Expeditionary Studies

I have been involved in developing a new initiative called University of Toronto Outdoors, which aims to bring together instructors, students, and community members interested in engaging forms of teaching and learning that we are calling expeditionary studies. This project is for those who teach and learn in courses and special programs across the University […]

Classical Tibetan Online

This year-long course is organized around a task-based language teaching (TBLT) model, with students moving through weekly modules focused on project-based tasks to be solved by the learning community as language skills develop. Students will begin by learning the Tibetan script, fundamentals of basic grammar and key vocabulary, and move on to reading and translating […]

Mapping Buddhist Sites

Mapping Buddhist Sites was run in a year-long Introduction to Buddhism course. Course development was sponsored by the U of T Arts & Science Student Experience Fund. Throughout this course, undergraduate Field Teams developed partnerships with diverse Toronto communities as they conducted research on Buddhist institutions and practices in the area. Students created a web portal […]

Practicing Oral History

Inspired by Digital Humanities models of working collaboratively on research projects uniting students and community members, Matt Price (History) and Frances Garrett (Study of Religion) taught two undergraduate courses in the fall of 2011 that engaged students in the practice of oral history using a range of new media technologies. The two courses were designed […]

Disposition: A Role-playing Game

This Introduction to Buddhism course was designed around a year-long role playing game called Disposition. Students began the year assigned a character (e.g., scholar, ritualist, farmer, trader, doctor), and as a class we imagined ourselves to be living together in a Buddhist village in the Himalayas. Periodically events would occur in the village (hailstorm, epidemic […]