Fostering Partnerships in Pedagogy
April 27 to April 28, 2022
For our 13th Annual University of Waterloo Teaching and Learning Conference, we focused on the theme of pedagogical partnerships. Learning is social, as is teaching. At their best, both make use of shared knowledge and experiences to create informal partnerships. It is worth considering the improvements that can come from taking steps to turn them into genuine pedagogical partnerships.
Partnerships can be student-centered, empowering the role of learners and connecting them with faculty for a more central role in their learning. Partnerships can exist in experiential learning environments or in cooperative education, providing learners with the opportunity to gain authentic experience and become valued members of a team. Partnerships can be cross-disciplinary in nature, drawing upon knowledge and experience of faculty from across the University to forge new ideas and innovative teaching practices. Partnerships can leverage the role of academic support units to help craft educational experiences that benefit all learners.
How can we foster more partnerships – of all kinds – to the benefit of teaching and learning in our university community? How can we invite students to have a more active role in their entire learning process? How can we encourage interdisciplinary course design or sharing teaching practices? How can we draw upon the expertise and skills of those working across higher education in supporting roles? How might partnerships inform and grow our understanding of teaching and learning as we work together to design learning environments that best support all learners?
Keynote - The Transformative Potential of Cross-Constituency, Cross-Disciplinary Pedagogical Partnership (Dr. Alison Cook-Sather, Bryn Mawr College)
In this interactive keynote address, Dr. Alison Cook-Sather will offer a definition and outline the underlying principles of pedagogical partnership. Drawing on the work of numerous scholars and several widely cited texts she has co-authored with faculty and students, including Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching: A Guide for Faculty, Pedagogical Partnerships: A How-to Guide for Faculty, Students, and Academic Developers in Higher Education, and Promoting Equity and Justice through Pedagogical Partnership, she will share a range of examples of pedagogical partnerships between and among faculty and students. These examples focus on curriculum design and redesign (e.g., Goff & Knorr, 2018, and Lubicz-Nawrocka, 2018); equity and inclusion, student engagement, and assessment of learning in classroom practice (e.g., Cook-Sather, 2020 and 2021, Marquis et al., 2021; Weiler & Williamson, 2020); and scholarly research (e.g., Cook-Sather, Abbot, & Felten, 2019, Felten et al., 2013, and Acai et al., 2017). Dr. Cook-Sather will present some of the most common outcomes of such partnership work and invite conference attendees to reflect on where pedagogical partnership is already happening at University of Waterloo and where it might be developed or expanded.
Dr. Alison Cook-Sather is Mary Katharine Woodworth Professor of Education at Bryn Mawr College and Director of the Teaching and Learning Institute at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges. Dr. Cook-Sather has developed internationally recognized programs that position students as pedagogical consultants to prospective secondary teachers and to practicing college faculty members. She has published over 100 articles and book chapters and given as many keynote addresses, other invited presentations, and papers at refereed conferences on six continents. Author or co-author of eight books, includingPedagogical Partnerships: A How-To Guide for Faculty, Students, and Academic Developers in Higher Education (with Melanie Bahti and Anita Ntem, Elon University Center for Engaged Learning Open Access Series, 2019) and Promoting Equity and Justice through Pedagogical Partnership (with Alise de Bie, Elizabeth Marquis, and Leslie Patricia Luqueño, Stylus Publishers, 2021), she is founding editor of Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education and founding co-editor of International Journal for Students as Partners.
Igniting our Practice
Dr. Sean Geobey is the Assistant Professor in Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship in the University of Waterloo's School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED) where his teaching includes social entrepreneurship, social finance, and sustainable business strategy. He is the Co-Director of the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR) and has led a number of multisector codesign collaborations on issues including business succession planning, sustainable finance, and affordable housing.
In his talk, Sean introduced a design thinking tool called an Empathy Map that can be used by students to better understand the experiences of customers, investors, and other key stakeholders so that you can identify opportunities for developing innovative solutions. Using Zoom breakout rooms coupled with Google Docs this session used the experience of attending an online conference to ground the activity.
Diana Skrzydlo is a Continuing Lecturer in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, the Math Faculty Teaching Fellow, and the current Director of the MActSc program. She has been teaching at the University of Waterloo since 2007 and has spoken widely on innovative teaching and assessment techniques, including in Indonesia with the READI project. She won the SAS department teaching award in 2016 and the Faculty of Math Distinction in Teaching Award in 2019. She has a BMath (2006) and MMath (2007) from UW, and achieved her ASA designation from the Society of Actuaries in 2018.
In her talk, Diana demonstrated how she uses coin-flipping games in small groups to allow Statistics students to discover the properties of Markov Chains for themselves. The results of the exploratory exercise then provided tangible examples to refer to when the theory and terminology was introduced later.
Resources
Conference Program with Session Descriptions
Contact
Visit our official conference website to learn about current and future conferences.
For questions about the conference, please contact Kyle Scholz at the Centre for Teaching Excellence.