Events & Blogs

Student’s View: My Interview Practice with an Industry Expert, June 2, 2021, by Denis Chsherbachuk

First, I would like to express my gratitude to BCIT for the opportunity to participate in this project. Especially to my instructor Nathan Devos for his work in preparing me for the interview with Clarius. And of course, thanks to Clarius for kindly agreeing to participate in our project, and in particular to Kris, VP Research & Development, who found the time to interview me.

A Communication class was included in my curriculum at BCIT, which introduced me to the basic concepts and requirements when writing a Resume, Cover Letter, and showed me examples of formal communication with colleagues in the workplace. However, the Job Application and Interview Online Course introduced me to a set of different techniques that improved my existing skills and supplemented them with new knowledge. I learned how to find the job ads that most match with my skill set, as well as analyze them, and highlight the key points that answer questions such as: What character/personality traits should the applicant have? What technical skills are they looking for? What might the company culture be like? and etc. This is a very important skill that helps to understand the company’s needs and values and gives me an idea of what the employer expects from me.

An equally important skill is to understand your strengths and be able to correctly reflect them in your resume. It is necessary to use an analytical and creative approach when writing a cover letter in order to interest the employer in your candidacy from the first lines. And here Nathan showed not only his professional qualities but also turned out to be a nice person. All our classes were held in a friendly manner, 45–60-minute sessions flew by as 5 minutes, which allowed me to feel comfortable and helped me to reveal my full potential.

During this course, we analyzed examples of various resumes and cover letters. After that, we learned how to format and organize a resume. We designed a cover letter writing plan, Nathan introduced me to the STAR approach, which stands for Situation, Task, Action, Result. It is a great way to tell a school or work-related story or describe any situation or project. It is a versatile technique that can always come in handy. We discussed and analyzed possible interview questions, worked on manners and word- choosing, and also conducted an entire session devoted to interviewing practice. Nathan has provided me with many helpful instructional videos that we discussed together after watching.

One blog post is not enough to list all the skills that I have acquired by participating in this project. Overall, I believe the Job Application and Interview Course should be offered to more students as it provides an invaluable and unforgettable experience.

[Denis is a first-year Electrical Engineering student at BCIT. He’s 20 years old and grew up in Kazakhstan. He’s been in Canada for less than 5 years]

Identifying Needs and Ideas, May 14, 2021, by Cristina Peralejo

The Why

As the Language Learning for Newcomers project ramped up, it became clear that in order to define the basic groundwork for the curriculum development side of the project, it was necessary to identify needs and ideas from the points of views of both instructors and students. Specifically, we were interested in finding out perceptions towards language learning and language support courses and what both groups imagined language support could look like in the future.

In order to determine this, I interviewed a number of language support instructors and students, and the Language Support Team distributed a survey to all students who had been recommended for language support, regardless of whether they had attended the classes or not.

Speaking with Instructors

It was a pleasure to speak with instructors and note how much they enjoyed teaching the Language Support courses despite its challenges. It was clear that they enjoyed working with the students in a more intimate setting and being able to watch them grow and improve as the months passed. Though the structure of the Language Support course different from program to program and from instructor to instructor, some core similarities remained. In general, instructors primarily support and scaffold the assignments given in the COMM courses and also work on students’ language development simultaneously.

Instructors mainly identified gaps in students’ writing, particularly in terms of grammar. Many also mentioned that students requested and needed repetitive practice of a skill and exposure to many examples. A few instructors mentioned that reading comprehension is a difficulty for students, especially reading instructions in assignments and tests. Finally, one instructor pointed out that students may benefit from information on study skills such as time management.

Instructors provided a great deal of insight into what support would be most useful in the future for themselves and for the students. This included:

• Banks of mini-lessons that can be customized across programs and departments
• An organized databank of materials to be used in Language Support courses
• Asynchronous materials which they could refer students to in the future
• Building a community for students to feel comfortable participating in

Interviewing and Surveying Students

Besides the survey which was sent out to all students who been identified for language support, I also had the opportunity to interview small groups of students in order to discuss their perceptions of their language support classes. The students I talked with were quite enthusiastic about their language support courses. They were happy to receive additional support with their COMM assignments, and to see how the grammar they studied applied to particular assignments. Another aspect they enjoyed was receiving personalized feedback from their instructor and peers in a safe setting. These positive attitudes towards language support were also clearly seen in the survey results:

The majority of students surveyed claimed they experienced difficulty in writing grammatically accurate sentences and organizing their ideas logically when writing, which confirmed the responses given by instructors. However, students also pointed to difficulties that they faced in all their skills throughout all their courses, not just their COMM courses. I was surprised to note that receptive skills, especially reading were highlighted by the students. Students claimed that reading exam questions and instructions on assignments were particularly challenging. Another challenge they identified both in interviews and in survey responses was speaking clearly so that instructors and classmates could understand them.

I concluded the interviews by asking students what kind of support might be useful to them in the future, and this question was also echoed in the survey. Many of the students interviewed remarked that it was helpful for instructors to provide guidance to them on where and how to begin improving their language skills as they felt lost as to where to begin. Survey respondents also indicated that self-paced, online materials on the Learning Hub would be a useful tool to have. Finally, the interview groups and the survey respondents were generally in favour of participating in a conversation circle with peers.

Next Steps/ Recommendations

It is clear that language support classes greatly benefit those students who attend them, and it is also clear that students need to be supported in all of their skills. While the language support courses provide ample opportunities for students to work on written output, students identified issues in reading assignments as well as being able to speak in class with confidence.  As well, considering that BCIT focuses greatly on workplace skills and that students appreciate the practical nature of their studies, it is also clear that any materials created have to be grounded in workplace culture, and students need to be made aware of how what they are learning applies to skills they will require in the job market. Finally, learners often want to improve their English, but often do not know where to start. Providing a road map for learners will be key to our next steps in this project.

Some of the next steps involved are to:

• Develop sample modules for the asynchronous student shells
• Develop corresponding sample modules for the instructor shells
• Request and receive feedback on what has been created
• Begin to flesh out a suggested curriculum for language support instructors grounded in the information gathered from the diagnostic assessments

Project Receives $500K from the Future Skills Centre, April 9, 2021, by Nathan

After waiting several long months for this to happen, our funding partner, the Future Skills Centre, finally announced the projects they’re funding across Canada. We’re proud to be one of 64 projects (selected from over 400 applications) to receive federal funding for our project “Language Learning for Young Newcomers.” Check out this interactive map of projects on the Future Skills Centre website.

Working on the application over the summer, I really hoped that we would get the boost we needed to push the project to the next level. I’d been working with other Communication instructors over the past years, but I knew that we had started to grow so big in terms of our testing capacities, number of recommendations, and how we thought we could best support our EAL students. We were essentially bursting at the seams. For example, the number of students we had screened in September 2020 had tripled since 2018, from about 400 to 1,200 students. We also recommended 300 students to Language Support and helped over 150 throughout the Fall 2020 term, so this federal funding was timely and needed. Now, we can’t wait to grow and support more students in different ways.

Since the official announcement, we’ve received so much support for this project from across BCIT; check out the great, positive comments on LinkedIn.

Link to BCIT News Release: https://commons.bcit.ca/news/2021/04/researchers-receive-funding-shock-proofing-future-of-work/

BCIT Hangouts, February 11, 2021, by Nathan

Today I got to hang out with some great student life advocates and talk about my favourite topics: Second Language Learning and Language Support.

Second language learning is a journey that has an impact on us emotionally, mentally, psychologically, and socially. In this video, I share about my own personal journey of studying in Germany for 5 years (in German), even though I didn’t know any German before I went.

I also talk about the benefits of attending language support, and that a small investment of time can go a long way in improving your grades.

Click on the link below to watch the full video:

BCIT Student Life Office – Second Language Learning & Language Support at BCIT | Facebook