LEAD: Lifelong education and development
About The course
We developed LEAD to address five key areas to empower highly qualified personnel with lifelong learning and professional skills: strategic learning (including metacognition), project management, resilience, mentorship and navigating difficult conversations. All the modules connect directly with learners’ values and goals.
We support HQP in developing skills that lead to more inclusive, equitable, and productive research environments.
Learners can come from any discipline, and include graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and others who work in advance research and academic environments (highly qualified personnel). This course can also be used by early career employees and beyond.
The course activities and assessments are authentic and tailored to each learner’s context and discipline. The tangible outcomes include specific strategies, plans, and skills that learners can immediately apply to their unique contexts.
How to take or get the course:
Online (self-directed online course coming soon); certificate of completion is provided
In person: Can be taken at the University of Ottawa, in the Faculty of Science; course credit upon achievement (1.5 or 3 credit options).
Summer Institute: join us for our week-long summer institute; details below.
Import/Adapt the course for your own context (currently requires the Brightspace learning management system); Zip files
The modules
Strategic learning: Most people spend years (even decades!) in formal education settings without learning how learning works, or how to learn effectively or strategically. They are often given lists of tips or simply expected to already know how to learn. The strategic learning module guides learners to use their values in identifying their SMART goals for learning, identifying what they know and don’t know and strategizing for their learning (metacognition). They learn how learning works and to apply evidence-based approaches, including learning skills of curiosity, mindfulness, mindsets, and failure, as well as practical skills such as distributed/spaced learning and interweaving.
Coming soon! A new section on using artificial intelligence for learning strategically, ethically, and responsibly!
Academic resilience: Increasingly, students are reporting mental health and wellness issues. Students are also increasingly dealing with stress in unhealthy ways, such as avoidance. In the module, students learn about different types of stress and build skills to face stress in healthy ways. We also address important social concepts related to resilience, for example, that it is inappropriate to ask for resilience from individuals from equity-deserving groups facing oppression of basic human rights.
Navigating difficult conversations: These conversations arise in all kinds of situations, such as between people from different cultures, and often include power dynamics, such as between students and professors. The module helps students build skills in navigating these conversations constructively and respectfully. The module helps learners prepare for, plan, engage in, and follow-up after the conversation. We also include an optional section on navigating negotiations, for those engaged in employment discussions.
Project management: Few people explicitly learn how to create a project management strategy, including setting goals, determining which aspects are in- and out-of-scope, managing risks, creating a timeline, etc. As a result, many projects fail or take far longer than necessary.
Mentorship: While mentorship relationships are important and often encountered in academic and professional settings, few people learn to strategically and purposefully approach the relationship, including identifying a suitable mentor/mentee, exploring mentorship models, developing goals and expectations, identifying needs, and ending the relationship.
Leadership: Stay tuned for our next module!
Course development process
With funding from eCampusOntario’s Virtual Learning Strategy and supported by uOttawa’s Teaching and Learning Support Service, we developed the course with students and experts. We co-designed learning outcomes, the course structure, and design during a one-week design sprint, worked on content and storyboarding over the following months, then moved into production with TLSS. The course is partly translated to French (in progress!) and is an open education resource (OER).
We have piloted the course twice with students, incorporating their feedback in the course. Alison also taught the course in uOttawa’s Department of Chemistry & Biomolecular Sciences in the winter of 2024 (1.5 credits); again, student feedback will make the next version better.
Following a team retreat in February, we identified our next priorities as moving the course out of the current learning management system and into a more openly-accessible format so that learners and educators can use it without barriers. Other priorities include expanding our project evaluation and knowledge mobilication activities.
What?
LEAD participants build skills in mentorship, strategic learning, academic resilience, navigating difficult conversations, and project management. The activities and the assessments are designed to be authentic and immediately relevant, in that they are tailored to the work/research that participants are currently doing. The course has already been piloted and formally offered, with fantastic outcomes, and we’re excited to be able to reach even more learners.
Who?
LEAD is designed for early career researchers/students from any discipline, including postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, and senior undergraduate students. At any career stage, LEAD offers opportunities to further develop professional and lifelong learning skills, to help participants be more successful in their studies and career.
Why?
Fostering innovation and scientific discovery in today’s fast-changing world requires exceptional training for graduate students and other highly qualified personnel. However, many issues can plague research and advanced training environments, including steep learning curves where many professional and learning skills are rarely taught, despite the best intentions. Further, many equity-deserving groups disproportionately face barriers to success. Our team developed this course to better equip and empower participants with lifelong learning and professional skills and foster more inclusive, equitable, and productive research and work environments. Supporting students in taking LEAD is one way that professors can contribute to building equitable, inclusive, and diverse training environments, as increasingly required by granting agencies.
How?
You can participate in the LEAD course in a few different ways:
Graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and senior undergrads from any institution and discipline joined during our inaugural Summer Institute, August 26–30, 2024 at uOttawa and Carleton University; those who completed the course received a certificate (register here). Stay tuned for our 2025 Summer Institute!
We welcome professionals! On Friday, August 30, invited professionals, educational leaders, and other stakeholders to join us for networking and to exchange ideas. We heard from their experiences and participants shared their own. We welcomed professionals from industry, government, academia, etc.
Students at uOttawa and Carleton can take the course in Fall 2024 as a for-credit graduate course; offered in two parts, with each part worth 1.5 credits.
Our team is dedicated to making graduate education more equitable, inclusive, and diverse. We welcome your suggestions and questions.
summer institute
Our inaugural 2024 Summer Institute was a resounding success! Stay tuned for details about our 2025 Summer Institute.
Project evaluation
We are also evaluating the impacts of this innovative, equitable, scalable, transferable training approach for HQP, designed to strengthen their skills for success and further Canada’s strength and leadership. We will use the project’s findings to identify better ways of helping persons prepare for, return to, and keep employment and be productive participants in the workforce.
We expect to see measurable improvements in skills in the targeted areas, reduced imposter syndrome, increased feelings of support, increased confidence, and empowered trainees. We want to create a coherent training program that will provide students with skills they can draw upon to be successful and that can be tested for efficacy and built upon over time.
MEET THE TEAM!
*Current team member
*Alison Flynn, University of Ottawa, Professor (Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences), 3M National Teaching Fellow
*Isabelle Barrette-Ng, University of Windsor, Chair of Integrative Biology and Professor (Integrative Biology), 3M National Teaching Fellow
*Gino DiLabio, University of British Columbia - Okanagan, Professor (Chemistry)
*Ashley Thompson, Carleton University, Adjunct Professor (Neuroscience), Teaching and Learning Services, Educational Developer
Connor Bourgonje, University of Ottawa, PhD Student in Department of Chemistry & Biomolecular Sciences
*Kim Hellemans, Carleton University, Associate Dean of Science (Student Recruitment, Retention, and Success), Assistant Professor (Neuroscience), Provost’s Teaching Fellow
Isabelle Hinch, University of Windsor, Master’s Student
Leah McMunn, University of Ottawa, former graduate student (PhD)
Sarah McPhedran, University of Ottawa, Undergraduate Student
Adam Pillon, University of Windsor, Master’s Student
*Jeremy Kerr, University of Ottawa, Chair and Professor (Biology), University Research Chair in Macroecology and Conservation
Bradley Wuetherick, University of British Columbia - Okanagan, Associate Provost (Academic Program)
Knowledge mobilization activities
*Lead presenters
Barrette-Ng, I.; Bourgonje, C.; DiLabio, G.; Flynn, A.B.; Hellemans, K.; Kerr, J.T.; and Thompson, A. “LEAD: Lifelong education and development” Seminar presented at the Ottawa-Carleton Science Education Symposium, May 2024.
Barrette-Ng, I.; Bourgonje, C.; *DiLabio, G.; Flynn, A.B.; Hellemans, K.; Kerr, J.T.; and Thompson, A. “LEAD: Lifelong education and development” Seminar presented at the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies 61st annual conference, Victoria, BC, 2024.
*Barrette-Ng, I.; Bourgonje, C.; DiLabio, G.; Flynn, A.B.; Hellemans, K.; Kerr, J.T.; and Thompson, A. “LEAD: Lifelong education and development” Seminar presented at the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education annual conference, 2023.