Poster Session Abstracts 2026

Dolly Abi Mansour (McGill University)

La maîtrise insuffisante du français constitue un frein majeur à l’intégration professionnelle et à la communication clinique en contexte de santé au Canada. Pour les futur·es professionnel·les, l’apprentissage du français s’ajoute à une formation déjà exigeante, pouvant affecter leur motivation. S’inscrivant dans la théorie de l’autodétermination et les approches mettant de l’avant l’authenticité pédagogique, cette étude exploratoire examine les perceptions d’apprenantes en français sur objectif spécifique (FOS santé) à l’égard d’une simulation clinique authentique et son influence perçue sur leur motivation. Menée dans un cours universitaire de niveau B2 en milieu anglophone québécois, l’intervention a impliqué douze participantes prenant part à une reunion interdisciplinaire simulée avec une professionnelle de la santé. Les perceptions ont été recueillies par questionnaire. Les résultats indiquent une appreciation globalement positive, notamment quant à la pertinence des contenus, au soutien linguistique et au sentiment d’appartenance professionnelle. Malgré un échantillon restreint, l’étude souligne le potentiel des simulations authentiques pour soutenir la motivation et la confiance langagière en formation en santé.

Vicki Zhang (University of Toronto)

As generative AI becomes widespread in higher education, students in our actuarial science program increasingly exhibit apathy toward learning and their future professional roles, consistent with recent findings (Heung & Chiu, 2025; Li et al., 2025; Bai & Wang, 2025). In response, we designed and piloted new assignments aimed at restoring professional engagement. This poster presents one such strategy that requires students to inhabit the role of a legally accountable professional. The assignment centers on a realistic case study in an actuarial professional experience course. A hypothetical insurer adopts a GenAI-based underwriting and pricing system trained on historical claims and telematics data. The Appointed Actuary approves the framework, which is deployed nationally. After one year, reserve and capital deficiencies emerge, prompting investigations into legal and professional liability. Students act as actuarial expert witnesses, auditing technical failures, analyzing legal and ethical responsibilities, and reflecting on professional accountability. Activities include in-class debate, short written analyses, and randomized oral defenses for a subset of students to reduce ghostwritten submissions. Learning outcomes of the assignment include distinguishing model error from professional judgment error, applying actuarial standards to AI-assisted decisions, analyzing legal and ethical liability, and reinforcing human accountability in AI-enabled workflows.

Marianne Dubé, Siyuan Wang, Jessica Hunter, Kristy Robinson (McGill University)

Observational methods offer valuable insights into the study of motivationally supportive teaching in STEM undergraduate courses. However, research shows that student-identified motivational supports do not always correspond to researchers’ observations. Accordingly, we analyzed STEM students’ open-ended answers about the factors that influence their judgments of four competence-supportive teaching strategies to understand match and mismatch in student-reported and researcher-observed indicators of motivational support. We make recommendations about how instructors can promote competence-supportive teaching in STEM.

Kirsten Hummel (Laval University)

A potentially promising means to allow opportunities for preservice language teachers to put their second language (L2) skills in practice is through community service-learning (CSL). CSL has been generally defined as learning which takes place outside of the institution and draws on student experiences and interactions with members of the surrounding community. This poster presents results from a current project (funded by the MES) with Francophone students aiming to become ESL teachers (n=19). The study explored the effects of short-term CSL on a number of psychosocial variables, including linguistic self-confidence and teacher self-efficacy. Preservice L2 teachers volunteered to collaborate in the local minority English-language community in the Quebec City region, assisting primary school classrooms. Quantitative and qualitative methods were applied through questionnaires and interviews to measure pre and post service-learning perceptions. Statistical analyses revealed no significant differences between pre and post activity measures (over 5 months) on the variables of interest, although a tendency was observed on a self-confidence measure. In-depth analyses of students’ responses on interview questions revealed perceived effects on both linguistic self-confidence and teacher self-efficacy. Results will be reviewed and compared with those from studies with different populations in diverse TESL and other teacher education programs.

Manuel Trudel-Ferland, Minoru Yoshida, Louca Filiatrault, Azeddine Ghodbane, Jean-Marc Lina, Ammar Kouki, Manel Abdellatif, Dominic Deslandes, Mariia Zhuldybina (ÉTS)

L’enseignement de l’électromagnétisme en génie pose des défis liés à l’abstraction et au lien théorie-application. CoulombCompagnon est un système de tutorat intelligent soutenant l’alignement pédagogique, l’apprentissage actif et la personnalisation dans ELE312 et ELE413. Il combine outils IA pour la planification, moteur adaptatif de playlists et base de connaissances collaborative alimentant un GPT contextualisé. Les learning analytics permettent d’itérer et d’identifier les concepts à risque, dans un cadre transférable d’intégration pédagogique de l’IA.

Carolina R N M Santos, Zacharias Foti (Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, McGill University), Elizabeth Webb, Veronique Brule, Armin Yazdani (Office of Science Education, McGill University)

This study examines how learning strategies, assessment anxiety, self‑efficacy, and academic performance vary across science disciplines and demographic groups in undergraduate students at McGill University. Participants (N = 929) self-reported on their assessment experiences through a survey measuring state and trait anxiety, academic self-efficacy, and study strategies. Significant disciplinary and demographic differences were observed, with gender and age strongly linked to anxiety and study behaviors. Findings highlight the need for tailored academic and well-being resources to support student learning.

Neerusha Gokool (University of Montreal), Angelo Geovani Dos Santos Junior, Richard Léveillé (John Abbott College), Devrin Aiden Tiongson (Concordia University), Victor Emmanuel Deguzman (University of Montreal)

Funded by the Entente Canada–Québec (ECQ), this project presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of interactive simulations on plate tectonics grounded in Universal Design for Learning. Addressing documented challenges in spatial reasoning and mental model construction, the simulations integrate dynamic visualizations, scaffolded vocabulary, and guided inquiry. This presentation outlines the pedagogical foundations of the simulations and reports student perspectives on engagement, conceptual clarity, and understanding of tectonic processes, offering an inclusive and research-informed approach to geoscience education.

Sophie Wu, Jovan Rohac (Encode Canada/McGill)

Encode Canada is a student-led AI advocacy group that has spent the past year promoting AI literacy among adolescents. Our initiatives include in-classroom workshops on AI and its social impacts, and a mentorship program matching high school and CEGEP students with graduate researchers on self-directed projects. In this presentation, we'll share challenges we've identified in AI education, present our initiatives that have engaged with these issues, and gather educator feedback on how to scale and improve our programs.

Tetiana Brandt (Concordia University)

The growing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into project management is reshaping professional practice, decision-making, and how knowledge is constructed in organizations. This work-in-progress study builds on a thematic review of recent qualitative research examining epistemic shifts in AI-enabled project work. The project advances toward a design-based research agenda that explores how project management education can better align with AI-driven workplace practices through the design of business simulations that model contemporary project scenarios for early-career project managers.

Chidiebere Okarah, Bohan Liu, Eduardo Oliveira, Manas Tiwari, Mateo Morales, Luke Williams (Koan)

Generative AI has fundamentally reshaped how students learn. Unregulated access, academic pressure and pedagogy that incentivizes final products over actual learning has left students accumulating cognitive debt and educators unable to verify whether submitted work reflects genuine understanding. Koan is an AI-integrated LMS embedding Aidan, a Socratic AI teaching assistant, directly into the learning process. Rather than providing answers, Aidan guides students through reflective problem-solving, making thinking visible to educators, with implications for equitable, process-centred pedagogy in digital learning environments.

Chenxuan Meng, James D. Slotta (OISE, University of Toronto)

As active learning classrooms become more popular, a key question is raised: to what extent do pedagogical approaches depend on spatial configurations? Although research acknowledges the pedagogy–space relationship, teachers lack tools to determine whether activities require or merely benefit from specific spatial conditions. Building on our Space Coupling Levels (SCL) framework, which maps 50 active learning strategies across five spatial dimensions, this study surveys teachers to validate SCL's criteria and identify overlooked spatial considerations.

Romane Monnet, Sanheeta Shankar, Kristy Robinson (McGill University)

STEM post-secondary education faces challenges such as low engagement and motivation (Blackley & Howell, 2015), yet educational reforms addressing these issues have often been perceived negatively by students, thus diminishing attempts to innovate (Deslauriers et al., 2019). Instructors are now encouraged to implement motivationally supportive teaching practices (e.g., competence support; Ryan & Deci, 2020) and there is a need to examine student perceptions and outcomes. This study investigated how STEM undergraduates’ perceptions of competence support predicted their academic self-efficacy, perceived learning, and actual learning. Data (i.e., self-report surveys and grades) were collected from 3,303 students in undergraduate STEM courses at McGill University. Overall, students perceived instructors as somewhat competence supportive. In a structural equation model controlling for baseline self-efficacy and demonstrating excellent fit, students who perceived their instructor as providing more verbal persuasion and appropriate tasks tended to exhibit higher self-efficacy, feel like they learned more, and actually learn more. However, while students who felt they had enough time to understand felt like they learned a lot, this was not reflected in their self-efficacy nor grades. These results help improve understanding of how STEM undergraduates respond to competence supportive teaching and gather needed evidence to ensure its successful implementation.

Alexis Gonzalez-Donoso (University of British Columbia); Fabian Arroyo-Rojas (Hofstra University)

Using a story completion design, this study examined how secondary science teachers understand disability in everyday practice. Twenty‑nine Chilean in‑service science teachers completed a fictional stem about a non‑verbal autistic student in a general education classroom; three participants identified as disabled. Thematic analysis revealed tensions between medicalized views, approaches that expect students to adjust to existing classroom norms, and relational approaches that emphasize changing teaching practices and the learning environment to better support the student and reduce barriers.

Champlain Chemistry Club (Champlain College St-Lambert)

The Champlain Chemistry Club will present a series of visually engaging, safe chemistry demonstrations designed to spark curiosity and promote active learning beyond traditional laboratories. Developed through outreach events, open houses, and peer-led activities, these experiments emphasize accessibility, and conceptual understanding for diverse audiences. During the poster session, presenters will perform selected demonstrations and guide visitors through hands-on interactions, while discussing the educational purpose, underlying chemical principles, and practical considerations, illustrating how these activities foster engagement and appreciation of chemistry.

Gideon Sarpong (Concordia University)

This poster examines Montreal’s public transit network as an underexplored educational technology (edtech) ecosystem for immigrant French language acquisition. No prior research has positioned STM infrastructure as a vehicle for language learning. Through a conceptual literature review synthesizing scholarship across edtech, applied linguistics, and urban studies, this study proposes that multimodal French input in daily transit routines function as ongoing, background language exposure. It is assumed that the frequency, contextual repetition, and real-world relevance of this input align with established conditions for incidental language development. STM infrastructure can potentially be a distributed, non-intentional edtech environment with significant implications for inclusive immigrant integration policy and the design of low-barrier language learning supports in urban Quebec.