News

Seeking PhD candidates to teach an interdisciplinary course, The Wicked Problem of Accessibility.

As part of the University’s strategic plans to develop talent for a complex world and focus on interdisciplinary scholarship, a team of PhD candidates will come together in winter and spring 2025 to re-design and co-teach a course related to contemporary Wicked Problems. The course will be offered to upper-year undergraduate students from across the University to create a community of scholars, sharing different perspectives from the PhD candidate instructors and the learners in the classroom.

The course, offered in spring 2025, will focus on the Wicked Problem of Accessibility. We know there are brilliant doctoral researchers across the University who are immersed in studying accessibility from interdisciplinary perspectives, addressing research on  intersectionality and disability identities; historical and cultural representations of disability and accessibility; technological advances to support access and inclusion; integrating accessibility into the design of programs, buildings, cities, and community areas; considering physical, developmental, cognitive, and learning disabilities; mental health; social justice; policy development; the representation of accessibility and disability in media and literature; disability advocacy, among others.

Many of these researchers may also welcome the opportunity to be part of an interdisciplinary teaching team that will provide undergraduate students with a classroom experience where the academic content spans disciplinary boundaries.

The selected PhD candidates will work as a team to re-design the course (previously offered in Winter 2023 and Spring 2024) and will receive training in the winter 2025 term from mentors in the Teaching Innovation Incubator. In the spring 2025 term, the team will collectively deliver the course to senior undergraduate students. Instructors will receive financial support for their contributions to the University’s teaching mission.

We encourage PhD candidates to apply using the online application form – details can be found on The Wicked Problem of Accessibility Teaching Innovation Incubator website. The deadline to apply is Monday, November 19, 2024, by end of day.

The Teaching Innovation Incubator is excited to announce its support of a new pilot funding program opportunity by the Sustainability Office. This program, the Sustainability Integration in the Curriculum (SIC) Grant is a new funding program for academic departments to deepen integration of sustainability within any undergrad program of study.

The new Sustainability Integration in Curriculum (SIC) grants are intended to catalyze efforts that draw connections between major sustainability challenges and the skills, experiences, and competencies students can leverage through their discipline to support a more sustainable future.

The grants can be for up to $7,500 each and can cover a wide range of activities that a department could implement to further their sustainability integration efforts, including research, workshops, supplies and materials, student incentives, and more. Applications are due by November 1 and will be reviewed by an interdisciplinary team of faculty and educational developers.

Thee Sustainability Toolkit equips faculty with resources to incorporate climate change and sustainability principles into your courses.

The Accessible Education Project is proud to announce the launch of the Accessible Education Hub - a one-stop shop webpage for information on educational guidelines and resources as they become available and identified by the project teams: https://uwaterloo.ca/accessible-education

The Teaching Innovation Incubator, in collaboration with the Associate Academic Vice President is hosting a two half-day Accessible Education Day on October 16th and October 17th. Topics to be covered include legislation governing Accessibility, Post-Secondary Course Accessibility Guide, Navigating Accommodations, Universal Design for Learning, available assistive technologies, among others. Be sure to register to attend! 

Following the initial round of testing on the efficacy of the Creator+ and Performance+ tools, the project team received budget approval to proceed with a two-year pilot of both tools. We are seeking interested individuals from across the faculties to join the pilot. 

The Performance+ project team continues to investigate the functionality of the tool for accessing and assessing student data in LEARN. Consultations have taken place with user-groups including academic advisors and faculty across campus about potential use cases of the tool. 

The Performance+ project team has begun piloting the tool with a small group of instructors using live student data in LEARN to determine its efficacy and utility for faculty at Waterloo. 

ITMS and the TII are looking for instructors, students, and staff with experience, or who are willing to use polling tools Vevox and/or iClicker to participate in a pilot during the Fall 2024 and/or Winter 2025 terms. Note: interested students can apply to join the pilot so long as they have experience using either polling tool; there is no requisite that students must join the pilot with their instructor.

NEW! Vevox, one of the supported polling tools currently being piloted, will have an integration with LEARN enabled for the Fall 2024 term. This integration will allow Vevox to push grades to LEARN for correct answers and/or for participation.