Scholarly Outputs

In a fourth year undergraduate research methods class 99% of the students were Facebook users, routinely checking for updates, 10 to 20 times a day. Thus, a facebook page seemed like a natural addition to this seminar course, which requires the budding researchers to discuss and review literature, data, and regression analysis. A Facebook group resembles an online café with walls to the rest of the online community, allowing students to (a) chat in real-time, (b) discuss in virtual-time, and (c) share materials through straightforward file upload. Facebook groups can be open (public), closed (require administrator approval for joining and only members can read the posts), or secret (only members can see the group, who’s in it, and what what’s being posted). As for the benefits of a Facebook group, not only did I see better online interactions and face-to-face discussions, but also an easy way to receive continuous feedback from the students.

Understanding and thinking critically about scientific evidence is a crucial skill in the modern world. We present a simple learning framework that employs cycles of decisions about making and acting on quantitative comparisons between datasets or data and models. his structure led to significant and sustained improvement in students’ critical thinking behaviors, compared with a control group, with effects far beyond that of statistical significance.

Peer feedback is a useful strategy in teaching and learning, but its effectiveness particularly in introductory courses can be limited by the relative newness of students to both the body of knowledge upon which they are being asked to provide feedback and the skill set involved in providing good feedback. Students perceived this novel comparative approach increased their facility with course content, their ability assess their own work, and their capacity to provide feedback on the work of others in a collaborative learning environment.

Creating an environment of student success for all students is likely at the top of every educator’s list of priorities. In BC, curricula changes have recently occurred in the K-12 system in order to incorporate Aboriginal content into courses and help ensure that Aboriginal perspectives are included “in the learning journey” of all students (B.C. Ministry of Education, 2015). This presentation reflects on current efforts made to support Aboriginal university students, as well as steps being made to indigenize teaching at a university level. Aboriginal students and support workers will share their experiences as well as make suggestions for the future.

This presentation shares initial findings from a research project exploring teacher education perceptions of outdoor learning and times spent outdoors through a required methodology course and a long practicum experience. This project takes a critical inquiry/ social justice stance around the marginalization of outdoors, requesting legitimatacy and necessity by highlight the benefits of time spent outdoors and outdoor learning around 1) health/wellbeing, 2) more-than-human wellbeing, and 3) experiential learning that profoundly sticks. Ultimately, it aims to change and inform educational praxis to both emphasize and include more time spent outdoors and outdoor learning. Moreover, the project invites educators to consider more profoundly their decisions around "where" learning experiences occur.

Students in first-year university courses often focus on mimicking application of taught procedures and fail to gain adequate conceptual understanding. One potential approach to support meaningful learning is Productive Failure (PF). In PF, the conventional instruction process is reversed so that learners attempt to solve challenging problems ahead of receiving explicit instruction. While students often fail to produce satisfactory solutions (hence “Failure”), these attempts help learners encode key features and learn better from subsequent instruction (hence “Productive”). Effectiveness of PF was shown mainly in the context of statistical and intuitive concepts, and lessons that are designed and taught by learning scientists. We describe a quasi-experiment that evaluates the impact of PF in a large-enrollment introductory university-level biology course...

Medical learners have unique accommodations needs given their diverse and ever-changing learning environments, direct contact with patient-care, and systemic stigma. Policy analysis showed great variance in the policies available for medical learners across the country. Only 5 out of the 14 programs have formal disability offices within the medical school, while others have more ad-hoc approaches. Data from the interviews corroborated this gap in services. Participants identified barriers related to 1) bureaucracy, 2) navigating the system, 3) power dynamics, and 4) perceptions of disability in medicine. The main recommendations are to 1) change attitudes and focused engagement and recruitment of students with disabilities, 2) streamline the delivery of services, and 3) develop capacity among educators and administrators.

Problem solving has been characterized as one of the “employability skills” due to the high demand for such abilities in a modern workplace. Most universities do not monitor progress of the generic problem-solving skills (PSS) of their students due to a lack of available assessment tools. We used previously reported 15-minute tests to measure the generic PSS of students over the first three years of university. We observed a non-linear increase in PSS test scores with a significant growth during the first three months of Year 1, a similar increase over the next 21 months, then no change during the first three months of Year 3. Moreover, the plateau we observe in the third year indicates that proactive steps by universities and individual instructors are required to advance this important skill set in upper-year students.

In most post-secondary introductory soil science courses, students learn about the broadest soil classification categories (or soil orders). Since topics of soil formation and classification are of direct importance for land use and management, it is essential that our future land managers have a solid understanding of soil formation factors. To enhance students’ learning on this important topic in the introductory soil science course at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada we are developing the Soil TopARgraphy app. With AR, different soil orders are shown within one real-life terrain across different parts of topography. The objective of this project is to develop a phone app to allow students to learn about the effects of topography on formation of different soil types through an immersive and visual AR terrain.

The growing deployment of emerging educational technologies among higher education institutions, and within geography departments, raises many questions. When used in teaching and learning, digital technologies are a powerful pedagogical framing for engaging students in place, across near and distant spaces, and through time - key concepts in geographical education. Teachers, students, technology and the learning environment are in effect supporting pillars and players to facilitate active learning, which will enable and empower the learner. When attempting to incorporate educational technologies into the geography classroom the use needs to be more directed, working towards a particular pedagogical goal as technology for the sake of technology may act as a confounding agent towards student learning.

Indigenization and internationalization initiatives at Canadian postsecondary institutions occur in parallel and may sometimes be complementary. At the University of Saskatchewan and UBC, these educational and organizational projects share some common ground, while maintaining unique and important distinctions. Moreover, as educational and organization developers, our experience with them is that they are expressed, operationalized, and practiced in regionally and locally specific ways that are determined by institutional and Indigenous community-based factors.

Our paper contributes to the growing literature on the effectiveness of the flipped classroom as a means of enhancing the student learning experience and achieving course learning outcomes, with a special emphasis on the effectiveness of the flipped classroom in an interdisciplinary course setting. Our paper describes how our course employs a fully flipped pedagogy, with learning materials based online and class time devoted to learning activities conducted in permanent student groups. To assess the student experience in the course, we conducted surveys of the students enrolled in our course and examined course analytics and metrics. Our experience suggests the flipped model is largely successful in enhancing the student experience in an interdisciplinary course setting.

This paper describes how future physics teachers' involvement in annual Family Math and Science Day—a public outreach event at the University of British Columbia, Canada—has a potential to transform them as physics demonstration experts and amateur video producers. These science demonstration videos serve as teaching and learning resources not only for their own coursework, practicum, and post-graduation, but also as a useful resource for their peers and other educators. The production of demonstration videos was framed around studies that support physics and general science teacher-candidates' engagement in hands-on science, science communication, and deliberate use of technology to promote active learning.

Digitizing the creative writing classroom offers an untapped pedagogical opportunity to help writers at all levels flourish. What if we blended them both into one course? I’ll discuss the highs and lows of redesigning a bricks and mortar class to a blended workshop format. We’ll consider how to integrate the best in creative writing pedagogy and innovative learning technology for interactive blended learning. And how we can help students cultivate foundational tools in craft, technique, and critical analysis while challenging them toward deeper understanding and more thoughtful application of the concepts learned through more face-to-face engagement in person.

Global challenges such as climate change, forest degradation and illegal logging are having a major environmental, economic, and social impact around the world. Global access to relevant open education resources is extremely important to address these challenges and improve sustainable forest management practices. Under this context, since 2014 the University of British Columbia (UBC) Faculty of Forestry has led a multinational, multi-university collaborative forestry online program to develop a series of self-directed online courses in sustainable forest management (SFM) for global learners as open educational resources (OER). As the only SFM online program of its kind, it provides world-class forestry education resources created and supported by leading professors and experts from internationally recognized universities...

Active learning places the student at the center of a lecture’s objective and its outcome. Students in these lectures are not only engaged in learning but are also involved in cognitive processes such as comprehension and evaluation. These processes then translate into (a) improved and deeper learning, (b) better grades, and (c) lower failure rates. Given this growing evidence, it would be beneficial to incorporate these active learning strategies into the classroom. There are wide-ranging theories of active and deep learning, and just as many applications of this kind of learning. Reducing the vast number of theories down to adaptable elements requires answers to questions such as: How much class time should be devoted to active learning and participation? Should this be at the expense of course content? One strategy would be to use a blended learning approach: modifying the course structure, introducing online videos for review, and changing how the content was delivered in class. The article summarizes the approach, its application in a large classroom, and students' experience and feedback.

Purpose: The need for Interprofessional Education (IPE) has been well documented and communicated by many prominent governmental bodies and health organizations. However, more longitudinal outcomes research is needed to demonstrate the impact of IPE on students’ attitudes and behaviours. This study assessed dental hygiene students’ readiness for IPE and collaborative practice at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Methods: A modified Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS) survey was conducted on 23 (96% response rate) second-year dental hygiene students prior to commencing the university’s newly integrated 4-week IPE curriculum and immediately following its completion approximately 1 month later. A focus group comprising five students then explored learning experiences and impact on attitudes about collaborative practice in greater depth. Curriculum content included professionalism, ethical practice, Indigenous cultural safety, and resiliency. Results: Attitudinal shifts were observed in three of the RIPLS measures suggesting that students found greater clarity regarding their professional roles and became more receptive to learning clinical problem-solving skills with other disciplines. No statistically significant differences surfaced between the pre-attitudinal and post-attitudinal RIPLS measures. The focus group revealed three prominent themes: greater role clarification, recognition of similarities in knowledge and practice with other professions, and cultivation of professional identity, collegiality, and respect. Conclusion: Students found greater clarity about professional roles and developed an enhanced appreciation for working with other health professions after completing the university’s month-long integrated IPE curriculum.

In this presentation, we describe the design, implementation and evaluation of a health humanities initiative aimed at enhancing students’ ability to provide patient-centred care. Project: To deepen students' understanding of patients' illness experience, humanities elements were embedded in case scenarios deployed in PY1 skills labs. Original paintings were added to a lower back pain case scenario and an autobiographical essay was added to a glaucoma case scenario, with associated questions incorporated into facilitators' guides for the case discussions. Most students felt these embellishments were valuable, contributing to their understanding of the patients’ concerns and their ability to empathize. A few students had strong negative reactions, finding the embellishments unengaging, artificial, and/or a poor alternative to interacting with actual patients. Students marginally preferred the essay to the paintings, and suggested other media, including poetry, music and video for future cases. Pharmacist facilitators indicated that students were reasonably engaged in discussions of the embellishments and that session flow was unaffected. Presentation Goals: 1) to share health humanities resources and approaches to incorporating humanities elements into patient case scenarios 2) to describe benefits and challenges of integrating humanities into a pharmacy curriculum 3) to demonstrate a scholarly approach to an educational innovation Relevance to pharmacy education: Hippocrates said “It's more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.” However, patient case scenarios used in clinical learning activities typically focus on biomedical details and do not provide a holistic picture of the individual. Further, didactic curricula provide little contact with actual patients and students rarely have personal experience of the conditions and therapies they are learning about. Nevertheless, students are expected to demonstrate empathy and to provide pharmaceutical care responsive to patients' individual needs. Integration of the humanities into the pharmacy curriculum is a potential strategy to bridge these gaps. Summary: To enhance students' appreciation of patients as unique individuals with differing illness experiences, artistic and literary works were incorporated into case scenarios. Student and instructor reactions to these novel elements will be presented, along with future plans for health humanities in the pharmacy curriculum.

We consider a utility-based customer choice model where the customer may purchase multiple products and even possibly multiple units of each product. We study the firm's optimal pricing problem, and present an algorithm to find the optimal prices.

The Beaty Biodiversity Museum (BBM) is home to the University of British Columbia's biological collections, including the largest collection of vascular plants in Canada (~225,000 specimens) and one of the world's largest collections of Pacific Northwest seaweeds (~90,000 specimens). These collections include substantial representation of Salish Sea watershed plant species and Salish Sea seaweed species and are a wealth of potential for teaching and research projects. Yet, most UBC Biology Program courses do not use the Museum as a teaching resource or use only the public displays. This project focuses on first-year and second-year students and seeks to integrate research collections into large-enrollment courses in order to introduce students to coastal British Columbia biodiversity while also contributing to museum inventory and digital transcription projects. The questions discussed here are: 1) how are first-year students' knowledge, interests and perceptions of biological diversity impacted by interacting with research collections? and 2) how much of an impact, and of what quality, can student participation have for BBM initiatives? For the first question, student responses to written questions in two courses were collected via a survey given prior to and after students completed a 2-hour activity using BBM specimens. Preliminary results suggest that students benefited from interacting with authentic research collections of local species. For the second question, the number of specimens recorded or digitally-transcribed by students was recorded. These data will be discussed along with recommendations for how to incorporate student participation into biodiversity projects while maintaining high-quality data collection.

Addressing social inequities has been recognized as foundational to transforming food systems. Activists and scholars have critiqued food movements as lacking an orientation towards addressing issues of social justice. To address issues of inequity, sustainable food systems education (SFSE) programs will have to increase students’ equity-related capabilities. Our first objective in this paper is to determine the extent to which SFSE programs in the USA and Canada address equity. We identified 108 programs and reviewed their public facing documents for an explicit focus on equity. We found that roughly 80% of universities with SFSE programs do not provide evidence that they explicitly include equity in their curricula. Our second objective is to propose an equity competency model based on literature from multiple fields and perspectives. This entails dimensions related to knowledge of self; knowledge of others and one’s interactions with them; knowledge of systems of oppression and inequities; and the drive to embrace and create strategies and tactics for dismantling racism and other forms of inequity. Integrating our equity competency model into SFSE curricula can support the development of future professionals capable of dismantling inequity in the food system. We understand that to integrate an equity competency in our curricula will require commitment to build will and skill not only of our students, but our faculty, and entire university communities.

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.

Students-led learning involving peer tutoring, collaborative projects, cooperative learning and peer assessment is an important way of fostering mentorship within the classroom (Topping, 2005). The benefits of these pedagogical strategies include enhanced leadership skills, sharing of knowledge, ideas and experience between the participants and improved academic performance (Boud, 2001). However, large class sizes, short teaching times and inflexible lecture spaces constrain our abilities to engage in effective peer learning during teaching sessions. Liberating Structures is a recent innovation that promises to mitigate these challenges by offering a collection of strategies to structure interaction, liberate course content, foster creativity, spark individual brilliance and tap into collective wisdom (Lipmanowicz & McCandless, 2014). The key advantage of Liberating Structures is that it requires that all participants engage in the creation of solutions, which promotes inclusive academic communities. The proposed workshop provides hands-on experience using liberating structure activities with suggestions on how they can promote in-class collaboration, mentorship and full engagement of students. Workshop participants will practice the activities, participate in peer learning and peer mentorship in this lively, interactive session. The presentation will also draw on data from a survey of students in a large upper-level Sociology course at University of British Columbia where students were instructed using liberating structures. The benefits identified by students include that it promoted deep and reflective learning, agency in the learning process and friendships beyond the classroom.

The success of active-learning pedagogies relies on effective communication and an inclusive classroom climate. Research shows that how active learning is conducted (e.g., characteristics of learning activities, social dynamics of small group work) influences students' learning and engagement, and can differentially affect students in systemically excluded groups[1]. Our institution has built a culture of active learning over the past 15 years[2] and has a current focus on inclusive excellence[3]. Our project aims to enhance inclusion and learning across first-year biology, chemistry, and physics courses at a large, research-intensive post-secondary institution in Canada. We are using a critical mix-methods approach to investigate students' experiences and to identify existing inequalities. We are using questionnaires, interviews, concept inventories, and course assessments to explore students' sense of belonging, self-efficacy, perceptions of classroom climate, and perceptions of learning activities. Identifying potential causes of inequities in our cultural and instructional context suggests inclusive teaching practices that may address structural barriers to student learning and their desire to persist in science fields. In this presentation, we will share what we have learned about investigating equity, including how we dealt with the challenge of non-existent institutional demographic data. Attendees of this presentation will be invited to reflect on and discuss models of equity and to consider which models of equity are most appropriate for their teaching and scholarly work[4,5]. Together we will consider how our cultural contexts influence what equity means in our teaching and learning contexts and use this to push forward SoTL intending to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Background MIT published a report on the global state of the art in engineering education (March 2018) and noted 'measuring the actual learning' as the next big frontier of the field. Students come to class with an existing level of knowledge about the subject matter, therefore measuring the 'delta' in students' knowledge would be a more accurate representation of the effectiveness of the course, teacher and/or program. Exams and in particular finals do not measure the 'delta', and the accuracy of these tests in reflecting actual students learning is a controversial topic. They might be a reasonable measures of immediate knowledge uptake, but they do not provide insights about deep learning and long-term knowledge retention. Purpose In order to measure students actual learning and retention of knowledge, a new holistic assessment is developed, herein referred to as yearly assessment (YA). The objective is to measure the 'delta' in students learning after they go through one year of instruction in our undergraduate program. Approach In this paper, we present the results for the year two of our curriculum, i.e. Y2-YA. The assessment was administered through our learning management system; canvas, once at the beginning of the school year (the pre-test; September 2021) and once more after the same cohort of students returned a year later to start the third-year of their undergraduate degree (the post-test; September 2022). The assessment is in the form of a series of conceptual multiple-choice questions (CMCQs) targeting the key concepts of each core course. These CMCQs underwent a few rounds of revisions and were vetted by each course instructor before the implementation in September 2021. For the Y2-YA, roughly 175 questions were developed and 50 questions were randomly selected from this bank of CMCQs for each student. Students were given 2 minutes per question and were advised that this assessment does not impact their academic record and they don't need to study for it. Outcomes The results of the pre-test provide insight into the prior knowledge and academic level of each cohort and can be used to semi-quantitatively compare different cohorts of students. Furthermore, calculating the cohort-average normalized gain, G=(post-pre)/(100-pre), for each course and its key concepts provide an objective measure for the effectiveness of the course and valuable feedback for the instructor. This figure can also provide additional evidence for the first graduate attribute of the CEAB, i.e. engineering knowledge-base. Individual report can also be prepared for each student, providing feedback on their performance against their cohort. Conclusions The yearly assessment has been used to objectively measure students learning and retention of knowledge as they go through one year of instruction in our program. The cohort-average normalized gain was 20%, a figure that shows there is lots of room for improvement. Analysis of the results also showed no statistically significant difference between the performance of male and female students. Additionally, these assessments serve as a tool for evaluating the impact of curriculum changes on students learning and will be incorporated into a new evaluation system to support the continuous improvement process.

We conducted an observational exploratory study of distraction by digital devices in multiple different sections across three large undergraduate physics courses. We collected data from two different settings based on the type of devices used for classroom polling: lecture sections that required mobile devices for polling and those that used standalone clickers. Our analysis shows no difference in the average distraction level between the two settings. However, we did observe an overall lower level of distraction during active learning modes, as compared to passive learning modes. Based on there being no observable difference in distraction levels in the mobile polling and standalone clicker classrooms, we recommend that instructors should choose the polling technology that best suits their needs without worrying about the impact on student distraction. The observed difference in distraction between the active and passive learning modes is consistent with previous results from the literature, which reinforces support for the use of active learning modes as much as possible.

Multiple choice questions (MCQs) are widely used in large, introductory sociology courses. Recent research focuses on MCQ reliability and validity and overlooks questions of accessibility. Yet, access to the norms of academic discourse embedded in MCQs differs between groups of first year students. We theorize these norms as part of the institutionalized cultural symbols that reproduce social and cultural exclusion for linguistically diverse students. A sociological focus on linguistic diversity is necessary as the percentage of students in Canada who use English as an additional language (EAL) rather than English as a native language (ENL), has grown. Drawing on sociology as pedagogy, we problematize MCQs as a medium shaping linguistically diverse students' ability to demonstrate disciplinary knowledge. Our multimethod research uses two stage randomized exams and focus groups with EAL and ENL students to assess the effects of a modification in instructors' MCQ writing practices in sociology and psychology courses. Findings show that students are more likely to answer a modified MCQ correctly, with greater improvement for EAL students.

There is growing research espousing the value of centring relationality in higher education teaching and learning (Anderson et al., 2020). Therapeutic use of self (TUS) is an occupational therapy practice skill that centres the client-occupational therapist relationship (Polatajko et al., 2015). With TUS, an occupational therapist authentically uses their self to support the client to bring their whole self into the therapeutic process. TUS challenges traditional power dynamics and co-creates supportive therapeutic alliances to improve client outcomes. A mainstay of occupational therapy practice, TUS holds promise as an effective pedagogical tool to promote educator and student wellbeing and enhance student learning. This paper presentation will share findings of a SoTL project that explored the experience of TUS as a pedagogical tool in higher education from student and educator perspectives. Data were gathered using collaborative autoethnography, with the study's researchers as participants (four entry-level occupational therapy master's students and two occupational therapy educators from two large Canadian universities). Five free-flowing discussions iteratively explored the relationship between participant stories and personal, educational, and societal contexts. Reflective memos and reflexive thematic analysis were used to analyse discussion transcripts. The analysis generated four themes: (1) education as transaction, (2) power-over and power-within higher education, (3) experiencing TUS, and (4) relationship as resistance. With an emphasis on authenticity, power equity, critical reflexivity, and mutual empathy, TUS is a nuanced skill that holds promise as a transformative teaching tool. In line with relational cultural theory and critical pedagogy, TUS has potential to enhance deep learning, disrupt the status quo that upholds power inequities in higher education, and foster student-educator wellbeing and success. Through guided discussion and engagement with online collaborative tools, we will invite participants to critically reflect on the potential of TUS to be used as a pedagogical tool within their own disciplines.

Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) gather crucial feedback on student experiences of teaching and learning and have been used for decades to evaluate the quality of teaching and student experience of instruction. In this paper we make the case for an important improvement to analysis of SET data that can further refine its interpretation. An extensive literature explores the reliability and consistency of SETs, and factors hypothesized to affect student evaluation of instructors. Much less attention has been given to the statistics used by institutions of higher education to summarize and report SET data“ historically, arithmetic means and standard deviations computed from Likert scale scores. Here, we argue that a combination of two different statistics “interpolated median (IM) and percent favourable (PF) rating “together with a measure of dispersion suitable for ordinal data, offer a fairer and more meaningful set of metrics for summarizing and interrogating SET data collected using balanced Likert scale surveys. To illustrate the power of these proposed metrics we present an analysis of SET data from two academic years at a major Canadian university, and we also highlight an interesting and previously unreported relationship that we identified between the interpolated median and percent favourable rating.

Engineering academic curriculum tends to focus heavily on technical competency rather than organizational and social skills [1]. There is a disconnect between this and engineering practice which is noted to be far more heterogeneous [2]. This is not a new problem, there have been well-documented concerns at least as far back as 1949 about engineering training not having enough of a focus on skills in social and organizational processes for engineers to be effective [3]. Students develop organizational and social skills through a variety of activities which may be curricular or co/extra-curricular. One such method of organizational and social skill development is through co-op work placements. This work will present an analysis of data from co-op students and employers from the Chemical and Chemical & Biological Engineering programs at the University of British Columbia's Vancouver Campus. These data are regularly collected by the co-op office following student placements. The author will also present their insights having spent 9-months working with a systems engineering team at Ballard Power Systems. The broader context of ongoing initiatives around building organizational and social skills in Chemical and Chemical & Biological Engineering students at UBC will also be presented.

Grading student work is required at most universities. Literature has promoted criterion-referenced approaches for decades. Yet norm-referenced grading approaches persist in some departmental microcultures experiencing pressures of large, under-resourced, multi-section courses, and concerns about grade inflation. Efforts promoting equity, inclusion, and Indigeneity create an imperative to question norm-referenced approaches, even under these pressures. How do members of a large quantitative psychology department perceive a longstanding norm-referenced grading policy, and its impact on teaching and learning? This poster offers three ways to engage: SoTL, Educational Leadership, or professional growth. Column 1 summarizes a mixed-methods study to answer the question above. Qualitative interview data, analyzed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis, highlighted positive and negative experiences of faculty, graduate Teaching Assistants, and undergraduates in relation to this policy, offering a clear a mandate for reform. Column 2 outlines ongoing departmental change. Column 3 highlights professional development experienced by the lead author, including epistemological growth.

We present the design and evaluation of an institutional support model for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL): the SoTL Seed Program. In this model, faculty from across disciplines partner with graduate students with expertise in educational and social science methodologies to implement SoTL investigations. We interviewed and obtained feedback from both faculty and graduate students about their experiences. A qualitative approach based on grounded theory suggests that organized and sustained partnership between faculty and graduate students offers a viable institutional framework to support SoTL across academic disciplines. In our institution, partnerships in SoTL have resulted in facilitating academic and professional development for both faculty and graduate students, establishing communities of practice for SoTL, and providing infrastructure for systematic engagement with SoTL.

Grading student work is required at most universities. Literature has promoted criterion-referenced approaches for decades. Yet norm-referenced grading approaches persist in some departmental microcultures experiencing pressures of large, under-resourced, multi-section courses, and concerns about grade inflation. Efforts promoting equity, inclusion, and Indigeneity create an imperative to question norm-referenced approaches, even under these pressures. How do members of a large quantitative psychology department perceive a longstanding norm-referenced grading policy, and its impact on teaching and learning? This poster offers three ways to engage: SoTL, Educational Leadership, or professional growth. Column 1 summarizes a mixed-methods study to answer the question above. Qualitative interview data, analyzed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis, highlighted positive and negative experiences of faculty, graduate Teaching Assistants, and undergraduates in relation to this policy, offering a clear a mandate for reform. Column 2 outlines ongoing departmental change. Column 3 highlights professional development experienced by the lead author, including epistemological growth.

Over the past year, three new program year 1 tutorials were created to prepare Entry-to-Practice PharmD students to prescribe for minor ailments, a new scope of practice for pharmacists in British Columbia, during their first summer experiential practicum. Our guiding questions for our project are the following: 1) How effective are our minor ailments tutorials in preparing our Year 1 students to participate in prescribing on their PHRM 171 practicums? 2) How can our minor ailments tutorials be improved to better prepare our Year 1 students? To answer these questions, we deployed a survey to students after their last tutorial in year 1 to determine students' perceptions on pharmacist prescribing, their preparedness to assess, diagnose, and make recommendations to treat patients for minor ailments, as well as how the minor ailments tutorials could be improved for future students.

Design Thinking (DT) learners in groups are required to bring their different perspectives to bear on wicked problems and propose novel solutions. To achieve this, they are led through an often-unfamiliar process of problem framing, inquiry, and experimentation. To help learners in the process of problem framing, educators employ instructional scaffolds. However, faced with an unfamiliar task in design thinking education, learners may resort to collaborative scaffolds, where group members assume scaffolding responsibilities to help others in the group reach further than they could without it. To examine the interplay of instructional and collaborative scaffolding, we studied eight MBA DT courses at a Canadian business school and found collaborative scaffolding can both enable and constrain instructional scaffolds, as group members assume responsibility for scaffolding that might lead to novel framings and task alteration, or to a failure in the framing enterprise. We theorize the results of our study provide also provide educators with practical suggestions on the value and limits of scaffolding.

This case study premised that outdoor learning situates within a unique ontological category of where learning happens, distinct from curricular (what) and pedagogical (who/how) concerns of learning. By shifting preservice teacher learning experiences during mandatory teacher education methods courses outdoors, we conjured a boundary object for where learning occurs. We collected and analysed preservice teacher reflections generated from the outdoor learning experiences. Three overarching outdoor learning dimensions (OLD) were distilled from 90 reflection-outputs: outdoors as 1) experience, 2) concept, and 3) place. Discussion considered purposes of outdoor where in teacher preparation for 21st century learning in relation to the aim of inhabitancy, through the lens of useful learning. Useful learning was scoped as learning concerned with health and wellbeing, pro-environmental actions and beliefs, and experiential/inquiry-based learning