Our Mission

The College Educator Development Program is a collaborative undertaking of the six Ontario Western Region Colleges.  Its mission is to foster teaching excellence through the shared exploration of evidence-based teaching and engagement in ongoing reflective teaching practice.  This assessed, outcomes-based program focuses on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). The program creates a learning community that supports the achievement of program learning outcomes, the exchange of best practices, and the continuous professional growth of college educators.  Through active learning in a technology enhanced climate, educators develop a solid pedagogical foundation to design curriculum and engage students in a wide range of transformative learning experiences The provincial Productivity and Innovation Fund provided funding for a project, “Creating an Effective Framework for New Faculty Development”, designed to revitalize and enrich the CEDP program.  Through this process, CEDP was restructured to reflect clearly articulated outcomes and to integrate, in a more thoughtful and prominent way, the scholarship of teaching and learning.  The new CEDP model retains the residential phases and collaborative, peer-driven spirit, however it has been updated to include new modes of content delivery, mechanisms for archiving products of instruction and critical reflections, and formalized mentorship opportunities, including:

• Online modules addressing a number of concepts fundamental to teaching and learning in the Ontario College system (list)

• A teaching portfolio containing instructional artifacts (i.e. lesson plans, sample assignments, student submissions) and reflective elements (i.e. Teaching Philosophy statement)

• Participation in Teaching Circles, a program that facilitates reciprocal peer-observation of instruction