Oppression and marginalization of people who identify as LGBTQ+ persist on university campuses despite their right to be free of discrimination under the Ontario Human Rights Code. In an attempt to highlight the real and detrimental impacts of normative heterosexual and cisgender ideologies on Ontarian students the Ontario Undergraduate Student…

Student Services support, including learning skills assistance, can be integral in empowering learners. First-year students are expected to be self-directed in their learning, yet may have neither been challenged nor experienced negative consequences for a lack of perseverance. Academic skills professionals can be partners with teaching faculty in…

Online courses are increasing in popularity while universities are using first-year seminars to address the challenges of large impersonal classes, lack of student engagement, and increased skills development. Could the learning experience and benefits of an in-person first-year seminar be achieved through an online distance education (DE) format?…

Students who engage in undergraduate research experiences acquire many benefits, including an understanding of how scientific knowledge is constructed, recognition that knowledge can be complex and uncertain, and the habit of viewing knowledge critically. This paper describes a first-year two-course sequence that provides multidisciplinary…

The present study investigated the time usage and levels of perceived stress, academic workload, and recreation time for 177 students at the University of Windsor before, during, and after Fall Reading Week (FRW). Over a three-week span (at various times of the day), students received a message to their smartphone to complete a 20-second survey…

More and more Canadian post-secondary institutions are introducing a fall break into their term calendars. In 2015, a full week fall break was introduced at our university in order to enhance academic performance and improve mental health amongst students. Our interdisciplinary team surveyed undergraduate students at our university about their…

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a self-directed learning strategy where students work collaboratively in small groups to investigate open-ended relatable case scenarios. Students develop transferable skills that can be applied across disciplines, such as collaboration, problem-solving, and critical thinking. Despite extensive research on…

This essay describes an undergraduate research project involving collaboration among two professors and a student. The result, a business case about the student's workplace, was ultimately presented at an academic conference and is now under consideration for publication. We describe the circumstances that led to the project, its outcomes, and our…

We often assume that students will simply understand specific ethical requirements as they progress, but in reality this does not happen. Students need instruction in ethics. With adherence to the TriCouncil's ethics policy now mandatory for university research with human participants, understanding of ethics is a necessity. We need students to be…

Transcending disciplinary boundaries is becoming increasingly important for devising solutions to the world's most pressing issues, such as climate change and food insecurity. Institutions of higher education often present challenges to teaching students how to work and innovate on transdisciplinary teams. We first define transdisciplinarity and…