The Faculty of Engineering Teaching–Learning initiative is dedicated to supporting faculty members in creating rewarding experiences for both instructors and students, with the goal of enhancing the depth, effectiveness, and efficiency of learning for engineering and architecture students. We recognize that meaningful teaching and learning occur both inside and beyond the classroom, and that the well-being of our educators and students is essential for a thriving academic community. Explore what we do and how we can support you in strengthening your teaching and learning practices.
Faculty of Engineering teaching portfolio founded
Pillars of our inclusive vision
Serving eight academic units
Initiatives across twenty-three undergraduate & graduate programs
Our Vision
The vision of the Faculty of Engineering, AD Teaching & Student Experience is grounded in three core principles that guide the AD’s priorities and long-term direction: teaching & learning, student experience, and community building.
Events
Generative AI as an Assessment Design Tool
Led by Prof Ken McKay
This two-hour workshop introduces generative AI as a practical tool for designing courses around essential themes, learning outcomes, competency levels, and assessments. Participants will practice with their own course materials and leave with a competency-focused course design roadmap, starter prompts for each stage of course and assessment development, draft themes and outcomes, including a first draft of an assessment item or a review of an existing assessment. Participants will be invited to join the AI and Teaching Practice channel for access to additional resources.
Activities: Two hands-on exercises of approximately 25 minutes each, followed by break-out discussion. All prompts and examples provided as Word documents.
What to bring:
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Access to an AI tool (for example, Copilot).
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Your course outline, with its learning outcomes.
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The topic of one upcoming lecture.
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One existing assessment with its marking scheme: an assignment, a midterm or a final.
Storytelling to Promote Technical Literacy
Led by Prof Emeritus Gordon Stubley and Veronica Stephenson
This workshop will demonstrate how the creative art of storytelling can used to engage low technical literacy audiences with technical and professional practice concepts. The workshop will use three original oral stories, The Fifty-Nine Story Crisis, Bridging for Bridges, and Chasing the Sun, to illustrate how three literary strategies: change of perspective, use of suspense, and use of the quest storyline, can be used to insert technical and professional practice concepts into traditional oral storytelling. Reflection/discussion activities will encourage participants to identify how these literary strategies impact audience engagement. Besides being able to identify the three literary strategies it is hoped that participants rediscover the wonder of story and are motivated to consider integrating oral storytelling into their professional teaching practice.
The workshop assumes no previous experience in storytelling. While storytelling skill will not be developed in the workshop, links to resources for developing storytelling craft will be provided.
Note that this workshop is very similar to the workshop delivered at CEEA-ACÉG 2026 (Moncton NB) in June 2026 and one of the stories, The Fifty-Nine Story Crisis, was presented at the Turkstra Talks speaker series in July 2026.
In retirement, Gordon joined the Baden Storytellers’ Guild in Fall 2021. Since then, he has drawn upon personal anecdotes, engineering case studies, and traditional folk tales to regularly contribute to the Guild’s monthly Stories Aloud events and annual World Storytelling Day concerts. He has also told at the Guelph Guild of Storytellers’ Tea’N’Tales summer concert series, Button Factory Arts Centre’s Bloom and Grow Open House, and the Queen-Margaret Neighbourhood Fair.