By integrating drawing and creative writing into her botany courses, Dr. Baldwin reaches outside her discipline to engage students in deep and meaningful learning. In her natural history and ecology classes, her innovative use of place-based pedagogy provides important scaffolding to contextualize abstract and theoretical concepts. Her students use the tools of both art and science to transform and translate their learning beyond the classroom. Through the Pedagogy of Place community of practice she initiated, Dr. Baldwin developed and field-tested many place-based teaching assignments. These and others are now available through the STLHE Green Guide: Place-Based Education: An Inter and Multidisciplinary Approach.

Dr. Charlin has made exceptional contributions to Health Sciences teaching and learning nationally and internationally. Recognizing the challenges of teaching and developing clinical reasoning skills in medical students, he developed an innovative approach to explore the nature of clinical reasoning using knowledge modeling and a concordance test (an assessment approach that helps determine whether students have successfully organized information to make accurate clinical decisions). He developed the Concordance of Judgment Learning Tool that allows students and professionals-in-practice to compare their judgment(s) with that of experts, and learn from their reasoning and justifications. This innovation has been widely adopted in the health professions. In 2015, Dr. Charlin received the Duncan Graham Award for Lifelong Contributions to Medical Education.

Dr. Couros is a well-known pioneer in the field of open education and online learning. His innovative courses feature educational technology-facilitated student engagement such as the #ETMOOC lipdub assignment where creative relationship-building occurs among 12,000 students from different countries. Not only do his assignments result in his Education students creating effective personal learning networks that transcend the boundaries of the course, but his students also gain competence using a wide spectrum of educational technology tools, while establishing their online identity. Student self-assessments and reassessments both empower his students and facilitate mentoring opportunities as they continue to learn and exchange ideas with experts from around the world.

Dr. MacNeil is a consummate innovator and institutional leader who is nationally recognized for his theoretically sound pedagogical innovations in chemistry education. His research-based metacognitive co-curriculum, for example, introduces students to the concept and importance of metacognition, while learning about organic chemistry. Weekly learning task inventories and learning task lists paired with asking students to rate their confidence when responding to clicker questions and to predict their grade one week and 24-hours prior to test-taking, challenges them to reflect on and assess their learning (perceived and actual) and overall test preparedness. Two-stage collaborative testing and blended/flipped classroom methods with a focus on formative assessment are also signature to Dr. MacNeil’s teaching. Through his national leadership roles, Dr. MacNeil seeks to build capacity in chemistry education research.

Barbara Sinclair is a passionate educational leader. Her dedication to incorporating simulation in nursing education, while still a relatively new approach, resulted in technology-enhanced simulation being integral to all four years of Western’s nursing curriculum, thus providing students the opportunity to apply theory to practice and master essential nursing skills in a safe environment. Her electronic health (eHealth) record simulation system, for instance, engages students in complex case scenarios with a focus on patient safety and medication errors. Similarly, a collaboration with a fourth year student to develop an electronic medication administration record (eMAR) incorporating barcode technology, now aids nursing students in learning how to administer medications using technology they will encounter in Canadian healthcare facilities.