Seasons Change and So Does Our Academic Director

Originally published May 29, 2026

Reflections on another academic year…and Bon Voyage Debora!

June brings with it a shift of gears for instructors at Laurier, as they emerge from the whirl of departmental and program business, accelerate research plans, or perhaps start a new teaching term. Convocation looms on the road ahead.

TEI, for its part, has just wrapped up a year of programming and resources focused on topics that continue to challenge and inspire our faculty at Laurier. In response to ongoing conversations with full-time and part-time faculty, TEI developed workshops on Assessment (Re)Design in an Age of Gen AI and Student Engagement Using Digital Tools. We also kickstarted a Peer Teaching Observation Program, as well as a monthly Faculty Learning Community on Generative AI and Academic Integrity, both of which brought together communities of instructors to share knowledge, experiences, and enhance each other’s teaching.

With the addition of a new educational developer in Brantford (whom we welcomed in September!), we have started to run the Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) again in addition to expanding our multi-campus supports that include consults, Teaching and Lounging for casual drop-in chats (and coffee 😊), and campus-specific programming.

Our ongoing resources, such as our Friday emails, regularly spotlighted faculty thinking through teaching problems and the innovative approaches they bring to their classes. We also continued discussions on polarization and international student teaching, alongside running our foundational programming (course design, teaching philosophy statements and dossiers, faculty and student teaching awards, and ASPIRE programming for graduate students).

And, the change of season brings another important development at TEI, as we say goodbye to Debora VanNijnatten who completes her three-year term as the academic director of TEI at the end of May. In addition to advancing our understanding and approaches to GenAI in teaching and learning, during her tenure, Debora emphasized the need to better understand Laurier’s diverse student body, to work across faculties and shared service units to support teaching innovation, to raise the profile of climate pedagogies at Laurier, and to move discussions of teaching effectiveness into new arenas and initiatives.

On June 1, we will be welcoming Dr. Jonathan Finn into the academic director role. Jonathan has taught nearly 60 courses across all levels of the curriculum during his time at Laurier and is a past winner of the Donald F. Morgenson Award for Teaching Excellence for Innovation. We are so excited to have Jonathan bring his long commitment to teaching experimentation and intentional course design to the AD TEI portfolio – so stay tuned!

Do

"Teaching and Lounging” – Come chat with us!

Drop by for coffee or tea and get support in brainstorming or talking through a teaching challenge, redesigning an assessment, or other teaching-related questions and problem-solving opportunities! No registration is required, just stop by and see us.

Join our Peer Teaching Observation Program

Designed with a formative approach to assessing teaching effectiveness, TEI’s Peer Teaching Observation (PTO) program offers an opportunity for faculty peers at all career stages to participate in reciprocal teaching observations in their classes in the upcoming academic year. Notification of groups or pairings will be sent out in early August to start the process. Please complete this Expression of Interest to help us best match you with your peers >>

Learn more about teaching observations at Laurier, including working with an Educational Developer for focused teaching observations.

Watch

Conversations about Teaching Excellence

Our Conversation series features discussions with recent winners of the Donald F. Morgenson Awards for Teaching Excellence, delving into how faculty inspire student learning both in and outside of the classroom through their innovative and inclusive approaches to teaching, mentorship and student-centred learning.

Faculty Spotlight Series on Effective Teaching and Assessment Strategies

TEI’s instructional programming library offers instructors the opportunity to discover new ideas to try out in your classes, such as assessment snapshots on teaching with Generative AI, taking an authentic care teaching approach, and multiple-choice testing strategies.

The Birds

Getting outside during the nicer weather can help break up your writing time, clear your head when finalizing your syllabus, or simply for the joy of stopping to recognize the world around you. Want to get serious? Destination Ontario has compiled a list of the best bird watching and birding events in Ontario to help you plan your outdoor adventure.

Listen

Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast

Whether you are interested in (Re)Orienting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning or are thinking through Active Learning That Engages All Learners, the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast is a great place to go for ideas for your course development.

Disagreeing Well with John Milloy

A podcast about polarization, Laurier’s own John Milloy discusses why it matters, what drives it, and what we should be doing about it. Speaking with authors, commentators, and practitioners, John skillfully explores one of the most pressing issues of our time.

Read

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and Higher Education: Lessons from a Blind Grad Student’s and a Sighted Librarian’s Journeys

An open-ed resource, co-written by Ashley Shaw, a blind graduate student, and sighted librarian Mark Weiler from Laurier, shares lessons on improving the accessibility of academic libraries. This resource helps to equip sighted allies in the advancement of inclusion in post-secondary settings. Chapter 4, for example, digs into MS Word features to make documents like our course syllabi more accessible or how requiring page numbers for citational practices can be an accessibility barrier. You can also engage with the authors and information of this resource via this related webinar on Accessibility in Academics.

Teaching Where You Are: Weaving Indigenous and Slow Principles and Pedagogies

Teaching Where You Are was written by two educators, one Indigenous and one settler, as a guide for “non-Indigenous educators to work in good ways with Indigenous students.” Using the Medicine Wheel to provide a holistic framework for the book, Leddy and Miller explore the ways in which Indigenous and Slow approaches to teaching and learning are complimentary approaches to rehumanizing education. Through a place-based and land-based lens, their Medicine-Wheel framework provides a holistic way to discuss how to re-centre teaching people, not subjects.

The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI

In this book, the authors look to better understand the larger context of cheating, a topic of increasing interest given the rise of gen AI and knowledge abundance through the internet and digital tools. Rettinger and Gallant’s research-informed and forward-looking book creates a vision for what classroom integrity could look like by exploring why students cheat and exploring practical suggestions for reframing our approach and mindset when it comes to academic integrity.