Director’s Message

Each year as we prepare our Annual Report, we take time to reflect on all we have accomplished and focus on our goals and priorities for the upcoming year. This year, however, this reflective process is even more pronounced as we celebrate many important initiatives and two important milestones for both the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation (CTSI) and the Teaching Assistants’ Training Program (TATP).

First of all, in 2019 we celebrated CTSI’s 10th anniversary and our role in the ever growing, ever developing teaching and learning community at U of T. Over this past decade, CTSI has had the pleasure and honour of working with so many of you to enhance teaching effectiveness and the student experience, to support new innovations and ideas, and to build an engaged and vibrant learning community. Over ten weeks, we honoured and featured themes and accomplishments from the past decade in our newsletter and on our website entitled “CTSI 10: Then and Wow!”. This milestone culminated in a celebration at this year’s Teaching and Learning Symposium – Learning Spaces + Places – held at the Desautels Centre for Integrative Thinking on May 28th. With 360 attendees (faculty, librarians, staff and students) from across the University, our presenters shared their expertise and research resulting in a productive day of learning. The day included a morning plenary, 23 concurrent sessions, a culminating poster session (featuring members of CTSI’s inaugural Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Cohort and past recipients of the Learning and Education Advancement Fund and the Instructional Technology Innovation Fund) and a Provostial-hosted reception. A key theme that emerged from our Symposium and celebration is that we are all stronger when we work together.

The full implementation of our new technology toolbox and learning management engine, Quercus, in Fall 2018 involved all members of our CTSI team, whether through providing resources and support for faculty and graduate students teaching with Quercus, communicating the step-by-step integration plan and available tools for the new academic toolbox, or integrating and supporting online course evaluation content into the platform. The Academic and Collaborative Technologies (ACT) team provided leadership, training and technical support for the university throughout the process and continue to do so. This implementation was truly a university-wide effort, and the success of the rollout in such a large university as ours, is a reflection of the care and commitment of so many.

CTSI, and U of T, continues to position itself as a leader in the assessment of teaching, and to highlight the role that course evaluations play
as one source of data in the improvement of teaching. Following many requests for external consultation regarding course evaluations, in October 2018 CTSI was pleased to host the first Course Evaluation Institute, bringing together 48 participants from 21 Canadian and international institutions to share research and best practices over a two-day period. All participants highly valued the collective learning and CTSI will continue to host this bi-yearly Institute.

As CTSI has grown, so has our engaged teaching and learning community. We are constantly assessing our programming and support mechanisms to determine how best to meet the needs of our faculty. This year, in our quest to develop a comprehensive, evidence-based program on teaching effectiveness that could build on our long-running Fundamentals of University Teaching course, we partnered with the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) for the Course in Effective University Teaching Practice, a year-long program that is endorsed by the American Council on Education. After extensive planning we were excited to launch this certificate program in June 2019 with 45 tenure-stream and teaching-stream faculty members!

A second important milestone in 2019 was the 20th anniversary of the Teaching Assistants’ Training Program, the peer-training program providing pedagogical support for graduate students and teaching assistants on all three campuses. To get a sense of the journey of past TATP staff and students, we invited former staff members to respond to a questionnaire about how working with the TATP affected their work and careers, whether or not they remained in the academy or followed other career paths. It has been inspiring to see how the TATP has impacted teaching, research, business and innovation around the globe.

And finally, the start of this year – 2019-2020 – will include a focus on a range of priorities that we are excited about, such as our continued partnership with Academic and Campus Events (ACE) and Student Life’s Innovation Hub, to assess ways to support teaching and learning in the many new U of T active learning classrooms, as part of the Transforming the Instructional Landscape (TIL) project. We will also be contributing to the university-wide Teaching Support External Review process led by Susan McCahan, Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education. The process will no doubt surface the many ways that teaching culture continues to be strengthened across our university, and how together we can continue to build a culture of continuous improvement.

As you review this CTSI 2018-2019 Annual Report I hope that you will discover information that connects to your interests, surprises you, and possibly, inspires you. It continues to be a privilege for our CTSI team to work with all of you in creating the vibrant, innovative, and committed teaching and learning community that is U of T.

Carol Rolheiser
Director, Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation (CTSI) and Professor, Department of Curriculum Teaching and Learning, OISE