Event Details
Date & Time: Wednesday, March 4th, 2026 | 12:00pm - 2:30pm
Location: Collaborative Digital Research Space (CDRS / MN3230), Maanjiwe nendamowinan (MN), 1535 Outer Circle, Mississauga ON L5L 1C6, U of T Mississauga (UTM) Campus
Lunch will be provided.
The Writing Development Initiative (WDI) is 20 years old! For the past two decades, the WDI has been providing funding and other forms of support to UTM faculty from across the disciplines to help them devise and put into practice plans to develop their students’ discipline-appropriate reading, writing, and critical thinking skills.
In any given year, between 15-35 courses at UTM (most, but not all, early year courses) are supported by the WDI. This support takes the form of funding for extra TA hours; as well, the WDI’s director, Michael Kaler, and the RGASC provide as desired other forms of support, including collaboration or assistance in creating or adapting teaching materials; facilitation of benchmarking sessions; TA training; setting up course-specific drop-in sessions at the RGASC or online; and so on. As well, several WDI projects have provided sites for innovative research opportunities.
The WDI is run by the Robert Gillespie Academic Skills Centre (RGASC), and can be seen as an instructor-facing extension of the RGASC’s offerings. Since its foundation in the 2005/2006 school year, the WDI has provided resources to faculty who have “dreamed big” about writing- and reading-related ways in which they could enhance their courses. It has supported courses from across the disciplines, with long-running projects in the Departments of Historical Studies and Biology, and with newer projects involving individual courses, paired (fall/winter terms) courses, and even multi-year, multi-course scaffolded projects. Every year, WDI support helps thousands of UTM undergrads develop their ability to communicate in discipline-appropriate ways; as well, in Departments that require their students to take ISUP’s ISP100 course, WDI projects build upon the fundamental understandings of academic communication that students acquire in that course.
At this gathering, attendees will be shown the history, structure, and proposal process for the WDI; they will learn about several of the projects that it currently supports, from long-running and well-established ones to new ones; and they will have the opportunity to work in a supportive and collegial environment to brainstorm ways that they might enhance their development of student writing and reading skills in their own courses.
Who knows – you might leave the colloquium with the idea for a WDI project of your own...
Registration
Registration is now open - click the link below to fill out the form and save your seat today!
Additional Information
For more information on the WDI, please contact Michael Kaler at michael.kaler@utoronto.ca, or visit here: https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/rgasc/faculty-instructors/funding-opportunities/writing-development-initiative-program.