2.6 Open Mic Sessions

2.6.1 Supporting Our Students' Mental Health: Quercus-based Resources for the Classroom
Lauren Brown, Victoria College Vic One Hundred instructor, Health & Wellness, Division of Student Life 
Allan McKee, Health Communications & Knowledge Translation Coordinator, Health & Wellness, Division of Student Life                                                                 

Sustaining Resonance: Lessons, Insights, and Impact

Supporting our Students' Mental Health (SOSMH) is a Quercus-based resource hub for faculty and teaching assistants. SOSMH is a response to the increased interest in supporting student mental health and wellbeing. It recognizes that faculty and teaching assistants are often a first point of contact for students who are struggling and equips them with simple, easy to access information. By embedding this content right into Quercus instructors no longer need to search through multiple websites and resources. Faculty and TAs have full control over how much or how little they'd like to share with students. Resources can be shared 1:1 with students who have indicated a particular need, or, with the whole class by embedding slides or scheduling Quercus announcement or using video resources for mindfulness or movement breaks. In this Open Mic session, I will describe the inspiration, collaboration, and iteration process behind the development of SOSMH and share how to implement this in the classroom and online. Participants will be encouraged to make suggestions for additional content and implementation.

2.6.2 From Summative to Formative: Implementing and Refining Two-Stage Exams in a Large Undergraduate Course
Alice Gao, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Computer Science, FAS
Marina Tawfik, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Computer Science, FAS        

Sustaining Resonance: Lessons, Insights, and Impact

Timed, high-stakes assessments are often stressful experiences, leading students to focus on optimizing grades rather than learning from feedback. Two-stage testing uses a team-based learning approach to turn summative assessments into formative learning experiences (Latulipe et al., 2025). In a two-stage test, students first complete the test individually and then complete the same or a similar test collaboratively with a group of peers. The final test grade reflects performance in both stages, with the individual component carrying the majority of the weight. This two-stage structure offers multiple benefits, including preserving individual accountability, providing immediate feedback, correcting misconceptions in real time, reducing anxiety, and fostering a stronger learning community.

However, implementing two-stage testing requires careful design. For example, designing questions for the group stage is particularly challenging, as they must be sufficiently rigorous, promote meaningful discussion and remain feasible within the time constraints. Other challenges include deciding on a grading scheme that balances accountability with collaboration and managing logistical details such as timing, group formation, room setup, and coordination. These choices directly shape students’ experience and the pedagogical value of the assessment. 

In this session, we share our experience implementing two-stage term tests in an upper-year machine learning course. We first outline our implementation process, including how we address common design and logistical challenges. Second, we present student survey feedback from our first iteration, reflecting on the implementation challenges and describing adjustments made in subsequent iterations. Finally, we offer recommendations for adapting the format to other disciplines, class sizes, and learning environments.

2.6.3 Mind the Gaps: An online "survival guide" for graduate students
Lori Ross, Associate Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health               
Soumyaa Subranamium, former student        

Amplifying the Signal: Connection, Engagement, and Civil Discourse          

Research has indicated that graduate students face disproportionately high rates of poor mental health, and a variety of strategies and interventions have been introduced on university campuses in an attempt to address this problem. However, most of this research and the related interventions have approached student mental health through a biomedical lens that centers the mental health symptoms of individual students without attention to the wider social and structural context. Recently, our team carried out a research project at three Ontario universities to investigate graduate student mental health from a critical disability studies lens, which instead directs our attention to examine how the structures and processes of graduate education could be disabling for students.

Through focus groups and interviews, we learned from students and faculty how sanism (discrimination associated with one's mental health status) operates on university campuses in ways that intersect with other experiences of structural oppression such as those associated with race, class, and citizenship status through what we call ""the wellness complex"". In addition, students and faculty shared their strategies for successfully navigating through these oppressive systems.

In this Open Mic presentation, we will share the product of this research: the ""Mind the Gaps"" website, an online ""survival guide"" developed to share these strategies and related resources with graduate students across Ontario to support them in navigating graduate education. Specifically, we will provide a brief overview of the guide, share our process of co-developing it, and discuss our plans for future dissemination and expansion of this resource. We will also offer suggestions for how faculty might consider using this resource in their own teaching practice.