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…

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…

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…

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…

A peer-mentoring program was developed for students in an introductory biology course at a university in Ontario, Canada. Students could attend up to five peer-mentoring sessions during their first semester. Quantitative-survey, participation, and academic data spanning from 2003 through 2007 were reviewed for the purpose of evaluating the…