The McGill University Strategic Academic Plan includes a commitment “to supporting pedagogical and curricular innovation” and a diversification of “on-campus academic programming and modes of delivery”, including “alternatives to traditional degree organization and academic time-tabling.” In broad terms, University leadership will “encourage and support a culture of calculated risk-taking, with a commitment to ensuring agility, efficiency, creativity, and organizational learning across all our functions by eliminating barriers to change and through institutional support of the pursuit of new challenges.”
With this in mind, together with the recent experience of the rapid reorganization of teaching and learning in 2020 and emerging trends in university-level pedagogy, the Working Group on New Models of Academic Program Delivery is tasked with recommending a strategy and direction for the evolution of academic program delivery at McGill that will serve as a basis for growth and change over the next decade or more. In so doing, the Working Group should consider broad pedagogical trends and evolving best practices with respect to, for example, student assessment strategies, remote and blended learning, applied and experiential learning opportunities, and opportunities for multi-disciplinary and collaborate program delivery. The Working Group will likewise assess alternatives to the conventional academic calendar, opportunities for maximizing University resources, including human and infrastructural, opportunities for revenue generation, and the impact on and opportunities for students, teaching staff, and administrative staff.
The Working Group will explore bold and creative ways to meet the commitments of the Strategic Academic Plan. The orientation of the Working Group should be toward identifying opportunities for change, prioritizing and sequencing of these opportunities, and helping develop pathways for implementation, with key considerations around change management, impacts on academic culture, and communications. Concerns or obstacles should be noted, and the Working Group is asked to propose solutions to these potential impediments to change where change is desirable.
Explore the Working Group's overarching themes.