The purpose of this study is to identify student participation characteristics within the discussion boards using a recent Blackboard Post-First setting in a graduate online course. Unlike the standard discussion forum setting, where students can typically see their peers' posts anytime, the Post-First setting requires students to post their own original response first. The new setting allows for topic focus and original responses but it discourages interactive discussions. Due to its forced and limited setting, some students expressed resistance against the Post-First condition. However, the new setting allows for even and sustained student participation throughout the course. Early posts receive more feedback from peers than do posts done at a later time.

As the demand for online learning environments grow in higher education, so does the need for systematic application of learning and educational theory to the design, development and delivery of assessment strategies within these environments. However, there is little guidance in the form of principled design frameworks that can assist the design practitioner in the development of online assessment strategies. From four cases, we have identified six design principles that represent the collective experience of our team of design practitioners in creating assessment strategies for online teaching and learning environments; (a) technology affordances, (b) alignment of objectives with assessment, (c) discipline-specific practices and approaches, (d) meaningful and timely feedback, (e) authenticity and transferability and (f) transparency of assessment criteria. We present in-situ qualitative case studies that articulate how these principles have informed our design practice in online a...

In the context of a large first-year business course, we explore the value of student contributors, the former students from this course, working with faculty to improve the learning experience of the students enrolled in the course. By describing our study of the roles, impacts, benefits, and challenges of the student contributors’ involvement in creating supplemental resources, such as videos and practice problems, intended to augment the teaching process of the faculty and the learning process of the student learners, we contribute to the understanding of this three-party experience. Our study included interviews, survey questions, and resource-engagement analytics. We found that because student contributors can provide unique perspectives, greater inclusivity, and diverse approaches to teaching, there are benefits to the instructors, the student contributors, and the student learners.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss instructional designers’ current status through a brief discussion of the history of instructional design, comparison of instructional design models, and a presentation of a perspective on how instructional designers cope with their current identity and profession while seeking professional development. In this paper, we identified various reasons for addressing why professional development effort is less than ideal for instructional designers. These include a lack of priority given to professional development at an organization level, budget and funding, individual workload, and departmental visions and priorities. In order to address and overcome these factors, we recommend an instructional designer community of practice within institutions. As the landscape of education is constantly transforming, the designers’ field cannot stay static. To respond to all the changes, instructional designers not only need to strive for continuous learning b...

Studying issues of heritage language (HL) maintenance is gaining more significance than ever as our lives become significantly more complex and dynamic because of frequent migration and the transnational diasporas that such migration creates in its wake. HL maintenance is important in multicultural environments because familial relationships depend heavily on successful communication among family members. Viewing HL maintenance as a social practice, this exploratory qualitative study attempts to understand how participants are involved in their children's HL maintenance by investigating, comparing, and contrasting the participants' attitudes and practices. This study recruited eight Korean immigrant families with different lengths of residence in Greater Vancouver, an area that has seen a steady growth in the numbers of Korean immigrants. Combining social practice theory and qualitative research, this study uses discourse analysis to explore the participants' language id...

Educational developers who seek to evolve in their roles and careers are likely to transition from one teaching and learning centre to another at least once, if not multiple times, during their professional lives. This reflection discusses several issues that arose when I moved from the University’s large and well-established central teaching and learning centre to a newly formed centre within a Faculty at the same university. I
describe the significance of staying connected to my educational development community, and note how the lack of established processes was beneficial in my career growth. I observe the important role of collegiality and leadership for supporting me in my development. Finally, I conclude with some general suggestions for promoting our profession and our own personal growth as educational developers.

This qualitative study explores how francophone mothers describe barriers to and supports for maintaining their mother tongue. It focuses on the experiences of women who have the primary responsibility for teaching French to their pre-school-aged children. The findings, based on data collected in semi-structured interviews with women residing in Greater Vancouver, show that, compared to before motherhood, the participants were much more motivated to communicate in French and to participate in the francophone community. However, the women felt that lack of resources in the community, lack of time, and having an English-speaking partner limited their ability to actively improve their French. This study highlights the complexity of preventing further language loss and, consequently, the challenge of promoting inter-generational language transmission, given the minority language status of French in British Columbia. The author underscores the need to advance the equal status of Canada's two official languages.

This study draws from 30 semi-structured interviews with tenure-track faculty
members in a research-intensive university to examine their lack of engagement in
the summative peer review of teaching. Findings indicate that most academics in
the study do not think peer review outcomes contribute meaningfully to decisions
about career advancement and believe that, in comparison, student evaluation of
teaching scores matter more. The findings suggest that faculty member resistance
to summative peer reviews will persist unless academics are confident that the
results will be seriously considered in decisions about tenure and promotion. This
article also contends that senior administrators should provide further clarity
about the purpose and use of peer review outcomes in high-stakes career
decisions.

Attempts to improve teaching and learning in higher education are evolving and are becoming more evidence-based. The present chapter looks at some of this evidence as it may inform teaching and learning improvement efforts, strategies for organizational change, and evaluation of programs in educational development. In so doing, we focus on examples of scholarship that educational developers might call “foundational.” The scholarly foundations of attempts to improve teaching and learning are placed in one of three categories: the apocryphal, the theoretically plausible, and the research-based. It is suggested that organizational culture research be used to help develop strategies for organizational change, a key task in educational development. Similarly, foundational literature is reviewed assessing the impact of training on university teachers skills, their approach to teaching and their students’ approaches to their learning.

While much literature has considered feedback and professional growth in formative peer reviews of teaching, there has been little empirical research conducted on these issues in the context of summative peer reviews. This article explores faculty members' perceptions of feedback practices in the sum-mative peer review of teaching and reports on their understandings of why constructive feedback is typically non-existent or unspecific in summative reviews. Drawing from interview data with 30 tenure-track professors in a research-intensive Canadian university, the findings indicated that reviewers rarely gave feedback to the candidates, and when they did, comments were typically vague and/or focused on the positive. Feedback, therefore, did not contribute to professional growth in teaching. Faculty members suggested that feedback was limited because of the following: the high-stakes nature of tenure, the demands for research productivity, lack of pedagogical expertise among academics, non-existent criteria for evaluating teaching, and the artificiality of peer reviews. In this article I argue that when it comes to sum-mative reviews, elements of academic culture, especially the value placed on collegiality, shape feedback practices in important ways.

This paper describes and discusses the essential pedagogical elements of the Partnering in Community Health Research (PCHR) program, which was designed to address the training needs of researchers who participate in collaborative, interdisciplinary health research. These elements were intended to foster specific skills that helped learners develop research partnerships featuring knowledge, capabilities, values and attitudes needed for successful research projects. By establishing research teams called “clusters”, PCHR provided research training and experience for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, as well as for community health workers and professionals. Pedagogical elements relied on active learning approaches such as inquiry-based and experience-based learning. Links between these elements and learning approaches are explained. Through their work in cluster-based applied research projects, the development of learning plans, and cross-cluster learning events, trainees acquired collaborative research competencies that were valuable, relevant and theoretically informed.

This qualitative study explores how francophone mothers, who have taken on the primary responsibility for teaching French to their pre-school aged children, explain support and barriers to regaining and maintaining their own native language when they mother in a linguistic minority.

The purpose of this research was to explore how francophone mothers, having taken on the primary responsibility of teaching French to their young children, experience loss of their mothertongue and describe support and barriers to regaining and maintaining their native language. The principal research questions were: 1) How do francophone mothers residing in Greater Vancouver perceive the experience of maintaining and regaining their mothertongue?

Strategic planning in universities is frequently positioned as vital for clarifying future directions, providing a coherent basis for decision-making, establishing priorities, and improving organizational performance. Models for successful strategic planning abound and often present the process as linear and straightforward. In this essay, we examine our own experiences of strategic planning for a new educational development centre situated in a Faculty of a research intensive university. Drawing from the literature, we provide a brief history of strategic planning in university contexts and consider criticisms and benefits. We investigate complicated issues related to our own process and, throughout, we argue that in spite of established formulas for creating a strategic plan, the process is non-linear and messy. We end this paper with recommendations for educational developer colleagues.

Teaching has always been and remains a core function of universities. However, there is a pervasive assumption that research activity is privileged over teaching contributions, particularly when hiring, tenure and promotion decisions are being made. Where do such beliefs come from? Are these assumptions based on policy or practice, or a combination of the two? Is research privileged, and if so, does teaching really matter? This dissertation considers the assumption that teaching is My good fortune continued throughout my doctoral studies as I worked with my supervisor Professor Glen Jones. His ongoing support, attention to detail and thorough feedback ensured that my experience and the writing of my dissertation was rigorous but also humane! I am truly appreciative of the guidance and mentorship Professor Jones provided throughout the entire process. My thanks go out also to the members of my committee: Professors Sandra Acker and Elizabeth Smyth. I am grateful to both Professors Acker and Smyth for challenging my thinking and my assumptions and for pushing me out of my comfort zone! Also, my sincere thanks to Professors Daniel Pratt and Edith Hillan for providing such valuable feedback on my dissertation during the final stages. I must also acknowledge the ongoing support of my family and friends. I was fortunate to be raised in a family where education was valued and its pursuit was encouraged and I am grateful for the support that each and every one of the members of my immediate and extended family has provided. In particular, I would like to thank my sister-in-law and friend Kathleen, for her unwavering support and her willingness to listen. And finally, to my husband, David MacKinnon, you have been by my side as I have completed each of my degrees-without your love and constant encouragement I would not have made it through! I reserve my deepest gratitude and my eternal love for you. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. List of Tables ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. List of Appendices ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Chapter 1-Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. Organization of the Study …………………………………………………………………………………….………… Chapter 2-Review of the Literature …………………………………………………………………………….. The Formalization of Tenure ………………………………………………………………………………………….. The pros and cons of tenure: scholarly debates …………………………………………………… Reforming tenure ………………………………………………………………………………………………… Impact of Tenure on Academic Work: Teaching and Research ……………………………………….. Teaching and the Evaluation of Teaching: Perceptions, Policies and Practice …………………. Emphasizing Teaching in Higher Education …………………………………………………………………….. Faculty Development Initiatives in Canada and Abroad ………………………………………………….. Impact of faculty development initiatives on teaching practice, institutional cultures and policies ……………………………………………………………………………………………. Effective Teaching Evaluation Frameworks: Recommendations from the Literature ………. Improving Evaluation Frameworks: Comprehensive Teaching Evaluation Systems …………. Evaluation goals and purpose ……………………………………………………………………………… Criteria for evaluations: faculty roles and responsibilities ……………………………………. What constitutes teaching? ………………………………………………………………………………… Teaching effectiveness ……………………………………………………………………………………….. Standards of performance …………………………………………………………………………………… Disciplinary contexts …………………………………………………………………………………………… Mechanisms for evaluation and forms of evidence: how and by whom? …………….. Training and support …………………………………………………………………………………………… Communicating Expectations ……………………………………………………………………………… Integrated and aligned evaluation frameworks …………………………………………………..