Tag: Our Design Research (page 9)

By Julia Smeed, Innovation Projects Officer

A world-class institution deserves world-class spaces for learning and instruction. That’s why we think that Academic and Campus Events (ACE) landmark renovation project – Transforming the Instructional Landscape (TIL) – will be such an exciting and impactful project at U of T. The instructional space on campus plays an essential role in fulfilling the university’s mandate to provide an unparalleled learning experience and impacts every student here. As the steward of these important facilities, ACE is committed to developing accessible, innovative, and purpose-built classrooms that address the needs of instructors and students. We can’t help but be inspired by their ambitious new vision for U of T.

By Suzie Kim, Communications Team

On October 11th, 2018, the Innovation Hub partnered with the SLP network to host a research event entitled SLP Presents: The Future of SLP.  SLP is a network of staff who  work directly with students across at the University of Toronto’s three campuses.  The partnership between SLP and the Innovation Hub commenced last year to explore two questions: What should the future of the SLP Network look like? and how should this community of practice be redesigned to better serve the needs and wants of all its members?  After conducting a number of empathy interviews with staff in a variety of positions and career stages, insights were generated.  These insights reveled that supporting staff to develop institutional knowledge, mentorship and networking, senior management involvement and career development support are areas where there are opportunities for SLP to provide support.  This event sought to gather additional data to inform next steps of the process.

By Sneha Dasgupta, Innovation Hub Blog Editor

By early 2017, the Innovation Hub’s research survey of the U of T student experience was complete. We used this research to come up with  25 innovative ideas designed to create a better student experience. Of these 25, the following five ideas emerged as the most promising:

• Chill Spots
• U of T Concierge
• Neighbourhood Communities
• Future Readiness Course
• Student-Faculty Exploration Cafe

By the Innovation Hub’s Knowledge Management Leader Michelle Johnstone, and our Implementation Leader Clara Luca

On June 5th and 9th, the Innovation Hub invited students, faculty, and staff across U of T to offer feedback on our six prototyped project ideas. Toencourage participants to provide direct, meaningful feedback, they were arranged into focus group-like arrangements to ideate and co-create the prototypes which interested them most.

By Alexandra Rodney, Operations Team Leader

Since February, the Innovation Hub had the good fortune of serving as the “client” for the Business Leadership class at John Polanyi Collegiate Institute. This class is made up of Grade 11 and 12 students who, each semester, apply integrative thinking tools to help an organization solve a difficult problem. For the Innovation Hub, the students were tasked with the question of how to increase student engagement at the University of Toronto. The Business Leadership students were taught how to use integrative thinking tools by their teacher Rahim Essabhai (who recently won a Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence!) and Nogah Kornberg (of Rotman’s I-Think initiative). The students had the opportunity to visit the university on several occasions to interview students and Innovation Hub staff members as well as observe student life on campus.

Guest Post by: Catherine Wachter, Guidance Counselor at University of Toronto Schools

The Innovation Hub envisions a seamless student experience, one where students feel well prepared for their future academically and personally. Unfortunately, poor mental health is an overwhelming barrier to student success. Students report feeling stressed and anxious about school work, and often struggle to find a healthy balance between academics and their personal life. 

Warrior Within (www.warriorwithin.ca) is a project that centres around the creation of a fictional short film (shot in July, 2016) that uses metaphor and imagery to help engage students in their understanding of stress, anxiety and resilience. This film has inspired a student-created curriculum that will be an open source resource for educators. 

By Denise Bentum, Kate Bowers and Alexandra Rodney

As mentioned in our last post, the Innovation Hub’s Organizational Learning team has been interviewing faculty and Student Life staff at the University of Toronto to learn about their experiences working with students and with each other. We have been exploring the topics of collaboration and student support, in line with a design-thinking approach, by trying to understand these things from the perspective of staff and faculty. Our goal has been to elicit stories of successful and challenging experiences supporting students and collaborating across the university’s many divisions and departments. We have analysed these stories in order to understand how to meet the needs of both students and frontline workers at the university, and to learn about what they value during intra-institutional collaborations and interactions.