The Tech2U Pilot Program: Through the Eyes of Student Classroom Ambassadors

Written by: Anchana Kuganesan (Design Research Team Lead), Nia Spooner, Cathy Li, Ashley Vadivelu, Garima Sharma (Designer Researchers) The Tech2U program has been active for a full school year now and we’ve consistently seen its impact in successfully creating opportunities…

Project Insights from “Fostering the Courage to Learn: Student Experience at the Faculty of Dentistry”

Lightbulb in shape of a tooth

Written by: Sabrina Wu, Senior Research Assistant

In the Faculty of Dentistry Student Experience project, we partnered with the Faculty of Dentistry to gain a deeper and nuanced understanding of the current Dentistry student experience and how it can be strengthened. While this project was specific to the Dentistry student experience, I found that the student needs around learning resonated with our team as well in our own learning experience. I have learned a lot through this project about the courage it takes to continue down the path of learning, as well as how to communicate what I have learned.  

Robarts is Re-designing its 5th floor! Call for Participants

Robarts is Re-Designing its 5th Floor

Share Your Feedback and Vision for Robarts Library 5th Floor

Sign up to share. Receive a $10 gift card as a thank you! 

Are you interested in digital humanities? Are you curious about a space for innovative digital scholarship? Have you ever used digital tools like GIS, SPSS, or more? 

Project Insights from ‘Celebrating International Students: Being Brave Away from Home’

Written by Robin Martin, Serena Tran & Yuwei Jiang, Design Research Assistants for the Celebrating International Students Project

Illustrations by Nikhil Pawar & Marielle Dilla – Digital Storytellers

The international student experience at the University of Toronto (U of T) is anything but homogenous. The Celebrating International Students project began during the  2019-2020 Design Thinking Experience Program (DTEP), and quickly took off after recognizing just how complex, and at times similar, the challenges of being an international student truly is. Over the last year and a half our research teams have delved into our archive of more than 600 interviews to get a broadened sense of the international student experience from before and during pandemic. We were also grateful to have interviewed several U of T staff in October to round out the data even further. 

In this blog post, we will be sharing the main insights we have uncovered after interviewing and carefully analyzing our existing data, as well as our team members’ personal reflections from this project. We also share Building Bravery Design Principles to empower one another in celebrating international students at U of T, and a link to our report.

Creating the Domains for Innovation

Headshot of smiling woman with red hair in grey topBy Julia Smeed, Innovation Hub Project Lead

Since the launch and the Day of Learning, our five Domains for Innovation have been evolving.  A team of over 30 Ambassadors continued this work which led to six versions of the domains for innovation.  We are so pleased to say that thanks to all of the input and feedback from the community, we have landed on the following five domains: