Academic Resilience Series in Teaching & Learning: Building Academic Resilience Across the Curriculum

Series description:
Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, the teaching and learning environment in higher education has increasingly reflected a complex interplay of cognitive, emotional, and structural pressures. While most students arrive at U of T with strong academic skills, the university experience brings with it a variety of interconnected changes and challenges that can impact student success. This series takes a holistic look at what it means to support and build student academic resilience. Across three consecutive webinars that focus on (1) student learning, (2) course design and (3) program-level development, participants will explore how academic resilience is best understood as a process of ongoing development across a system, with reach beyond the individual. Through the voices of students, faculty and staff, participants will be exposed to the various dimensions of academic resilience that can be supported in curricular spaces.

Through this three-part series, participants will be able to:

• Summarize research on academic resilience and its role impacting academic success
• Compare perspectives across disciplines relating to the development of resilience in academia
• Navigate resources and strategies to apply in their own teaching and learning contexts

Please join us as we work towards creating a learning culture that fosters resilience and generates feedback loops that help us all learn and evolve.

Note: This session will engage and model empathetic communication principles characterized by active listening to others’ experience and by the ability to give and receive feedback free of judgment and grounded in mutual respect.

Workshop #3: Academic Resilience Series in Teaching & Learning - Building Academic Resilience Across the Curriculum

Building on Sessions #1 and #2, we will explore how faculty might approach supporting students' development of academic resilience at the curricular level. The session is focused on awareness building for the process of curriculum development and will address considerations for how the three pillars of academic resilience can be intentionally developed through the curriculum to support students in their journeys through their programs. Participants will have the opportunity to hear from U of T instructors about how they have considered the development of metacognition, self-efficacy, and resourcefulness at various levels of study in their disciplines. Throughout the session, participants will have the chance to discuss challenges and brainstorm ideas that can help begin conversations about strategic support for academic resilience across the curriculum.

Session Learning Outcomes:

• Examine how curricular structure & other factors enable and constrain students' development of academic resilience
• Reflect on challenges to academic resilience experienced by students at different levels of study
• Explore a model to develop students' capacity for metacognition, self-efficacy and resourcefulness across curricula
  

Other sessions
View webinar recordings and materials from Workshop #1: Exploring Academic Resilience: Research and Student Experiences (March 30, 10am-11:30am) and Workshop #2: Teaching Practices & Course Design (May 4, 10-11:30am)