We integrate digital innovation across research, education, engagement, and operations, and equip students, faculty, and staff with critical technological competencies, adaptable resources, accessible and affordable tools, and infrastructure to explore complex social and cultural inquiries.
Our approach emphasizes experimentation, ethical integrity, accessibility, affordability, and inclusive and reciprocal relationships with communities, stressing the importance of wellbeing, equity, and human connection in an increasingly digital world. Digital empowerment allows us to ask new questions, reach new audiences, enhance knowledge exchange, address societal challenges, expand research capacities, and innovate our methods. Arts expertise and values also ensure that sustainability, ecological responsibility, and environmental literacy guide the development of policy, infrastructure, and careful use of technology.
Goals and actions
Action 5.1.1: Establish an Advisory Committee with representation of students, faculty, and staff to guide the overall implementation of the Faculty of Arts’ digital strategy and resource allocation.
Action 5.1.2: Develop evidence-based ethical frameworks and guidelines, informed by Truth and Reconciliation, digital ecology, equity, wellbeing, and accessibility, to guide AI use, and employ minimal computing options and other sustainable digital practices.
Action 5.1.3: Identify opportunities to support computational and digital projects with social impact that aligns with Faculty of Arts commitments, including strengthening the role of Arts in shaping public policy around digital technologies.
Action 5.1.4: Ensure curricula, certificates, and specializations featuring digital scholarship encompass critical, ecological, and ethical perspectives by incorporating the history of technology, data, its relationship to society, and the role of human expertise in shaping these fields.
Action 5.2.1: Establish and strengthen partnerships for collaborative infrastructure initiatives within and outside of UBC and expand research support services and software.
Action 5.2.2: Conduct a comprehensive assessment of existing digital resources, tools, infrastructure gaps, and support needs, and enhance and expand access to skilled developers, digital tools and resources such as servers, specialized software, and AI models.
Action 5.2.3: Identify and reduce critical gaps to enhance digital accessibility, affordability, and wellbeing, prioritizing sustainability and equitable access to computational resources.
Action 5.2.4: Explore the development and enhancement of digital maker spaces and showcase areas with upgradable infrastructure to foster community engagement, knowledge exchange, and co-learning.
Action 5.2.5: Equip learning and study spaces with the technology needed for tech-intensive teaching and collaboration using a phased, targeted, and sustainability-informed approach.
Action 5.3.1: Incentivize the development of academic programs and micro-credentials that integrate digital competencies within the Faculty of Arts and in collaboration with UBC partners.
Action 5.3.2: Create and expand opportunities for students to engage in project-based learning using digital applications to solve real-world problems.
Action 5.3.3: Support innovative curricula and pedagogy that apply digital methods, including multimodal outputs, natural language processing, machine/deep learning, archiving, image, text, data, and spatial analysis, while ensuring that digital literacy includes critical engagement with the ethical, social, and environmental dimensions of technology.
Action 5.3.4: Work with units to update degree outcomes, revise programs and/or courses to negotiate/align with digital advancement, such as AI, encoding, analytics, data preservation, towards critical and responsible use of technology.
Action 5.4.1: Foster Faculty-wide conversations on ways to support digital integration and to evaluate and recognize diverse forms of research excellence in digital methods.
Action 5.4.2: Promote and support digital research funding opportunities.
Action 5.4.3: Promote available resources and accessible training to help faculty and students stay current with digital research advancements and integrate them into teaching and research.
Action 5.4.4: Enable participation and contributions from different fields and roles in developing digital initiatives, including in research and teaching.
Action 5.4.5: Attract funding and opportunities to create specialized expertise and roles that drive advancements in digital research and creative practice.
Action 5.5.1: Strengthen existing digital collaborations and knowledge-sharing opportunities, and develop new opportunities across the Faculty of Arts, UBC, and with external partners.
Action 5.5.2: Expand digital literacy programs and resources on-campus and beyond.
Action 5.5.3: Advocate for innovative grant structures and facilitate securing diverse funding sources to support the use of digital methods for social, environmental, and community good.