Course Navigation

Navigating through the material in this course is a learning journey for educators, equally as much as it is learning journey for the learners, and it depends on how much time an educator can dedicate in their teaching to introduce the the Canadian Engineering Grand Challenges, provide examples from cities and communities and impart leadership skills to support impactful change towards address these challenges.

First, an educator will be able to select the Canadian Engineering Grand Challenge of relevance and interest to their teaching and to their learners. This step will provide the educator with a summary of the Canadian Engineering Grand Challenge and offer downloadable slides that can be shared with learners in a classroom or workshop setting.

Second, an educator will be able to select examples of cities and communities that would serve as case study to demonstrate the Canadian Engineering Grand Challenge. For each Canadian Engineering Grand Challenge, the educator may select an Ontario city or an Indigenous community based on their teaching objectives and the learners’ intended learning outcomes. Downloadable slides are available for download and can be shared with learners in a classroom or workshop setting.

Third, an educator will be able to present leadership theory in class, and connect leadership skills to addressing the Canadian Engineering Grand Challenges. Downloadable slides are available for download and can be shared with learners in a classroom or workshop setting.

Fourth, an educator will be able to tie these material together by using the toolkit available for educators designed and categorized by selecting the leadership skills of interest: self-leadership, team leadership, organization leadership, and societal leadership, and downloading the instructor guide and the leadership activity worksheet for their learners. The instructor guide provides the educator with instructions on re-using material, while the leadership activity worksheets are to be shared with learners, and provides prompts to gain experiential learning experiences on leadership skills that are designed to offer opportunities to reflect on the Canadian Engineering Grand Challenges and the case studies in cities and communities.

With a primary focus on the time available to learners, an educator will be able to decide how much time to spend with this material. The course makes available two options:

• If the educator has 15 minutes, they would have time to introduce Canadian Engineering Grand Challenge and walk through a city or community example.
• If the educator has 60 minutes, they would have time to introduce Canadian Engineering Grand Challenge and walk through a city or community example, in addition to working through a leadership skill guided by the activity in the respective worksheets.

Examples of Educator Personas

Educator Persona A: The instructor teaches a second year course to civil engineering students on Pipe Network Flow, and wishes to motivate students by introducing the Canadian Engineering Grand Challenge on Access to Safe Water in All Communities (CEGC 3), and since the instructor also would like their students to be aware of the challenges of water access in Indigenous communities they have chosen the Neskantaga First Nation case study. They have decided to dedicate one lecture for this just before Reading Week to leave students with some motivation for their learning to reflect on while they are off. The instructor also has time to integrate leadership skills, and has chosen to introduce self-leadership since they believe this is the first time that their students are aware of leadership skills, and it would be a good idea to start with self-leadership as the first of the leadership domains in the engineering leadership framework presented. The instructor therefore downloads the instructor guide from the Toolkit for educators, and will follow the guide for the 45 minute framework. The instructor guides prompts the instructor to download the material for CEGC 3, Cities and Communities for CEGC 3, Introduction to Engineering Leadership, and Lesson 3 Self Leadership and CEGC Case Study.

Educator Persona B: The instructor teaches the fourth year capstone course to environmental engineering students and does not have much lecture time with students to introduce material that is not specifically design-related, however, the instructor would like students to have a comprehensive view of sustainability in cities and communities for which their proposed designs will serve. This instructor is interested in the Canadian Engineering Grand Challenge on Inclusive, Safe and Sustainable Cities (CEGC 4), and wants to demonstrate this challenge in a city that may be familiar to most capstone teams, so they’ve chosen Toronto. The instructor therefore downloads the instructor guide from the Toolkit for educators, and will follow the guide for the 15 minute framework. The instructor guides prompts the instructor to download the material for CEGC 4, Cities and Communities for CEGC 4.