Let us lay the context for our conversation: My senior level undergraduate nursing students, all of whom were doing their clinical experience at health care centres in Calgary, appreciated not having to travel to the University after their clinical day to have a face-to-face hour session with myself as their instructor. In previous years, we used…

Experiential learning (EL) has become essential for graduate students to meet the demanding nature of professional environments, equipping them with skills in leadership, problem solving, and civic consciousness. Community based learning (CBL), as an identified EL strategy, involves a collaborative learning model emphasizing group membership and…

Peer mentorship programs have mostly emphasized formal structures, wherein a more experienced student guides a less experienced student. However, these practices are hierarchical and require substantive resources to organize and implement. Searching for alternatives, we research the effectiveness of an informal teaching technique that facilitates…

The creation of a community classroom, grounded in the philosophy of experiential learning, was the challenge for our education students and ourselves as instructors. Goals for our students became twofold: goals as a current post-secondary student and goals as a future educator. To activate this experience, groups of students engaged both…

Problem-based Learning (PBL) has long been touted as an effective pedagogical approach in higher education to promote students' authentic learning. As a learner-centered pedagogy, PBL is characterized by students working collaboratively in small groups to solve messy, ill-structured problems that mirror real-world problems encountered by expert…

The significant global challenges faced in the world today require innovative solutions and creative thinking. In traditional postsecondary education, technical programs such as engineering often focus on technical competencies as opposed to creative thinking. However, as industry demands for creative technical employees continue to increase,…

Design Thinking (DT) has recently been adopted in some higher education disciplines as an effective pedagogical approach to enable students to acquire the skills needed for solving real world problems. As a human-centered, iterative process, design thinking is characterized by working with others to understand, define and solve problems using…

The visualization of chemical compounds in three-dimensions is a foundational skill in the study and practice of chemistry and related fields, and one which has the potential to be supported by interaction with virtual models. Here, we present a collaborative learning activity piloted in first-year chemistry which investigates if inquiry-driven…

This paper reviews the idea of threshold concepts in the context of conceptual change processes students experience at the cognitive and social dimensions of learning. Literature suggests that students' ontological views play a part in the development of their prior conceptions, which could be alternative to scientifically accepted ideas. It is…