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Message from the Vice-Provost
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I hope you are all enjoying the official arrival of summer! This month, I'd like to highlight the extraordinary achievements of our President's Teaching Award winners. We are also pleased to announce the new LEAF priority areas, updates on the Generative AI Task Force and the AI Virtual Tutor Program and events on funding, learning analytics and pedagogy to help you prepare for the next academic year.
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Teaching Awards
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Congratulations to the President's Teaching Award Recipients!
The President’s Teaching Award (PTA) is the highest honour for teaching at the University of Toronto. The PTA recognizes sustained and ongoing excellence in Educational Leadership, Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation. This year's winners are:
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- Stavroula Andreopoulos, Professor, Teaching Stream, Biochemistry, Temerty Faculty of Medicine
- Timothy Chan, Professor, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering
- David France Tang-Wai, Professor, Medicine, Neurology and Geriatric Medicine
Temerty Faculty of Medicine
- Franco Taverna, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, Human Biology Program, Faculty of Arts & Science
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Teaching Grants
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New LEAF Priority Areas & Upcoming Workshops
The Office of the Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education (OVPIUE) is launching new priority areas for the Learning & Education Advancement Fund (LEAF) including student success, experiential learning, technology in the classroom and equitable and inclusive teaching. The OVPIUE will be accepting Expressions of Interests on a rolling basis between June and September 10. Learn more here.
If you are interested in learning more about LEAF, you are also invited to attend two upcoming workshops:
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2024 Global Classrooms Funding Initiative
This funding initiative will support costs identified by faculty in three areas: external expertise, partner engagement and course development. Global Classrooms are an approach to internationalize teaching and learning, from international guest speakers to courses co-taught with colleagues at institutions abroad.
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Applications close Sunday, July 7.
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Generative AI
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AI Task Force Updates
The University of Toronto Artificial Intelligence Task Force and its working groups are meeting monthly to develop a vision and strategy to guide the University’s AI activities. One major role of the Task Force will be to coordinate and synthesize the efforts of area-specific working groups, chaired by the Task Force members, in essential areas of the University’s mission and operations: Teaching & Learning, Student Services, People, Strategy, and Administration, Operations & Planning and Technology & Data Governance. Additionally, representatives from the libraries, legal services and graduate education sit on multiple working groups, as their presence is critical to topics across the institution. Working groups will continue their work through the fall term, and will consult widely across the U of T community.
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Monthly AI Roundup - Emerging Trends
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Each month, Vice-Provost Susan McCahan will host a session intended to sort through the vast amount of information about AI advances, sharing a few key items of interest to the U of T community. The hope is that it will help people stay abreast of emerging changes that will potentially impact work at the institution.
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All U of T faculty and staff who would find this content helpful are welcome to attend. To request an invitation to the meeting, please use this form to register.
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Artificial Intelligence Virtual Tutor Program
Applications are now being accepted for a new Artificial Intelligence Virtual Tutor Initiative. This pilot program offers an opportunity to co-develop a Virtual Tutor for use in the fall 2024 term.
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The Virtual Tutor will be tailored to your course materials and will leverage AI to provide responses to students based on these materials. We encourage applications from instructors who have a robust corpus of digital course materials and are interested in experimenting with the creation of chat bots for use in teaching and learning activities.
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Successful applicants will have the operational costs for their Virtual Tutor and staff time for co-development covered by this program for one full production semester. Please note that applications will be accepted until July 2, 2024.
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Welcoming Emily Greenleaf, Special Projects Officer, Generative AI
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The VPIUE is pleased to announce that Emily Greenleaf has joined the team in the new role of Special Projects Officer, Generative AI. Emily will support the AI Task Force and its working groups in their strategic planning for emerging AI technologies and their intersection with education, research and university operations.
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Learning Analytics
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Quercus Data Insights: A New Dashboard Tool to Visualize Student Activity
To support your course planning for the 2024-25 year, CTSI and the U of T Learning Analytics initiative will demonstrate a series of dashboards (Quercus Data Insights) visualizing your students’ activity in Quercus in a workshop on Thursday, August 1 from 1:00-2:00 p.m. via Microsoft Teams. The dashboards will include data for courses from September 1, 2022 up to August 31, 2024 and will be available to all interested instructors as of August 1. This session will focus on the functionality of the dashboards, how to formulate meaningful questions based on the data and how to access additional supports to effectively use this tool.
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Teaching & Learning
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Certificate in Effective Teaching Practice Framework
U of T faculty can obtain the Certificate in the Effective Teaching Practice Framework by completing the Course in Effective Teaching Practices (ETP), a nine-month course (September 2024 – May 2025) that combines 25 asynchronous online modules, in-person and synchronous online learning opportunities and a community of practice. The ACUE course is a partnership between the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation (CTSI) at U of T, and the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE), and endorsed by the American Council on Education.
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Unit heads (Deans/Chairs/Program Directors) are asked to nominate up to 3 instructors for this program. Applications close on Monday, July 29.
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CTSI Summer Programming
The Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation (CTSI) has a range of summer programming for U of T instructors including a special event stemming from the Teaching & Learning Symposium on August 20 from 10:00a.m.-2:00p.m. facilitated by Garfield Gini-Newman, Associate Professor, Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, OISE: Finding the Balance: Learning Spaces that Promote Rigour and Kindness. Other programming includes:
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Academic Toolbox for 2024-25
As instructors begin planning for the 2024-2025 academic year, Academic, Research & Collaborative (ARC) technologies would like to provide a reminder of what teaching tools are available with support as part of the University’s Academic Toolbox.
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Thank you, Julian!
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The Office of the Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education, gathered to extend their best wishes to Julian Weinrib, Director, Innovations in Undergraduate Education, in his new role with Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration. While he will be much missed after nine years with the OVPIUE, we are delighted that he is remaining in the U of T community.
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