Teaching Fellows

Dr. Eugene Chan

Dr. Eugene Chan is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). He holds a PhD in Marketing from the University of Toronto, an MA in Social Psychology from the University of Chicago, and an AB in Honors Psychology from the University of Michigan. Dr. Chan's research delves into consumer behavior and decision-making, exploring how factors such as political ideology, food packaging, and moral foundations influence consumer choices. He has published over 50 papers in top-tier journals, garnering more than 6,000 citations, and boasts an h-index of 25 and an i10-index of 43. Dr. Chan’s notable contributions include examining the role of political ideology on consumer decisions, strategies to combat obesity through food packaging, and the psychological underpinnings of compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic. He has received numerous accolades, including the 2023 TRSM Research Recognition Award and the 2019 ANZMAC Emerging Researcher Award. Dr. Chan serves as an Associate Editor for the Australasian Marketing Journal and has secured significant grants, including a SSHRC grant and a Natural Science Foundation of China Grant. His administrative roles at TMU include Acting Chair of the Marketing Management Department and Academic Co-ordinator for the Chang School’s strategic marketing certificate.

Project Abstract

The research project aims to investigate whether online collaborative learning (OCL) tools, such as Zoom and Google Docs, facilitate social loafing in group projects among higher education students. Social loafing refers to reduced individual effort in group work due to perceived lowered accountability. Previous studies have highlighted both benefits and challenges of OCL tools, but there is limited understanding of their impact on group projects. The proposed research includes three studies: a qualitative study to explore students' experiences with OCL tools in group projects, a quantitative survey to identify factors contributing to social loafing, and an experimental study testing the effectiveness of an accountability pledge to reduce social loafing. By interviewing 50 students, surveying 200 students, and testing an intervention with 100 students, the research aims to generalize previous findings, identify mechanisms behind social loafing, and propose practical strategies for educators. This comprehensive approach seeks to enhance the effectiveness of OCL tools in group projects while mitigating the tendency for social loafing.

Dr. Alyssa Counsell

Dr. Alyssa Counsell is an Associate Professor in the Psychology department and Director of the Psychology and Statistics Education Research (PASER) Lab. Dr. Counsell is primarily interested in the scholarship of learning and teaching, especially as it pertains to statistics education. She studies topics such as statistics anxiety, attitudes toward statistics and statistical software, and statistics literacy. She also works to identify statistical challenges for applied researchers and explore ways to better emphasize research transparency and open science practices. Dr. Counsell has won several teaching awards and has been the recipient of over $250,000 from SSHRC to lead several research projects aimed at improving statistics education in the social sciences.

Project Abstract

Statistics courses are notoriously unpopular in psychology. Research demonstrates that undergraduate psychology students tend to hold negative attitudes toward statistics and high levels of statistics anxiety. However, limited research directly examines students' experiences in these courses. In this research project, I will employ a mixed methods approach to examine students' experiences after taking introductory level psychology statistics courses. Specifically, I will recruit students taking one of two different styles of psychology statistics (one that focuses more on hand calculations and another that focuses more on software). With this sample, I will use pre-post surveys to examine quantitative change in statistics attitudes and anxiety over the duration of their course. Next, I will conduct interviews to examine qualitative data on the student experience in their statistics course. As Psychology is in the process of revamping our statistics and methods courses at the undergraduate level, these data will provide valuable information about where we can make changes to best support student learning and mental health in statistics courses.

Dr. Terri Peters

Dr. Terri Peters is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architectural Science where she teaches in the architecture and building science programs. She is a registered architect in the UK and holds a PhD in architecture from Aarhus Architecture School in Denmark where she researched the design and renovation of high performance housing. She has been a long standing member of the University’s Teaching and Learning Spaces Working Group, completed a two year course of teaching development instruction in 2021 called the University Teaching Development Program (UTDP), and has been the recipient of two TMU Learning and Teaching Grants from CELT. Dr. Peters is the recipient of the 2023 AVP International's Global Learning Award. Her research interests and areas of expertise are health and wellbeing in non-clinical environments, co-benefits of building performance and people performance in sustainable buildings, and biophilic and salutogenic design for long term care environments. In her research, she utilizes architectural design and building science methods to examine how building design impacts people’s experience of spaces, exploring the experiential qualities to understand how architecture can contribute to enhancing people's well-being. Her research into pedagogy aims to uncover ways in which design studio learning spaces, particularly those used in architecture programs, can positively influence student collaboration, productivity, and overall mental health.

Project Abstract

Design studio courses are the most important classes in architectural design education and the sites of enormous creative energy. “Studio” is both an open plan, collaborative learning environment in the building where students have a desk and do all of their coursework, and also the name for their yearly required academic course. The physical and social studio culture reflects a long standing tradition in schools of architecture in Canada and elsewhere, dating back at least 100 years to ideas from Beaux Arts education from the 1830s onwards and from the Bauhaus model. In the context of a return to in-person teaching after COVID-19, now is the time for testing new ideas for its reinvention. Through this project Peters will contribute to the profession’s broader understanding of new needs in disciplinary teaching, will examine innovative teaching and learning approaches, and will foreground pedagogies addressing social justice and inequity. Combining architectural and building science research methods, Peters aims to uncover ways in which design studio spaces, particularly those used in architecture programs, can positively influence student collaboration, productivity, and overall mental health. During her fellowship, Peters will focus on a project aimed at improving studio culture in architecture programs. Her goal is to understand the dynamics of teaching spaces and how they contribute to student success, emphasizing collaboration and well-being.

Bio

An innovative educator and a passionate researcher, Dr. Dong focuses on experiential education and applied research. She has been awarded numerous teaching awards for her teaching excellence including the most prestigious lifetime teaching achievement award at Toronto Metropolitan University, the Provost’s Award for Experiential Teaching (2018). She is also the recipient of multiple teaching awards, including the Dean’s Teaching Award (2020), Best Poster Award by Toronto Metropolitan LTO (2016), and the TRSM Innovation Teaching Fund (three times from 2017 to 2018). Dr. Dong is devoted to using emerging technologies to engage students not only within but also outside the classroom. Her recent project, funded by a Learning and Teaching Grant, examines the impact of using AI chatbots to improve student learning.

Project Abstract

Higher education learning is challenged by a rising trend of students working while studying. Studies have discovered that working while studying reduces learning time and increases fatigue and psychological detachment from school. Students who work while studying experience lower well-being and a higher probability of repeating or dropping out. To address the adverse impacts of working while studying, this project aims to experiment with seamless learning (learning anywhere and anytime) by engaging student learning beyond the classroom. In particular, the project proposes to (1) deploy an AI chatbot that serves as a 24x7 learning buddy and (2) motivate students to develop TikTok-like learning materials. By offering seamless learning via interactive technology and engaging learning materials, the project could stimulate student learning and cultivate positive student learning behaviors, resulting in not only enhanced learning outcomes but also a better work-study balance. As an early effort in seamless learning, the project bears significant theoretical and practical implications.

Bio

Dr. Duah joined the Mathematics Department in 2021 as an inaugural Assistant Professor in STEM Education Research. A Fellow of the UK Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications, Senior Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy, and a BSc graduate from the London School of Economics, Dr. Duah is a mathematician with multiple identities and a multidisciplinary background. He received his PhD in Mathematics Education from the Mathematics Education Department, Loughborough University, UK and an MSc in Mathematics Education from the School of Education, University of Southampton, UK. He held positions in the UK as the Mathematics and Statistics Skills Centre Manager at the University of York and Senior Lecturer at the University of Chichester. Dr. Duah’s research interests are in quantitative social and educational research, and computational social science. He currently researches learning and teaching of undergraduate mathematics, transitions in undergraduate mathematics, and widening participation in the mathematical sciences.

Project Abstract

The advent of the faculty-student partnership movement (see for example, Cook-Sather et al. 2014 (external link) ) has shown that it is mutually beneficial for faculty and students to work together to explore issues of learning and teaching, and course design. The goal of such faculty-student partnership is often to enhance the student learning experience, improve achievement, and reduce student attrition. During his tenure as a teaching fellow at the Centre of Excellence in Learning and Teaching, Dr. Duah will develop and research a model of faculty-student partnership in Learning and Teaching Development. The partnership will work to introduce learning outcomes for all topics taught in two Mathematics courses, and align these with learning activities and assessment tasks. He will research this intervention in order to understand its impact on the student learning experience and achievement on the courses. The findings and implications of this scholarship of learning and teaching project will not only be of interest to all who teach mathematics to specialist and non-specialist students, but also those who teach courses on other programmes.

Bio

Dr. Osborne is a linguistic anthropologist housed in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Key themes of her research focus on multilingualism, codemixing and switching, and more recently, the ways in which language can be leveraged as a political tool. She teaches courses in methods, anthropological theory, linguistics, and linguistic anthropology, among others. As an anthropologist trained in the four fields of the discipline with a focus on language, one of her core philosophies of teaching focuses on the funds of knowledge that students bring to the classroom. This approach takes as a foundational principle that students are not empty vessels waiting to be filled, but that they are fires to be stoked, whose ultimate contribution to a given intellectual space is to share their understanding of the world with others in the mutual construction of truth and knowledge.

Project Abstract

The focus of Dr. Osborne's project is to assess and analyze elements of the student experience in an Introduction to Anthropology course using a storytelling approach to teach complex anthropological concepts. Careful storytelling within anthropology engenders the use of the lessons of ethnography in ways that can be transferred into the learning environment without adding too much theoretical baggage to the project at the outset. In this way, integrating meaningful opportunities to tell stories as a transformational pedagogical tool is one that can be seamlessly integrated into classrooms across the university community. It is a tool that has the potential to increase the positive valency of student experience by fostering possibilities for drawing critical connections between students’ own experiences and the experiences of others, and it is a highly sustainable tool for learning focused on increasing the efficacy in learning.

Dr. Jennifer Poole 

Jennifer or Jen Poole (she/her) is a first-generation white settler to T’karonto. In her professional life, she is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work where her work has long been focused on madness, sanism(s), heartbreak and grief. While supporting and companioning learners is her priority, she has served in various leadership roles in her School and beyond. Current collaborative re-search projects focus on sanism(s) in the helping professions, the effects of white supremacy on grief and loss as well as interrupting colonialism and carcerality in education. She is also a co-parent, a community peer supporter, a TEDX talker and a very silly auntie. She is happiest outside.

Project Abstract

When grief comes to class: Gathering story, knowledge and experience on learning and teaching with grief 

There is much scholarship on learning and teaching about grief. There is little on learning and teaching while grieving. This is partly because of what Anderson (2020) calls ‘grief managerialism’ or the pressure to manage grief out of educational spaces. However, during this pandemic and long before, grief has ‘come to class’ anyway. Consequently, this inquiry seeks to gather story, knowledge and experience to better understand: 1. How is grief ‘coming to class’ for learners and educators? 2. What knowledge(s) do learners and educators already have about how to meet and learn with and from grief? 3. What do learners and educators want to know and have access to when it comes to grief learning and resources? Informed by critical theoretical, community and activist work, the project will be grounded in a critical qualitative approach and guided by a group of learners and educators. Together, data and process decisions will be made, stories and knowledge(s) gathered and findings shared in ways that reach and teach multiple folx on and off campus. 

Dr. Yukari Seko

Dr. Yukari Seko is an Assistant Professor at the School of Professional Communication and an Adjunct Scientist at Bloorview Research Institute, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. As a critical communication scholar by training, Yukari is interested in the potential role of communication in disrupting an oppressive system of normalcy and fostering an inclusive space where diversity can thrive. Communication settings that she has been studying include supervisor-student relationship in higher education, provider-client communication in pediatric rehabilitation, and food shaming at Canadian school lunchtime.

Project Abstract 

Effective supervision is vital to graduate students’ successful and timely completion of their degrees, particularly for those from non-dominant backgrounds. This Teaching Fellow project “Implementing solution-focused communication in graduate supervision: A parallel community of practice for students and supervisors” stems from the belief that equity-minded higher education needs robust training and community building for supervisors to serve as agents of change. It also aims at supporting graduate students in developing their capacities to empower themselves and others.

Over the course of two years, I will: 1) co-design parallel Community of Practice (CoP) for supervisors and graduate students to practice solution-focused (SF) communication; 2) iteratively assess learners’ engagement and experience with the CoPs; and 3) create a sustainable network for supervisors and students within and beyond our university. This project is built directly on my Learning and Teaching Grant project (2020-21) that piloted Solution-Focused Graduate Supervision (SFGS).