Case Study: British Columbia Institute of Technology achieves 4x staff participation and 20x faster analysis with Thoughtexchange

Engaging staff in a conversation about the future of post-secondary education with Thoughtexchange

British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), one of Canada’s largest polytechnic institutes with over 48,000 students and nearly 3,000 faculty and staff, needed to engage staff in strategic planning about the future of teaching and learning. Town halls and traditional surveys were impractical or too prescriptive, so BCIT sought a way to gather open, concise, and collaborative input from a large, distributed workforce.

BCIT partnered with Thoughtexchange to run an online, confidential “exchange” of four open‑ended questions that let staff share and rate ideas from any device; Thoughtexchange’s analysis reduced manual collation from roughly 80–100 hours to about five and delivered results in three weeks. The exchange drew more than 400 participants who submitted nearly 800 thoughts—about four times BCIT’s original goals—validated leadership direction, and gave the institution confidence to act and continue using the platform for future initiatives.

British Columbia Institute of Technology

Tom Roemer

Vice President Academic