Feedback on student work is problematic for faculty and students in British higher education. Evaluation feedback takes faculty much time to produce and students are often dissatisfied with its quantity, timing, and clarity. The Sounds Good project has been experimenting with the use of digital audio for feedback, aiming to save faculty time and…

The authors discuss the challenges of transferring from college to university programs. Following consideration of the practices associated with transferring credits and creating articulation agreements, the authors suggest the use of learning outcomes. Noting the challenges, as well as the benefits, they propose using learning outcomes as an…

In this paper, we describe our experience with a recently devised teaching method termed interteaching (Boyce & Hineline, 2002). This educational approach provides a rich rehearsal of material, and emphasizes student engagement, peer discussion, and student/instructor interaction. We describe the method, provide pragmatic tips for…

Student evaluation of courses and teaching at universities remains a highly contentious and divisive topic. Emotions and anecdotal evidence can overrule conclusions drawn from research on the validity and design of course evaluations. However, even amongst researchers, there is significant disagreement on the efficacy of course and teaching…

We present a data-based perspective concerning the recent "Maclean's" magazine rankings of Canadian universities, including cluster and other analyses of the 2007 and 2008 data. Canadian universities empirically resemble and relate to each other in a manner different from their formal classification and final rank ordering in the…

Conferences are a great way to exchange ideas, communicate research findings, network, and more. However, as a teaching and learning community, we are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of environmental sustainability. The 2008 Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education conference organizers chose "A World of…

The purpose of this paper is to share our experiences involving a creative approach to service learning that was implemented in a Human Development and Family Studies graduate course. In our departmental pursuit of evolving scholarship and promoting scholarly teaching and learning (Kopera-Frye, Hilton, & Cavote, 2003), this course represents…

This paper highlights program-level assessment of learning outcomes in an 8-month Faculty Certificate Program (UBC-FCP) on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) at the University of British Columbia (UBC). The aim of the UBC-FCP is to enhance SoTL in multidisciplinary settings. Essentially, SoTL is an approach to academic work that…

In 2006-2007, we established a writing exercise in two large first-year biology courses. Overall, our exercise, which consisted of multiple drafts of a 500-word essay, offered students a good introduction to how editorial feedback can improve content and style in scientific writing. We discuss our goals, procedures, outcome, and students'…

This paper presents the preliminary findings from the University of Northern British Columbia's e-portfolio project, entitled the Digital Record of Student Success (DRSS). The e-portfolio requires that the Education Program students provide artifacts of their learning related to the British Columbia College of Teachers' 13 standards for…

In our science learning and teaching environment, how often do we present science as a body of facts, or at best, a compendium of knowledge to which we can add more information, if we ask the "right" questions? In reality, the nature of science is significantly more complex, and the number of iterations we go through to resolve a given…

Although many Canadian universities offer graduate level training or certificates on teaching in higher education, there is no national framework of expectations or provision for national certification of post-secondary teachers. There are models of post-secondary teaching expectations in the United Kingdom and in elementary and secondary systems…