Learning Futures Fund: Empowering professors and students to create solutions for a rapidly changing world

March 5, 2025

A group of University of Ottawa professors

2025 Faculty of Arts’ Learning Futures Fund recipients in Hamelin Hall

The rise of AI and digital platforms is reshaping how we work, interact and understand the world. For students, this requires them to be able to think deeply and broadly. It demands adaptability, curiosity and, most importantly, the ability to continuously learn. In today's world, how we learn is as important as what we learn.

Future-proofing education

Empowerment has always been the mission of a Faculty of Arts education: to share knowledge and teach people how to learn—how to grow, pivot, adapt, and think critically in the face of change. As technology continues to drive transformation, this foundational goal feels more vital than ever.

That’s why the Faculty’s Learning Futures Fund (LFF) is an investment in future-proofing education. It supports bold, professor-driven initiatives that explore new modes of teaching and learning.

From digital literacy to platforms that personalize the learning experience, each project is an experiment—a chance to innovate, measure success and share what works across other courses and programs.

Co-creating the future of learning

The fund isn’t a top-down initiative. As Marc Charron, senior adviser to the Faculty, strategic initiatives, says, “our professors know what their students need because they’re in the classroom. Professors guide students in how to use technology as a tool for discovery, while students, immersed in digital culture, bring new perspectives and experiences that enrich the process. The LFF is all about harnessing this dynamic, enabling it and amplifying it.”

Jennifer Dumoulin, for example, is using the fund to help students build the skills and competencies to succeed at university. A part-time professor in the Department of Communication, she saw the effects of the pandemic on first-year students. In response, she’s developing a course to bridge the gap for incoming high school students, to prepare them for undergraduate studies. The course will teach them to use technology effectively while avoiding the traps. Students will gain writing and critical thinking skills and the confidence to make their university experience what they want it to be.

A living laboratory for learning

For Dean Kevin Kee, “the goal is to create a living laboratory for learning—where we continually adapt and improve how we teach, using technology not to replace thinking, but to expand it.”

Kee adds that “learning how to learn today means learning how to leverage technology—not as a distraction, but as a tool for growth, collaboration and critical thinking.”

Follow us as we announce new projects, meet the teams behind these courses and programs, and discover what inspired them to push the boundaries of teaching and learning.