Fostering effective teaching and learning is an incremental, ongoing process, one that requires CTE staff to be agile and responsive to the changing needs of instructors. Based on consultation trends, needs assessment surveys, and the University’s Strategic Plan, we design new programming (and re-design standard programming) with the intention of providing guidance for navigating changes that instructors face. In the past, we have adapted our programming in light of world events like the COVID pandemic that necessitated a massive shift to remote learning, and this year we saw an increased need for support and guidance with respect to the proliferation of generative artificial intelligence tools in particular. While not as disruptive, our Teaching Excellence Academy and the learning communities we develop and lead are also examples of the ways CTE provides opportunities that encourage Waterloo’s instructors to explore, challenge, and incrementally change their pedagogical thinking and approaches.
Read more about:
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The Teaching Excellence Academy: A Retreat Designed to Inspire Experienced Instructors
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The Standing Committee on New Technologies, Pedagogy, and Academic Integrity
Jason Thompson (CTE Faculty Liaison, Faculty of Science) talks to Predrag Rajsic (Lecturer, Economics) and Hamid-Reza Kariminia (Lecturer, Chemical Engineering) at the 2022-2023 Teaching Excellence Academy's showcase event. Image credit: Centre for Teaching Excellence.
One intensive workshop that CTE resurrected in April 2023 was the Teaching Excellence Academy (TEA). This 4-day course redesign workshop is aimed primarily at experienced faculty members who want the opportunity to rejuvenate their teaching in a collegial environment.
At the TEA, attendees work through an iterative course design model to revise one of their courses (face-to-face, fully online, or blended), with the assistance of their peers and experts from the Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE) and the Centre for Extended Learning (CEL).
Various activities and group discussions encourage instructors to think critically about the numerous and interdependent decisions needed to design a course with aligned intended learning outcomes, assessments, and activities that will work for their context and content.
Some participants make sweeping changes, but most zero in on modifying two or three key elements for their next course offering; through the TEA, they learn processes that they can use over and over again to generate further changes as needed.
This incremental change approach makes the redesign process manageable. The intensive, peer-based format also helps to create a supportive environment that encourages trying out new approaches and strategies.
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 the participants share their revised course outlines.
I plan to apply an iterative process to ensure alignment between learning outcomes, course content, and assessments. The process of slowly walking through and discussing these aspects has shown me how disconnected each were.
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.
IMAGE CREDIT: University of Waterloo image bank.
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 Associate Vice-President, Academic'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 Generative AI 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 us think through the most productive ways to adapt and thrive as we update our processes.
Image credit: Aila Images via Stocksy.
CTE was involved with two new cross-unit learning communities this year.
The Wellness Collaborative
In 2019 the University of Waterloo signed on to the Okanagan Charter and subsequently formed the Wellness Collaborative, a community of practice. In 2022, staff from CTE were actively engaged in a successful SSHRC grant and Wellness Collaborative initiative on Universal Design for Learning (UDL), for faculty and teaching staff. Behind the scenes, CTE consulted on the overall design of the community of practice sessions and co-facilitated three of the six sessions held in 2022-2023. We continue to participate in conversations with the Wellness Collaborative--about UDL and about future plans for the group.
Enabling the Uptake of Feedback
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. The meetings provided the opportunity to explore new ways of approaching how to harness the potential of feedback on student work, and gave the participants a chance to contemplate how they could adapt their current practices.
The time between the meetings enabled participants to actually test out changes they wanted to try. Through their conversations, the participants shared experiences, challenges, and successes implementing strategies explored during the meetings. Senior Educational Developer and group facilitator Katherine Lithgow notes that,
"having a space to talk about teaching over a period of time–with evidence-based guidance for trying new approaches–creates an environment that encourages taking an iterative approach to enhancing teaching. And the multi-meeting format helps to pace the learning and give time for reflection."
The learning community discussions led to a CTE teaching tip sheet 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 thislearning community has had a significant impact on my understanding of feedback and how it is perceived by 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, and that feedback can be given in various ways, such as group work or from peers through guided feedback.
You’re all so great at welcoming folks into open and curious discussion. You always have thoughtful reflections to share back with the group and your experiences resonate with others. Folks were engaged, asked honest questions, and responded to each other, drawing from their own experiences and understandings. So cool! We didn’t know what to expect and we left that session feeling energized and hopeful.