News

As of March 2025, the Student Course Perception Surveys (SCP) now feature a link to encourage students to nominate their instructors for a Distinguished Teacher Award (DTA). Once students complete their SCPs, they will be presented with the option to complete a nomination form to nominate their instructor for a DTA. Note that students are directed to a separate page once they finish their SCP. 

Updates about Waterloo's Teaching Fellow's team. The Faculty of Science has appointed Dr. Vivian Dayeh as the Faculty Teaching Fellow until July 1, 2025. Joining Dr. Dayeh as new members of the Teaching Fellow team include, Dr. Alison Chenier, Faculty of Arts, and Dr. Uzma Rehman, Faculty of Arts. 

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In Winter 2024, Deans’ Council approved updates to Student Course Perceptions (SCP) surveys to ensure consistency and fairness across faculties. These changes mean that SCP surveys are now administered for classes with five or fewer students enroled, addressing inconsistencies that previously excluded these classes in some areas.

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We write to announce the launch of the University’s Peer Review of Teaching process, beginning in January 2025. This is a “soft launch” which means that participation in 2025 is optional. We also want to take this opportunity to encourage those who receive an invitation to participate.

All Faculties will be implementing systematic Peer Review of Teaching in 2025.

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The Teaching Innovation Incubator has announced its inaugural open call for project submissions.

The Incubator is seeking diverse project teams with teaching and learning ideas that are complex, necessitate change, require interdisciplinary and cross-functional partnerships, and have the potential to be a transformative part of the future of education at the University of Waterloo. Selected projects will gain access to funding, project coordination, and a suite of resources.

Check out the Open Call Innovation Incubator website for specifics! 

Please help us recognize the great work Waterloo’s instructors are doing in the digital classroom.

The Office of the Associate Vice-President, Academic and the Centre for Extended Learning would like your help to identify these remarkable people by nominating an instructor or an online course author.

The Office of the Associate Vice-President, Academic (AVPA) is seeking to fill the position of Chair of the Undergraduate Communications Requirement Group (UCRG), starting May 1, 2024 for a three-year term (with the possibility of renewal). 

The Instructional Programs and Practices project team, led by co-leads Diana Skrzydlo (Teaching Fellow in the Faculty of Mathematics) and Donna Ellis (Director of the Centre for Teaching Excellence), will have a broad mix of representation from across the campus and is currently seeking expressions of interest from faculty members from all faculties.

Turnitin released an artificial intelligence detection tool on April 4, and it went live at Waterloo on April 6. The tool has been trained on GPT 3 and GPT 3.5 (which includes ChatGPT) and Turnitin claims that it has impressive accuracy.

Instructors who use Turnitin will start receiving an AI detection score (entirely independently generated from Originality score) as part of its Similarity report. The report on artificial intelligence will only be visible to instructors and administrators, and only from within the Originality report. Of course, if you do not have a statement in your course outline notifying students that you will be using Turnitin you will not have access to these reports (because Turnitin is not activated for your course).

Dear Colleagues, 

I write today because there are a substantial number of important religions holidays that will occur during the exam period in Winter 2023. The University’s regulations on providing accommodations with respect to assignments, tests, and final examinations note that “ the University acknowledges that, due to the pluralistic nature of the University community, some students may seek accommodations on religious grounds,” and imply that these requests should be accommodated.