A part of 4.3: Lightning Talk session.

Development of Graduate Student Pedagogy Through Practical Application and Partnership with High School Educators in the Discovery Educational Platform
Dawn Kilkenny, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBME) & ISTEP
Nicolas Ivanov, Doctoral candidate, IBME
Nhien Tran-Nguyen, Master of Applied Science candidate, IBME
Neal Callaghan, IBME, Doctoral candidate, IBME
Theresa Frost, TDSB ACL Science & STEAM, Discovery/ISTEP
Locke Davenport Huyer, Post-doctoral Fellow, Johns Hopkins University

The evolving academic landscape requires skills beyond traditional research, therefore graduate students in STEM require broad opportunities to develop and improve translatable skillsets. An increasing number of graduate students now focus on developing their teaching skills in parallel with thesis research given pursuit of teaching-centred careers post-graduation. Opportunities to practice innovative pedagogy are therefore highly advantageous in allowing graduate students to fully immerse as teachers and gain experience beyond teaching assistantships. FASE graduate students have opportunity to develop teaching self-efficacy through volunteer participation with the Discovery Educational Program, where they create and deliver curriculum based in critical thinking and problem solving, meanwhile working in collaboration with STEM educators from partner TDSB secondary schools. Discovery provides iterative in-classroom and on-campus learning project-based learning for ~ 180 TDSB high school students each semester. Once a new global theme has been selected at the onset of each session, graduate trainee leaders create and develop discipline-specific instructional materials based on their unique experience with cutting-edge science and engineering. Trainees engage with TDSB educators to reframe basic and ubiquitous high school STEM course concepts into relevant problems and challenges that align with ministry-required discipline outcomes and educator curriculum strategies. Subsequently, these graduate leaders are responsible to teach the theory and practical application they have developed to relevant high school educators and fellow volunteer graduate instructors, who ultimately mentor participating university preparatory TDSB high school students. This strategy has been fully translated online and in compressed format, currently engages ~100 students per quadmester.