2025 Teaching and Learning Symposium
April 30 & May 1, 2025
Conference Theme: Humanizing Teaching through Relationality, Reflection, and Innovation
Call for Proposals
The CapU Teaching and Learning Symposium brings together faculty, students, staff, Elders and community members to celebrate and reflect as we consider ways to weave relationality, reflection, and innovation into our classrooms as part of CapU’s distinct university experience. This year’s theme invites us to reflect on what it means to be human in our classroom; how we forge deep connections with our students through teaching, learning, community building, and reflective practice.
Deadline to submit: February 28, 2025 11:59pm (PST)
We welcome proposals from individuals, teams, faculty-student partnerships, panels, and community partnerships (faculty, students, and organizations) for the following session formats, focused on the topics of: Reflective Teaching Practices, Community Building in the Classroom, Innovative Pedagogy, Inclusive Teaching Practices, and Relational and Reflective Student Assessments.
We particularly welcome sessions that are based upon ongoing or completed SoTL projects.
Format
Day 1: Wednesday, April 30: Online on Zoom
Day 2 Thursday, May 1: In-Person
Seeding Session (Online):
5-minute Inspire and plant an idea – A seeding session plants the seed of a novel teaching idea with colleagues. They typically include one key message and may or may not incorporate a couple of slides. Seeding sessions will be bundled into a larger session according to topic and followed by breakout conversations to grow and nurture the ideas.
Table Conversation (In-Person):
15-minute Host a table in a World Café session – Hosting a table in a world cafe session offers the opportunity to share your teaching experiences and scholarship and build on your ideas with colleagues through multiple rounds of small cafe style conversations typically with 4-5 people at a time.
Interactive Workshop (Online or In-Person):
25-minute Facilitate an engaging learning experience – Focusing on specific learning outcomes, interactive workshops engage participants in a learning experience around a topic that leaves them inspired about their own teaching and learning. In line with our theme, facilitators are invited to encourage creative thinking about what it means to be human in our teaching and how we forge deep connections with our students.
Guiding Questions
The following guiding questions may help to shape your submission:
1. Reflective Teaching Practices
What reflective strategies or activities help you build stronger connections with and between students?
What reflective practices help to foster self-awareness in students’ learning journeys?
How do you encourage students to critically reflect on their experiences and apply insights in real-world contexts?
2. Community-Building in the Classroom
How do you foster belonging and inclusivity to address diverse student needs and perspectives?
In what ways do you partner with students, colleagues, or community members to co-create learning experiences that are human-centered and relational?
3. Innovative Pedagogy
How do you approach technology as a tool for meaningful, relational, reflective, and inclusive learning?
How are you re-imagining assessments or assignments to focus on deeper learning, creativity, or real-world problem-solving?
4. Inclusive Teaching Practices
How do you embed inclusive, including culturally responsive, teaching practices into your work to respect and reflect the diversity of student backgrounds?
Which strategies are effective in recognizing and addressing power dynamics in the classroom?
5. Relational and Reflective Student Assessments
How do you design assessments that value relational learning and personal growth as part of student development?
What feedback practices do you use that encourage dialogue and reflection with students?
* Faculty interested in sharing (inter/trans)disciplinary research projects are advised to submit to the Faculty Research Symposium hosted by the CARS office. For more information, please contact cars@capilanou.ca.
Support for Your Proposal
The planning committee’s intention is to create a space for sharing that is accessible to all faculty members and participants. If you are wondering how the theme of the symposium might fit with a teaching and learning activity or idea that you would like to share, an Educational Developer in the CTE would be happy to chat with you.
Book your consultation with an Educational Developer here or email us at cte@capilanou.ca
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