empower educators to leverage AI effectively while upholding ethical standards.

Speakers

Naghmeh Babaee

LaSalle College Vancouver

Dr. Naghmeh Babaee has taught Liberal Arts courses such as Critical Thinking, Academic Writing, and Cultural Theory for over 20 years in Canada and abroad.

Tijana Sretenovic

LaSalle College Vancouver

Tijana Sretenovic teaches Math at LaSalle College Vancouver.

Saturday May 3, 2025 10:00am - 10:45am PDT
TBA

Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence

10:00am PDT

Using Roshi.ai to Generate Assessments, Rubrics, and Feedback

Saturday May 3, 2025 10:00am - 10:45am PDT

TBA

This workshop will teach instructors how to ensure that AI aligns with standards when creating assessments and feedback.
Nowadays, there are countless AI tools available for creating lesson materials. However, a paradoxical gap remains between the vast capabilities of AI and the narrow, specific needs of teachers when assessing students. For example, ChatGPT can easily generate countless questions, but it won’t directly reference the specific CLB benchmarks when creating those questions. As a result, teachers often still have to manually flip through curriculum documents and struggle to write rubrics.
The same gap exists when creating feedback on assessments. Many AI tools can provide general feedback on a student’s writing assessment, but teachers often need the feedback to be directly based on the rubric for that assessment.
Roshi.ai, an AI tool used by teachers across Canada, has recently sought to bridge this gap by providing tools that let teachers create standards-aligned assessments, detailed rubrics, and automated feedback based on those rubrics.
In this workshop, we will discuss in detail how these tools were developed in tandem with Canadian teachers to tackle this issue, and we will walk through exactly how teachers can use these tools in their assessments.
Specifically, teachers will learn to do the following:

Generate content for assessments that is both realistic and tailored to the assessment’s level
Create forms (e.g., dentist intake forms), brochures, and other documents
Develop dialogues and monologues with high-quality voices
Craft illustrated stories
Generate detailed rubrics that are both aligned with standards (e.g., CLB) and relevant to the assessment content
Get AI recommendations for feedback on student submissions, directly based on the rubrics

Presentation Outline:

Introduction
Why AI still struggles with assessments

Speakers

Jonny Kalambay

Founder, Roshi

Jonny is an education technology expert and the creator of Roshi.ai, a tool used by teachers across Canada to create lessons and assessments.

Saturday May 3, 2025 10:00am - 10:45am PDT
TBA

Artificial Intelligence, Assessment/Testing

11:00am PDT

Enhancing Language Learning with collaboration of AI and Teachers: Action-Oriented Feedback for Student language learning achievement

Saturday May 3, 2025 11:00am - 11:45am PDT

TBA

Feedback is essential for language acquisition and learning. However, providing detailed, actionable feedback can be time-consuming and challenging for language teachers. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to support language teachers by offering high-quality, personalized feedback to learners.
This paper explores how AI can assist language teachers in delivering feedback more effectively. First and foremost, prompt engineering is one of the essential skills to develop appropriate action-oriented feedback. A well-structured prompt should include students’ proficiency level, a full description of the task, assessment criterion, and learning objectives. In addition, AI could be prompted to start with positive reinforcement, identify areas for improvement, and provide actionable suggestions for progress. Additionally, AI can analyze all student errors and mistakes in a particular task and provide you with an action plan to enhance your classroom procedures.
Despite its benefits, AI-generated feedback has limitations. AI lacks contextual awareness and emotional sensitivity, which may reduce the connection between teachers and students. Furthermore, AI feedback is often overly formal which hinders learners from full understanding of the feedback. Therefore, while AI cannot replace human educators, integrating AI with teacher guidance can enhance the feedback process. In conclusion, educators should refine AI-generated feedback to better meet students’ individual learning needs.

Speakers

Malihe Mouavi

LINC Instructor, SUCCESS

Malihe is a dedicated TESOL professional with a PhD in English Language Teaching. She has co-authored qualitative academic journal articles and English language learning books. Currently, she is a LINC instructor.

Saturday May 3, 2025 11:00am - 11:45am PDT
TBA

Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence

1:00pm PDT

Avenue and AI

Saturday May 3, 2025 1:00pm - 1:45pm PDT

TBA

In this session, I invite managers and instructors to discover the latest advancements in integrating artificial intelligence (AI) within Avenue's learning resources. Recent AI developments and the upgrade to Moodle 4.5 have introduced innovative features designed to enhance the educational experience. WE are currently examining our options. We have deployed several AI features on our CanAvenue resource and will be using our experiences with this with the Moodle 4.5 upgrade in March 2025. Moodle 4.5 offers us the new opportunities such as a flexible AI subsystem that allows organizations to choose if, how, and where they want to integrate AI tools into their Moodle site. This subsystem supports integration with various AI providers, including OpenAI and Azure AI, enabling functionalities such as text generation, course content summarization, and image generation. These capabilities streamline content creation, allowing educators to generate text and images directly within Moodle's editor, thereby saving time and effort. Additionally, AI-generated content is tagged for transparency, and descriptions for generated images are automatically added, making it easier to create inclusive, accessible learning materials. When enabled by their instructor, learners can also use AI tools within Moodle to create content and summarize text, with all actions logged for review and continuous learning improvement. This session will provide an overview of these new AI-powered features and demonstrate how they can be effectively utilized to enhance both teaching and learning experiences. In May, there will be functioning and future AI integrations presented at this session.

Speakers

John Allan

Manager of Training Development, New Language Solutions

John, certified Ontario teacher, is as an experienced e-learning developer, instructor mentor and live support operator. He has been working on the Avenue project since the inception. He presented his first BCTEAL session in 1996.

Saturday May 3, 2025 1:00pm - 1:45pm PDT
TBA

Artificial Intelligence, LINC

2:00pm PDT

Transforming Language Learning with AI: Practical Tools for Educators

Saturday May 3, 2025 2:00pm - 2:45pm PDT

TBA

In times of change, educators thrive by integrating emerging technologies with established pedagogical practices. This session will demonstrate how AI-powered tools can transform language learning in higher education, making instruction more interactive and adaptive. First, the speaker will discuss the role of AI in modern classrooms and its impact on student engagement. Next, we will explore three powerful AI tools: Kapwing, which enables educators to craft and modify multimedia content seamlessly; Eleven Labs, which generates authentic listening materials to enhance pronunciation and cultural awareness; and Perchance, which creates AI-generated narratives for scenario-based language learning. Finally, the speaker will examine student feedback and classroom applications, showcasing AI’s ability to promote critical thinking, creativity, and real-world connections. By embracing these tools, educators can foster a vibrant and transformative learning environment, exemplifying the power of innovation in education.

Speakers