Teaching & Learning Centre Information for Chairs | The Teaching & Learning Centre | Seneca Polytechnic

_{Updated: Jan. 29, 2026}

Welcome to the Teaching & Learning Centre Information Hub for Chairs!

This page is curated with you in mind, serving as a central resource hub to assist you in planning and supporting your faculty members. Here, you will discover a spectrum of resources tailored to empower and enhance the teaching and learning experience for your faculty.

Navigate through the following key areas:

• Teaching & Learning Day Winter 2026 on Feb. 24
• A Focus on Assessment
• Supports for Generative AI
• Support for Flexible Delivery
• Faculty Development Program Schedule and Deadlines
• The Professional Development Plan for Non Full-time Faculty Members
• Learn@Seneca Blackboard Ultra Resources
• New Faculty Orientation for Non Full-time Faculty for Winter 2026

This hub is your ally in empowering your faculty and steering them towards success. For any questions or additional support, feel free to reach out to us at teaching@senecapolytechnic.ca.

Teaching & Learning Day Winter 2026

Join us on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026 at Newnham Campus for a day focused on Emerging Technologies in our ever‑changing educational landscape. The program features an engaging keynote on today’s most transformative technologies, an open and honest student panel discussion, and workshops that offer practical ways of implementing this technology into your own teaching.

The event theme is Emerging Technologies: Advancing High-Quality Learning Experiences.

Visit the event website for the full event schedule, workshop listings, and other information.

A Focus on Assessment

Discover the assessment resources created by our Team: Assessment Resources (PDF).

This PDF highlights the webpages, nutshells, and videos we have that focus on assessment (in general), authentic assessment, academic integrity and artificial intelligence, and formative assessment.

Reminder: The Teaching & Learning Centre can offer a workshops for your School. We also offer one-on-one consultations for faculty and instructors. Email us at teaching@senecapolytechnic.ca.

Supports for Generative AI

In fall 2025, the Teaching & Learning Centre offered a four-part webinar series focusing on using Generative AI in teaching:

• AI Literacy and Generative AI for Educators
• Effective Techniques for Generative AI Prompting
• Assessing Learning in the AI Era
• Exploring GenAI Use – from the Teaching side of things

Resources and recordings are available in our Generative AI Webinar Series in November 2025 Spark Plug article.

GenAI Resources

• the Generative AI: Teaching & Learning Resources website from the Teaching & Learning Centre
• Seneca’s Academic Integrity Policy
• Seneca’s Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) Policy
• Generative AI – Faculty Toolkit – The Learning Portal

Support for Flexible Delivery

Upcoming sections of our Fundamentals of Flexible Course Design and Delivery course:

• TBD

We have a Flexible Course Design website!

We also recommend our Envisioning Your Course Through a Flexible Lens nutshell (a self-paced online module), our Five Things I've Learned about Flexible Teaching from Conversations with Seneca Faculty Spark Plug article, and our Seneca Flexible Classroom Instructional Video which shows how to set up and use the flexible classrooms on campus.

Faculty Development Program Schedule and Deadlines

FDP in Winter 2026

The Faculty Development Program schedule for winter 2026:

• Faculty Development Program 1 (also know as FDP1) is not running in winter 2026
• Faculty Development Program 2 (also known as FDP2)
  The live components will run on Wednesdays in hybrid mode. The in-person components will take place from 9:50 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Newnham Campus.
• Faculty Development Program 3 (also known as FDP3)
  The live components will run on Thursdays in hybrid mode. The in-person components will take place from 9:50 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Newnham Campus.

Faculty can now apply to register in MyPD for winter 2026.

Important deadline for you:

• If any of your faculty members currently in the Faculty Development Program will not be able to participate in the Faculty Development Program in winter 2026, please let us know before Oct. 15, 2025. Our staffing and scheduling for the Faculty Development Program bundles will be set up by then, making changes difficult.

Important deadlines for your faculty for the winter 2026 term:

• In winter 2026, FDP2 ends on Apr. 8, 2026 and FDP3 ends on Apr. 9, 2026; all participants should complete the deliverables by this date.
• If extra time is needed, the faculty member needs to let their facilitator know. The final deadline to complete the winter 2026 deliverables is Thursday, Apr. 23, 2026 — any faculty members who have not completed the deliverables for their winter 2026 course by Apr. 23 will not be eligible to participate in their next course in summer 2026.

FDP in Summer 2026

The Faculty Development Program schedule for summer 2026:

• Faculty Development Program 1 (FDP1) is not running in summer 2026
• Faculty Development Program 2 (FDP2) is not running in summer 2026
• Faculty Development Program 3 (FDP3)
  The live components will run on Thursdays in hybrid mode. The in-person components will take place from 9:50 a.m. to 4:10 p.m. at Newnham Campus.

Faculty can now apply to register in MyPD for summer 2026.

Important deadline for you:

• If any of your faculty members currently in the Faculty Development Program will not be able to participate in the Faculty Development Program in summer 2026, please let us know before Feb. 15, 2026. Our staffing and scheduling for the Faculty Development Program bundles will be set up by then, making changes difficult.

Standing Schedule of the Faculty Development Program

There is a standing schedule for the Faculty Development Program:

• Faculty Development Program 1 (FDP1) runs on Tuesdays.
• Faculty Development Program 2 (FDP2) runs on Wednesdays.
• Faculty Development Program 3 (FDP3) runs on Thursdays.

The only variables in our schedule are whether a particular course is offered during a given term and the exact timing of each course. If we have two sections of the same course running, or if that course runs in May/June, we ask for the participants to be available all day to participate in the course that they need.

Please note that FDP1 does not run in the summer term and if FDP2 and FDP3 are offered, they will run in May/June. We do not have Faculty Development Program course running in July/August.

Professional Development Requirements for Newly-hired Full-time Faculty Members

As a reminder, The following are the professional development requirements through the Teaching & Learning Centre for newly-hired full-time faculty members:

• Participate in Micro-teaching Sessions or the Teaching & Learning Summer Conference
• Attend New Faculty Orientation
• Complete the three components of the Faculty Development Program

The next Micro-teaching Sessions is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 25-26, 2026 and the next New Faculty Orientation is tentatively scheduled for Aug. 2026.

The Professional Development Plan for Non Full-time Faculty Members

A professional development plan has been created for Seneca’s non full-time faculty members: PD Plan for Non Full-time Faculty. Every course in the PD Plan is micro-credentialled and the micro-credential can be used as proof of completion if needed.

These courses are open to all faculty members and instructors.

Upcoming courses:

• Foundations of Creating Accessible Content begins Jan. 20, 2026
  two-week online course — asynchronous content and assessments plus one synchronous session
  registration closes in MyPD at 2 p.m. Eastern on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026
• Accessible Presentations and Documents using PowerPoint and Word begins Mar. 3, 2026
  three-week online synchronous course
  Prerequisite: Foundations of Creating Accessible Content
  registration closes in MyPD at 2 p.m. Eastern on Monday, Mar. 2, 2026

Learn@Seneca Blackboard Ultra Support

Our Learn@Seneca website is where faculty can find all the resources they'll need to teach in Learn@Seneca. With how-to articles, best practices, resources, and videos, this space hosts all of the Teaching & Learning Centre's Learn@Seneca materials.

We recommend beginning with our Learn@Seneca Crash Course. It walks through the main features of Blackboard Ultra. We have the Quick Tour, a short introduction video about Learn@Seneca, and the Course Tour, showing what a course could look like in Learn@Seneca.

The Crash Course also include four instructional videos that cover the vast majority of topics faculty need to know to successfully teach in Learn@Seneca:

The First Look at Learn@Seneca – explore the menu and content areas of Learn@Seneca, then start creating content: documents, folders, and modules

Building Assessments – explore the details of assessments in Learn@Seneca

Using the Gradebook – explore the Gradebook in Learn@Seneca and see how all the same features are still available plus some quality-of-life improvements

Groups and Accommodations – explore how to create groups and add them to assignments, plus how to set up accommodations and exceptions

These are polished versions of our webinars that were recorded without audience questions.

Faculty may also be interested in our Learn@Seneca Nutshells! Nutshells are a series of quick, self-paced, online learning modules for faculty. Our Learn@Seneca series of Nutshells provide faculty with an overview of Learn@Seneca in addition to tips, best practices, and resources.

New Faculty Orientation for Non Full-time for Summer 2026

New Faculty Orientation is tentatively scheduled to take place in Aug. 2026.

Attending New Faculty Orientation is a professional development requirement for all newly-hired faculty members, both full-time and non full-time faculty members.

If a new non full-time faculty member has prior commitments and are unable to attend New Faculty Orientation, they can attend New Faculty Orientation for Non Full-time Faculty in early September 2026.

We explain this and provide more details on our Welcome New Faculty Members: Understanding Your PD Requirements page.

_{Header photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash}