This workshop is being held online. If you want to attend the in-person session, please see above.

As you think about your Fall courses, you may be asking yourself some questions. How can you increase student engagement? What sorts of activities will help your students learn best, and retain knowledge? Can students take some ownership of their learning?

Active learning includes a number of different strategies that can be used to help with all of these things! In this interactive session, participants will learn about implementing active learning techniques and try different examples of strategies to prompt student thinking and engagement. We will consider aspects of active learning in face-to-face, online, and HyFlex courses. Participants will identify possible strategies they can use in their own classes.

This workshop will be HyFlex (in-person session will be held in Erie Hall room 2123).

This workshop is being held online. If you want to attend the in-person session, please see below.

Lesson planning can offer instructors a road map to plot out the objectives, activities, and assessments for each class, thereby helping to use class time effectively. Carefully constructing a plan for each lesson can give instructors a sense of confidence by maximizing the likelihood of students achieving the learning outcomes while having meaningful learning experiences. In this practical session, the basics of lesson planning will be outlined, and participants will have an opportunity to see how different active learning strategies and assessments can be tied into the planning process. Even more, participants will obtain useful models and templates to help get them started on their lesson planning journey.

This workshop will be HyFlex (in-person session will be held in Erie Hall room 2123).

More than just an act of measurement, assessment is a fundamental part of teaching and learning. In this collaborative session, we will investigate the core purpose of assessment and what pedagogical role assessment should play in improving learning. We will discuss the rationale behind different kinds of assessments (i.e., summative and formative) as well as how meaningful assessment frames learning and is central to aiding students’ experience. This session will also feature a panel of instructors who will present case studies that illustrate innovative assessment methods within different academic disciplines. In exploring various approaches to assessment, participants will have the opportunity to extend their repertoire and consider ways of designing new assessment strategies.

The last three years have been extraordinarily challenging for educators and students alike. Thanks to the plague that shall not be named, many educators find themselves struggling to remember what drew them to teaching in the first place. What may have begun as a passion to share knowledge, promote exploration or serve the academic community now threatens to be obscured by a sense of burn-out and exhaustion.

This workshop will help faculty re-kindle their enjoyment of teaching, and identify strategies to energize their practice. Using a variety of exercises, participants will be invited to identify the aspects of teaching they enjoy, focus on the aspects of teaching that inspire and motivate them, and explore their strengths and skills as educators.

Discussion is a powerful tool to foster deep learning and meaningful student engagement. It can also be difficult to predict, plan for, and time-consuming. This workshop focuses on equipping participants with essential skills to facilitate effective and productive discussions. This session will include discussions around developing positive classroom environments, different discussion-based teaching methods, and strategies for navigating challenging moments. Participants will be invited to think about and discuss how they can adapt these strategies to their own disciplinary contexts.

Has artificial intelligence (AI) made assessment pointless? Or does it provide an opportunity to rethink assessment practices? The latest iteration of AI systems such as ChatGPT has taken higher education by storm and forced educators to rethink their assessment approaches. In this workshop participants will be introduced ChatGPT, a popular AI system, the challenge it poses to traditional assessment tasks, and will be exposed to assessment strategies that can be implemented to combat issues surrounding AI. Participants will be invited to think about and discuss how they can adapt these strategies to their own disciplinary contexts.

Like a script for a movie, lesson planning offers a structure to organize coherent, interactive, and involving lessons that helps to reach instructional goals. In this hands-on workshop, we will cover fundamental principles of lesson planning, including the importance of establishing clear learning outcomes, incorporating engaging learning activities and assessment strategies. Join me for tips, tools, and advice on how to effectively and efficiently lesson plan!

You want your course to be effective, but where do you begin? In this session, you will have the opportunity to work on your plan for a course you are scheduled to teach, will be teaching in the future, or want to re-design or create. We will present some guiding principles to help you achieve alignment of assessments and teaching methods with the goals of the course, and we will share resources on how to design lesson plans that encourage engagement based on your syllabus.

You will have an opportunity to work independently and with other workshop participants to brainstorm and draft a course plan that will set you and your students up for success.

Bring what you currently have for your course (e.g., a previous syllabus), and your favourite writing tools.

Faculty spend a lot of time designing assessments and providing feedback to students. But how do you know if you are effectively assessing student learning? During the first half of this workshop, participants will hear from faculty from across the campus on unique ways to assess student learning, ranging from authentic opportunities to transparent rubrics. The panel session will end with opportunities for participants to ask questions and receive feedback on their ideas on assessments.

Learning is at the heart of the university: instructors are consistently exploring new ways to enhance student curiosity, critical thinking, motivation, and skill acquisition. Advances in teaching and technology have, no doubt, helped, with many of these innovations allowing instructors to create more efficient, effective learning experiences. At the same time, the surge in machine learning and automated technologies, like generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) and large language models (LLMs), has introduced certain challenges and dilemmas surrounding the way we teach, how and what students might learn, and more critically, what it means to learn.

In this session, we will challenge and explore the differences in “natural” vs “artificial” intelligence, and consider what learning can look like in our classrooms. We will examine questions of how to balance curiosity with convenience, with a view to identifying ways to rekindle curiosity and foster a renewed culture of learning.