Belbin team role self and observer perceptions were applied to a large cohort (145) of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences undergraduates in a module assessed through two separate group projects. Students self-selected groups for the first project; for the second, groups were more "balanced." Results show slight improvement in group…

This paper explores peer-to-peer teaching and learning at a postgraduate level using the example of two NVivo workshops run by geography postgraduate students. The workshops took place in March and May 2011 and feedback was collected from all attendees in both sessions. This paper aims to provide a practical guide to organizing and facilitating…

This paper critically evaluates the use of journals as a pedagogic tool to encourage reflection, critique and self-analysis by students. Based within a postgraduate teaching module that has operated annually since 2008 and was awarded the Royal Town Planning Institute's Award for Teaching Excellence in 2009, reflexive journals were employed as a…

This research involved in-depth interviews with nineteen women professors, drawn from across various faculties and ranks at one Canadian university, and was intended to explore the interconnections between the women's personal and professional lives. The women in this study chose to combine having children with an academic career. Most of them…

This paper explores the link between research collaboration and innovation among faculty, as indicated by a self-reported assessment of the contribution of a co-authored publication to knowledge. Findings challenge the assumption that collaborators are rarely involved in theory development and the practice of crediting only the lead author for the…

The prospect of tuition fee increases for public sector universities has attracted an enormous amount of attention in recent years as governments in all industrialized countries have responded to the converging pressures of increased demands for higher education and rising costs of competing areas of social spending. I show that this dilemma is…

An increasing number of young Canadians want the benefits of a university education, placing huge demands on Canada's universities. Our universities have responded to this demand by increasing enrolment significantly over the past several years, but per-student funding levels have not kept pace. This enrolment growth is unsustainable without…

It is frequently assumed that the student experience, and, by implication, student program satisfaction, improves over the course of a university education. A four-year panel study of students at a large commuter university indicates some improvements in assessments of professor performance and GPA between first and fourth year; however,…

This study examines the academic senate within the context of university governance in Canada. Data were obtained from a survey of university senate secretaries on senate structure, composition, and operation, and from a survey of senate members on their perceptions of the senate, their role as senate members, and the nature of their work. The…

Until recently, the meaning and origin of the Canadian university degree was well understood by Canadians and around the world. Degrees were only offered by universities and the use of the label university was controlled by legislation in each of the ten provinces and three territories. Institutional membership in the Association of Universities…

This paper assesses the importance of the credential requirements used by employers to attract graduates who will use their education on the job. The framework of this study is embedded within the theoretical debates between proponents of the credentialist and human capital theories of education. Past research related to these debates has focused…

Mass higher education has taken hold in the developed nations, and a widely held belief exists that higher education is a "right." With massification have emerged two notable trends: an entrepreneurial emphasis fuelled by the revenue-cost squeeze ensuing from reduced and realigned government funding; and a quest for differentiation through "Image…

Political, economic, and social explanations of higher education reform, and the very definition of "reform," are the main departure points of this volume. The introduction uses the examples of Canada, Austria, Germany, and Japan to show that in all these countries, reform has meant reduced state funding and control and increased reliance on…

British Columbia has implemented two significant higher education reforms in the last 15 years. The first was an "Access for All" policy, and in particular, the creation of a new breed of institution--university colleges--and recognition of the right of colleges and institutes to confer "applied" degrees. The second reform, more recent and…

Ontario higher education system has moved far and fast in the past decade. The early 1990s saw "modest modifications and structural stability." Since 1995, under a neo-liberal government in Ontario, major policy initiatives, with objectives not unlike those already at large in western Europe and most of the United States, have quickly followed one…