While many of these courses are tailored for School of Art students, one standout this year is FA 1212: Art, Technology, and Culture of Video Games. Open to all UM students with no prerequisites, this new course bridges the arts, sciences, and humanities through the study of video games as cultural and creative forms. It’s a unique opportunity for students across faculties—especially U1, Arts, and Science—to explore visual culture in an accessible and engaging way.

Fall 2025 Highlights

FAAH 3150: Nineteenth-Century European Art: Cultural Transformations and Artistic Movements
Instructor: Dr. Stephen Borys
A course examining the major artistic movements of nineteenth-century Europe, from Romanticism and Realism to Impressionism. Students will explore how artists responded to industrialization, urban growth, and political upheaval, while developing critical insights into how painting and sculpture shaped and reflected cultural change.

FAAH 3250: Queer Art
Instructor: Dr. Braden Scott
A course considering how sexual and gender diversity is expressed, encoded, or obscured in visual culture. Students will trace queer art histories across time and geography, exploring questions of visibility, identity, and representation.

FAAH 4070: Bauhaus-Canada
Instructor: Dr. Oliver Botar
Examining the influence of the Bauhaus in Canadian contexts, this seminar investigates intersections of modernism, pedagogy, and artistic innovation.

FAAH 4082: Seminar in Art Historiography
Instructor: Dr. David Foster
An advanced seminar focusing on the debates, methodologies, and historiographies that shape the field of art history.

STDO 2680: Introduction to Art Therapy
Instructor: Tanissa Martindale
This course introduces students to the principles and practices of art therapy, exploring how creative processes can support healing and well-being.

STDO 2680: Ceramic Tiles
Instructor: Grace Nickel
Students will experiment with tile-based ceramic design, learning technical processes while exploring historical and contemporary approaches.

STDO 3680: With the Land: Artists Outside
Instructor: Sarah Ciurysek
A land-based studio at FortWhyte Alive, where students engage directly with seasonal changes through observation, movement, and creative process.

STDO 3680: Sketching Time
Instructor: Matthis Grunsky
Students explore drawing as a practice of attention and reflection, maintaining daily sketchbooks and emphasizing the slow, observational qualities of mark-making.

STDO 3680: Experiments with Video Projection
Instructor: Freya Olafson
A hands-on course in expanded video practices, including projection mapping, performance integration, and site-specific installation.

STDO 3682: The Figure in Drawing and Painting
Instructor: Mark Neufeld
This course explores figuration through studio practice and critical readings, examining both historical and contemporary approaches to representing the body.

STDO 3684: Photography and Materiality
Instructor: Dominique Rey
A hybrid studio that investigates photography as both image and object, combining digital and analog processes with sculpture, painting, and performance.

STDO 3686: Small Scale Sculpture
Instructor: Erika Dueck
Students create intimate sculptural works, exploring the possibilities of materials, scale, and space.

Winter 2026 Highlights

FA 1212: Art, Technology, and Culture of Video Games
Instructor: TBA
Students analyze video games as artistic, narrative, and cultural forms. Topics include design, interactivity, and visual culture in contemporary media. Open to all UM students with no prerequisites—ideal for U1, Arts, and Science.

FAAH 3160: Mid-Century Modernist Abstraction
Instructor: Dr. Shepherd Steiner
This seminar focuses on the art and ideas that shaped abstraction in the mid-20th century, from its formal innovations to its global influences.

FAAH 3250 / STDO 3674: Manitoba Print History
Instructors: Dr. Oliver Botar and Suzie Smith
A combined seminar and studio exploring Winnipeg’s influence on Canadian printmaking. Students will study Indigenous and activist print histories alongside hands-on practice in screen printing, woodcut, and collagraph techniques.
Note: These courses are corequisites and must be taken together.

FAAH 4070: Building and Making Things from the Earth
Instructor: Dr. Braden Scott
Exploring sustainability, symbolism, and material sourcing in art and architecture, this course investigates global histories of extraction and production.

FAAH 4090: Indigenous Feminisms
Instructor: Dr. Suzanne McLeod
This seminar explores how First Nations, Inuit, and Métis women artists address gendered violence, settler colonialism, and cultural resurgence through diverse media.

STDO 3672: Design and Printmaking
Instructor: Leigh Bridges
A studio course at the intersection of graphic design and printmaking. Students will create posters, zines, and card decks, exploring collaborative and experimental strategies.

STDO 3680: Intermediate Performance Art
Instructor: Lori Blondeau
Students expand on foundational practices in performance, working through solo and collaborative projects that engage gesture, time, and audience.

STDO 3680: Puppets in Animation or Performance
Instructor: Derek Brueckner
This course introduces the design and creation of puppets and miniature sets for stop-motion or live performance, with an emphasis on narrative and metaphor.

STDO 3680: Natural Dyes, Fibres, and Fabrics
Instructor: Katherine Boyer
Explores sustainable and culturally rooted practices of dyeing and fibre construction, foregrounding material-based research.

STDO 3682: On the Surface
Instructor: M.E. Sparks
A topics course examining approaches to surface in drawing and painting, from experimental mark-making to conceptual layering.

These offerings reaffirm the School of Art’s commitment to critical inquiry, diverse perspectives, and innovative approaches to artmaking—while opening new doors for students across the university to join the conversation.

For more information or to view the full list of courses, visit Aurora: aurora-registration.umanitoba.ca/StudentRegistrationSsb/ssb/registration

Decolonizing Classrooms: Indigenous Approaches to Building Good Relationships

Date and time: Thursday, September 19, 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM

Over the past several years, an important discussion of how we can Indigenize and decolonize the academy has been occurring. This workshop series aims to give participants the context and tools necessary to meaningfully engage with decolonizing processes as they relate to education. “Indigenous Approaches to Building Good Relationships” will discuss how participants can employ the 4/5Rs (relevance, reciprocity, respect, responsibility, and relationships) to ameliorate and decolonize student-instructor relationships. Indigenous ways of understanding relationships and specific tools and strategies that instructors can use will be considered, and participants will be supported as they consider how they can implement the 4/5 Rs in their own teaching practices.

Register for the Decolonizing Classrooms workshop

Small Shifts, Significant Gains: Transformative Teaching Strategies Series

Date and time: Thursday, September 26, 1:15 PM to 2:15 PM

Looking for ways to revitalize your teaching but don’t have time for a big redesign? In Small Teaching James Lang argues that small changes in classroom techniques and activities can have big impacts on student learning. Drop in to any or all of these brown bag lunchtime chats to hear creative strategies from your faculty colleagues across the university. Bring your questions and your lunch. Leave with ideas you can implement right away in your courses!

Session One, Lightning Presentations:

• Danielle Yaffe (College of Nursing) presents: Make Learning Fun with Interactive Drag-and-Drop PowerPoint Activities
• Lisa Ford and Janna Wilson (both from the Department of Environment and Geography) present: Transparent Learning: Course Alignment using Learning Objectives Table

Register for the Small Shifts, Significant Gains workshop

More updates to this workshop series will be posted soon.

Date and time: Thursday, June 13, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

Create pages in UM Learn from HTML templates, discover best practices in managing files, and understand your legal responsibility in creating accessible content. Explore various media objects that can be created for your courses in collaboration with the Centre’s Media team.

Register for the Panorama workshop

Open Educational Resources – What, How, Why (Part 1)

Date and time: Tuesday, June 18, 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM

The term open educational resources (OER) describes a wide range of materials in teaching and learning that are available for public use with an open license or in the public domain. Examples of OER include full courses, course modules, syllabi, textbooks, lectures, assessments, and datasets. In this workshop, participants will learn why OER are valuable, how to locate them, how to evaluate them using a rubric, and how to adapt and create them. The workshop does not assume prior experience with these topics. 

Register for the open educational resources series.

Best Practices in Providing High Stakes Feedback in Clinical Instruction

Date and time: Thursday, June 20, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM

This workshop is offered to all educators in Health Sciences who teaches in classroom, lab, and clinical settings. The purpose of this workshop is to inform  about the best practices in giving high stakes feedback in their classroom, lab, and clinical instruction. 

Register for the high stakes feedback in clinical instruction workshop

The Flipped Classroom

Date and time: Tuesday, June 25, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

Interested in more knowledge application and problem-solving activities in your classroom? Looking to add more active learning to a traditional lecture course? Come to this workshop and learn the basics of a flipped classroom that will enable you to flip a lesson or two in an upcoming course.

Register for the flipped classroom workshop

SoTL Ethics

Date and time: Tuesday, June 25, 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM

Research with human participants requires approval from the UM Research Ethics Board to ensure the safety and well-being of all participants. This is true of all research with human participants, but SoTL projects often have unique characteristics that warrant extra consideration when preparing an ethics application. For example, how do you ensure that students do not feel coerced to give consent when the instructor of their course is also the lead researcher? In this workshop, we will provide possible solutions for this and other research design elements that require careful consideration of ethical practices when designing your SoTL study. We will also review the Research Ethics application process at the University of Manitoba, and attendees will be given the opportunity to begin to draft their ethics application. This workshop will be interactive and collaborative. To get the most of this workshop, please bring a laptop or device to the workshop. 

Register for the SoTL ethics workshop

The ISW focuses on structuring a lesson plan. This may sound a bit dry, but it is anything but that. The facilitators, Mona and Iwona, kept us engaged and interested throughout the event. We focused our efforts on creating a mini lesson for a specific teaching objective(s). Having the focused time to work on this aspect of my pedagogy was instructive of what aspects of my teaching are strong and where I need to improve. Having the workshop leaders and my peers make observations and provide suggestions was very helpful. It boosted my confidence in the strengths I thought I had, and I was able to improve where I was weak. It is also very helpful to critically engage with other people’s lessons and incorporating the things learned there into your own teaching practice. I now feel much more capable to building new educational materials and engaged learning in the subjects I cover. There are also fun elements in the ISW that brighten up the week and make it especially memorable.

Aside from the workshop’s primary focus, spending time with people from a wide variety of disciplines is quite fun. Hearing about the things people are passionate about (whether the mini-lessons were in their subject area or not) was interesting and informative.

While the material covered in the ISW is not the only way to think about or structure pedagogical practice, it is a very useful process to participate in. I can’t recommend it highly enough.  

Learn more

Johnathan Bevan is available for Accessible Course Design Coaching through The Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning. He is planning on becoming a certified ISW instructor.

Date and time: Eight sessions available from February 5 – 16.

Experiential learning is recognized as a high-impact practice in postsecondary education with positive impacts on student learning and retention, student engagement, career-readiness and community involvement. In light of these benefits, The University of Manitoba is invested in supporting faculties and instructors with the enhancement and expansion of experiential learning opportunities for students in academic courses and programs. The Office of Experiential Learning is leading these consultations to better understand the experiences of faculty members, instructors and staff involved in the development and delivery of curricular experiential learning opportunities for students. The information collected will be used to create recommendations to enhance existing practices, remove barriers and design effective supports.

All faculty members, instructors, and staff involved in the development and delivery of curricular experiential learning opportunities for students are invited to participate.  Participation in these consultations is voluntary. To ensure confidentiality, no potentially identifying information will be reported. Individual responses will not be shared with others. Findings will be reported in aggregated form.

Lunch will be provided at in-person sessions.

Register for the Experiential Learning Community Consultations

Open Educational Resources, Part 1

Date and time: Wednesday, February 14, 2024, 9:30 – 11:00 AM

The term open educational resources (OER) describes a wide range of materials in teaching and learning that are available for public use with an open license or in the public domain. Examples of OER include full courses, course modules, syllabi, textbooks, lectures, assessments, and datasets. In this workshop, participants will learn why OER are valuable, how to locate them, how to evaluate them using a rubric, and how to adapt and create them. The workshop does not assume prior experience with these topics.

Register for the Open Educational Resources workshop

Creating Connections in SoTL: Learning From Colleagues

Date and time: Thursday, February 15, 2024, 10:00 – 11:15 AM

In the Creating Connections in SoTL series, faculty, instructors, and other UM scholars explore foundational topics in SoTL research, discuss ongoing SoTL projects, make interdisciplinary connections, and receive support from colleagues and Centre SoTL Developers. In this online workshop we will hear from a presenter (TBC) from the 2023 Symposium for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. This presenter will share lessons learned from conducting and disseminating SoTL research, and answer questions from attendees. We will also provide time for participants to share their SoTL study progress in small groups, discuss challenges, and provide mutual support.

Register for the Creating Connections in SoTL workshop

Experiential Learning Community of Practice

Date and time: Wednesday, February 28, 2024, 2:30 – 3:30 PM

Facilitated by The Office of Experiential Learning, the Experiential Learning Community of Practice (CoP) meets online once a month. Each online meeting will consist of a 30-minute presentation on a topic related to best practices, trends, and challenges in experiential learning, followed by a 30-minute facilitated discussion.

Future-proofing students in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world.
Researchers and policymakers in various fields are adopting the term VUCA to describe the current state of our world. In this session, we’ll explore some of the skills, competencies, or capabilities that the UM and other post-secondary institutions have identified as highly relevant to any student’s ability to thrive in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous future. Join us to learn about the UM’s recently developed competency framework!

Register for the Experiential Learning Community of Practice workshop

Planning Your SoTL Study

Date: Tuesday, January 23, 2024

In this workshop, participants will begin outlining a SoTL study. Building on an existing idea, participants will develop research questions and utilize quantitative and qualitative research methods to outline a plan for data collection and analysis. We will also work collaboratively to develop solutions to possible SoTL challenges and identify critical SoTL resources.​ To get the most out of this workshop participants should come with a developed SoTL research question in mind.

Register for Planning Your SoTL Study

Applying trauma-informed teaching practices online synchronous courses

Date: Friday, January 26, 2024

This introductory panel will discuss trauma-informed teaching and how to apply the basic concepts in your online teaching.

Register for Applying trauma-informed teaching practices online synchronous courses

Decolonizing Classrooms Part 2: Unpacking and Overcoming Barriers to Decolonizing Processes

Date: Tuesday, January 30, 2024

The Decolonizing Classroom series aims to give participants the context and tools necessary to meaningfully engage with decolonizing processes as they relate to education. “Unpacking and Overcoming Barriers to Engagement and Decolonizing Processes” explores the barriers that exist for teachers and students, which prevent them from enacting decolonizing processes in educational contexts. Part two of this workshop series discusses the barriers that prevent teachers from engaging fully in decolonizing classrooms and creates a space for the discussion of strategies for overcoming these barriers.

Register for Decolonizing Classrooms Part 2: Unpacking and Overcoming Barriers to Decolonizing Processes

Experiential Learning Community of Practice – January

Date: Wednesday, January 31, 2024.

Facilitated by The Office of Experiential Learning, the Experiential Learning Community of Practice meets online once a month. An Experiential Learning Townhall is organized once every academic term for CoP members who would like the opportunity to meet in-person.

Each online meeting will consist of a 30-minute presentation on a topic related to best practices, trends, and challenges in experiential learning, followed by a 30-minute facilitated discussion.

January: Why experiential learning now?
Enhancing and expanding experiential learning (EL) opportunities for students has become a priority for the UM and many other post-secondary institutions in Canada and abroad. However, EL has been around for a long time both in theory and practice. So, why has EL suddenly become the topic of the hour?
At this initial meeting of the EL CoP, we’ll explore the reasons that make experiential learning an appropriate response to the challenges facing postsecondary education today, and share updates about the UM’s upcoming Experiential Learning Framework for faculty and instructors.

Register for Experiential Learning Community of Practice – January