Teaching Fellows

Mike is an expert on large class instruction and the use of multimedia in the classroom. He is a recipient of the University Students' Council Teaching Award of Excellence (1996), the 3M National Teaching Fellowship (1998), and a multi-year recipient of the Western Psychology Association Psychology Professor of the Year Award.

As part of her new university-wide teaching fellowship, and building on the curriculum change initiatives she led during earlier work in the Office of Indigenous Initiatives, Candace is now leading two interrelated Indigenous curriculum projects. These projects focus on developing unique online teaching opportunities to assist Western instructors in ethically including Indigenous ways of knowing into their teaching and learning practices.

The primary project—Maatoo-Kiiying Gaa-Miinigoo-Wiziying (Sharing Our Gifts): Indigenous Online Learning Bundles—places Indigenous scholars and Indigenous epistemologies at the forefront in the creation of curriculum Learning Bundles. (A Learning Bundle is a collection of teaching resources focused on a broad theme that has interdisciplinary application.) Over the course of three years, Candace will facilitate collaborative spaces that nurtures the creation of at least 28 Bundles which will form a digital repository of resources to be made available to Western instructors across disciplines. The Learning Bundles initiative is inspired by a similar project conceived by Dr. Kahente Horn-Miller at Carleton University, an award-winning initiative that engages her campus community in learning with and from Indigenous Peoples and ways of knowing.

Beyond the Bundles project, Candace will work closely with Western’s Office of Indigenous Initiatives and Centre for Teaching and Learning to foster professional learning communities to support use of the Bundles. She will also play a key role in collaboratively developing and piloting an Indigenous Teaching and Learning Series (with Sara Mai Chitty, Indigenous Curriculum and Pedagogy Advisor) geared towards Western instructors who are committed to advancing critical, Indigenous, and decolonial approaches to teaching. This series of online modules will guide Western instructors in thinking through and applying critical, decolonizing principles to their classroom pedagogies. This project has been partially funded and supported through a Peace and Reconciliation grant awarded to Candace in March 2021 by the Association of Commonwealth Universities.

• https://www.edu.uwo.ca/news-events/2021/teaching-fellow-indigenous-learning.html
• https://news.westernu.ca/2021/06/moving-toward-decolonizing-the-curriculum/

Paul’s project, Engagement through Immersion: Immersive Education in Science, will focus on the impact of immersive technologies (e.g., virtual reality, augmented reality, immersive video) on student motivation, engagement, and scientific literacy in undergraduate and graduate courses at Western. Paul’s work will have a particular focus on interdisciplinary environmental courses and engaging students with STEM subject matter related to sustainability and climate change education. Students will examine real-size 3D models of biological species, virtually explore sites of ecological significance, and role-play as scientists in realistic simulations. Paul will establish a research program dedicated to identifying the key benefits of immersive education by testing the efficacy of immersive technologies in properly controlled studies. Finally, he will build capacity for employing immersive technologies at Western by overseeing the development of a virtual library of digital learning objects and creating evidence-based training resources such as online video tutorials and guides.

Katrina’s project, Integrating Ways of Knowing to Enrich Climate Change Education, will integrate western science and Indigenous ways of knowing to effectively teach, and empower students to take action on, climate change through the development of an innovative blended module-based experiential learning course, Connecting for Climate Change Action. In partnership with Sara Mai Chitty (Curriculum & Pedagogy Advisor, Office of Indigenous Initiatives) and Dr. Beth Hundey (eLearning & Curriculum Specialist, Centre for Teaching and Learning), the course will be developed as a series of online learning modules that will require a shift in the traditional teaching approach, from understanding with our minds to a deeper awareness that comes from Indigenous ways of knowing that engage the mind, body, emotion, and spirit. The course will be the cornerstone for the new Climate Change and Society Major, the first of such programs offered in Canada. However, the impact of the modules is intended to reach far beyond the one course as they will be made available to other courses at Western and at other post-secondary institutions, as well as to interested community groups, governmental agencies, and businesses, with the goal of transforming climate change education! Katrina will investigate the course’s impact on students’ understanding of, and values concerning, climate change, as well as their skills to address the urgent challenges climate change poses through a mixed-method research program.

Kim’s project, Innovations in Interdisciplinary Pedagogy, Within and Beyond Arts and Humanities, involves developing and evaluating two different models of collaborative interdisciplinary pedagogy. The first involves a collaboration between Theatre Studies and Psychology, refining an existing community engaged learning partnership across two courses and including City Studio London. The students in Psychology will perform qualitative research into the lived experiences of newcomers to London and develop recommendations for City staff, while their counterparts in Theatre Studies will explore different models of performance for social change and community-engaged theatre, creating performance actions to animate the data and help raise awareness about newcomer experience among London’s residents. The second model involves a partnership between colleagues in Theatre Studies and Philosophy who will create a course on the work of 17th Century philosopher and playwright Margaret Cavendish. The course will use a mix of performance- and philosophy-based pedagogies to help students explore Cavendish’s non-dramatic writing in embodied ways and examine her playtexts as embodied philosophy. Kim will also engage in a mixed research program with her partners on the course projects, exploring instructor experiences of designing and implementing the two models of collaborative interdisciplinary pedagogy through an auto-ethnographical methodology, as well as determining the impact of those courses on students using survey and interviews. Meanwhile, Kim plans to engage her colleagues across Arts and Humanities in discussions about interdisciplinary teaching and learning by creating a community of practice within the faculty, and developing a workshop series with colleagues.

Nicole’s project involves effectively communicating learning outcomes to students and assessing and recognizing student achievement of Western’s core competencies. She will develop an interactive visual syllabus that links program and course outcomes to teaching activities and assessments, design self-assessment rubrics for students to measure their proficiency levels on Western’s core competencies, and incorporate ePortfolios and online badging to support these initiatives. She will also research the impact of these initiatives by exploring how improved transparency of outcomes allows students to engage in deeper learning as well as examining the impact of student self-assessment to determine the most effective ways to promote student reflection on and integration of knowledge.

Quazi will create an online hub designed to engage Engineering students in learning and practicing programming in a variety of programming languages. The interactive online modules created as part of the project will introduce programming languages commonly used in industry, research, and high performance computing to students from all disciplines. The modules will include playful resources and hands on activities that offer students the option to engage with the modules at their own pace even before joining Western. Ultimately, this project will provide students with an enhanced online computer-programming experience that will help them develop skills that are necessary for career opportunities in programming related fields.

Thomas will integrate mental health and mindfulness education into Western’s Law program. He will raise awareness of mental health issues, reduce stigma, and build student resiliency through the development and implementation of a new mental health education program. He will also revise and extend an existing first-year non-credit mindfulness course in Law, creating an optional upper-year for-credit Law course that will support students’ personal, academic, and professional well-being through its focus on mindfulness, emotional intelligence and professionalism. Further, he will conduct research on the impact of these mental health and mindfulness initiatives.

• How one law professor's depression led him to bring mindfulness into the classroom (CBC Radio)

• Western Law to launch academic mindfulness course this fall (Canadian Lawyer)

• Meditation program lightens the weight of the law (Western News)