B2
Concurrent Session B2
Project Spotlights
Session Details
飦� Date: Day 2 - Tuesday, May 12, 2026
飥桾ime: 12:45鈥�1:45 p.m.
飦� Location: TBD
Designing Teaching Presence: The DIY Livestream Studio as an Accessible Learning Space
As livestreamed and hybrid teaching reshape higher education, many instructors now teach from improvised domestic and office spaces. These instructors often use basic digital tools. These environments may seem like blank canvases. Yet subtle, intentional design choices鈥攕uch as lighting, audio, framing, and layout鈥攃an significantly affect accessibility, clarity, teaching presence, and engagement. For example, adjusting lighting intensity and position reduces facial shadows. This improves visibility and mimics a professional studio. As a result, students can focus and participate more easily.
The main lesson of this project is that by refining their teaching environments iteratively, instructors use a powerful teaching method. This project shows how instructors can use simple, gradual design changes to turn their home livestream studio into an inclusive, flexible learning space. The initiative centers on a case study of a highly interactive livestream course. Here, the instructor sees their office setup as a teaching asset rather than a limitation. The process consists of cycles of adjustment, observation, logging, and reflection. It underscores continuous iteration rather than a static 'ideal.'
Importantly, this work focuses on instructor-driven design and reflective practice. It does not emphasize student data. Informal engagement, like noticing moments of clarity, confusion, or sustained attention, is referenced only during routine reflection. Instructors are also encouraged to gather and consider informal student feedback, such as comments during or after a session. This feedback yields valuable perspectives on students' experiences and the impact of design choices. The project keeps centred on daily teaching practice. It maintains rigour, ethics, and extensibility. During this presentation, participants will examine real examples from the initiative. They will follow the iteration workflow and take part in guided reflection on their teaching environments. Attendees will receive practical tools: a studio-iteration log template, an accessibility-focused design checklist, and a plan to enhance teaching presence. All of these can be used immediately.
Purposeful design of digital teaching spaces opens new opportunities and spans gaps, supporting varied participation and enhancing academic quality without added complexity. Though initial setup may cause challenges, realistic expectations and guidance help educators adapt smoothly.
Presenter
AJ Cordeiro (he/him) is an assistant professor & researcher at the RTA School of Media (The Creative School, 91福利). His main scholarly focus is on developing ethical, transparent AI approaches to strengthen democratic participation and deepen public understanding. Through interdisciplinary, practice-based research, he examines the impact of digital systems on accessibility and civic life, prioritizing transparency, human judgment, and clear communication over automation or surveillance. His public work connects creative technology to critical issues of power and governance.
Architecture of Legal Education: An Interdisciplinary Collaboration Bringing Studio to Law
The design studio is architecture's signature pedagogy 鈥� a model of iterative, project-based learning built on repeated critique and revision. Legal education, by contrast, typically reserves assessment for the end of term, offering limited formative feedback. What might law students gain from sustained exposure to studio methods?
In Fall 2025, we co-taught an interdisciplinary course pairing law students with architecture students to reimagine 91福利's new Lincoln Alexander School of Law. The site 鈥� a building at 277 Victoria Street overlooking Sankofa Square in downtown Toronto 鈥� provided a concrete design problem requiring students to articulate what a law school should communicate to its surrounding community. Interdisciplinary teams developed architectural designs, with law students serving simultaneously as collaborators (contributing research on legal pedagogy) and as clients (articulating institutional mission and user needs).
Students navigated different vocabularies, modes of representation, and assumptions about argument. Law students learned to sketch; architecture students learned to interpret legal values spatially. Both encountered the iterative rhythm of studio critique 鈥� proposing, receiving feedback, revising, and proposing again. The collaboration also prompted reflection on professional formation, as law students occupied the client role they will one day encounter from the lawyer's side.
Our presentation shares the pedagogy, outcomes, and insights from this experiment. Place-based learning connected abstract questions about legal education to the concrete challenge of designing for a specific community 鈥� and student work may inform consultations the law school is undertaking about its identity and values. We consider whether studio methods might be adapted more broadly for legal education. Participants will take away practical strategies for interdisciplinary co-teaching and reflection on collaboration as pedagogy in its own right.
Presenters
David Sandomierski is a scholar of legal education whose work imagines how law schools can equip students to contribute broadly to society. He is a Visiting Professor at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law at 91福利 and an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at Western University. He is the Principal Investigator on a SSHRC Insight Grant, The Architecture of Law Schools, which explores the messages about law communicated by the physical spaces of law schools. He earned his SJD from the University of Toronto, where his dissertation received the Governor General's Academic Gold Medal, and has twice won the Prize for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning from the Canadian Association of Law Teachers.
Lisa Landrum is Department Chair and Professor of Architectural Science at 91福利, a licensed architect, and a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Carleton University and a Master's and PhD in Architectural History and Theory from McGill. Between her undergraduate and graduate studies, she practiced architecture for seven years in New York City. Her research engages architecture as a performing art, exploring its intersections with theatre, philosophy, and pedagogy. She is the author of Theatres of Architectural Imagination (Routledge, 2023).
Marcin Kedzior is a writer, educator, and urban thinker. He is a Professor in the School of Applied Technology at Humber Polytechnic, where he teaches architecture and engages students in collaborative, situated design projects. He also teaches in the Master of Visual Studies program and Architecture Studies at the University of Toronto and is a Faculty Associate at the Willowbank School of Restoration Arts. Kedzior holds a BFA from Queen's University, a Master of Architecture from the University of Toronto, and SEED certification from Harvard. He is a founding editor of Scapegoat: Architecture, Landscape, Political Economy, which has been exhibited at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, the CCA in Montreal, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. His practice spans critical pedagogy, performance, and micro-urbanism.