A trio of wildly divergent projects were in the spotlight at the TeachingCity Open House in Oshawa Friday, with the partnership between the City of Oshawa and post-secondary institutions Durham College, Ontario Tech University, Trent University Durham GTA and the University of Toronto hosting their annual celebration of innovation, collaboration and real world learning.
Guests at the open house had the opportunity to explore and engage with 10 projects making a difference in the community, including one helping train firefighters, another on building community in downtown Oshawa and a third studying autistic adolescents and dungeons and dragons.
Launched in June 2017, TeachingCity has helped transform Oshawa into a “living laboratory’ where students, faculty researchers, and city staff work together to address urban challenges.
With Oshawa home to more than 30,000 students and a diversified faculty base, TeachingCity is at the forefront of academic collaboration, encouraging innovation while enhancing community development.
Mixed Reality Firefighting Training
The research team at Durham College worked with the Mixed Reality Capture Studio to create a mixed reality prototype for training and testing of firefighters in collapsed and enclosed spaces. The goal was to assist Oshawa Fire Services with training staff during regular shifts with minimal disruption and allow them to train for events that are difficult to simulate safely.
Exploring Community Building and Identity in Downtown Oshawa
Dr. Tyler Frederick from the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at Ontario Tech and his team of PhD students applied their community development expertise in research on community identity and vibrancy in downtown Oshawa. The project included conducting a scan of popular community-building frameworks, holding key interviews with local leaders and engaging with downtown groups and communities to understand their perspectives on building a sense of community and identity.
Exploring the Social Experiences of Autistic Adolescents in a Dungeons and Dragons Club
John Smith, a research student from Trent University Durham GTA’s Department of Child and Youth Studies, developed a Dungeons & Dragons club geared towards neurodivergent adolescents. This unique programming provides youth with an opportunity to collaborate with their peers, socialize, and ’slay dragons’ to achieve collective goals. This collaboration has been successful and impactful for participants, leading to expanding the program since inception to support ongoing development.
The Open House also provided the added benefit of creating a networking opportunity between students, faculty and city staff with the intention of spurring on more project ideas for the future with a project ‘idea station.’ Collaborators were also able to connect and exchange ideas through a brainstorming activity wall.
TeachingCity partners address Oshawa’s urban issues through innovation, collaboration, applied research and shared experiential learning opportunities with the aim to position Oshawa as a local, national and global community of urban research and learning.
Learn more about TeachingCity at teachingcityoshawa.ca and follow #OshTeachingCity on Twitter and Instagram.