15-minute Innovative Teaching Shares in RFP214-5

• “Generative AI: From the Classroom to the Workplace and Beyond” Kate Cassidy (Communications, Popular Culture & Film) 

Students are increasingly using generative AI (GAI) in their coursework, often accepting its output without question. While this may seem like a convenient shortcut, it influences more than just their immediate learning. The ways students engage with GAI in school shape the habits and beliefs they carry into their personal and professional lives. Unquestioning use of generative AI affects not only individual success but also broader dynamics like trust, well-being, and culture. This session shares research on generative AI in the workplace and explores its implications for teaching. We move beyond whether to allow GAI in assignments to explore deeper questions such as: What does it mean to evaluate GAI output? Where is the line between a digital tool and a human substitute? And what skills beyond technical proficiency are needed to use it responsibly?  Universities play a critical role in preparing students not just for careers but for ethical and informed engagement in an AI-driven world. This session will help educators consider how to meet that challenge.

Presentation Slides (Kate Cassidy)

• “Using Generative AI to create personalized case studies for assessments’ Camille Rutherford (Education) 

Dr. Camille Rutherford will share how she uses GenAI to create meaningful connections and increase student engagement through personalized case studies custom designed for individual students. 

Presentation Slides (Camille Rutherford)/Blog Post (Rutherford – Linkedin)

• “Navigating Fear and Building Connection to Support Learning in the Time of AI” Amanda Burk (Visual Arts) 

Faculty teaching in creative disciplines have long known that learning and creative output requires a level of safety and trust. Students will struggle to take risks, be present in their learning, or produce their best work, if they are working from a place of stress or fear. How might we better support students in navigating their own learning and engagement, especially in a time of AI? How might we help them find and trust their own ideas and voice? This session will reflect on how healing-centred approaches and strategies used in creative disciplines offer faculty and their students a path forward. 

Presentation Slides (Amanda Burk)

15-minute Innovative Teaching Shares in ST103

• “Maximizing Open Education: Finding Ways to Help OER Creators and Adopters Connect” Julie Stevens (Sport Management) 

As momentum around Open Education builds, so too does the interest in Open Education Resources (OERs). The positive energy that encircles this movement motivated me to become an OER Creator. The learning curve to create this type of resource is steep and requires significant investment to grasp multiple elements novel content generation approaches, unique pedagogical features and complex technical applications. Nevertheless, I am finding the most difficult challenge, as I endeavour to implement my ever-greening strategy, is finding effective ways to connect with Adopters from diverse disciplines, varied educational levels and expansive contexts (research, teaching, professional development. 

Presentation Slides (Julie Stevens)

• “Co-design: A collaborative approach to developing, implementing, and evaluating a transition to professional practice nursing course” Elizabeth Orr (Nursing) 

Background: The transition from student to professional nurse is a critical and often difficult period, marked by increasing clinical responsibilities, complex decision-making, and the need to adapt to high-pressure healthcare environments. New graduate nurses (NGNs) must bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and real-world practice while developing confidence, competence, and professional identity. Although transition support initiatives exist, they are largely post-licensure, leaving a gap in undergraduate curricula that directly prepares students for this transition. To address this, our project utilizes a co-design approach to develop and implement a Transition to Professional Practice Nursing course in the final year of the Brock BScN program.

• “Introduction to reimagining your courses for inclusion and decolonization” Karen Julien (Education) 

In this interactive session, participants are welcome to bring their syllabi and work together to consider their syllabi, course materials, in-class activities, and assignments in the context of creating a learner-centered classroom that considers practices of universal design for learning, differentiated instruction, trauma-informed practices, and decolonization. Following a brief introduction to selected relevant literature, discussions and activities will explore instructors’ own emotions about the challenges of change, resources available to support this professional development, and practical, manageable approaches to making course updates. 

Posters (and lunch) in Goodman Atrium

• “Explore and Design Community: Building Mathematical Thinking” Anjali Khirwadkar and Shannon Welbourn (Educational Studies) 
• “Enhancing Clinical Teaching: Phase One of a Multimodal Orientation and Mentorship Approach” Farhana Madhani & Rebecca Larocca (Nursing) 
• “Trends in Postsecondary Student Use of GenAI Tools: A Comparative International Study” Rahul Kumar, Robert McGray, Meghan Nagpal (Educational Studies) 
• “Eating Disorder Stigma in Schools: Equipping Ontario Teachers to Better Support Student Mental Health (Poster)” and Teacher Toolkit Alyssa Raab (Co-op, Career, and Experiential Education)
• “Teaching with Trauma-Informed Practices” Educational Development Team (CPI)  

15-minute Innovative Teaching Shares in RFP 214-5

• “Teaching with Escape Rooms” Mark Julien (OBHREE) & Arica Oliver (CCEE) 

Escape rooms are a popular leisure activity, and we sought to capitalize on their popularity by employing an escape room concept in the classroom. An activity was developed that allowed teams of students to answer questions related to the course material on human rights legislation. Students were enthusiastic about how much they enjoyed this activity and their test scores on human rights legislation concepts were higher relative to previous cohorts who did not have the opportunity to participate in this activity.

Presentation Slides (Mark Julien and Arica Oliver)

• “Science fair re-imagined for the health equity classroom” Val Michaelson (Health Sciences) 

Students were invited to engage with and then present course material in innovative ways. Most shunned traditional academic formats and used things like poetry, art, and board games to communicate their learning instead. Here is the story of what happened.

50-minute Workshop in ST103

• “Herodotus as an Educator” Anton Jansen (Classics) 

In teaching my university courses I have come to realize that my own approach to teaching owes much to Herodotus, the first Greek prose historian. Herodotus had a problem. He was writing about his enquiries into peoples, cultures, and societies for the reasons why the war between the Greeks and the Persians occurred. But, he was doing this in a very new way. As a result, he had to educate his audience in a different way of looking at the past. In this talk I will examine how Herodotus’ approach to educating his audience and making it think about how history works marks him out as a better educator than his immediate predecessors.

Presentation Slides (Anton Jansen)

50-minute Workshop in ST105

• “Ungrading” Ebru Ustundag (Geography)and Natalie Patterson (CPI)  

Join this session to reflect on the purposes of grades and grading in higher education. Participants in this session will hear about the rationales and approaches of instructors who have engaged in alternative grading practices and be invited into a conversation about approaches to assessment.

50-minute Workshop in RFP 214-5

• “Know Thy Frenemy: Understanding LLMs – Past, Present, and Future” Barak Shoshany (Physics)

This workshop will cover the following topics:

• How LLMs work: Basics of machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, and the transformer architecture (at an accessible level – no background needed!).
• The LLM zoo: An overview of the various frontier models currently on the market, and what each one is good for.
• How to use LLMs: Prompting techniques, refining results, handling data, image input and output, recognizing hallucinations, and so on.
• What to use LLMs for: Understanding their strengths and weaknesses, what exactly they can currently do and what they can’t (yet) do.
• Integrating LLMs in your course: Educating your students on how to use LLMs properly, creating a custom chatbot optimized for your specific material and teaching style, and more!

Presentation Slides (Barak Shoshany)

50-minute Workshop in ST103

• “Beyond Shadows: Building Institutional Support for Contract-based Faculty in Canadian Higher Education” Drs. Neivin Shalabi, Rakha Zabin, Karen Julien (Education) 

The session aims to call attention to precarious employment in the academy and develop comprehensive support for contract-based faculty in Canadian higher education.  The research team will engage the participants in interactive activities to examine the following critical questions:

• How does universities’ growing reliance on precarious employment affect contract-based faculty?

• How can contract-based faculty be supported in their teaching, career development, and overall well-being in Canadian higher education?

Drawing on their lived experiences during and post Ph.D. studies, five contract-based instructors will illuminate the participants’ understanding of what it means to be a “sessional instructor” and the unique challenges facing this faculty group, enriching participants’ understanding of the lived realities of contract-based faculty. The researchers will discuss strategies employed worldwide to address these challenges and build an equitable university where contract-based faculty are truly integrated as valued members in the university with fair compensation and opportunities for career advancement. Through art-based reflections, among other interactive activities, the participants will have an opportunity to share their own experiences and collectively propose practical strategies to support this faculty group. Untimely, the researchers aim to develop sustainable and meaningful support for contract-based faculty informed by multiple stakeholders and tailored to the distinctive structure of Canadian higher education.

50-minute Workshop in ST105

• A roundtable discussion with the Brock Faculty Fellows in Accessibility Chelsea Jones (Child & Youth Studies), Keri Cronin (Visual Arts), Ann Gagné (CPI)

In this roundtable the Brock Faculty Fellows in Accessibility will share their pedagogical strategies for supporting accessibility in their course designs and how this may interact with practices that are found in their disciplines or in the institutional more broadly. It is an opportunity to hear from the Fellows in terms of what they are doing in their pedagogy and/or research and how this is supporting a more inclusive environment for the learners. It will also be an opportunity to reflect on how accessible practices also need to be accessible to instructors, professors, and members of the teaching team. Participants are encouraged to bring their questions and thoughts about how accessible pedagogy is designed in their courses and discipline, and what resources they are looking for to make their pedagogy and research more inclusive.