The Vice-Deans, Teaching & Learning and Academic Experience participated in a tri-campus committee to discuss the future implementation of a course tagging system that would enable the tracking and generation of metrics on experiential learning course offerings at U of T.
In the 2017-2018 academic year, 138 students enrolled in academic internship courses, followed by a 65% enrollment increase to 229 students by the 2019-2020 year. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the enrollment count declined to 192 in 2020-2021. However, this enrollment count still reflected an overall growth from the first year of the academic plan being implemented. Similarly, the Research Opportunity Program had 327 students enrolled in projects during the 2017-2018 academic year. By 2020-2021, this number rose to 367, reflecting a 12% growth rate. Given the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, subsequent academic years may reflect contrasting data.
With funding secured through the Provostial University Fund for Experiential Learning, the Experiential Education Unit (EEU) established an Experiential Learning Development Grant (ELDG) to promote the development of new in-person and remote EL opportunities at UTM. 10 new curricular EL opportunities were funded by the ELDG for the 2020-21 academic year.
In February 2020, the EEU submitted a successful application to the Ontario Human Capital Research & Innovation Fund for 2019-20 to support the Linking Skills project, a new research and EL initiative designed to enhance the career outcomes of Humanities graduates. It is collaborating with five Humanities departments and multiple campus partners on the development of parallel student-facing and employer-facing frameworks to enhance EL opportunities in Humanities courses.
The Department of Political Science introduced its very first internship course. POL405Y5 has started accepting student applications for its first course offering and is targeting September 2021 for industry work placements.
Despite the sudden transition to remote learning in March 2020, UTM continued to offer students opportunities to gain experience in Academic Internships, Community Engaged Learning courses, and Research Opportunity Program courses, across the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Sciences. In addition, Experiential Education Unit (EEU) staff also served on the Remote Experiential Learning Group, a tri-campus initiative launched by the Office of the Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education, which developed resources on remote learning for faculty and staff. EEU staff further co-presented a webinar on best practices for facilitating remote internships, as part of a tri-campus series organized by the Office of the Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education.
