VLS Success Story – Demystifying Dossiers

In the Spring of 2021 we shared news of a Virtual Learning Strategy (VLS) funding program by the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities, to expand and enrich learning through development of online course content, modules and open textbooks.

As these projects come to a close we wished to highlight a few examples of the work to come out of this initiative. Our colleagues in the Teaching Assistants’ Training Program created the Developing Your Teaching Dossier series; a four-module series for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows exploring strategies to reflect on their teaching and develop their teaching dossier. The series is comprised of four 60-minute self-paced modules:

  • Module 1: Reflecting on Your Teaching Experience: An Introduction to Teaching Dossiers
  • Module 2: Articulating Your Teaching Values and Practices: Developing Your Statement of Teaching Philosophy
  • Module 3: Connecting Narratives and Evidence: Developing Components of Your Teaching Dossier
  • Module 4: Looking Ahead: Telling New Stories About Our Teaching Experiences

Developing Your Teaching Dossier Logo

The resource was co-developed with four other institutional partners—Ryerson (X) University, University of Waterloo, University of Windsor, and Western University. Of importance in this highly collaborative approach was the inclusion of graduate student and postdoctoral fellow perspectives–they became the protagonists, guides, storytellers, and mentors on this journey of reflective practice.

The team leveraged H5P, a relatively new elearning technology, in developing the interactive learning objects. Speaking with one of the project leads, Mike Kasprzak notes:

“”eCampusOntario’s H5P Studio offered the technological framing for our story about teaching dossiers. By providing a range of content types, it allowed us to design and develop an engaging, accessible and interactive learning experience for diverse users. Most importantly, it afforded a high degree of customization to anyone trying to adapt the series to their institutional programing.”

Visit the Developing Your Teaching Dossier series website to learn more. This open-access resource is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License.

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