Learning spaces in higher education are fraught with colonial barriers such as teacher-centered, front facing, stark, feelingless, and unwelcoming classrooms that diminish students' feelings of well-being. For pre-service teachers, these are also the types of classrooms that they often inherit as they foray into the profession. Three Bachelor of…

While the use of Twitter for communication and assessment activities in online courses is not new, it has not been without its challenges. This is increasingly true of high enrolment courses. The use of a Twitter Evaluation application which leverages a Learning Management System's (LMS's) application programming interface (API) provides a…

The authors describe a model for embedding science communication into the science curriculum without displacing science content. They describe the rationale, development, design, and implementation of two courses taught by science faculty addressing these criteria. They also outline the evaluation plan for these courses, which emphasize broad…

The mission of Thompson Rivers University Open Learning (TRU-OL) can be understood in terms of three entities: the student, the faculty member and the curriculum content. Their conjuncture--when a TRU-OL student works with TRU-OL courseware and is supported by a TRU-OL faculty member--is where learning, assessment and, ultimately, credentialing…

Several years ago, the author's relocated their work as educators from middle and high school music classrooms to positions in teacher education at two Canadian universities. Recognizing that working in initial teacher education demanded a new level of theorizing their practices of music education, they questioned their professional knowledge,…

A first year non-majors biology course, with an enrollment of around 440 students, has been redesigned from a course of traditional content and teaching style to one that emphasizes biological concepts in current global issues and incorporates active learning strategies. We were informed by the education literature incorporating many aspects of…

In delivering chemistry courses by distance, a key challenge is to offer the learner an authentic and meaningful laboratory experience that still provides the rigour required to continue on in science. To satisfy this need, two distance general chemistry laboratory courses appropriate for Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) students, including chemistry…

Within the current accountability context of education in the United States and Canada, there is a clear need to educate teachers on effectively using assessments to support, measure, and communicate student learning. Despite this need, assessment has historically been a neglected area in teacher education programs with comparatively little…

Online learning is expanding rapidly today in many Canadian universities. Fuelled by Canada's unprecedented broadband access, online teaching is creating new challenges for faculty and new responsibilities for educational developers. Although there is adequate literature with regard to faculty thinking about course planning in general, there are…

This paper offers an emerging interpretive framework for understanding the active role instructional designers play in the transformation of learning systems in higher education. A 3-year study of instructional designers in Canadian universities revealed how, through reflexive critical practice, designers are active, moral, political, and…

This year's E-Learn conference has numerous exciting presentations and keynotes. Many speakers will be discussing how education is changing in the forthcoming years. Among them are Dale Stephens who works with the social movement "Uncollege" that empower students to create their own education, Saul Carliner who talks about Massive Online…

Distance education, increasingly dubbed online learning and even e-learning, represents an important societal movement, as witnessed by the sudden emergence of a worldwide knowledge industry in which universities play a central role. Many universities, in implementing e-learning, have undertaken a process whereby faculty are being encouraged to…

Developing instructional programing priorities and planning program improvements require an understanding of how effectively program objectives are being met. A formalized process for evaluating programs has been developed at Vancouver Community College as an aid in these and other aspects of instructional planning. (SSH)

Our department has redesigned its electrical engineering and computer engineering programs completely by adopting a learning methodology based on competence development, problem solving, and the realization of design projects. In this article, we show how this pedagogical approach has been successfully used for learning compiler design.

This document explains the curriculum development notation system for the Lethbridge (Alberta, Canada) schools to ensure that the legal requirements for education are met. Tenth grade geography is used to explain how to cluster the notations into a coherent system that provides curriculum area, course title, unit title, and generalization. This…