Teachers of Tomorrow: Transforming Education by Facilitating a Culture of Wellbeing in Bachelor of Education Programs

The Teachers of Tomorrow (TOT) initiative targets students in Bachelor of Education (BEd) programs prior to their involvement in K-12 schools with innovative strategies to promote systemic change around wellness practices. By focusing on both the “what” (curriculum) and the “how” (pedagogy), TOT strengthens the impetus for organizational changes within BEd programs to better prepare future teachers in addressing their own wellbeing and enhancing wellbeing throughout K-12 and postsecondary settings. This is accomplished by using the Comprehensive School Health (CSH) framework, the gold standard for schools around the world. CSH enhances students’ abilities to learn and provides a multi-faceted structure for improving wellness within school communities.

Innovative Entrepreneurial Thinking Course

First Nations’ Reconciliation. Poverty. Climate Change. Pandemics. These are just a few of the complex national and global issues facing today’s society. After extensive consultations with students and community partners, our team developed the unique course, Entrepreneurial Thinking (ENTI) 317, which launched by UCalgary’s Haskayne School of Business in 2014. This massively scalable pedagogical approach is anchored in seven essential and teachable entrepreneurial thinking skills that prepares future leaders to: 1) problem solve, 2) tolerate ambiguity, 3) fail forward, 4) be empathetic, 5) create with limited resources, 6) respond to critical feedback, and 7) understand how to work in and with teams (ET7).

Bringing First Year Chemistry Online with Students as Partners through Universal Design

During the COVID-19 pandemic, an innovative Students-as-Partners collaboration was utilized to build short screen-capture video content and interactive quiz-style questions. Lab content was brought to life through a 360° interactive lab tour, experimental content delivery to support real-time data/observation acquisition and the ability to make experimental mistakes and see the results of those errors. Students could choose the way they wished to view an experiment, which greatly helped those with colour vision deficiencies or devices with low-resolution. Over 50 custom interactive online modules (containing over 1000 videos!) have been created and successfully delivered to over 2600 students across various faculties.

Working with Students to Co-Design 21st-Century Classrooms: The Online Learning & Technology Consultants (OLTC) Program

A team of collaborators at Bishop’s University created the Online Learning and Technology Consultant (OLTC) Program in the first few months of the global pandemic. Training students in pedagogy, technology, and critical empathy, this experiential learning program takes a transformative approach to pandemic pedagogy by creating inclusive virtual learning communities. This innovation had three phases: as a pilot at one university, then scaled across four universities, and finally as a three-credit course. From its modest beginnings to a university-wide and cross-institutional intervention, the project puts students at the heart of designing 21st century classrooms. It also the potential to reshape our understanding of what inclusive student-centred learning looks like in a post-pandemic world.

Alone in the Ring: Innovation in Pedagogy, Representation and Evaluation

Alone in the Ring (AitR) is a research-based, co-created pedagogical program that innovatively engages learners with the underrepresented challenges of disabled health and human service professions’ students in higher education. The use of research-based theatre as a guiding pedagogy, the inclusive nature of the team’s collaboration, the representation of diverse experiences, and the translation of research into teaching — and then into a movement for action — invigorated the typical learning context. Learners reported an unforgettable shift of perception and a deeply impactful understanding of disabled students in these professions, which further extended into a motivation to enact change.