Medical school admissions is a contentious and high stakes selection activity. Many assessment approaches are available to support selection; but how are decisions about building, monitoring, and adapting admissions systems made? What shapes the processes and practices that underpin selection decisions? We explore how these decisions are made…

This paper proposes that a curricular shift we call "decanonization" is shaping contemporary English Major degrees at Canadian universities. We believe it is a response to a complex set of challenges currently facing departments as they program their undergraduate degrees in English, and, in a qualified way, we endorse it as a positive…

This research explores the emerging position of teaching professionals in research universities through the framework of 'third space professionals'. The third space is described as an overlapping space between the professional and academic domains in university and usually staff who are neither traditional academics nor traditional professionals…

Food is perfectly positioned to link students' lives to the deep and broad historical forces around them. Like everybody else, students procure and consume food on a daily basis, use it to mark special occasions, share it with friends, enjoy or dispute it with families, all perhaps without ever considering its potential for historical analysis.…

In this paper, we describe our approach to mentoring Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) as teaching and learning protégés within the context of a challenging undergraduate honours thesis course. An approach to mentoring GTAs in this multifaceted course is outlined, while providing practical strategies that expose GTAs to various aspects of the…

Critical thinking, creativity, communication, teamwork, emotional intelligence, problem-solving, empathy, resilience, ambition, grit, and innovation (Heckman & Kautz, 2012). These skills, often referred to as 'soft' skills, are considered a requirement for employment and advancement for the 21st-century graduate (Carnevale & Smith, 2013).…

To meet an increasingly complex set of global challenges, undergraduate programs need innovative, well aligned curricula that prepare students to effectively address those challenges. This is especially true in programs such as sustainable food systems education (SFSE) where students learn to think systemically, critically, and reflectively, and…

The purpose of the July 60 Second Report was to seek feedback from undergraduate-serving members on how--if at all--their institution uses tools and data to project class and/or academic-program demand at the undergraduate level. Of the 331 responses, 312 were from the U.S., and 15 were from Canada; Bulgaria, Cote d'Ivoire, Singapore, and the…

There are growing concerns about the affordability and accessibility of post-secondary education. This has resulted in increased attention to the inclusion of open educational resources (OERs) as course materials rather than commercial course resources. OERs are mostly cost-neutral for students. In this research, an elective course for business…

International studies have revealed that Black undergraduate nursing students experience higher levels of attrition from nursing programs. Touted as the least likely racial group to graduate, Black students struggle disproportionately in comparison to their non-Black peers. Canadian literature, however, is largely silent on this topic and this…

This paper reports the findings of a Canada based multi-institutional study designed to investigate the relationships between admissions criteria, in-program assessments, and performance on licensing exams. The study's objective is to provide valuable insights for improving educational practices across different institutions. Data were gathered…

There is widespread misuse of statistics in research, particularly in the life sciences, which is one of the contributing factors to reproducibility concerns in research. However, the formal quantitative training that life sciences research trainees receive is often quite limited. Our survey of statistics requirements in undergraduate life…

The major is a standard undergraduate degree structure in which learners follow largely predetermined course paths with the primary goal of developing content knowledge and skills. Developing the more sophisticated ability to author inquiry is typically deferred to graduate training but can, we believe, be successfully cultivated in undergraduates…

How is the content of university programs selected and structured? How does it evolve? In the anthropological theory of the didactic, external didactic transposition designates the processes through which knowledge to be taught is delimited and developed for delivery within a school institution, including universities. This paper presents a first…

Fieldwork is a meaningful and authentic learning experience that is rarely included in undergraduate chemistry courses. In this laboratory, we visited a hot spot of perfluoroalkyl acid (PFAA) contamination identified in 2012, in Binbrook, Ontario, Canada, a 1 h drive from the University of Toronto. The persistence and unique environmental…