Learning about Generative AI should include supporting collaborative interdisciplinary research and writing ethical prompts to help discover what it can do.
Sexual and gender-based violence can seem like an insurmountable problem, but interdisciplinary thinking encourages creative approaches to social change. Queen’s University students in Kingston, Ont., protest sexual assault on campuses in September 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Lars Hagberg
Faculty and university staff are embedding training to prevent gender-based and sexual violence into curricular goals of both arts and STEM classes.
Before the 1960s and until 1990, university residences were constructed to support multiple chance encounters with students on the same floor or building through shared space. Dorm life in Washburn Hall, San Jose State College, early 1970s.
(San José State University Special Collections & Archives)
Student residences built in recent decades prioritize privacy, yet research shows a lack of student socialization spaces negatively affects students’ academic performance and well-being.
NOSM University, which began as the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, may potentially offer a model for Northern education in other professional fields.
(NOSM University)
Ontario’s changed university funding formula, which forces institutions to rely on high student tuition for niche programs, is putting some northern institutions in precarious financial situations.
The University College building at the University of Toronto. Government budget cuts and the race to attract more students are changing the function and purpose of Canadian universities.
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Forcing universities to only serve the needs of the labour market undermines their abilities to educate students and conduct research.
Research suggests labour strikes at universities get scant media coverage, both in Canada and the United States. In this December 2022 photo, graduate student instructors and researchers picket at University of California, Berkeley.
(AP Photo/Terry Chea)
Labour unrest at universities is a matter of public interest. That’s why support for local, independent media outlets to provide in-depth coverage of university strikes is so important.
Learning to transform, not only criticize, circumstances is an important part of humanities education.
(AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
Pairing disability counsellors with post-secondary instructors to help them design classes is one way colleges and universities can improve their efforts to support students with disabilities.
Universities and colleges that seek to grow their student enrolments have an obligation to address student housing.
(AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
Governments and universities have failed to prepare for an increase in housing demand amid planned enrolment growth in higher education and a crisis driven by treating housing as an investment.
For many non-engineers, iron rings worn by Canadian engineers have been shrouded in mystery.
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Engineers say the current ‘iron ring’ ritual is steeped in colonial worldviews and excludes the public from understanding engineers’ ethical obligations.
When University of Manitoba Faculty Association went on strike and hit the picket lines in 2016, the association raised issues about having a greater say over ever-increasing workloads, appropriate use of metrics in evaluation and job security.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods
Education strikes by university and public school workers are political fights about diminished respect for education as a public good and workers’ rights in an economy that perpetuates inequality.
University research has a legacy of doing harm to Indigenous communities. However, a new collaborative project is showing how research can be done in a better and inclusive way.
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Harmful research practices have done serious damage to Indigenous communities and created distrust. The Collaborative Indigenous Research Digital Garden is one way to repair that damage.
The cost of assessment prevents some students, who self-identify as having a disability, from pursuing an assessment and diagnosis that would allow them to claim formal accommodations.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nicole Osborne
A survey of disabled students found that some university accommodations they value became more widespread in the pandemic, like flexible course deadlines.
Canada’s Latinx community is growing fast. That signals a greater need for Latinx studies at Canadian universities.
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Through the Scarborough Charter, many Canadian universities committed to fostering alternative ways of knowing. But more must be done to realize that commitment.
Overhauling approaches to student participation in university governance is one way universities can help revitalize the democracy we want.
(Pexels/Yan Krukov)
Universities should look to democratic innovations seen in society like ‘mini publics’ where citizens deliberate about critical issues in representative forums.
Involving social sector organizations in students’ experiential learning allows students to develop important skills, and this can also serve as a community engagement and capacity-building strategy.
(Pexels/Fauxels)
Internships and work-integrated learning for social sciences and humanities students can be part of how post-secondary institutions increase their capacities to contribute to social innovation.
Blended learning helps students learn to use new technologies so they can critically integrate and construct new knowledge while communicating in an increasingly digital society.
(Jopwell/Pexels)
Teaching approaches should be rooted in learning objectives or students’ experiences, and these considerations aren’t the same as whether course components are online or in-person.
Traditionally, institutions own and control certifications like degrees, but that could shift with ‘digital degrees’ and microcredentials that rely on blockchain.
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During times of stress and change, people are often advised to practice self-care by looking after themselves, yet what about the benefits of showing kindness to others?
Assistant Professor, Educational Technology, Chair in Educational Leadership in the Innovative Pedagogical Practices in Digital Contexts, Université Laval