In May 2007, the Thompson Rivers University Faculty of Science established an ad hoc subcommittee to develop a new student ratings of teaching survey. The final survey, approved by the Faculty in February 2011, includes statements categorized in the dimensions of teaching shown in previous studies to be correlated with student achievement. The…

The purpose of this paper is to share my experiences as the instructor of a full-time, single semester, service-learning capstone course. In this innovative course students already volunteering in the Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) organization work in teams to identify community needs and address them using their business skills and knowledge…

This essay discusses the effectiveness of a graduate course for physics students, with a course goal to write a publishable article on a modern research topic (graphene). I analyze the tools used to this end, which included Web 2.0 methods, in-class discussions and presentations, as well as extensive peer-review. In addition to producing a…

The choices teachers make about both form and content in designing their courses shape students' perceptions of the connection between "real life" and the "classroom." The choice to begin a first-year law course with stories told by residential school survivors provides an example of how to bring "real life" into the…

In this article we report the outcomes of a needs assessment administered to new faculty members who were hired within the last four years at Mount Royal University. Our purpose in conducting this needs assessment was to gather information to guide the redevelopment of the institution's support program for new faculty in light of a changing…

From its earliest times, higher education transcended geographic boundaries so nowadays international students are a significant element of the social and cultural landscape of higher education, but international graduate students form a diverse group with different motivations for study and have become a sizeable segment of the student body in…

Over the last 15 years, graduate students applying for academic positions in post-secondary education have increasingly been asked to include a statement of teaching interests, a teaching philosophy, or a teaching dossier with their applications. Even if a potential employer does not request any of these documents, many interviewees are expected…

The Montana Indian Education for All (IEFA) Act is an unprecedented reform effort 40 years in the making. In this paper we summarize the IEFA professional development opportunities provided to faculty at a land grant university in the western United States while highlighting a faculty member's personal efforts to integrate IEFA in a culturally…

In the 2011-2012 academic year, the Organizational Development and Learning unit and the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology at the University of British Columbia co-developed an interactive theatre project, Conflict Theatre, to engage in discussion around conflict with our audience and to allow us to explore, engage with, and build…

A group facilitation technique called World Café usually involves dividing a large number of people into smaller groups at tables, exploring a variety of topics around a key focus, and collecting ideas from the discussions to debrief later as a large group. We used a modified version of World Café during the new Cracker Barrel session format at…

Confronted by the increasingly changing and varied nature of disabilities in higher education (Bowe, 2000; McGuire & Scott, 2002), disability service providers across North America are progressively moving away from targeted remedial assistance focusing on the disabilities of students to a less frontline role involving the sensitization of…

This paper encourages shifts in praxis to promote the thoughtful inclusion of creativity into higher education assignments in order to broaden and deepen student experience, and offer greater integration between required assignments and the complexity of students' lives. Obstacles to integrating creativity into academia are also briefly explored.…

This paper introduces a pedagogical approach and strategies for using online resources and interactive media to teach in English about writers and writing from around the world without colonizing or excluding other languages and cultures. First, I explain the context and challenges of teaching world literature: the importance of including diverse…

Legal education has traditionally been defined by many boundaries. Characterized by taxonomic structures and doctrinal categories, legal education is, for the most part, still seen as inextricably linked to a particular political geography and state normativity. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the pedagogical benefits of shattering…

In the 2011 Winter semester, the University of Guelph engaged in a pedagogical experiment: an online first-year seminar. This article is a conversation about the learning journey that surrounds this seminar, as experienced by three participants: Jacqueline Murray (JM), Professor of History and Director of the FirstYear Seminar Program (FYS);…