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…

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…

This study investigates the degree to which biodiversity concepts are included within university curricula in Ontario and provides a baseline for tracking this. A keyword search of undergraduate and graduate academic calendars from six Ontario universities was conducted. A list of 28 relevant keywords was developed, and university program…

In addition to literacy and numeracy skills, social and emotional skills are increasingly recognized as being essential for success in school and beyond. This commentary paper summarizes the discussions from a 2018 seminar on social and emotional learning (SEL) in tertiary education in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The summary is framed…

Academic conferences are events geared to disciplinary specialization, and much of the SoTL literature regarding scholarly gatherings addresses their benefits for graduate student apprenticeship. In our organization of the 22nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, we explored other forms of pedagogy to augment an academic…

Transcending disciplinary boundaries is becoming increasingly important for devising solutions to the world's most pressing issues, such as climate change and food insecurity. Institutions of higher education often present challenges to teaching students how to work and innovate on transdisciplinary teams. We first define transdisciplinarity and…

University programs that prepare graduates for professional fields are adopting ePortfolios to achieve program learning goals and promote lifelong learning. However, various structural and cultural barriers exist to implementing ePortfolios, particularly in large universities. Members of a community of practice (CoP) that participate in…

We compared the wages of economics degree holders with of those in 49 other fields of study using data from the 2006 Canadian population census. At the undergraduate level, economics majors earned the sixth highest average wage in 2005. When demographic controls were applied, they ranked ninth on the salary scale. When we compared the wages in 15…

From an economic perspective, the arrival of international students on Canadian campuses can represent a flow of highly skilled talent that can help ease domestic skills shortages not filled by the native-born population. A recent study notes that of the cohort of international students who came to Canada to study during the 1990s and early 2000s,…

Cross-border higher education institutions are considered a main way to fulfill the educational internalization in Mainland China; to some extent they represent the attitude of entering the international market. In this paper, the history, status quo, and future of Chinese-foreign cooperatively-run schools are analyzed and discussed. Cross-border…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the province over time has addressed problems that are generic to many jurisdictions in assuring quality -- level of aggregation, pooling, definition of new and continuing programs, scope of jurisdiction, role of governors, performance indicators, relationship to accreditation, programs versus…

In education, there is a tension between exploring practice (focusing on the practicalities of an educator's daily work) and critical praxis (problematizing positionality as it relates to pedagogies and engaging in a societal critique). I do not set this up as a duality, a dichotomy, or a continuum, but as a skewed Venn diagram, in which there is…

The emergence of a research university model in Canada has increased significantly over the past few decades. From institutions that focused primarily on education, universities are striving to become large, research-focused centres. These changes have brought increased prestige to universities, greater graduate education, and more funding…

Universities around the world increasingly recognize the importance of offering high quality, high-engagement student learning experiences in their undergraduate and graduate programs. While the SoTL movement and literature has gained considerable recognition and momentum over the past two decades, much less inquiry has focused on institutional…

Engagement with current research is essential for the implementation of evidence-informed instructional practices in adult English as a second language classrooms. We explored Canadian administrators' and instructors' engagement with peer-reviewed research articles, perceptions of their impact, and ways in which stakeholders could enhance…