The holistic student experience depends on learning activities that are inclusive and foster a sense of belonging. To support this, we are committed to recognizing and promoting scholarly teaching excellence that integrates the principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Objective

• Emphasize inclusive excellence in teaching.

McMaster is recognized as Canada’s most research-intensive university—but our instructors are also on the leading edge of pedagogical development and innovation. It is essential that we ensure teaching excellence is equally valued, recognized and supported at the university.

Objectives

• Refine policies and processes to demonstrate that teaching is valued and recognized as a professional practice.
• Build a culture that values innovative, experimental and playful mindsets.
• Establish a knowledge translation and exchange process to support research-based teaching practice.

There are so many ways to assess learning, and we want to encourage instructors to push the boundaries of traditional assessment and evaluation methods. Innovative assessments can promote learning and creativity, provide opportunities to check in on student progress, and serve as catalysts for conversations around how students can keep growing.

Objectives

• Develop meaningful, authentic assessments that promote learning and explore opportunities to reduce the use of high-stakes exams where appropriate.
• Enable learning environments that foster collaborative projects and evaluations.

Evaluation of teaching needs to be multi-faceted and include self-reflection, peer observations and student voices. We are committed to ensuring that quality, relevance and impact of teaching is valued.

Objective

• Review how teaching is evaluated and refine policies and processes to ensure a multi-faceted approach to evaluation is implemented.