Past CTSI Workshop Recordings

At the University of Toronto, a teaching dossier must be submitted as part of the formal review process for tenure and continuing status. Beyond the information included in an academic CV, a teaching dossier describes and documents an instructor’s teaching expertise, goals and priorities for teaching and learning. It also highlights personal contributions to course and curriculum design efforts in a department or program, evidence of student impact, and evidence of teaching leadership.

This session offers practical tips on how to produce, document, collect and reflect on the materials necessary for the compilation of an effective teaching dossier – including gathering, framing and acting on student feedback and tracking and honing teaching materials – with a particular focus on professional development and educational leadership. This workshop will not focus on how to draft the actual dossier; rather, we will examine strategies for ensuring that you are ready to prepare a dossier when the time comes.

Participants in this workshop will:

• Identify practices for reflecting on teaching development and educational leadership
• Develop a framework for approaching the collection of teaching-related data, the organization of these data and synthesis of key dossier elements
• Practice articulating key aspects of your teaching and educational leadership through writing and discussion
• Consider when and how to document your teaching in line with the regular cycle of your work
• Identify how to get started with professional development focussed on teaching

In preparation for this webinar, participants will be provided with a digital workbook prior to the webinar and asked to complete a set of brief pre-work activities and reflections. This work will be taken up in the live webinar and will form the basis of the online workshop activities.

• Workbook – Articulating Teaching Success

This webinar is part of the Demystifying the Dossier Series. Faculty are welcome to attend one or multiple workshops in the series; recordings will be available for all sessions online.

At the University of Toronto, a teaching dossier must be submitted as part of the formal review process for tenure and continuing status. Beyond the information included in an academic CV, a teaching dossier describes and documents an instructor’s teaching expertise, goals and priorities for teaching and learning, contributions to course and curriculum design efforts, evidence of student impact, and evidence of teaching leadership.

This session will provide an overview of the content and overall structure of an effective teaching dossier. Participants will develop a plan for assembling and strengthening their own dossiers. They will be guided in how to use a narrative throughout their dossier to connect and create coherence between multiple sections and sources of evidence.  Participants will also have an opportunity to engage with their divisional guidelines to draft key headings for their dossier.

The goal is for participants to leave the session with a clear sense of what steps to take to enhance their dossier drafts. Participants will be provided a digital workbook prior to the webinar and this document will form the basis of the session activities. Please note that this webinar will focus on the preparation of a teaching dossier by appointed faculty members for the purposes of undergoing a review process (tenure or continuing status). Teaching dossiers prepared for job searches carry different expectations and will not be the main focus of this session.

• Guide for Developing and Assessing Teaching Dossiers
• Preparing the Teaching Dossier Worksheet

This session is part of the Dossier Series. Faculty are welcome to attend one or multiple workshops in the series; recordings will be available for all sessions.

At the University of Toronto, course evaluations are one key component of the teaching dossier. The dossier is submitted as part of the formal review process for tenure and continuing status, as well as for promotion.

This session will offer strategies and practical tips for understanding, interpreting, and integrating your course evaluations into your teaching dossier. Topics covered in this workshop include:

• an overview of reading and interpreting the institutional course evaluation framework and report(s);
• university policies, guidelines, and norms regarding how course evaluations are to be interpreted and used in the teaching dossier and elsewhere;
• key insights into trends and contexts in course evaluation data (e.g., relationship between course size and ratings) which can help you better understand and contextualize course evaluations;
• how to describe and frame your course evaluations in a narrative that facilitates fair and reasoned interpretations

• Worksheet Interpreting and Integrating Course Evaluations
• Drafting Your Statement of Teaching Philosophy
• Course Evaluation Summary Sheet instructions
• Course Evaluation Summary Sheet Template
• Links shared during webinar

This webinar is part of the Demystifying the Dossier Series.

At the University of Toronto, a teaching dossier must be submitted as part of the formal review process for tenure and continuing status. Beyond the information included in an academic CV, a teaching dossier describes and documents an instructor’s teaching expertise, goals and priorities for teaching and learning, contributions to course and curriculum design efforts, evidence of student impact, and evidence of teaching leadership.

This session focuses on one of the key components of the teaching dossier: the opening Statement of Teaching Philosophy (STP). A strong statement summarizes and highlights the core beliefs and principles of an educator while also providing a conceptual framework for the dossier materials that follow. It needs to provide enough information and examples to convey a vivid sense of the values and approaches of an instructor, yet also needs to be clear and concise enough to be meaningful to the reader of the dossier.

In preparation for this webinar, participants will complete the “Teaching Perspectives Inventory” (TPI) (an online survey that takes 15-20 minutes to complete) and bring a draft of their statement (bullet points and rough notes will work) to the session. The TPI is a useful tool to assist instructors to clarify and articulate their ideas about teaching.

In this interactive webinar, participants will:

• identify key elements of a STP
• examine their own perspectives on teaching
• review steps to follow when preparing to write the STP
• practice articulating key aspects of their teaching through short writing activities and discussions
• edit their own teaching statement draft

The goal is for participants to leave the session with a clear sense of what steps to take to enhance their drafts. Participants will be provided a digital workbook prior to the webinar and this document will form the basis of the session activities. Please note that this session will not focus on how to prepare/compile the actual dossier itself – for this topic, please view the recording for Preparing the Teaching Dossier on April 13, 2022.

In this interactive session, participants will:

• Increase their understanding of the experiences and impact of racial microaggressions
• Identify forms of racial microaggressive behaviour and comments
• Discuss and develop strategies for prevention and resolution of subtle discrimination within the work and learning environments
• Increase understanding of the role of management in effectively addressing and responding to occurrences of microaggressions/subtle discrimination

• Examples of Microaggressions in the Classroom (webinar activity) (OneDrive)
• Ontario Human Rights Commission
• Microaggressions are like mosquito bites (video)
• Examples of Microaggressions in the classroom (pdf)
• Experiences of students (video)
• Intersectionality Videos
  • 1. What is Intersectionality? (video)
  • 2. What is Intersectionality? (video)
• Dealing with Microaggression in the classroom (webpage)

Have you been meaning to personalize your land acknowledgment to open events and gatherings, but been concerned about getting something “wrong”? Do you often use a pre-written template but would prefer to tailor your acknowledgment to better reflect your own cultural and social location(s)?

This session will offer a non-judgmental and supportive environment to reflect on your identities using the Medicine Wheel as an Indigenous pedagogical and experiential learning framework. Through a variety of prompts and dedicated contemplative writing time, participants will have opportunity to draft a meaningful and dynamic statement on what it means to “acknowledge” Indigenous land and consider their further action related to the Truth and Reconciliation process.

This workshop will be guided by Bonnie Jane Maracle (Indigenous Learning Strategist, Academic Success/First Nations House).

Join U of T faculty graduates of the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) Effective Teaching Practices course (ACUE-Certified Faculty) as they share insights from the 25 modules they completed over several months. They implemented, reimagined, and extended evidence-based teaching practices to support their teaching, learning and student success at U of T. This Series invites participants to hear from these instructors: their reflections upon what they have learned, and practical examples and tips informed by evidence-based strategies. Facilitators will engage in discussions on sharing these approaches into one’s current practice.

In this session Professor Alex Rennet will discuss some carefully designed new online assessments introduced throughout a first-year mathematics course at UTM aimed at improving students’ *mathematical* reading and writing skills.  Prior to a recent redesign, these skills were expected but neither taught, nor explicitly communicated to students.  But as part of the course redesign, they have communicated the centrality of these outcomes and have steadily introduced more components that target them, including these new assessments. Alex will share lessons learned along the way, including through some research studying the redesign.

Join U of T faculty graduates of the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) Effective Teaching Practices course (ACUE-Certified Faculty) as they share insights from the 25 modules they completed over several months. They implemented, reimagined, and extended evidence-based teaching practices to support their teaching, learning and student success at U of T. This Series invites participants to hear from these instructors: their reflections upon what they have learned, and practical examples and tips informed by evidence-based strategies. Facilitators will engage in discussions on sharing these approaches into one’s current practice.

In this session Katherine Trip and Nancy Johnston will discuss their teaching strategies to support students in online learning through enhanced communication with students, scaffolding expectations for participation and assignments. They will discuss their use of pedagogical strategies, such as video introductions, lecture outlines and vocabulary lists, and synchronous/ asynchronous engagement activities, to create an inclusive online environment and help students to persist in their learning online. Both instructors draw from their diverse perspectives in teaching Nursing and Humanities students to explore how they have explored pedagogical advice and research from ACUE on promoting active learning and encouraging an inclusive course environment.

Over the past two years, members of the University of Toronto have had to reinvent their teaching environments, delivery methods, and interactions with colleagues and students. While many are looking forward to post-pandemic teaching, some of us are also uncertain of what the future of teaching in higher education will bring. Now is a great time to reflect on the past, understand the present, and start shaping the future.

This workshop focuses on using a design thinking approach to reflect on teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and design what the future may be. Throughout the session, participants will use design thinking methods to: 1) reflect on the lessons learnt in the last two years; 2) propose opportunities given the current situation we are in; and 3) sketch out big ideas to define the future. To guide these activities, participants will be asked to think about the three following questions:

• What are you leaving behind?
• What are you taking forward?
• What are you looking for?

These questions will serve as the starting point to collect participants’ thoughts, which will then be fed into the design thinking process presented during the workshop. The session will start with an introduction to design thinking and how it can be applied to teaching. Then, each participant will work individually and in small groups using a subset of design thinking methods to propose ideas on the future of teaching in higher education. The session will also introduce fundamental concepts of design thinking such as divergence and convergence, individual versus group data generation, and playbacks.

The goal is for participants to leave the session with some design thinking tools, methods, and practice they can apply in their own teaching.

This workshop will feed into the work of the 2022 U of T Teaching & Learning Symposium: Designing for the Future. The theme for this year’s symposium seeks to answer the questions “where are we now and where are we going?” To learn more about the Teaching & Learning Symposium and be part of the premier teaching showcase for the University of Toronto, please visit the TLS website.

Join U of T faculty graduates of the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) Effective Teaching Practices course (ACUE-Certified Faculty) as they share insights from the 25 modules they completed over several months. They implemented, reimagined, and extended evidence-based teaching practices to support their teaching, learning and student success at U of T. This Series invites participants to hear from these instructors: their reflections upon what they have learned, and practical examples and tips informed by evidence-based strategies. Facilitators will engage in discussions on sharing these approaches into one’s current practice. Recordings from previous sessions in the series can be found in the CTSI webinar catalogue.

In this session Professors Dana Boyko and Safieh Moghaddam will discuss incorporating transparency with respect to course activities and assessments.  Being clear and transparent with students about the reasons for the design of the course and its assignments can help students to engage more fully in learning opportunities and understand expectations more clearly.  Topics covered will include:  aligning assignments with learning outcomes, Transparent Assignment Design, and using scoring fair rubrics and meaningful feedback.

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.

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

• Excel summary of polling responses(.xslx)

Building on Session #1, we will begin in this workshop to explore how academic resilience can inform the course design process and how the three pillars of academic resilience identified in Session #1 — metacognition, self-efficacy and resourcefulness — translate into practice. Specifically, we will consider how these elements can be further fostered through student support strategies, in-class activities and formative assessments. Participants will have the opportunity to hear from U of T instructors who have successfully structured their courses and adapted their teaching approaches to foster academic resilience in their students. In small groups, we will discuss challenges and brainstorm ideas that will help guide the design of participants’ own resilient learning environments.

Learning Outcomes:

• Examine how course design decisions impact the resilience and academic success of both instructors and students
• Explore strategies to promote student reflection and resilience in a course
• Review a range of approaches (from basic to increasingly complex changes) that can be applied in any teaching and learning context

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.

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 

Join U of T faculty graduates of the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) Effective Teaching Practices course (ACUE-Certified Faculty) as they share insights from the 25 modules they completed over several months. They implemented, reimagined, and extended evidence-based teaching practices to support their teaching, learning and student success at U of T. This Series invites participants to hear from these instructors: their reflections upon what they have learned, and practical examples and tips informed by evidence-based strategies. Facilitators will engage in discussions on sharing these approaches into one’s current practice.

In this session Laura Dempster and Karen Smith will explore the opportunities and challenges in promoting active learning in both online and in-person classroom environments. They will discuss pedagogical strategies such as the use of breakout rooms and polling in large classes, and small group active learning strategies such as jigsaw and collaborative problem-solving. Both educators will draw on their diverse experiences in teaching Dentistry and Environmental Science students, along with resources from ACUE, to share tips, techniques and insights for effective active learning for online and in-person learners.

In this interactive hands-on clinic, participants will workshop a particular approach to course planning. After first considering the situational factors that inform the delivery of their course, they will develop a few key course learning outcomes. Working back from these outcomes, participants will map out some of the key activities they would like their students to do to develop competence in subject areas and consider what assessments will be needed as the course progresses to demonstrate learning in these areas. They will then use a worksheet developed by Dee Fink (Creating Significant Learning Experiences, 2013) to plan what students will do when they are in class versus what they will do when they are engaged in course work outside of class time. The clinic will end with participants being introduced to the Course Framework worksheet that they can take away and work on as they further develop their course plan. A key goal of the worksheets is to help instructors streamline content to see where space can be created for students to practice using skills and concepts and reflect on learning before being evaluated. Participants are asked to bring to the session the syllabus or outline for one course they are planning.

• Course Planning Clinic Framework Worksheet (.docx)

•  Links from the Syllabus Clinic(.docx)
•  Syllabus Checklist(.docx)
•  Creating a Friendlier Syllabus(PDF)

Join U of T faculty graduates of the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) Effective Teaching Practices course (ACUE-Certified Faculty) as they share insights from the 25 modules they completed over several months. They implemented, reimagined, and extended evidence-based teaching practices to support their teaching, learning and student success at U of T. This Series invites participants to hear from these instructors: their reflections upon what they have learned, and practical examples and tips informed by evidence-based strategies. Facilitators will engage in discussions on sharing these approaches into one’s current practice.

Even with clear learning goals, designing courses that fit outcomes and assignments that help students see the connections amongst key course concepts is challenging. Concept mapping is a valuable tool for designing courses and for helping students deepen their understanding of key course concepts and recognize the connections among these as they navigate a course.

This workshop presents an example of how a concept map assignment from a human biology course helped students understand the connections amongst key course concepts and skills. The workshop then guides participants from across the disciplines in creating a concept map for one of their own courses, which they can use to plan assessments and other learning activities.

Are you interested in learning about teaching and learning funding opportunities available to U of T faculty and staff? If so, you are invited to participate in a 90-minute online workshop that provides a general overview of the three major institutional teaching and learning grants:

• Learning and Education Advancement Fund (LEAF)
• Instructional Technology Innovation Fund (ITIF)
• Graduate Education Innovation Fund (GEIF)

We will describe the opportunities available through these funds and explore effective practices regarding proposal writing for funding opportunities that seek to enrich, catalyze and directly impact University of Toronto teaching and learning. We will discuss general strategies and suggestions for successful grant applications and address the main criteria that these proposals should address.

By the end of this session you will have:

• Gained an understanding of available funding avenues at U of T that support teaching and learning projects and the application processes
• Gained knowledge of the essential elements and key principles guiding effective proposal writing
• Explored grant ideas with U of T colleagues
• Identified key resources to consult for your proposal writing

A well-crafted syllabus ensures that students understand the essential requirements for participating and succeeding in a course. A well-designed syllabus can also serve as a learning tool to enhance students’ experience in the course, beyond listing course policies and due dates. This practical, interactive session will consider the essential elements of an effective syllabus, review current best practices in syllabus design and examine a model University of Toronto course syllabus. Participants will then work in pairs to provide feedback on each other’s syllabi (see below) with CTSI facilitators providing additional guidance.

As a participant in this session, we ask that you have one of the following at hand during the workshop:

Assignments have been called the creative engine of teaching: they can increase student engagement and learning and make the grading process for instructors and TAs more meaningful. But what exactly are good assignments and how do we create or adapt them?

In this session we’ll review the principles and strategies of assignment design that apply to all disciplines and to both online and in-person environments. Participants will gain new tools and resources they can use to improve their own assignments.

Through discussion and activities, such as analyzing sample assignments and rubrics, we’ll consider how and why to:

• sequence and scaffold assignments throughout a course
• build in feedback at key junctures
• communicate evaluation criteria to students
• foster academic integrity
• provide resources to guide students through assignments

Facilitators:
Andrea Graham, Ph.D., Learning Strategist, Academic Success
Andrea Williams, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Director of Writing & Rhetoric, Innis College, and Writing-Integrated Teaching, FAS

In this session, we will discuss a range of misconceptions about institutional grading procedures and provide clarification around some key issues and common scenarios related to grading at U of T. Participants will be encouraged to ask questions through a facilitated dialogue on grading policies that will inform teaching practice. Topics include distribution of grades and assignments, managing grading with Teaching Assistants and posting student progress in Quercus.

Of particular focus will be hybrid, which is defined as a course that is designed such that there is a mix of online and in-person interaction, involving the use of technologies to facilitate multi-modality, flexibility, and student engagement. We will clarify the distinction between hybrid teaching and hybrid work as well as the difference among hybrid, hyflex, and dual delivery teaching.

From Panic to Possibility: Rethinking and Redesigning Assignments in the Wake of Generative AI

As an instructor, it is hard to read about the impact of generative AI on teaching and learning in higher education and not wonder what we are going to do come September, especially when we are told that many of our students are already using it. This workshop will help move you from panic mode to problem-solving: in consultation with workshop leaders and faculty peers, you will get a chance to rethink and redesign one of your assignments with a focus on learning objectives, possibilities, and constraints in our new context.  

View recording (December 11,2023)

Download Slides (December 11 2023)