WELCOME

For the past fifteen years, the University of Toronto Teaching and Learning Symposium has provided us with the opportunity to share experiences and research, successes and challenges, and to strengthen our connections and forge collaborations. This past year, with its unique circumstances and our unprecedented response, proved our commitment to teaching and learning, and each other.  

The theme Teacher-as-Learner/Learner-as-Teacher emphasizes our need to grow as individuals and as a community. Coming together over the three days of the Symposium provides a well-deserved space to reflect on where we've been, how we've survived and where we succeeded during a global pandemic, teaching and working remotely, and maintaining the high standards we all, as teachers and learners, demand. Our keynote, Reimagining Impact Across Disciplines by Embracing a Beginner Mindset, unpacks the cognitive work involved in adopting the necessary habits of mind that might better equip us and our students to confront such challenges now and in the future.

Balancing all these elements in such a way that also supports our mental health, and our students', was often a struggle this past year and is something we will continue to face. Our Closing Plenary, Pandemic Snapshots: Learning and Looking Forward, is a reminder we are not alone in these pursuits and that listening to each other, learning together, will aid us all as we continue teaching and learning in an increasingly complex world. 

I look forward to the presentations and conversations at the Symposium, encountering new voices and ideas, the partnerships strengthened and the ones formed. While this is work we are engaged in year-round, the Symposium is our chance to celebrate what we've achieved and the people who supported us along the way.   

Professor Alison Gibbs, Director of CTSI