Jennifer Campbell of the Faculty of Arts & Science has been recognized with the President’s Teaching Award — the highest honour for teaching at the University of Toronto.
A professor, teaching stream and associate chair for undergraduates in the Department of Computer Science, Campbell is renowned for her teaching innovations. As universities started to experiment with Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in 2012, Campbell co-developed an introductory programming course that extended the University of Toronto’s high calibre of computer science instruction to hundreds of thousands of students around the world.
The high-quality videos produced for the MOOC enabled Campbell to co-develop a new, “flipped” approach to CSC108, the department’s introductory programming course. Using those videos, lecture material could be presented outside the classroom, and in-class time could be focused on active learning, with just-in-time guidance from instructors and teaching assistants.
Co-author of a textbook on introductory programming in Python, Campbell has authored more than 20 publications on computer science education and has served many times as a program committee member for the Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education Technical Symposium (SIGCSE TS) and the conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE).
“Jen is a superlative teacher and inspiring educational leader whose impact has been felt by hundreds of thousands of students around the globe, as well as colleagues in our department, across U of T, and internationally,” said Professor Marsha Chechik, chair of the department.