Interdisciplinary Grad Student Designed and Led “Wicked Problem” Courses

Project Goals/Deliverables

Advance our PhD candidates’ professional development by engaging them in curricular design, development and implementation, with appropriate mentorship

Enhance our PhD candidates’ academic goals and personal well-being by creating communities of scholars

Provide Waterloo’s undergraduate students with additional course offerings with foci in critical, contemporary issues that spans disciplinary boundaries

Expose undergraduate students to (student) research and researchers, potentially motivating future studies

Develop a process and pathway for interdisciplinary course development

Create re-usable digital assets

Project Team

Anna Esselment, Associate Professor (Political Science) | Associate Dean, Graduate Studies (Faculty of Arts)

Bertrand Guenin, Professor (Combinatorics and Optimization) | Associate Dean, Graduate Studies (Faculty of Math)

Brian Laird, Associate Professor (School of Public Health Sciences) | Associate Dean, Graduate Studies (Faculty of Health)

Project Summary

This project aims to bring together a team(s) of PhD candidates to design, develop and offer a course related to contemporary “wicked problems” that catalyzes each PhD candidate’s research and disciplinary expertise while also offering them a meaningful teaching experience. The teaching team will receive mentorship and support with regard to course conception, design and integration by those with disciplinary and pedagogical expertise via the TII. The course will be offered to senior undergraduate students across the university as an elective, and collectively creates an interdisciplinary construct that fosters learning and an integration of knowledge, methods and ways of knowing that could not be achieved within a single disciplinary approach.

Project Timeline

2021
1. Dec
  1. Project approved for (Beta) Teaching Innovation Incubator
2022
1. Jan
  1. Project plan developed
2. Mar
  1. Discussions with ASUs concerning course code options and financial models
3. Apr
  1. Decision: Use cross-listed Special Topics courses for pilot of course
4. Jul
  1. Recruit six PhD candidates (one from each faculty)
5. Aug
  1. Craft course description
6. Sep
  1. 12-week PhD candidate instructor training (facilitated by Centre for Teaching Excellence)
7. Oct
  1. Course open for enrolment
2023
1. Jan
  1. First course offering
2. Mar
  1. End-of-term symposium held to showcase undergraduate student work to general public
3. Jul
  1. Interim evaluation report written
4. Oct
  1. Precarity identified as next wicked problem for course
5. Nov
  1. Instructors recruited for Wicked Problem of Precarity
2024
1. Jan
  1. Climate change decided to be offered again for further insight into process
  2. Training program for instructors revised and offered (facilitated by CTE and past wicked problems instructors)

Project Updates

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.

Join us on July 25th, 2024 from 12:30pm-2:30pm at the Wicked Problem of Precarity Symposium. The symposium will feature the culmination of student and instructor work with poster presentations, networking, and graduate students insights.

The instructors of the Wicked Problem of Climate Change (Fall 2024) course offering sat down with Waterloo Imprint to discuss some of the features of the next iteration of the Wicked Problem Course.