On November 5, a group of Grade 12 students from Central Toronto Academy had the opportunity to attend an engineering lecture at U of T.
But there was no quiz afterward — in fact, the students were the ones who were evaluating the instructors.
The project was part of TEP 1203 Teaching Engineering in Higher Education, a graduate-level course taught by Professor Chirag Variawa (ISTEP). The course is part of U of T Engineering’s Prospective Professors in Training (PPIT) program available to PhD students and postdoctoral fellows in all disciplines.
Both PPIT and TEP 1203 are just two of the many initiatives run through U of T’s Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering Education and Practice (ISTEP). The first of its kind in Canada, ISTEP drives change in how U of T Engineering prepares future engineering leaders, including what and how engineering professors teach.
“In this course, we’re looking at different methods of teaching pedagogy, and how we can bring teaching, assessment, learning outcomes and rubrics closer together,” says Amin Azad-Armaki (ChemE, ISTEP PhD student). Azad-Armaki serves as the TA for TEP 1203, and is pursuing the Collaborative Program in Engineering Education (EngEd) under the supervision of Professor Emily Moore (ISTEP, ChemE).
“We know that graduate students at U of T are great researchers, but they sometimes struggle with communicating their research ideas to audiences that don’t have the same technical background they do.”
To hone their communication skills, students in TEP 1203 develop presentations designed to impart a key concept in science or engineering. They typically end up presenting for their classmates, who are instructed to model what the intended audience — for example, first-year undergraduates — might be like.
But this year, the audience was two classes of Grade 12 students studying advanced placement calculus and biology at Central Toronto Academy, a secondary school in the Toronto District School Board.
“One of the things we do in our classes is try to bring in a meta-cognitive framework,” says Mike Gleeson, a teacher and assistant curriculum leader of mathematics at Central Toronto Academy.
“It’s not just about learning math, but also about learning how to learn effectively. That’s what this course is all about, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity for us to participate in it.”
Two groups of TEP 1203 students presented their sample lessons to the students from Central Toronto Academy. One of the lessons focused on the topic of microplastics, while the other addressed critical thinking in science and engineering.
Before and after the lesson, both groups of students discussed what makes for effective teaching with each other. The high school students also used pre-prepared rubrics to evaluate the lessons given by their graduate student instructors, similar to those used by undergraduates at U of T Engineering to evaluate their professors.
“We truly believe in authentic teaching and learning, and we wanted to create a realistic classroom experience for both the prospective professors — that is, our graduate students — and for the high school students we partnered with,” says Variawa.
“We hope to continue to have many more of these kinds of conversations with community partners going forward.”
Azad-Armaki notes that even though the focus of TEP 1203 and the PPIT program is preparation for a career as a professor, there are many other applications of the skills being developed.
“Engineering graduates are constantly having to communicate with a wide range of audiences: in industry, in academia and for the general public,” says Azad-Armaki.
“A project like this provides great grounding in how to tailor your message and the tone of your delivery to the audience. That’s a useful skill for anyone to have.”
