CIRPA Day One

Yesterday was the first day of the Canadian Institutional Research and Planning 2025 virtual conference. The conference is for professionals who work in Institutional Research and Planning. We are people who count students, report to the public and the government, support data-informed decision making, run surveys and other things.

I am the Program Chair of the conference this year, the first time I'm doing anything quite like this. I really have to thank my co-chair Emily helping me when I stumbled and making sure everything got done.

We have had record setting attendance this year and the first day was filled with amazing engagement from attendees. A virtual conference is a little different, since you can't see the rooms filling up. But when we judge by the attendance at each session and number (and quality) of the questions, we know people are there and engaged. We also had really well attended networking sessions.

Our opening keynote from Madeline Bonsma-Fisher on understanding cycling network access using data really got our attendees in data frame of mind. I approached her to speak at the conference because I wanted to have someone talk about using data in a different domain than we usually do, to get people thinking about the possibilities. She also brought it home for me by showing the importance of infrastructure crossing the Humber River, where my employer's main campus is located, to providing safe cycle networks to destinations on both side of the river.

I have started saving up for a cargo bike.

I have to give a shout out to all our speakers on the first day. I didn't get to see all your sessions live, but I'm looking forward to watching the recordings. Based on the discussions from the volunteer team, they all went wonderfully. I always learn a lot at CRIPA, and yesterday was no different.

Doing a virtual conference is a bit different, and I do miss connecting with my colleagues in person. However, as Dr. Nicole Johnson of the Canadian Digital Learning Research Association pointed out in her talk: people may not always prefer online learning to online, but often it's not a decision between in-person learning and online learning. Often it's a difference between online learning and no learning at all.

This year, I probably would not have been able to attend an in-person conference. I was lucky to be able to go to last year's conference in Fredricton, New Brunswick. I'm not sure I would be able to do that this year.

I am going to try to make it work for next year's conference, through.

I'm looking forward to seeing all of our conference participants tomorrow.

Posted on October 22, 2025.