Academic Resilience Series in Teaching & Learning: Exploring Academic Resilience: Research and Student Experiences

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 #1: Exploring Academic Resilience: Research and Student Experiences description:
This session will lay the foundation for the series by presenting a definition of academic resilience and will explore this within the context of student challenges at U of T. We will examine various ways to foster resilience such as supporting metacognition, building self-efficacy, and developing resourcefulness. Drawing on relevant research, student stories, and their experience as learning strategists, the presenters will facilitate an in-depth discussion of how to implement key practices for student engagement and well-being in the learning environment.  

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand a definition of resilience in the academic context
• Explore dimensions of academic resilience that support student engagement and well-being
• Identify practices to support academic resilience in the classroom  
  

Other sessions:
Workshop #2: Teaching Practices & Course Design, May 4, 10-11:30am, Register

Workshop #3: Building Academic Resilience Across the Curriculum, May 25, 10-11:30am, Register