Joining students on their SLICCs journey

Abstract

At Waterloo Engineering, we have great student leaders who go far beyond the average of 120 hours needed for a course credit in leadership roles, but currently receive no academic credit for this work. The SLICC (Student-Led, Individually-Created Course) model, developed by professors at the University of Edinburgh, is a great way to help the student leaders reflect on their own leadership experiences in a personalized format, producing a product that is of value to them. That is the motivation for a new course, offered in the winter 2022 term for the first time, GENE 415: Practical Analysis of Student Leadership Experience. As instructors, we were completely new to the SLICC model. After some basic training in the mechanics of the SLICC process with folks at Waterloo who are implementing it in their courses and support from folks at the University of Edinburgh, we put ourselves through a SLICC project with our students. This was done with lots of support from a senior educational developer from the Centre for Teaching Excellence. This is the story of SLICCs being implemented by two seasoned instructors and their educational journey to guide ten senior engineering student leaders through a new course designed to acknowledge, through course credit, their substantial leadership experiences throughout their undergraduate studies in engineering. This SLICC experience was completed at the height of the Omicron wave of COVID-19 in Ontario, revealing both the benefits and challenges of this self-directed learning model being implemented in an online environment and then shifting to in-person.