TeachingCity Oshawa hosts annual Open House celebrating 2024/2025 projects
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On Friday, March 21, TeachingCity celebrated its 2024-2025 annual projects, continuing its mission of fostering innovation, collaboration, and real-world learning within the City of Oshawa. Launched in June 2017, TeachingCity has been a vital partner in transforming Oshawa into a “living laboratory” where students, faculty researchers, and City staff work together to address urban challenges.
The initiative, in partnership with Durham College, Ontario Tech University, Trent University Durham GTA, and the University of Toronto, has grown exponentially over the past seven years. With Oshawa home to more than 30,000 students and a diversified faculty base, TeachingCity remains at the forefront of academic collaboration, encouraging innovation while enhancing community development.
Guests had the opportunity to explore and engage with ten annual projects making a difference in the community. Those featured projects included: Mixed Reality Firefighting Training; Exploring Community Building and Identity in Downtown Oshawa; and, Exploring the Social Experiences of Autistic Adolescents in a Dungeons and Dragons Club.
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 excited to connect and exchange ideas through a brainstorming activity wall.
Mixed Reality Firefighting Training
The research team at Durham College working with the Mixed Reality Capture Studio created a Mixed Reality prototype to facilitate training and testing of firefighters in collapsed and enclosed spaces. The outcome is assisting Oshawa Fire Services with training staff conveniently during regular shifts with minimal disruption and allowing them to train for events that are difficult to simulate safely. Watch the recently released Research Documentary – Mixed Reality Firefighter Training highlighting the project.
Exploring Community Building and Identity in Downtown Oshawa
Dr. Tyler Frederick, Associate Professor from the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at Ontario Tech University, along with a 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 (D&D) Club geared towards neurodivergent adolescents. This unique programming provides neurodiverse youth with an opportunity to collaborate with their peers, socialize, and ’slay dragons’ to achieve collective goals. This collaboration has been very successful and impactful for participants, leading to expanding the program since inception and continued funding exploration to support ongoing development.
About TeachingCity
TeachingCity brings together the City of Oshawa and its education and research partners – Durham College, Ontario Tech University, Trent University Durham GTA and the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.
The 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.
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