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Beyond the Assignment: How Learning Design Shapes Student Inquiry, Ethics, and Voice

How can instructors create space for students to reflect on their approach to a research assignment—what matters to them, how they can develop their voice, and the ethical choices they will make? This session explores these questions through the ‘Intersections Project’, an inquiry-based digital storytelling assignment that challenged students to think critically about authorship, accountability, and representation in their work. This structured assignment helped students engage with the complexities of narrative ethics, the challenges of unreliable archives, and narrative decision-making as they worked with legal records and case narratives, exploring the social meaning of gender, sexuality, and crime.

This session presents a scaffolded, inquiry-based approach to student assignments that centers choice and voice within a structured framework. Rather than prescribing a rigid format, this approach encourages students to think through how they will tell a story, what is at stake in their choices, and how their audience will engage with their work. The strategy involves guided prompts, ethical decision-making exercises, and reflective checkpoints, helping students approach their work with intentionality and critical depth.

Grounded in critical pedagogy (Freire, hooks) and multimodal inquiry, this approach emphasizes scaffolded learning, active learning, and critical reflection. Research on student-centered learning and inquiry-based assignments demonstrates that when students are encouraged to navigate complex problems—such as ethical storytelling—within a scaffolded but flexible framework, they develop deeper critical thinking skills and a stronger sense of ownership over their work.

This session offers a case study featuring firsthand student experiences. Students from the course will present alongside their instructor, sharing the questions that shaped their creative process and how they navigated choice and voice in their storytelling. Their reflections provide insight into how structured inquiry deepened their engagement with ethical dilemmas and transformed their approach to research, authorship, and representation.

Beyond simply incorporating digital tools, this session examines how instructors across disciplines can design assignments that prompt students to engage critically with their role as storytellers, researchers, and authors. Participants will leave with practical strategies for fostering intentionality, reflection, and creativity—while maintaining scholarly rigor.

Presenters

Redesigning Nursing Theory OERs to Support Licensing Exam Success

This session will focus on divulging the process we took to redevelop two Open Educational Resources (OERs) to incorporate the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX-RN) (NGN)-style questions into the weekly content students are learning in their undergraduate nursing theory courses at TMU. The project aims to enhance student engagement and prepare them for the licensing examination by integrating digital learning strategies that align with contemporary nursing education practices. This strategy involves incorporating weekly modifiable in real-time digital case studies with various NGN-style question types, such as bowtie and matrix-style questions, actively engaging students in the learning process. By integrating these tools into the existing curriculum using Pressbooks, we created a scalable and accessible learning resource that goes beyond traditional teaching methods.

This initiative aligns with active learning theories and constructivist pedagogy, which emphasize student-centered engagement with content through problem-solving and critical thinking exercises. The use of NGN-style questions is supported by research (Coombe et al., 2024), which underscores the importance of continuous exposure to complex question formats to enhance student confidence and performance on licensing exams. Furthermore, the project incorporates principles of decolonization, equity, diversity, inclusion, and social justice by ensuring that case studies reflect diverse patient populations that students serve in clinical practice and use inclusive and affirming language evaluated by experts in the field.

The implementation of these digital learning tools will significantly enhance the student experience by providing structured, formative assessments that closely resemble real- world nursing scenarios. Early exposure to NGN-style questions has been demonstrated to reduce test anxiety, improve critical thinking, and bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and clinical application. Moreover, the adaptability of OERs ensures that students from diverse backgrounds have equitable access to high-quality educational materials. By integrating blended learning strategies, students engage with course content on a deeper level, creating a more interactive and supportive learning environment.

This session aligns with the themes of Teaching with Technology and Navigating an Ever-Evolving Educational Landscape by incorporating blended learning approaches, utilizing digital tools to engage students, and integrating digital content into nursing education.

Presenters

Leveraging GenAI for Equitable Assessment: Designing Bias-Resistant Grading Systems

The integration of generative AI tools in educational assessment presents a transformative opportunity to address longstanding challenges in grading equity. My proposed session will showcase a structured framework for implementing AI-assisted grading that demonstrates a way to reduce unconscious bias while enhancing feedback quality. Specifically, this proposal provides three main pillars to be presented:

1. AI-optimized rubric design using structured prompts that quantify assessment criteria with precision.

2. A dual-validation process where instructor grading is complemented by AI assessment, with discrepancies triggering reflective analysis rather than automatic resolution.

3. Student-facing feedback templates that separate content mastery from stylistic execution, allowing for more targeted improvement while still respecting student voice and authorial intent.

This framework builds upon Dr. Ward Risvold's presentation "Structured Prompting: Enhancing Student Engagement with GenAI" at February's Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching event at TMU. As a recognized authority on academic AI implementation, Dr. Risvold suggests integrating these evidence-based techniques with established pedagogical frameworks can create an assessment ecosystem that enhances both grading fairness and educational outcomes. Dr. Risvold graciously offered me the opportunity to follow-up and work with him directly on solving this challenging problem to help create meaningful outcomes for both teachers and students.

Presenters