Changing demographics at post-secondary institutions in Canada provide opportunities for intercultural learning. Curricular design that engages domestic and international students can result in new ways of knowing, seeing, and understanding multiple perspectives of and connections to place. This paper draws on students' reflections to highlight…

This paper draws on the author's experience of developing a short-term, intensive international learning experience within the framework of a one-semester course. This paper is aimed at faculty members who are interested in implementing a short but effective and authentic international learning opportunity, but who may not have expertise in issues…

This paper describes the development of a three-phase approach our team of educational developers finds useful in curriculum projects in our Teaching and Learning Centre. Informed by the literature on the importance of flexibility and iteration (Knight, 2001; Wolf, 2007) and an orientation towards Appreciative Inquiry (Srivastra & Cooperrider,…

This article describes the Context Based Learning (CBL) redesign of Nursing courses addressing life transitions, including by implementing group discussion, written concept analysis, group presentations, reflections on thinking and simulation performance, group skills analysis and a final paper. The purpose of the study was to determine how these…

Active listening is an important communication skill in a variety of disciplines and professions, including the profession of Educational Development. In our roles as educational developers, we engage in a variety of processes, all of which rely heavily on the practice of active listening. Emerging strategies of active listening praxis have…

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…

In this essay, we tell the story of how a team of English and nursing professors came together to develop curriculum for a mandatory first-semester writing course in the collaborative Bachelor of Science, Nursing (BScN) at Fanshawe College and Western University, both in London, Ontario. The discussion focuses on the implementation of the course…

Transitioning to university can be a daunting endeavour, with student success dependent on a myriad of effects (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). Understanding how to navigate university systems, who to meet, how to get help, how to study, and what goals to set can be hard to grasp (Valle et al., 2003). We provide an overview of the new…

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?…

In this paper, we present a step-by-step guide to implement a curricular alignment project, directed at professional development and student support, and developed in a higher education French as a second language department. We outline best practices and preliminary results from our experience and provide ways to adapt our experience to other…

In this essay, I describe my experience applying the principles of feminist group process in a senior level social science course. I begin by providing an overview of feminist pedagogy as an approach to teaching and learning and discuss the relevance of feminist group process within this model. I then highlight the core components of feminist…

Universities want to encourage faculty to keep curricula up-to-date and innovative, yet faculty dread the prospect of arguing about course and program changes with college and university curriculum committees--which are overworked and overwhelmed with detail. The Course Challenge Procedure (CCP) at the University of Saskatchewan is a collegial yet…

In 1994, the National Arts Education Association created a research agenda to address major research issues in the field of visual arts education for the purpose of examining, negotiating, and modifying commonly held beliefs in the field of art education. Research by arts educators has done much to inform visual arts education theory and practice,…