Congratulations to Dr. King and his project team for receiving the 2026-27 TLEF funding
Dr. David King and his project team were awarded the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF) to support the project Centering Queer Voices: Story-Driven Learning in Psychology.
Dr. King is a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology and the project members are:
- Dr. Kalina Christoff, Professor, Psychology, Faculty of Arts
- Dr. Jessica Tracy, Professor, Psychology, Faculty of Arts
- Andrés Montiel, Graduate Student, Psychology, Faculty of Arts
- Kiarah O’Kane, Graduate Student, Psychology, Faculty of Arts
“We’re really excited about this project as it not only aims to benefit queer students in psychology, it also directly involves them in the process of content development. The aim is to curate a database of narrative content and course modules featuring 2SLGBTQIA+ voices and perspectives that can be plugged into our undergraduate courses. Once the archive becomes available, and as uptake hopefully increases among faculty, we hope to see feelings of representation and inclusion improve among our queer students, and a sense of diversity in our curriculum enhanced broadly in the department.”
The TLEF supports UBC’s strategic plan, Shaping UBC’s Next Century, by advancing transformative learning at the university. It is funded entirely through a portion of UBC Vancouver student tuition.
Since its inception in 1991, TLEF has supported more than 1,400 teaching and learning projects. The 2026-27 Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF) awarded over $2.4 million to support 60 new and returning TLEF projects across UBC Vancouver, including Dr. King’s Small TLEF Innovation award.
Centering Queer Voices: Story-Driven Learning in Psychology will enhance the learning environment by embedding 2S/LGBTQIA+ student voices directly into psychology courses.
Through storytelling workshops that involve flexible contribution options, students will share their experiences in ways that respect their privacy and comfort level (e.g., video, audio, or written), generate fictionalized stories that communicate their personal experiences while protecting their anonymity, and/or curate publicly available narratives that reflect diverse queer experiences.
These narratives will be stored in a Digital Narratives Archive and used to create curriculum modules (case studies, teaching guides, assignments, and discussion prompts) that instructors can integrate into multiple high-enrollment courses such as Health Psychology, Social Psychology, and Abnormal Psychology.
Faculty and TAs will receive training to use these modules effectively and to facilitate inclusive discussions.
Additionally, UBC Psychology faculty Dr. Simon Lolliot and Dr. Steven Barnes continue as members of the project team for the Large TLEF Transformation project GRASP: Using Generative AI to Efficiently Provide Spaced, Elaborative, Interleaving Formative Assessments, which received renewal funding for its second year.
Led by Dr. Kayli Johnson in the Department of Chemistry, GRASP uses generative AI to help faculty efficiently create formative assessment questions that engage students in regular retrieval practice, spaced learning, and topic interleaving.
