This article investigates how introducing new activities to the practice of academic development can influence and challenge both the academic developers and the Centres for Teaching and Learning (CTL). By applying Wenger's (1998) Communities of Practice, (part of) the practice of the academic developers is conceptualised as exercising collegial…

This article presents the results of evaluating a dataset collected with the Community of inquiry (CoI) survey (Arbaugh, The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning 9:1-21, 2008) using Rasch psychometric techniques to evaluate instrument functioning. Data were collected over a two-year period yielding a sample of 704…

There has been a revived interest Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Notions emanating from his philosophy concerning the human person and that human beings together create and sustain phenomena through social practice speaks of a relational ontology that has relevance for contemporary education. This article argues that such ontology needs to be…

Universities invest in teaching academies to reward outstanding teachers. Few studies have been published about the impact of teaching academies on teaching communities. The aim of this study was to see who excellent academic teachers spoke to when they discussed teaching and learning, and what kind of community a Teachers' Academy established in…

In this article we report our research into the concerns and other matters of significance for members of instructional design teams. Specifically we studied how members of a design team depicted the quality of their own motives while participating in team pursuits. This is a type of self-evaluation known as drawing distinctions of worth. Our…

While molecular visualization has been recognized as a threshold concept in biology education, the explicit assessment of students' visual literacy skills is rare. To facilitate the evaluation of this fundamental ability, a series of NSF-IUSE-sponsored workshops brought together a community of faculty engaged in creating instruments to assess…

Educational leaders are increasingly required to have knowledge over a wide range of topics. They are seeking ways to engage with colleagues and other educational leaders by connecting in meaningful learning and collaboration. Online communities are offering networking opportunities to educational leaders by turning social media platforms into…

Although becoming more common, research on first-year programs for college students that combine several high-impact practices (HIP) are assessed at the institutional level, but not always published in peer-reviewed journals (Andrade, 2007). Research is being conducted, albeit mostly quantitatively, regarding individual HIP (e.g., impact of…

Borup, Graham, West, Archambault, and Spring (2020) theorized that a student's level of engagement in an online course is influenced by course community support and personal community support, with both factors helping a student to achieve a level of engagement that is not possible independently. In other words, an individual student's ability to…

This dissertation examines the role that culinary entrepreneurship communities of practice, using Lave and Wenger's Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) model (Lave & Wenger, 1991), can lead to better social and economic inclusion for Middle Eastern Muslim refugee chefs in Utah. The life history approach was used to construct life…

Internationalization has become a buzzword in many US higher education circles. Despite the variations in how institutions define this concept, the common denominator seen in all definitions speaks to a simple principle: the inclusion of international perspectives to educate and promote a global sense of being for students. To limit the scope of…

Typically, beginning teachers need proper support as they transition to the classroom to be successful; they may not have the specialized skills and knowledge to teach mathematics effectively. Induction programs are designed to provide the needed support to novice teachers during their early years of teaching (Ingersoll & Strong, 2011);…

In this chapter, authors discuss university housing learning communities focused on social justice principles. Authors provide diverse approaches and resources for implementing social justice learning communities.

This paper explores experiences of becoming a "curriculum maker of community" as part of the University of Alberta's Building Peaceful Communities Summer Institute, held annually over a two-week period each July. Prompted by the experience in 2018, the author explores the ways in which curriculum can be co-composed as a community of…

An interdisciplinary Pop-Up Learning Community (PLC) allowed students from various disciplines with different levels of content knowledge to discuss their perspectives on and beliefs about climate change. The impact of this event on students' climate change beliefs was gauged by a survey from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. This…