What’s Happening August 3-7 on Stories from a Distance

Stories from a Distance encourages students to find community through conversation. Students can expect to be welcome into a virtual space (over Zoom) created by and for students looking to invest in meaningful connections within their campus community over the Summer.…

The E-Motion of Research at the Innovation Hub

By Terri-Lynn Langdon, Lead Editor and Writer – in collaboration with Johanna Pokorny (Ethnography and Insights Team Lead) and Danielle Baillargeon (Data Analysis Team Lead)

A mosaic of students connecting over Microsoft Teams, with sticky notes around the outside with writing on them such as "navigating resources" or "commuting students". Dashed lines and icons are connecting with one another to visualize collaboration in research.
Virtual Collaboration at the Innovation Hub, Summer 2020

At the Innovation Hub an intended focus of our research as a by and for student research Hub at U of T is empathy and the tapestry of it in the development of our questions, writing, and its role in research findings.

[1]The research process at the Innovation Hub includes design thinking supported by ethnographic research methodology, which seek to understand people in context. Where other qualitative methods (like survey work) operate through “extracting” data, ethnography is wholistic and expanding. The goal is not to be ‘statistically significant’ but rather to identify insights and themes from a few rich and unique stories.

What’s Happening July 27-31 on Stories from a Distance

Stories from a Distance encourages students to find community through conversation. Students can expect to be welcome into a virtual space (over Zoom) created by and for students looking to invest in meaningful connections within their campus community over the Summer.…

In Conversation with Ngoné Lo: Insights into the Experiences of International Students with Disabilities and Musings on the Fall Semester

By Terri-Lynn Langdon, Lead Editor and Writer

Questions around how the University of Toronto can support international students using an intersectional lens in the best ways possible are critical. We need to support students who have not been traditionally supported in their educational and skill development. In this role as a Lead Editor and Writer, I take great care to capture stories that need telling. I had the privilege to sit down and talk to Ngoné about what is going on in her life as a U of T student.

What’s Happening July 20-24 on Stories from a Distance

Stories from a Distance encourages students to find community through conversation. Students can expect to be welcome into a virtual space (over Zoom) created by and for students looking to invest in meaningful connections within their campus community over the Summer.…

A Glimpse Into the Lives of Disabled Student Parents at the University of Toronto

Written by Terri-Lynn Langdon, Lead Writer and Editor

Terri-Lynn and her daughter smiling
Terri-lynn and her daughter, Jaycie.

I am a wheelchair- using mother and a PhD student at OISE in Social Justice Education. When the lockdown in Toronto began we lost access to daycare and we also lost more than one support person (Nurturing Assistants) who felt that their own lives were too disrupted by the pandemic to continue to provide ongoing support to us. Without this direct support neither myself nor my child can shower safely, and I have no means of taking my twenty-one month old outside on my own. On top of which our building has been plagued with significant apartment maintenance issues all summer which has meant I have had to solve big family pandemic issues for 4 months and counting….

What’s Happening July 13-17 on Stories from a Distance

Stories from a Distance encourages students to find community through conversation. Students can expect to be welcome into a virtual space (over Zoom) created by and for students looking to invest in meaningful connections within their campus community over the Summer.…

In Conversation with Dr. Meng Xiao: Supporting Chinese International Students at the University of Toronto

Written By: Terri-Lynn Langdon, Lead Editor and Writer, Innovation Hub

At the Innovation Hub one of our projects focuses on engaging International students. International students currently make up 25.4% of the undergraduate and graduate student population at U of T.1 Questions around how the University of Toronto can support this group in the best ways possible and how their needs differ from domestic students is extremely important to the work that the Innovation Hub is engaged in, not to mention that, student engagement and a project by and for students is our bread and butter.

Photo of Dr. Meng Xiao in a library, looking to the camera and smilingMeng Xiao recently wrote a book titled Student Engagement in Practice: Chinese International Graduate Student Engagement Handbook which is a book inspired by her own doctoral research from OISE’s Doctorate of Education Program at the University of Toronto.  

What’s Happening July 6-10 on Stories from a Distance

Stories from a Distance encourages students to find community through conversation. Students can expect to be welcome into a virtual space (over Zoom) created by and for students looking to invest in meaningful connections within their campus community over the Summer.…