This essay describes two integrated projects initiated by the 2020 3M National Teaching Fellowship Award (NTF) cohort on educational leadership and the role of authenticity among exemplary teachers, as presented at STLHE 2022. A thematic analysis of 3M NTF award-winning dossiers identified six prevalent traits characteristic of educational leaders: innovation, persistence, responsiveness, reflectiveness, curiosity, and positive opportunism. The analysis also revealed aspects of educational leadership in practice, including being committed to a cause, being action-oriented, being community-engaged, being multi-disciplinary, building bridges, freely sharing, trailblazing, and using applied methods. Educational leaders’ relationships with others tended to foreground elements of collaboration, empowerment, support, and mentorship, and their actions had an impact beyond their own classrooms or institutions. In the second project, qualitative interviews with cohort members articulated ways in which authentic teaching is expressed by educational leaders. The actions of authentic teachers were viewed as influential and inspiring, and based on their actions authentic teachers tended to be recognized as instruments of change. These results were shared in an interactive workshop at STHLE 2022, which discussed how educational leadership is currently framed in higher education, and guided participants in self-reflection as educators and leaders to formulate calls to action involving educational leadership and authentic teaching.
While the notion of an anti-racist curriculum is not new, many higher education instructors have not made the transition from a decolonized curriculum to an equally decolonized pedagogy. From a conceptual standpoint, the transition is understood but the actualization of this cyclical process is at times, not as smoothly executed. Deconstructing delivery is a daunting prospect for faculty, especially for those most invested in the content of their practice. As a result, this paper draws upon both evidenced-based practices and the practical application of decolonizing tertiary-level instruction. Utilizing a Transformative Learning lens, this article details the experiences of a college curriculum renewal project and the subsequent considerations and changes in practice that ensued in the adoption and delivery of an anti-racist curriculum.
Failure is an important part of the learning process as it provides opportunity to reflect upon and modify study habits, can increase understanding and retention of concepts, and supports the development of resilience, an important skill within and beyond the university context. Despite these benefits, undergraduate students may have a negative perception of failure that may contribute to fear of failure and risk avoidance. We investigated the influence of instructor feedback, discussions of failure in the classroom, and course-level and institutional structures on students’ view of failure across disciplines. Undergraduate students at the [redacted for blind review] participated in an online survey (n = 304) consisting of Likert-scaled and open-ended questions on perceptions of failure, experience with instructor feedback, likelihood to engage in help-seeking, and course- and institutional-level suggestions to support learning from failure. When instructors discussed with their students how to best respond to feedback, students were more likely to view small failures as a helpful part of the learning process. Further, when instructors discussed strategies to best respond to failure, students were more likely to view failure as helpful for learning and less likely to view weak performance early in a course as an indication of future weak performance. Student-identified strategies to better support resilience included improved communication between students and instructors, in peer-to-peer conversations, and by the institution more broadly. Across all three areas, students expressed a desire for systems of higher education to destigmatize failure through changes in both rhetoric and policy. This suggests the incorporation of meaningful conversations and failure narratives in the classroom and beyond are effective strategies to encourage the development of resilience-based skills. Such discussions may help students engage positively with failure and maintain willingness to engage in future challenges. Keywords: learning from failure, higher education, resilience, help-seeking, feedback
Large introductory classes typically reflect courses that cover a broad landscape of learning and necessitate assessment formats that are efficient and reliable, making multiple-choice (MC) tests a good option. Designing a good quality MC test requires reflection on the appropriateness of the assessment format, designing a test blueprint, and writing MC questions following item-writing guidelines that align with course learning objectives and teaching/learning strategies. It is a time-consuming endeavour that often requires a group of question writers who are experts in the domain—both of which can be challenging considering the demands of teaching in higher education. Sometimes we want to adopt or adapt existing MC tests that we have access to. I suggest a five-step “reverse engineering” analytical process for selecting questions from existing MC tests to utilize in our course assessment, emphasizing the alignment process. In one of the steps, we will refer to the Taxonomy Table, a practical two-dimensional aid proposed by Anderson and Krathwohl (2001), to select the questions that cover a cognitive dimension landscape. The outcome of this process provides an effective visual representation of the alignment and enables us to decide on the utility of questions for the context of our unit and assessment objectives. Keywords: course alignment, assessment, multiple-choice test, taxonomy table.
Academic conferences are key spaces of knowledge sharing and professional development. As a national society which has pledged to undergo “a robust examination of its attention to equity, diversity, and inclusion throughout the organization” (STLHE/SAPES 2021), we undertook an evaluation of the diversity of participants and presentation topics at the 2022 conference. This paper reports on some of the distinctive aspects of the 2022 conference as well as the findings of the evaluation such as diversity of participants by gender and ethnic identity, province, institution type, discipline, and more. While the 2022 conference was unique in many ways due to being STLHE’s first face-to-face conference since 2019, this report provides a useful baseline with which to compare the diversity of participants and presentation topics in future years. The report concludes with additional recommendations for programming decisions to support and evaluate equity, diversity, and inclusivity at future conferences. Keywords: conference, diversity, participation, presentation topics, Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
Critical thinking, creativity, communication, teamwork, emotional intelligence, problem-solving, empathy, resilience, ambition, grit, innovation... (Heckman & Kautz, 2012). These skills, known as a contentious four-letter “S” word (soft), are considered a requirement for employment and advancement for the 21st-century graduate (Carnevale & Smith, 2013). Within a School of Business, in an environment highly regarded for technical skill achievement in diploma and degree graduates, faculty set out to investigate the contentiousness and inclusion of human skills in curriculum outcomes. While not directly built into the curriculum, there is an institutional understanding that human skill development is innately a part of the programs. The intention is that human skills (LeBusque, 2020), or power skills (PMI, 2022) naturally occur during course delivery, creating a commonality across foundational courses to reinforce the skill sets identified, developed, and refined as students complete their credentials. However, industry reports (Lapointe & Turner, 2020; RBC, 2019) and the authors’ own institutional data collected from new graduates and employers indicated room for improvement in these skills. To gain a better understanding, the authors undertook a critical examination through a document analysis of all common core courses that form the program foundation. This involved 24 common courses, comprising 1,442-course objectives or outcomes, resulting in a range of 134 Bloom’s Taxonomy verbs. In this paper, the authors begin the first phase of this comprehensive study with a return to the course foundations. Through this analysis, the authors present a framework to better understand and strengthen the learning foundation, to proceed with realignment and strategic scaffolding of both technical and human skills from entry through graduation. Keywords: business education, skill development, course objectives, Bloom's Taxonomy, 21st-century graduate, document analysis
Literature suggests post-secondary students felt disengaged and socially isolated while learning virtually, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we explored whether a sense of belonging is differentially achieved in an inquiry-based course between two different delivery formats: virtual and blended (combination of virtual and in-person). Our primary measurement instrument was a modified version of the 26-item Sense of Belonging-Revised Scale, which we distributed to all first-year health sciences students enrolled in an Inquiry course at [institution name removed for blinding purposes] University during the 2021-2022 school year. Data analyses revealed no statistically significant difference between the two groups across the four subscales of the Sense of Belonging-Revised Scale: perceived peer support, perceived classroom comfort, perceived isolation, and perceived faculty support. As promoting community is a core skill in our Inquiry course, this may have reduced the perceived difference between the two groups. Future directions include exploring facilitators’ perceptions and experiences across course delivery formats.
Le Musée acadien de l’Université de Moncton (MAUM) est gratuit pour toute personne étudiante, pourtant il reste sous-visité par cette population. J’ai décidé d’y amener les personnes inscrites au cours ‘Loisir et culture’. Les données recueillies ont permis, via notre musée universitaire, d’évaluer le processus pédagogique mis en place qui comporte un travail approfondi sur les musées. Je présente ici comment le musée est valorisé dans le cadre des activités pédagogiques mettant l’accent sur les bénéfices retirés par les personnes étudiantes. Je souligne l’impact identitaire sur certaines jeunes personnes acadiennes et leur nouveau regard sur la richesse de leur patrimoine culturel, à travers les exercices et leurs commentaires. Le Musée acadien offre une grande variété de situations d’apprentissage autour desquelles des activités pédagogiques peuvent être organisées, comme : la muséographie, les œuvres exposées, la gestion des collections, les réserves, la communication, la promotion ainsi que des collaborations externes. Une approche transversale et écosystémique permet de joindre l’intérêt de chaque personne quel que soit sa formation de base. Elle invite les jeunes à la découverte du monde culturel et à l’ouverture vers l’autre, amenant ainsi à une meilleure compréhension de l’importance de l’inclusion et du vivre ensemble.
At their best, open educational resources (OER) are known to foster equity, accessibility, and flexibility for users and include multiple perspectives from a collaborative community for creators and contributors (Hylén, 2006). Therefore, when planning our university’s first offering of a week-long course (re)design workshop (based on Saroyan & Amundsen, 2004), recognizing we had been primarily using materials from other post-secondary institutions, we opted to create resources specific to our university through a one-day facilitated writing sprint. Moving beyond offering information simply for course design, we decided to create an OER that encompasses three main areas of curriculum planning and design: composition, mapping, and alignment of learning outcomes; choice and alignment of instructional strategies and learning activities; and alignment of outcomes assessment at all levels. During the OER content development stage, the group also recognized the opportunity to position the OER, named CRICKET, as a community building tool, focusing on learning re-design. The site not only hosts curriculum planning and design information, it also features an OER authoring tool that invites participants to share their work with their peers. Through our OER creation process, we determined that OER have the potential to transform not only how information is disseminated and used, but also how it is created.
This article reports perceptions of what constitutes the early career stage by newer educational developers in contrast with those experienced in the field. We collected participants’ thoughts about what constitutes early career for educational developers using an online survey, and qualitative responses were analyzed using thematic analysis (per Braun & Clarke, 2006). Aligning with Super’s (1990) lifespan career development model, this exploratory research suggests there is no single, universal definition of what it means to be an early career professional in this field, and our research suggests that self-concept is crucial in determining means to be an early career professional in this field. Further, there is a distinction between being new to the field of educational development and being ‘early career’ in a broader sense; the research findings suggest that those who come to educational development as a second or third career understand the notion of ‘early career’ differently than those for whom educational development is a first career. We discuss key themes that emerged around how participants constituted the notion of ‘early career’ and offer some common vocabulary to identify and discuss experiences of early career professionals in educational development. This research may provide new opportunities for supporting onboarding and community building, and raises areas for further exploration.
The Visual Dictionary of Sociology is a collection of images that illustrate core sociological concepts, created through a multi-year partnership with an undergraduate artist. I have successfully used the images in a first-year introductory sociology course to encourage discussion and deep thinking among students. The process of creating the images provided an opportunity for the student to gain a deeper understanding of the concepts through regular consultation with me, and for me to reflect on my own teaching practices. Drawing on reflections gathered from both of us, I discuss the creation process, the growth we have experienced, and the impact on my teaching.
This paper reviews the Digital Detox project at TRU. At TRU, the Digital Detox is not necessarily about abstaining from technology altogether, but rather establishing a more ethical, healthier approach to the tools we are required to use every day. Conceived this way, a Digital Detox offers an approachable opportunity to discuss difficult and controversial topics in educational technologies. The objective of this paper is to offer description and analysis of one strategy to improve university community engagement on issues of ethics and educational technologies. In addition to understanding our own process for creating this resource at TRU, this paper provides a “toolkit” for starting a Digital Detox event at any campus.
Providing educational resources without burdening students financially is considered higher education’s moral and sensible mission (Farrow, 2016). The financial burden of one or multiple textbooks can produce a great deal of stress on students, especially if the textbooks do not fulfill students’ needs in satisfying learning objectives. We attempted to bridge this digital divide by connecting student affordability with pedagogical enhancement to increase teaching impact on students’ learning. This essay will discuss the experiential understanding of student affordability, how teaching and learning can be improved by using Open Educational Resources (OER), and the team dynamic that developed while creating an OER for an undergraduate education course.
Integrating educational assessment tools such as the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) into university classrooms can help students and faculty gain insight into areas of strength and challenge for students. The present study adapted and integrated the MSLQ into a set of first-year communication courses for Faculty of Arts students at the University of Waterloo. This adaptation allowed us to better situate the scale within the writing and communication course context. Through exploratory and confirmatory analysis, a shortened questionnaire (MSLQ-AF) with 6 subscales (motivation, academic self-confidence, performance anxiety, critical thinking, planning for optimal learning, and peer learning) was created. MSLQ-AF proved to have stable factor structure, adequate and stable internal consistency, and construct validity (correlation with grades), when assessed across four samples spanning four university terms. We discuss the role of this new scale in helping students transition into university.
Meaningful and impactful learning experiences are rife with failure. And yet, students struggle with framing, tolerating and attributing failure in a positive manner within the post secondary learning context. This paper explores whether using design thinking as a pedagogical approach might help students learn to tolerate, reframe and attribute failure in a more productive way. Findings from this comparative study of 600 undergraduate business students enrolled in a common first year marketing class reveal the ways in which design thinking-based learning approaches might be used to re-orient student’s conceptions of failure as a part of their creative problem-solving skill development process. Students were surveyed to learn more about how they perceived the concept of failure within their learning, to whom they attributed failures within their learning, and how well they tolerated failure as a part of their learning experience. Results from the nearly 400 responses to the online survey suggest that integrating design thinking focused approaches to learning into the post secondary classroom has a positive impact on the development of a student’s self-reported failure tolerance and may change the way that failure is attributed and framed in students’ descriptions of their individual learning. I find that design thinking-based learning might be used as an effective pedagogical approach in classes where the development of a failure-positive mindset is considered an essential competency or learning objective, and I offer practical recommendations for educators seeking to develop a failure-positive mindset within their learning communities.
An increasing amount of literature from academic, governmental and non-governmental organizations (Kluzer, Reyna, Hanham, & Meier, 2018; Kluzer & Pujol Priego, 2018, etc.) points to the need for post-secondary institutions to do more to prepare students to be fluent in the consumption, understanding and use of digital media and tools. Digital fluency is increasingly seen as an essential skillset for graduates’ employability and for their citizenship, but while there is strong consensus about the need for students to be more digitally fluent, there is less consensus about what digitally fluency is, or about how to teach it. This paper will offer a working definition of digital fluency and describe an approach to fostering student digital fluency development that can be applied to a wide range of courses. Drawing on frameworks by various governmental and non-governmental organizations, as well as current scholarship in the field of teaching digital literacy (Ng, 2012.; Caufiled, 2017, Ungerer, 2016, Hinrichsen & Coombs, 2013, etc.), the paper will provide an explanation of the rationale behind the framework tool that the author has developed and the paper will conclude with an explanation of how to use the tool to embed specific and authentic digital fluency skill development at the course level.
In 2020, ten visionary undergraduate students across Canada were brought together through the 3M National Student Fellowship and tasked with developing a project that furthers STLHE’s mission of enhancing teaching and learning in higher education. To address a need for increased national collaboration among student groups and to unify student leaders in their efforts to transform higher education, we developed an online bilingual resource hub and forum—CANnect: Cross Campus Collaborations—that enables Canadian post-secondary students to learn about and engage in various areas of advocacy and activism across campuses. We worked with STLHE staff to build the online platform and drew from our own networks of student advocacy groups across Canada to populate the website. To ensure the platform’s sustainability and safety, we hired a bilingual moderator to manage the forum content and update resources. In December 2021, 19 months after we began working on the project, CANnect officially launched. Currently, our biggest challenges involve increasing platform usership and engagement, and ensuring the platform’s long-term sustainability. Nevertheless, we see great potential in this project and remain determined to enhance teaching and learning in higher education by creating an accessible and inclusive space to connect student leaders across Canada.
The iterative process of writing a co-authored manuscript in sport and exercise psychology may take several months to complete. Draft-in-a-day is an alternative group-based approach to writing that draws on concepts from sport and exercise psychology to efficiently write the first draft of a manuscript, while providing rich opportunities for trainees to develop their writing skills. The purpose of this paper was to explore the usefulness and acceptability of draft-in-a-day by examining individuals’ experiences using the draft-in-a-day protocol. Twelve participants (4 professors, 8 trainees) who had used the draft-in-a-day protocol completed an online questionnaire about their experiences. Participant responses were inductively content analyzed. Participants were receptive to the draft-in-a-day method of writing, reported being very likely to use it in the future (M = 4.9, SD = 0.28; scale 1-5), and provided suggestions for improvement. This early stage research provides a framework for efficient group-based writing in sport and exercise psychology.
This study examines the learning experience of Chinese international undergraduate students taking a large core first-year anthropological science course (ANT101) by distance learning during the Winter of 2021 at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM). By analyzing qualitative and quantitative data collected from self-report pre- and post- course surveys (n=587), we review the general learning experience of Chinese international students (n=30) in comparison to other international students (n=34) and domestic students (n=523). Our study shows support, but at the same time undermines some prevailing notions about Chinese international student experiences of studying in Western universities. Our data suggests that while many Chinese international students may feel a lack of English language proficiency is a barrier to their learning, it does not significantly impact their performance when compared with domestic students. The preliminary results suggest that educational research and policy makers should move beyond a focus on language proficiency and examine the role of other factors when developing strategies to facilitate supportive learning environments for English Language learners (ELL) and international students in a university setting.
Multicontext theory offers an approach to designing learning experiences and environments that take into account varied ways of thinking and knowing, are relevant inside and outside of the classroom, and can both enrich and encompass the lives of students on and off campus (Ibarra, 2001; 2005, Chavez & Longerbeam, 2016). Educators can leverage multicontext theory by integrating high context features like community wisdom, storytelling as knowledge, and inclusiveness into a traditionally low context system of experts sharing knowledge in a linear fashion to reap the benefits of both approaches (Chavez & Longerbeam, 2016; Weissmann et al., 2019). Examples of possible multicontext approaches are discussed, prompting readers to consider ways they can implement or may already be using multicontext teaching and learning. The classroom as a site of exposure to diversity is one of its fundamental gifts, and to make this more explicit through utilizing multicontext teaching and learning models is to enrich the learning environment, giving students more opportunities to communicate, collaborate, and learn.
