Lunch & Learn Series
Sharing pedagogical tools, insights, and approaches within our academic community, fostering collaboration and innovation in teaching and learning.
The Wood Centre Lunch & Learn Series brings together faculty and staff to explore new teaching tools, share innovative approaches, and spark collaborative conversations. Each session is designed to provide practical strategies that enhance learning and foster a community of innovation. Explore the summaries below for insights into each session and key takeaways.
AI & Humanity
Mark Daley
September 2026
On September 3, Mark Daley (Chief AI Officer, Western University) joined the Ivey community for a John F. Wood Centre faculty Lunch and Learn, held as part of the Coffee, Chai, and Gen AI series. He led a broad-ranging discussion on how AI has affected our lives, including the tension between its usefulness and the anxiety it creates, fears about what AI means for our professional identities, questions about ensuring cybersecurity, and perspectives on the ownership of ideas.
A key insight considered during the discussion was how we incentivize our students to do the work necessary to become effective users of AI tools. One observation that emerged from the talk was that those with domain expertise are in the best position to make effective use of the tools. The question, then, becomes how do we encourage our students to develop that expertise in a world in which AI can increasingly produce the final product without requiring the same struggle and friction required for learning? At an academic level, we’d need to move beyond incentivizing the output. At a societal level, we’d need to engage in conversations around whether our incentives can go beyond maximizing economic value.
Some key takeaways about how to engage with your students:
- Be transparent about why the process of learning matters, not simply what students need to produce
- Where reasonable, incentivize the work that goes into creating high-quality output rather than the output itself
- Have open conversations with your students about the society to which they contribute. What problems do they hope AI will solve?
Beyond AI "Competencies": Preparing Students to Critique & Innovate
Dan lizotte
April 2026
The session featured Dan Lizotte (Director, Rotman Institute of Philosophy; Associate Professor, Computer Science and Epidemiology and Biostatistics), who explored how educators can better support students’ engagement with generative AI.
Dan questioned the growing focus on student “AI competencies,” arguing that such frameworks can reduce students to passive users of technology. Instead, he emphasized helping students to critique, question, and innovate in their use of AI.
Discussion ranged across disciplines and included questions of agency, when and why students use AI, and how teaching can focus more on learning processes than final outputs. Faculty shared practical examples, including assessing how students reach answers, encouraging slower and more deliberate thinking, and designing classroom activities that leverage learning beyond reliance on AI tools.
Participants also reflected on the importance of our own thoughtful intention for learning objectives and values, as well as clear communication with students about why they matter in an AI enabled environment.
AI & Assessment Design Workshop
cortney hanna-benson & dani dilkes
November 2025
Thank you to everyone who joined our extended three-hour Lunch and Learn session focused on one of the most pressing topics in contemporary teaching: how to adapt assessment design in an era of rapidly advancing generative AI. The session built on our August workshop and ongoing conversations this semester, offering space for collective reflection, practical exploration, and thoughtful dialogue about how AI is reshaping the way we teach and evaluate learning.
Facilitated by Dr. Cortney Hanna-Benson, Associate Director, Digital Learning, and Dani Dilkes, eLearning and Curriculum Specialist at Western University’s Centre for Teaching and Learning, the workshop guided participants through a series of discussions and activities exploring:
How our pedagogical values should guide AI use
- An analysis of prototypical assessments at Ivey.
- Approaches to designing assessments in a post-AI classroom
The session encouraged instructors to critically reflect on where AI challenges existing assessment models, where it offers new possibilities, and how we might collectively evolve our practices to maintain academic integrity while supporting deeper student learning.
Exploring Practices in Rubric Design and Implementation
Tiffany Bayley, ken meadows & Mandy penney
October 2025
In collaboration with the Building Up Our Teaching Community series this session hosted by Tiffany Bayley, with Ken Meadows and Mandy Penney from Western University Centre for Teaching and Learning, explored how well-designed rubrics can promote fairness, support inclusivity, and serve as powerful teaching and communication tools. Participants analyzed different types of rubrics, explored a variety of rubric purposes, and engaged in collaborative exercises to apply rubric design to their own assessments.
Faculty were encouraged to bring either an existing assessment with a rubric or an assessment that could benefit from rubric incorporation. The workshop emphasized practical strategies for designing rubrics that are adaptable, clear, and aligned with course learning outcomes while fostering creativity and engaged learning.
Key Takeaways
- 5 Principles of Rubric Design:
- Align with learning outcomes.
- Use clear, descriptive, and specific language.
- Share with students in advance.
- Align with and be adaptable for disciplinary, student, and instructor contexts.
- Balance specificity and flexibility / creativity
- Choose the rubric type that best fits your course's learning objectives and assessment style: Analytic, Holistic, or Single Point.
- Rubric ≠ Grading Key
Participants explored practical strategies for designing clear, adaptable, and purposeful rubrics that enhance learning, support fairness, and foster student engagement.
Creating Deeper Connections in the Classroom
Mazi Raz & the artist collective wild soma
September 2025
This interactive session explored meaningful engagement in the classroom, focusing on how faculty and students can cultivate deeper, reciprocal connections. Prof. Mazi Raz and the artist collective Wild Soma guided participants through sensory-rich, embodied practices designed to expand attention, reflection, and relational awareness in learning spaces.
The session challenged conventional modes of teaching by emphasizing non-linear approaches, physical engagement, and interaction with non-human objects to spark reflection and shift habitual learning patterns. Faculty were invited to explore unfamiliar ways of knowing that complement cognitive approaches, encouraging curiosity, presence, and connection.
Wild Soma’s approach is informed by Indigenous, accessibility, and pedagogical advisors, and the session was supported through a multi-year Strategic Innovation Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Key Takeaways
- Embodied awareness can deepen engagement by attuning to presence, mood, and relational dynamics in the classroom.
- Altering physical space and introducing non-human connections, such as caring for a plant, can spark reflection and shift habitual patterns.
- Practices like shared breath and back-to-back contact invite participants to quiet the analytical mind and experience learning through the body.
- Non-linear, sensory-rich approaches challenge academic norms that privilege cognitive engagement and structured takeaways.
- Faculty responses ranged from feeling belonging and connection to discomfort and resistance, highlighting both the challenge and promise of embodied practices.
Participants explored how embodied, sensory-rich practices can foster deeper engagement, relational awareness, and transformative learning in the classroom.
Reflections
As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen the teaching community, Mazi Raz and Wild Soma led a 90-minute session with four movement artists and a dance choreographer, designed around two core intentions:
1. Embodied Awareness for Deeper Engagement
Participants experienced a non-linear, sensory-rich session that disrupted conventional learning modes. The physical space was transformed, and participants engaged with non-human objects, including caring for a plant as a living companion. Activities such as sitting in unfamiliar arrangements, breathing together, and connecting physically (e.g., back-to-back exercises) encouraged participants to quiet the analytical mind and inhabit their fuller human capacities. The exercises sparked reflection, humor, and insight, highlighting the power of embodied engagement in educational spaces.
2. Exploring Unfamiliar Learning Modes
The session intentionally contrasted with typical academic approaches, privileging cognitive engagement and structured reasoning. By emphasizing somatic intelligence, the session challenged participants to step outside habitual patterns and embrace discomfort, uncertainty, and new forms of insight.
Faculty responses were diverse, ranging from feelings of belonging and connection to initial resistance or discomfort. This diversity underscores the potential of embodied practices to foster meaningful engagement, deepen understanding, and expand perceptions of teaching and learning.