Each term, a variety of new courses are offered for the first time. Below is a centrally-maintained list of such courses, submitted by various academic units on campus.
Click the course link to see the full course description in the Undergraduate Studies Academic Calendar. Browse through the list for course details and check back often for updates.
Spring 2025
Last updated: January 16, 2025
ARTS390: Third-Year Topics in Arts Disciplines/ENVS374: Special Topics in Environment/GENE399: Special Topics in Third-Year Engineering/HEALTH490 - Interdisciplinary Health Topics/MTHEL398: Mathematics Elective Topics 3/SCI300: Special Topics in Science
Topic title: Wicked Problem of Accessibility
Topic details: This interdisciplinary course provides a comprehensive overview of the wicked problem of accessibility. Unlike ordinary problems, which are well-defined, self-contained, and come with a limited set of potential solutions, wicked problems resist definition, are mixed up with and compounded by other problems, and cannot be solved in a way that is simple or final.
Accessibility, when viewed through this lens, can be identified as a wicked problem, as it requires interdisciplinary approaches to understand it, including social, political, economic, technological, policy-oriented, scientific, and health-related. When designing with accessibility in mind, what works for one group may not work for another. Developing and supporting accessible experiences, environments, and opportunities for people with disabilities requires substantive and interdisciplinary solutions.
This course approaches the wicked problem of accessibility from diverse disciplinary perspectives (e.g., applied sciences, social sciences, health sciences, humanities, engineering, technology, policy, and planning) to address the various dimensions of this global challenge. Topics covered in this course may include: 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. The course prepares students to analyze the wicked problem of accessibility from an interdisciplinary perspective, to evaluate and critique diverse perspectives on the issue, and to devise potential solutions to support access for disabled individuals.
Graduate students at the University of Waterloo are engaged in research that is advancing our understanding of - and developing solutions to - some of society’s most challenging problems. As part of the University’s strategic plans to develop talent for a complex world and focus on interdisciplinary scholarship, this initiative sees a team of PhD candidates come together to design, develop, and offer 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.
Additional information:
- This special topic is open to all undergraduate students in level 3A or higher.
- This special topic is offered as a blended course and requires a combination of both in-class and online learning.
- For more information about the instructors and learning outcomes, visit The Wicked Problem of Accessibility web page.