Fostering effective teaching and learning is an incremental, ongoing process, one that requires use to be agile and responsive to the changing needs of instructors. A good example of this was the “eruption,” near the end of 2022, of AI technologies such as ChatGPT. These new technologies meant that CTE (in tandem with other academic support units) had to rapidly develop expertise and resources to assist Waterloo instructors with the educational challenges and opportunities that AI technologies posed (reminiscent, in some ways, of the sudden pivot to remote teaching that occurred at the beginning of the COVID pandemic). Our workshops, too, aim to foster steady, incremental change. To achieve this, our workshops are client-focused, meaning they strive to build ongoing relationships between individual instructors and CTE staff members, as well as between instructors who share an interest in some aspect of teaching. Sometimes these shared interests even result in instructors forming long-term learning communities or communities of practice, which our staff members help to coordinate. In short, the expertise of our staff members is important, as is their ability to respond quickly to new needs, but most essential is the value we place on building relationships.
Read more about:
- The Teaching Excellence Academy
- The Standing Committee on New Technologies, Pedagogy, and Academic Integrity
- Enabling the Uptake of Feedback: A Learning Community for Instructors
Teaching Excellence Academy
One intensive workshop that CTE resurrected in April 2023 was the Teaching Excellence Academy (TEA). This 4-day course redesign is aimed primarily at experienced faculty members who want the opportunity to rejuvenate their teaching in a collegial environment.
At the TEA, attendees thoroughly revise one of their courses (face-to-face, fully online, or blended) with the assistance of their peers and experts from CTE and the Centre for Extended Learning.
Past attendees have reported that the TEA helped them to design more effective courses and make their design choices more transparent for their students.
The TEA ends with a showcase event at which TEA participants share their revised course outlines.
I plan to apply an iterative process to ensure alignment between ILOs, course content and assessments. The process of slowly walking through and discussing these aspects has shown me how disconnected each were.
Just having the space and permission to put everything else aside and focus on one task with feedback available helped me get things to a point I can now run with it much faster than I would have otherwise.
The TEA offered a comfortable environment to speak up and share ideas and feedback with others. It felt collegial and professional, which made it easier to take feedback from others and incorporate it.
Standing Committee on New Technologies, Pedagogy, and Academic Integrity
In late Fall 2022, it became clear that the mass availability of ChatGPT and other Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) was quite suddenly (for most) resulting in a seismic shift in pedagogy; faculty, staff, and students responded with a mix of excitement and fear. Many institutions set up short-term response committees and made available help sites that took account of emerging knowledge and promising practices for teaching, research, and communication generally. It was clear that all institutions, not just universities, would need to rethink practices, sometimes at fundamental levels. Our students are living through this shift across their courses and disciplines as well as in their workplaces right alongside us. At Waterloo, CTE together with the Office of Academic Integrity organized relevant support units to craft a slower, curated, thoughtful response while also supporting those who sought to address GenAI in their courses and assignments in a more immediate sense.
Part of the effort was to co-create in Winter 2023 the AVPA's Standing Committee on New Technologies, Pedagogy, and Academic Integrity, which will be active in 2023-2024 on both pedagogical and policy recommendations beyond a single tool or platform. Meanwhile, CTE coordinated information for the AVPA website, created the first in a series of Teaching Tips (Conversations with Students about GenAI), offered sessions such as a Faculty of Health Lunch and Learn with over 50 participants, and gave feedback on Library and Office of Academic Integrity documents. We look forward to further engagement on this topic over the coming years, including offering pop-ups, panels, and more Teaching Tips.
The range of practical and ethical concerns with GenAI is vast, and we know that Waterloo researchers are themselves at the forefront of creating and critically analyzing this ever-changing and growing set of tools and associated social phenomena.
Generative AI will change almost every aspect of how universities operate, but its impact is likely to be most immediate and profound with respect to teaching and learning. We are lucky to have CTE and the Office of Academic Integrity to help the campus community think through the most productive ways to adapt and thrive as we update our teaching and learning processes.
In the Fall 2022 and Winter 2023 terms, CTE facilitated a successful online learning community centred on the topic of “Enabling the Uptake of Feedback” bringing together seven instructors from different disciplines including, engineering, accounting, and language studies.
During ten lunch-hour sessions, participants discussed curated readings and resources focused on effective feedback practices that really engage students. Through their conversations, the participants shared experiences, challenges, and successes implementing strategies explored during the meetings.
The learning community discussions led to a CTE teaching tipsheet and a refereed conference paper for one of the participants. In addition to the knowledge gained, participants cherished connecting with colleagues from different departments who shared their passion for teaching and a commitment to creating engaging and effective learning experiences. The learning community not only fostered professional growth, but also nurtured a sense of belonging and reinvigorated dedication to teaching and learning.
Participating in the Enabling the Uptake of Feedbacklearning community has had a significant impact on my understanding of feedback and how it is perceived by both the teaching team and their learners. It influenced the way I provide feedback to students and what I ask them to do with it. I discovered that the best way for students to learn from feedback is to act on it. Additionally, I learned that feedback can be given in various ways, such as group work or from peers through guided feedback. These results were valuable.