Student development has connections to important academic purposes in higher education (King, Baxter Magolda, Barber, Kendall Brown & Lindsay, 2009). In particular, a growing body of work on self-authorship, a social-constructive theory of development, has demonstrated relevance to the purposes of higher education (Baxter Magolda, 2001; King…

Experiential education and service-learning are "buzz words" within many educational circles. The purpose of this study was to explore students' (N=18) and professor experiences with/in a student-directed experiential education elective course, with a particular focus on a service-learning initiative. Stephen Brookfield's…

This paper reports the qualitative findings of a mixed methods research study conducted at three Canadian post-secondary institutions. Called the Meaningful E-learning or MEL project, the study was an exploration of the teaching and learning experiences of faculty and students as well as their perceptions of the benefits and challenges of…

Concerned about the success rate of new students in our program we designed and implemented a compulsory set of experiences which aim to support students in their transition from high school to university by (1) developing their sense of belonging to a community of learners and by (2) articulating with them the interrelationships among their first…

In this paper we report on research we conducted to begin the process of identifying threshold concepts in the field of postsecondary teaching. Meyer & Land (2006) propose that within all disciplinary fields there seem to be particular "threshold concepts" that serve as gateways, opening up new and previously inaccessible ways of…

The primary purpose of the study described here was to document the first author's experiences delivering a repertoire of evidence-based comprehension strategies in context of a first-year university course. We first provide an overview of the literature related to students' transition into the postsecondary environment, arguing for the…

Several faculty members including the author were involved in exploring the implementation and effectiveness of research-based assessment strategies in their undergraduate teacher education courses at a Canadian university. The paper describes the process and the results of their ongoing improvement efforts and implications for teacher education…

In November 2012, the educational provisions of the Copyright Modernization Act were proclaimed in force, thereby introducing a number of significant changes to the Canadian Copyright Act. These changes include the expansion of fair dealing to include the purpose of education, the addition of new educational exceptions for the online transmission…

North American universities are encouraged to increase opportunities for undergraduate research experiences (UREs). To this end, many universities offer directed studies courses (DSCs) which are 1-2 semester long courses involving one-on-one instruction, with a focus on student-led independent research. Building on the understanding of dynamics…

Integrating the arts into higher education pedagogy provides an opportunity for cultivating rich ideas and high-level thinking, capitalizing on the creativity that every person already possesses and uses (Livingston, 2010). As Newton and Plummer (2009) note "the use of the creative arts as pedagogical strategy enables individuals to better…

In a milieu where traditional views of scholarship are embedded in the culture of educational institutions, and nursing programs in particular, this paper reports on a research project designed to support nurse educators' capacity to engage in scholarly activities. Rogers' (2003, 2004) "Diffusion of Innovation" model provided a theoretical vantage…

This paper defines and operationalizes definitions of good teaching, scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning in order to measure characteristics of these definitions amongst undergraduate instructors at McMaster University. A total of 2496 instructors, including all part-time instructors, were surveyed in 2007. A total of…

The findings outlined in this paper are the result of focus groups conducted with faculty at a mid-sized Ontario university. These nine faculty, all of whom have received awards of excellence from their university for their teaching, shared their insights about how they developed as teachers over time. More specific topics explored were as…

The rise of the research intensive university has led some critics to argue that teaching has been discounted in favour of research, and thus the academy has "failed...their undergraduate populations" (Boyer Commission, 1998, p .5). This paper examines instructor perceptions of inquiry at an institution with a significant history of providing…

Because multiple-choice testing is so widespread in higher education, we assessed the quality of items used on classroom tests by carrying out a statistical item analysis. We examined undergraduates' responses to 1198 multiple-choice items on sixteen classroom tests in various disciplines. The mean item discrimination coefficient was +0.25, with…