91福利

The City as Classroom: Experiential Storytelling and Urban Pedagogy at a Downtown University

This session explores experiential storytelling as a pedagogical approach that extends learning beyond the classroom into urban public space. Drawing on teaching practices at 91福利, a university embedded in a dense city centre, this presentation demonstrates how streets, public art, and everyday urban environments can function as structured learning sites. Using the TORE interpretive framework (Thematic, Organized, Relevant, Enjoyable), the session illustrates how educators can design narrative-based learning experiences that connect academic concepts to lived environments through guided observation, discussion, and reflection.

This approach builds on experiential learning, constructivist pedagogy, and place-based education, emphasizing meaning-making through direct engagement rather than passive information delivery. At a city-centre university, students already move through complex social and cultural environments; experiential storytelling intentionally transforms these everyday encounters into opportunities for learning, civic engagement, and critical observation.

This teaching strategy has improved student engagement, strengthened connections to course material, and supported diverse learning styles by combining movement, dialogue, and narrative interpretation. The approach also leverages existing urban environments as accessible learning infrastructure, requiring minimal additional resources.

This presentation aligns with conference themes including bridging classroom and community, opening the classroom to all, and engaging students in learning and teaching by positioning the city itself as an extension of the classroom.

Learning Outcomes

Participants will:

• Understand how experiential storytelling supports rigorous, community-based learning
• Apply the TORE framework to design place-based learning activities
• Identify strategies for using urban environments to enhance student engagement

Interactivity will include brief reflective prompts and short interpretive exercises, with accessible, adaptable examples suitable across disciplines and teaching contexts.

Presenter

Taking the Pulse: Visualization and Exploration of Segments of Toronto鈥檚 Revitalized Waterfront

For over two decades, Toronto鈥檚 waterfront has been re-envisioned, revitalized, diversified and intensified. Today, it hosts new and growing communities who live, work, study, traverse, and use it for professional, recreational and other daily activities. 

This study builds on the works of Canadian artist Larissa Fassler and Danish architect and planner Jan Gehl, who document the uses of public spaces. It presents approaches the author developed in order for her and her research team to analyze and understand the usages of public spaces. It focuses on two sets of locations: Love Park - a site which replaced a vehicular infrastructure formerly hosting a Gardiner Expressway off-ramp - and the East Bayfront Precinct - 23 waterfront hectares bookended by Sugar Beach and Parliament Slip that have been rapidly transforming into a mixed-use area. Specifically, it reviews their planning as well as their evolution and examines how such locations are being revitalized and transformed with the creation of several award-winning projects. Through fieldwork, observational studies and maps, this presentation visualizes the use of public space and showcases ways to synthesize activities they host. This is done via the development and application of methodological innovations that can help examine open urban areas.

This work is related to the conference鈥檚 theme and bridges the classroom with the community in multiple ways. First, it presents various means to document and understand how public spaces are used. Second, it engages and mentors graduate research assistants that have contributed to this study also by inviting them to present related findings in undergraduate classrooms. Further, the replicability and scaling-up properties of the methodological approaches featured in this presentation shed light on segments of Toronto鈥檚 revitalized waterfront and can help open new doors for researchers and students in their own research.

This research is supported by a SSHRC partnership grant titled 鈥淨uality in Canada鈥檚 Built Environment: Roadmaps to Equity, Social Value and Sustainability.鈥� 

Presenter

Teaching in the Age of Reels: Turning Screens into Learning Tools

Let鈥檚 be honest 鈥� we are teaching in a completely different world than even ten years ago. Students today grow up scrolling, watching, creating, and communicating through visuals. If education doesn鈥檛 adapt to that reality, we risk losing their attention before learning even begins. That鈥檚 why engaging students in learning and teaching is one of the most powerful ways to open doors and close gaps. Engagement is not just about keeping students busy. It鈥檚 about making them active participants instead of passive listeners. When students think, create, and contribute, learning becomes meaningful. In today鈥檚 world, visual and digital learning plays a huge role in that. We live in the age of video. Platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Reels have changed how young people process information. Visual content is faster, more dynamic, and often easier to understand. Video-enabled learning can make complex topics easier and more memorable. Visuals reduce confusion and help close learning gaps, especially for students who struggle with long texts. But we can go even further 鈥� students don鈥檛 just have to consume videos; they can create them. Imagine giving an assignment where students explain a math concept through a one-minute Reel or summarize a novel in a creative short video. When students create content in formats they are already comfortable with, they feel more confident and motivated. This approach builds important skills like communication, creativity, and digital literacy. Another important strategy is choice-based learning. Not every student expresses knowledge the same way. Some may prefer writing an essay, while others might thrive by creating a video or digital poster. Allowing students to choose how they present their learning opens the classroom to all types of learners. It removes barriers and closes gaps between different strengths and abilities. Active learning also remains essential. Short mini-lessons followed by group discussions or project-based learning keep students involved. Technology should not replace teaching 鈥� it should enhance it. Accommodations can be made for visually challenged students through voice-based technologies and screen readers to ensure equal access and an inclusive environment. Finally, relationships matter. When teachers respect students鈥� interests 鈥� including their digital culture 鈥� students feel seen. 

Presenter

Co-Creating an Internationally Educated Nurses (IEN) Mentorship Framework: A Community-Engaged Approach

This session presents a mentorship-informed teaching practice developed through the co-creation of an Internationally Educated Nurses (IEN) Mentorship Framework. It reframes mentorship as a pedagogical strategy rather than an add-on support, showing how mentorship can bridge classroom learning with community knowledge, lived experience, and professional identity formation.

Grounded in social constructivism, community-engaged pedagogy, and inclusive teaching practices, this approach emphasizes dialogue, relational learning, and shared meaning-making. Learners, practitioners, and educators collaboratively identified mentorship needs, mapped learning pathways, and translated these insights into an adaptable framework for teaching, curriculum design, and learner support. Technology was used intentionally to support collaboration, accessibility, and documentation.

This work responds to the need for more equitable teaching practices for internationally educated and marginalized learners. Findings from the co-creation process suggest that mentorship-informed approaches can strengthen engagement, belonging, confidence, and participation by recognizing learners鈥� existing expertise and resisting deficit-based models.

Participants will leave with practical strategies for integrating mentorship, co-creation, and community-engaged learning into their own teaching contexts. The session will include a brief reflective activity and model accessible, low-resource approaches that support belonging and learner success across diverse educational settings.

Presenter