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The Teaching and Learning Centre at Ontario Tech offers workshops to introduce faculty to experiential learning. Review their content offerings here.

Career Ready Fund

In support of the Career Ready Fund, the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities (MTCU, formerly Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development) released six criteria as Guiding Principles for Experiential Learning. Activities funded with Career Ready Funds (CRF) should be designed in order to meet these criteria, which provide a way for institutions to ensure their EL activities provide authentic and meaningful opportunities for their students.

  • The student is in a workplace or simulated workplace
  • The student is exposed to authentic demands that improve their employability, interpersonal skills, and transition to the workforce.
  • The experience is structured with purposeful and meaningful activities.
  • The student applies university or college program knowledge and/or essential employability skills.
  • The experience includes student self-assessment and evaluation of the students’ performance and learning outcomes by the employer and/or university/college.
  • The experience counts towards course credit or credential completion OR is formally recognized by the college or university as meeting the five criteria above.

Project Highlights

  • Case Studies
    Faculties of Engineering and Applied Science and Energy Systems and Nuclear Science

    Encouraging students in first- and second-year engineering courses to engage in active and applied learning can be a challenge. Two UOIT Engineering Faculties partnered to create a series of engaging and realistic case studies for their first- and second-year courses that allow students to apply their learning in ways that would be expected by future employers. Case studies not only encourage program learning, but also let students practice essential employability skills such as communication and teamwork. Importantly, this serves as early exposure of experiential learning to UOIT students. As outlined in UOIT’s application to the Career Ready Fund, UOIT students have many responsibilities (including commuting, working, and caring for family) that make engaging in traditional experiential learning (such as co-op) more difficult.
  • Course Laboratory Revisions
    Faculty of Science

    Through the Career Ready Fund grant, the Faculty of Science engaged its faculty in their disciplines of biology, chemistry, and physics to redesign the laboratory components of two courses per discipline to include all aspects of the Ministry’s Guiding Principles for Experiential learning (Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities, 2019). While many Science courses have laboratory components, many are missing essential principles that would ensure they meet Ministry guidelines. These laboratory courses were redesigned to include a self-reflective component to ensure laboratory outcomes align with the guidelines and with Kolb’s model of experiential learning.
  • Engaged Educator Project
    Faculty of Education

    The Engaged Educator Project (EEP) is an action-oriented educational project where students engage with the various stakeholders of an organization, network, or community of practice on an issue or opportunity that is meaningful to the group, leading toward meaningful social or structural change for the group. This project is designed to help students make connections between what is learned in class and the potential for impact the learnings have on society. It also allows for flexibility, so students are able to engage with stakeholders on a project that is meaningful for themselves and their educational path.
  • Lord Ridgeback Project
    Students from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (Forensic Science, Medical Laboratory Science, Collaborative Nursing Registered Practical Nursing-to-Bachelor of Science in Nursing) and Durham College (schools of Justice & Emergency Services, Health & Community Services and Media, Art & Design) participated in a disaster simulation exercise on the university’s and college’s shared campus in north Oshawa. As part of the simulation, there was a noticeable presence of emergency vehicles on campus, volunteers acting in distress and being moved around campus on stretchers, and the use of smoke machines. Participants put their in-class training into action and gained vital understanding of how health-care, emergency and legal service providers and the media must work together during an emergency. In addition to collaborating with students in their own institutions, participants in the Lord Ridgeback Project also worked with students in disciplines at the partner institution. This added authenticity to the Project, encouraging students to call upon communication skills as well as technical knowledge.
  • User Experience Analysis
    Faculty of Business and Information Technology

    Behavioural observation analysis is the core of evaluating user experience (UX) in digital interactive products. This project created a joint experiential learning hub with a focus on behavioural observation analysis of participants while interacting with the technology. Given the crowded digital media market, UX and customer experience play a major role in the success of products. The hub was organized with interdisciplinarity as a major theme work with real companies with respect to game, web, software, instructional development and entrepreneurship. Students are provided opportunities to get experience with design and analysis of transferable user research methodologies for use in interactive digital media (Applications: games, simulations, software, apps; Platforms: desktop, mobile, tablet, VR/AR; Users profiles: students, children, aging population).
  • Horizons of Friendship
    Faculty of Social Science and Humanities

    Over the course of 13 days, six FSSH student travelled around Central America as part of their 4th year Practicum experience. They gained first-hand knowledge about community development, social justice and human rights and met with community partners who are working to eliminate poverty and injustice. Students continued their quest for knowledge at a local community partner for an additional 50 hours.