Reigniting Curiosity and Inquiry in Higher Education (PDF)

Stacey L. MacKinnon is an associate professor with the Department of Psychology at the University of Prince Edward Island. Stacey has spent the last 12 years designing and implementing The Curiosity Project and the past six years developing and coordinating UPEI 1020 First Year Inquiry Studies. She is the recipient of the 2012 Hessian Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2012 President's Award of Merit for Teaching, 2016 UPEI Professor of the Year, and the 2022 Janet Pottie Murray Award for Excellence in Education Leadership. As a lifelong and life-wide learner herself, Stacey strives to inspire her students and colleagues to fully engage their curiosity mindset and inquiry skills to explore all the possibilities our world has to offer. She is currently developing a new approach to reading non-fiction that incorporates active inquiry to improve students' ability and willingness to engage in deeper critical understanding, academic discussion and the quality of both their informal and formal writing. She strongly believes that learning should be both enjoyable and challenging for both the students and professor. By harnessing our curiosity or "desire to inquire", much can be done to achieve that goal. Beth Archer-Kuhn is an associate professor with the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Calgary. As a Teaching and Learning Scholar (Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning) and recipient of the Teaching Excellence Award (Faculty of Social Work), Beth has spent the last ten years learning about IBL-HE through implementation and SoTL research with undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students within courses on-campus, study abroad, and on-line. She believes IBL-HE is a socially just and inclusive pedagogy that aligns with the values of social work education, can support students with varied learning preferences, and allows students the necessary choice and agency to inspire lifelong learners.