Looking Back, Moving Forward

As the year comes to a close, I have been reflecting about the people, the ideas and the conversations that stayed with me throughout 2025.

Competencies and Recognition of Learning 

This year, much of my focus was anchored in recognition of prior learning, developing and assessing competencies, and valuing lived experience whether through training needs, environmental scans or RPL and competency-based assessment pathways. Some highlights include:

• RPL-Based National Certification Program (Canada): Designed, developed and launched a Recognition of Prior Learning-based certification for Career Development professionals. Awarded Professional Certification Programme of the Year by the e-Assessment Association.

• Training Needs Analysis: Reviewed and analyzed structures, curriculum, and training model to define the current state; led consultations to define the desired state; conducted gap analysis with best practices and EDI considerations; and delivered actionable curriculum enhancement recommendations.

• Competency-Based Faculty Development Program: Designed a structured yet flexible Faculty Development Program to build foundational skills in teaching, curriculum design, facilitation, and educational technology while advancing equity, diversity, inclusion, and Indigenous ways of knowing. The goal: support faculty growth from basic to advanced levels to enhance the quality of teaching and learning across the institution and cultivate a culture of teaching excellence and innovation. 

• Environmental Scan on Recognizing RPL Practitioners: Conducted a comprehensive environmental scan to assess the training needs within the field of Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR/RPL) across Canada. The project included practitioner and employer surveys, focus groups, interviews, and research to gather insights aimed at shaping the future of RPL/PLAR in Canada, including potential development of a national RPL certificate or voluntary certification program.

Takeaway: Partnerships and collaboration with clients and interest holders make recognition and learning systems stronger, sustainable, and capable of amplifying human potential.

Learning, Teaching, and Community Engagement

This year, I had the privilege of teaching my Instructional Design course at UVic CACE guiding adult learners to design meaningful, evidence-informed learning experiences while learning alongside to shape the practice of instructional design.

I wrote many blog posts and LinkedIn Articles and contributed to BCcampus's Digital Pedagogy Toolbox with my article: Who Are We Leaving Behind? where I reflected on the hidden costs of digital pedagogy and explored how we can address these challenges and promote more inclusive learning environments.

I attended CredX: B.C.'s Inaugural Symposium on Micro-credentials, Badges, and Recognition and BCPLAN Symposium and The Accessible & Inclusive Design Conference 2025 by The Training, Learning, and Development Community and met friends and colleagues, who like me, are passionate about promoting innovative solutions, sharing insights, and supporting recognition practices and accessibility across learning and work. 

I also presented at:

• CAPLA Conference (May)

• CAPLA Community of Learning (June) - "Reclaiming the L in RPL/PLAR"
  Experience alone doesn't guarantee learning

• CAPLA Fall Webinars (Nov)

• BCcampus Digital Learning Strategy (DLS) Forum (Nov)
  
  

Takeaway: Ideas grow stronger when tested in dialogue with a curious and engaged community who isn't afraid to challenge you. Collaboration is where learning multiplies.

Podcasts and Panels

Being invited for podcasts and panels offered a slower, more reflective space to explore. These conversations were less about answers and more about sense-making, which felt timely.

• Getting Comfortable with AI

• Fingerprints of Work: Humanizing Learning & Recognition in the Age of AI 
  Work Fingerprints

• Competencies in a Changing World of Work
  Competencies make the invisible, visible

Takeaway: Thoughtful dialogue and reflection together with peers and practitioners help navigate complexity and encourage innovation.

Questions That Kept Resurfacing

Across projects, presentations, and dialogue, two questions kept resurfacing: 

• How do we design learning, assessment, and work systems with a human-first mindset?

• How do we move beyond tools and trends to address authenticity, trust, and belonging in learning systems?

Looking Ahead to 2026

I am deeply grateful for the practitioners, educators, sector leaders, and peers who engaged thoughtfully and generously and for my colleagues, clients, partners and collaborators who trusted me with work that matters.

As we move into 2026, my commitment remains the same: to design and support learning and recognition practices that are collaborative, equitable, and deeply human.

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I want to acknowledge that this reflection captures some of the visible work from the year, but not the failures, challenges, or breaking points that sat alongside it. Growth is uneven, learning is messy, and meaningful work is shaped as much by uncertainty as by accomplishment. So, if this resonates, I hope it does so not as a "checklist of achievements", but as a reflection on learning, partnership, and the questions that continue to shape my work and as an invitation to learn/share, and to give ourselves and others a little more grace as we continue the work.

BCcampus Digital Learning Strategy Forum 2025

 

Taruna Goel Vodcast with Britt and Tracy

If AI were a song, movie, or book title, what would it be?

Well… I definitely have an answer, but you will have to watch the vodcast to hear it! I had such a great time chatting with Britt Dzioba, M.Ed. and Tracy Roberts about digital literacy, AI, and all the ways educators are trying to make sense of this moment. We reflected, we geeked out a little… and yes, I revealed my favourite tool too. 

Watch the vodcast here:  Taruna Goel Vodcast with Britt and Tracy

But that was just the warm-up.

Last week, over three days, the BCcampus Digital Learning Strategy Forum 2025 brought together more than 400 educators, leaders, and practitioners from BC and beyond. The theme was "Human-Centered Design in Digital Learning Environments" and every presentation, every conversation and every question was on point.

A huge thank you to the Program Committee, to every speaker who shared their expertise, and to all the participants who joined the conference. My session on "AI Literacies for Educators: From Fear to Fluency" was reflective, practical, and full of the competency-based goodness you know I adore :) We discussed the UNESCO AI Competency Framework for Educators and identified ways to include it into our teaching and learning practice. 

Here is a copy of my slides: 2025 DLSForum-TarunaGoel-Slides_18Nov25

I am leaving the forum feeling inspired and hopeful about where BC’s post-secondary community is heading. And if your team or institution wants to dig deeper into AI literacy, competency frameworks, or building skills-first pathways, I would be glad to continue the conversation.

If you made it this far, what is your answer to: 

"If AI were a song, movie, or book title, what would it be?"

#BCcampus #AILiteracy #AICompetencies #DigitalLiteracy #DigitalStrategy #BCPostSecondary #Educators #Teachers #Competencies #Skills #ArtificialIntelligence #CriticalAILiteracy #UNESCOAICompetencyFramework #UNESCO

From Choice to Judgment: Redefining Self-Directed Learning for the AI Era

This reflection emerged from a recent discussion with fellow post-secondary educators, where we explored how Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles come alive in real courses and programs. In the ongoing conversations about choice and voice, I often find myself returning to a simple truth:

Choice doesn’t automatically lead to better learning.

One of the goals of UDL and of any learner-centered design is to nurture learner agency. But so many learners, including adults returning to formal education, people engaging in continuing education, or professionals participating in corporate upskilling programs, are not accustomed to navigating multiple pathways. I have seen how giving too many options can quickly shift from being empowering to being confusing or even overwhelming.

What we don’t talk about enough are the self-directed learning behaviours that make any “choice” meaningful. Things like learning how to learn, how to self-assess and reflect, and how to connect content or information with purpose. In courses and in organizations, we tend to assume the existence of these meta-learning skills, and we don't put as much energy behind developing these skills more intentionally.

This is where leadership in learning design matters.

Our role isn’t just to provide choice and flexibility; it is to create guided structures or scaffolds that help people build confidence in making informed decisions about their own learning.

Image by wal_172619 from Pixabay

 

At the course level, guided choice-making is about helping learners make purposeful micro-decisions within the context of specific learning outcomes. In practice, within a course, this might mean offering guided choice-making. For example, providing a choice of recommended readings and additional resources, but framing those with brief cues such as:
- “If you’re curious about the theory behind this concept, explore this reading.”
- “If you want to apply it in your work context, try this one.” At the organizational level, the same principle scales up to how we design learning systems that balance autonomy with direction, where we enable people to self-direct their growth without being lost in choice overload.

In competency-based or skills-first organizations, guided choice can show up in multiple ways. For example:
- Curated, purpose-linked learning pathways: Organizations must offer guided learning pathways based on roles, competencies, or career aspirations. This can be aided by providing employees with self-assessment tools that map to these learning pathways. For example, the results of a self-assessment may show strong technical expertise but lower leadership competencies, and that might be an area the employee may explore next in terms of purposeful and meaningful learning experience.
- Recognition systems that reward reflective choices: Recognition systems can be designed to reward, nurture, and encourage reflective learning. For example, when an employee chooses a professional development activity, they could be asked to articulate why they chose it, how they intend to apply it, etc. Over time, these reflections can help people identify and recognize their own learning and develop the meta-skill of learning how to learn.
- Adaptive learning with human guidance: If an organization is developing skill platforms that use AI-driven recommendations, guided choice-making can mean connecting the algorithmic suggestions with human judgment, such as manager notes and recommendations, peer feedback, or self-reflection diaries or assessments that bridge the gap between machine personalization and meaningful human guidance.

Small design choices like these create big shifts. And we need these big shifts.

The next evolution of self-directed learning is already here. We need to start moving from making choices within a course towards making informed, ethical, and purposeful choices about our learning in an AI-augmented world.

As educators and learning leaders, we have to support people to not just exercise choice but to develop the judgment to use it well, and this capability feels even more critical in the age of AI. In many ways, building choice and supporting self-directed learning behaviours isn’t just about learner autonomy anymore; it is about helping people learn how to think with AI without outsourcing their thinking to AI.

AI won't teach us how to learn; that's still our job!

#UDL #LearningDesign #AILiteracy #CriticalThinking #HumanizingAI #LifelongLearning #LearnerAgency #LeadershipInLearning #AdultLearning #LearnerAgency #InstructionalDesign