Taylor Institute Guides
Our guides provide free, open-access resources that summarize, synthesize, and clearly present evidence-based ways of better understanding and improving student learning, and the teaching approaches and practices that facilitate that learning.
A Guide for Undergraduate Research at UCalgary
Undergraduate research activities are meaningful Experiential Learning (EL) opportunities where students “learn by doing” and develop research and transferable skills. Our intended audience for this guide is instructors designing curricular undergraduate research experiences or research mentors supporting undergraduate research experiences in an apprenticeship model during curricular or non-curricular undergraduate research experiences.
Ethics in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
This Taylor Institute Guide takes the researcher through the essentials of the Canadian standards for ethical practice in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Because of the unique challenges of SoTL, where the human participants that are the subject of the research are also typically the researcher’s students, this guide translates the comprehensive TCPS2 (2014) for the researcher conducting SoTL research.
Fostering Student Success in Online Courses
The guide contains nine chapters contributed by members of UCalgary's Teaching Academy from across disciplines involved in undergraduate and/or graduate instruction, writing solo or with collaborators, to highlight an aspect of their teaching that leverages the online environment to enhance student learning. Importantly, each chapter shares the wisdom of practice of the author/s, discussing implications of use and giving concrete recommendations for those who are thinking of applying similar strategies.
Incorporating Universal Design for Learning in Disciplinary Contexts in Higher Education
Incorporating UDL in higher education is complex, varied and nuanced work that instructors are doing to meet the learning needs of students in their classes. In this guide we illuminate different ways in which UDL principles have been implemented across disciplines and in different ways to enhance student learning.
Student Academic Integrity: A Handbook for Academic Staff and Teaching Assistants
This guide is intended for academic staff at the University of Calgary, though it may also be useful to others on campus including graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants (TAs) and students. It is intended to serve as a companion to the Academic Integrity Student Handbook. This guide is focused on, and limited to, academic integrity as it pertains to students.
Teaching Philosophies and Teaching Dossiers Guide
Including Leadership, Supervision, Mentorship, and EDI
This guide continues to provide a robust resource for creating teaching dossiers and philosophy statements. It starts with an overview of a research-informed framework for developing teaching expertise and then describes how to create philosophy statements that ground your approaches to teaching across multiple contexts.
The Making Sense of Student Feedback Guide
Gathering and making sense of student feedback can be challenging. This guide takes a holistic approach to understanding student feedback with a focus on end-of-term course surveys, including both quantitative ratings and qualitative feedback comments. The aim is to support the meaningful use of student feedback in our teaching practices.
The Mentorship Guide for Teaching and Learning
This guide provides a practical framework to inspire and enrich new mentoring relationships for teaching development in higher education. You will explore mentoring relationships, assessing readiness for mentorship, initiating mentorship, developing and sustaining mentoring relationships and mentoring transitions while ultimately improving student learning.
Students as Partners in Higher Education
The purpose of this guide is to provide a practical and applied resource for instructors in higher education that focuses on Students as Partners (SaP), drawing on University of Calgary Teaching Academy members’ wisdom from research-informed practice; to reflect diverse contexts, approaches and perspectives in higher education; and, to offer recommendations, considerations and implications to others who may be interested in implementing SaP in their practice.
Universal Design for Learning in Program Development
This guide is intended to be used by groups and individuals at the University of Calgary who are either developing a new program or examining an existing one. Although some of the ideas in this guide can be implemented within courses, many of them involve decisions that are at the department or faculty level. Others may be part of an institutional decision-making process. By reading about the examples provided, we hope you are inspired to implement principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) within your programs.
A Guide to Providing Evidence of Teaching
Providing evidence of the scope and quality of teaching, and the impact of teaching on student learning is challenging. There are multiple ways that teaching expertise in developed and communicated. This document will help instructors prepare materials that require them to describe their teaching practice and impact, or to identify activities that they would like to pursue to enhance their teaching practice.
Course Design Program Manual
The Course Design Program is a hands-on program where we introduce participants to a variety of concepts that are critical to designing a course. This guide is used in the program and will introduce a variety of concepts that are critical to designing a course and how to apply them directly to a course design.
Enhancing Critical Thinking through Class Discussion A Guide for Using Discussion-Based Pedagogy
Discussion-based approaches to teaching and learning are those that rely predominantly on dialogue and discourse rather than didactic transmission of information. This guide discusses the theoretical foundations of discussion-based pedagogy, and offers user templates for three specific discussion-based strategies that can be adapted for higher education classrooms across disciplines.
Focus on Formative Feedback for Teaching Development
This guide is for anyone who teaches in higher education, or who is preparing to teach. The focus of this guide is on how formative feedback can be used to improve both the learning experiences of students and the teaching experiences of instructors.
Graduate Student Teaching Development Guide
The Graduate Student Teaching Development Guide is designed to empower TAs to engage in their role in ways that enhance their teaching and learning capacities, and promote student learning.Each chapter provides practical information and strategies to use in real time, and reflection prompts when considering how to best translate these elements into the classroom.
Guide to Curriculum Review
At the University of Calgary, curriculum reviews are a formative component of the overall quality assurance strategy and focus on understanding students’ learning and experiences within a program. The curriculum review process will generate an action plan for enhancing the program, and an interim report will document the progress toward those plans.
Guiding Principles for Assessment of Students' Learning
Effective assessment of student learning is one of the most important components of postsecondary education. Assessment is one of the biggest motivating factors for student learning. The following TI guide builds upon an extensive literature review to present 19 research-informed principles for guiding assessment of student learning in diverse postsecondary contexts.
Online Assessment in Higher Education
This guide aims to provide an evidence-based background on the prevalence, benefits, challenges and importance of online student assessment in higher education.
Student Mental Health and Wellbeing: Supportive Teaching and Learning Practices
What specific teaching and learning practices support student health and well-being? The Student Mental Health and Well-Being: Supportive Teaching and Learning Practices Guide is an annotated bibliography, exploring articles that address this question.
The Teaching Squares Guide: Observe and Reflect on Teaching and Learning
Peer observation of teaching programs are becoming increasingly popular in the postsecondary environment as they provide unique and valuable opportunities to learn from colleagues and to enhance one’s own teaching. This guide outlines the Teaching Squares philosophy and method for peer observation of teaching and learning.
Threshold Concepts
This guide contains four sections: primary characteristics of threshold concepts, additional characteristics based on subsequent research, criticisms of the notion of threshold concepts, and a selected bibliography of applications within a range of disciplines.
Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education
Universal Design for Learning is a framework that guides the design of courses and learning environments to appeal to the largest number of learners. It emphasizes flexibility in how instructional material is presented, how students demonstrate their knowledge and skills, and in how they are engaged in learning.
Universal Design for Learning in Program Development
This guide is intended to be used by groups and individuals at the University of Calgary who are either developing a new program or examining an existing one. Although some of the ideas in this guide can be implemented within courses, many of them involve decisions that are at the department or faculty level. Others may be part of an institutional decision-making process.