Self-Paced Learning
CTSI’s self-paced learning programs offer flexible, on-demand opportunities to develop your teaching practice. Whether you are getting started, refining your approach, or reflecting on your teaching, these concise, evidence-informed resources support inclusive, engaging, and effective learning experiences.
These programs can be taken individually or followed as a self-directed pathway—from course design and instructional strategies to reflection, documentation, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Explore the pathway:
Getting Started or Refreshing Your Teaching
Build or revisit the foundations of your course design and teaching practice.
Course Design Foundations (CDF)
Develop or redesign your course with confidence. This self-paced learning program guides you through key decisions about outcomes, assessments, teaching strategies, and course structure using inclusive, UDL-informed principles.
Syllabus Design Foundations (SDF)
Create a clear, usable, and inclusive syllabus aligned with U of T expectations. This self-paced learning program offers templates, examples, and practical guidance to strengthen structure, tone, and accessibility.
Quercus Home Page Foundations (QHPF)
Active Learning Design Foundations (ALDF)
Explore strategies for designing flexible and engaging active learning experiences. This self-paced learning program offers concise guidance, examples, and tools to support active learning across contexts.
Deepening and Enhancing Your Teaching Practice
Extend your teaching through inclusive, flexible, and evidence-informed design approaches.
Universal Design for Learning Foundations (UDLF)
Design more accessible, inclusive, and usable learning experiences using Universal Design for Learning (UDL). This self-paced program introduces practical strategies for reducing barriers and welcoming learner variability across your course design.
Reflecting on, Documenting, and Researching Your Teaching
Develop your teaching through reflection, feedback, and scholarly inquiry.
Teaching Observation Guide
Engage in structured, formative approaches to observing teaching. This guide supports reflective and collaborative observation practices, with tools and templates to guide pre-observation planning, in-class observation, and post-observation feedback.
Teaching Dossier Guide
Develop a clear, reflective teaching dossier through structured guidance and practical strategies. This guide supports documenting teaching values, practices, and impacts, and offers guidance for organizing evidence, strengthening coherence, and refining materials over time.
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Hub
Stay connected with SoTL opportunities at U of T, including events, programming, and new resources that support your SoTL work.
About These Programs
These programs and resources were collaboratively developed with contributions from faculty and staff across the University of Toronto. Contributors include members from the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Faculty of Arts & Science, Faculty of Information, Faculty of Music, Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto Libraries, University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM), and University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC), among others.
Accessibility
CTSI is committed to creating self-paced learning resources that are accessible, inclusive, and usable, recognizing that learners engage with content, technology, and learning environments in different ways. Accessibility considerations are integrated into both the learning environments and the resources shared within them, including Quercus-hosted content and downloadable materials accessed through University of Toronto-supported platforms such as SharePoint.
When developing and reviewing self-paced learning programs, CTSI considers factors such as information structure and organization, heading hierarchy, meaningful link text, alternative text for images, colour contrast, captioning and transcripts where applicable, accessibility of downloadable documents, and the usability of learning materials across different devices and learning contexts.
Self-paced learning programs may include content hosted in Quercus as well as downloadable resources, such as Word and PDF documents. Where possible, resources are provided in multiple formats to support learner choice and access needs. Quercus-hosted content may also support accessibility features such as Microsoft Immersive Reader.
Accessibility is an ongoing process of review and improvement. CTSI welcomes feedback about accessibility barriers or opportunities for enhancement. Questions or feedback regarding accessibility may be directed to ctsi.teaching@utoronto.ca.
Support and Related Opportunities
To explore additional teaching support, visit our Workshops & Programs page or the Teaching and Learning Calendar for upcoming events, live sessions, and cohort-based programs. You can also browse a selection of past online workshops.
For questions, please contact us at ctsi.teaching@utoronto.ca.