When the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) sought to encourage its students to walk and cycle to school and travel less by car or bus, they engaged U of T students for help.
But the TDSB didn’t look only to U of T students studying transportation planning and mapping, or to those honing skills in crafting a convincing message. Nor did they consult solely with students able to analyze the volume of carbon dioxide released into the environment from so many vehicles arriving at schools before the morning bell.
The TDSB sought assistance from students in all three areas through a new collaborative experiential learning program in the Faculty of Arts & Science called the Sandbox. The program is adapted from a model introduced at the University of New South Wales in Australia where students and scholars enter partnerships with corporate and not-for-profit organizations to enable the co-creation of solutions to problems. The U of T version of Sandbox features a multidisciplinary model where courses from different disciplines work on the same challenge and learn from each other.
The Sandbox program saw 1,320 students participate in the inaugural offering during the 2023-24 academic year, under the guidance of 12 different faculty members and across 11 Arts & Science courses. In addition to the partnership with the TDSB, students explored challenges facing Access Alliance, a multicultural health and community services agency that supports immigrants and refugees across Toronto, and international humanitarian and developmental aid agency UNICEF.
With Access Alliance, students in the Human Biology program’s Health in Community course along with Peace, Conflict & Justice students helped the organization develop a model for refugee resiliency, analyzing data on youth in Toronto who experienced isolation during COVID-19 lockdowns.
“The Sandbox project was a unique opportunity to leverage our collective expertise, learn from other students, and adapt to different challenges — an essential skill set I believe every student should develop,” says Bay Bahri, a St. Michael’s College student in the senior year Health in Community course in Arts & Science’s Human Biology program. “Collaborating across disciplines in this practical setting allowed me to also identify my strengths and weaknesses, enhancing my project management skills."
With UNICEF, students supported two projects. One brought students of ethics, statistical reasoning and peace, conflict and justice together to evaluate a machine learning model that scans news stories to predict conflict escalation around the world, identifying where aid will be needed next.
The other involved an investigation into the retooling of UNICEF’s in-house country-specific data management platforms, into a company-wide open-source digital resource with uniform application across the many countries and territories in which the agency operates. The project brought together students of statistical reasoning, computer science and the psychology of organizational behaviour and change.
"Students really appreciated the opportunity to work on a real-world organizational problem,” says William Ryan, an assistant professor, teaching stream in the Department of Psychology. “They reported knowing their work would be seen and used by a real organization and would have an impact beyond just their own grade, was incredibly motivating.”
Franco Taverna, the Faculty of Arts & Science’s academic advisor to the Sandbox program, notes the program enables significant community impact, locally and globally, while bringing unmatched learning opportunities for students.
“Participants work together across disciplines and learn important project design skills all within their existing courses,” says Taverna, who also led human biology students in their work with Access Alliance as a Sandbox course instructor. “This has important access and equity implications for students.”
This past February, U of T joined the University of New South Wales as the inaugural institutional member in the Global Sandbox Alliance, a partnership that acts as a catalyst for universities worldwide to converge and collaborate. The Alliance envisions a network of Sandbox programs across universities and disciplines that fosters productive, lasting partnerships, leveraging global expertise and resources to support research, education and social engagement activities.
“As part of the Global Sandbox Alliance, we can take our multidisciplinary Sandbox approach and inspire other institutions to build bridges between arts and science disciplines in this same way,” says Christine Ovcaric, program manager of the Sandbox in the Office of Experiential Learning & Outreach Support at the Faculty of Arts & Science. “It also allows for the possibility of cross-institutional collaboration using this model where each university can contribute their own expertise to a partner’s challenge and students can learn from their global peers.”
Ovcaric adds that among the more than 10 partners and 19 courses identified for the 2024-25 academic year, UNICEF is continuing their partnership with the Sandbox. The program expects to reach 2000 students in its second year of running.
“We have a few national organizations, an environment-focused international organization and several local community partners who are eager to engage with our students,” she says. “And the participating courses are a true representation of the breadth of Arts & Science — statistics, human biology, psychology, philosophy, computer science, and many more.”
Vicki Lowes, executive director of experiential learning and professional development in the Faculty of Arts & Science, is eager to see the Sandbox program grow to include other disciplines and courses, and potentially spread to other divisions at U of T.
“The breadth of academic programs across the Faculty of Arts & Science, the strength of our U of T students and their eagerness to gain experience and contribute their expertise to real-world challenges, make the Sandbox partnership possibilities endless. We look forward to expanding the number and range of Sandbox projects in the coming years, and we invite faculty and community partners to connect directly with us to learn more and get involved.”