Search

A multipartner agricultural and nutrition project was implemented in Kenya between 2015 and 2018. This study examined the impact of the international learning and research project on the emotional and civic engagement status of 43 Kenyan women farmers receiving agricultural and nutrition interventions, comparing this group to a control group. Some project women experienced higher emotional worthlessness in the short term but less worry in the long term in comparison to the control group women. Project women also had higher overall civic engagement levels after the 3-year project compared to the control group women. Our results demonstrate that experiential learning has advantages and disadvantages for overseas communities. For community benefits, research and learning projects should be a partnership with community members.

Research on faculty use of technology and online education tends to be cross-sectional, focusing on a snapshot in time. Through a secondary analysis of the annual "Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology" conducted by "Inside Higher Ed" each year from 2013 through 2019, this study investigated changes in faculty attitudes toward technology and online education over time. Specifically, the study examined and synthesized the findings from surveys related to attitudes toward online education, faculty experiences with online learning, institutional support of faculty in online learning, and faculty use of technology. Results showed a low magnitude of change over time in some areas (e.g., proportion of faculty integrating active learning strategies when converting an in-person course to a hybrid/blended course) and a large magnitude of change in other areas (e.g., proportion of faculty who believe that online courses can achieve the same learning outcomes as in-person courses). These results reveal that, prior to the widespread shift to remote and online learning that occurred in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty perceptions of technology and online learning were static in some areas and dynamic in others. This research contextualizes perceptions towards online learning prior to the pandemic and highlights a need for longitudinal studies on faculty attitudes toward technology use going forward to identify factors influencing change and sources of ongoing tension.

Digital education refers to in-person, blended, and fully online learning efforts, as well as attempts to capture a wide range of teaching and learning contexts which make use of digital technology. While digital education is pervasive in Canada, pan-Canadian data on digital education are relatively scarce. The Canadian Digital Learning Research Association/Association Canadienne de Recherche sur la Formation en Ligne conducted pan-Canadian surveys of higher education institutions (2017-2019), collecting data on the digital education landscape and publishing annual reports of its results. Previous analyses of the data have used quantitative approaches. However, the surveys also collected responses to open-ended questions. In this study, we report a systematic analysis of qualitative data exploring the digital education landscape in Canada and its changes over time. Findings shed light on the growth of digital education, the situated and multidimensional nature of digital education, the adoption of openness, quality, and rigour, and the development of alternative credentials.

The disruption that resulted from COVID-19 in 2020 impacted the ways in which higher education faculty lived and worked. Earlier literature describes how faculty members' experiences during the early months of the pandemic included emotional impacts such as stress and anxiety, with little support to manage these impacts. In this paper we report on a thematic analysis of interviews with Canadian faculty members which revealed that the sources of impacts on Canadian faculty were both the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as racial tensions. These impacts revealed themselves in both the personal and professional lives of participants. With regard to their professional role, participants reported that the additional time and care that they put towards learning new technologies, implementation of new teaching practices, support of students, and efforts to sustain their perceived obligations as a scholar carried an emotional burden. With respect to their personal lives, participants noted that emotional impacts emanated from increased caring responsibilities for family and friends, reduced in-person connections, and news reports and social media. We conclude by presenting support recommendations for individual faculty members, teaching and learning centres, and university administrators.

Integrating community-based learning (CBL) into graduate education has gained attention in higher education during the past decade because CBL allows students to inculcate professional values and ethics, situate academic knowledge and understanding in contexts, and practice academic citizenship through serving communities with disciplinary knowledge and skills. In a North American higher education context, about half of the graduate student population are international students, who have needs in several areas. However, their experiences in CBL are under-investigated and scarcely documented in existing literature and scholarship in either community-based learning or international education. Drawing on international students' experiences in a graduate program infused with CBL components in Canadian higher education, this mixed methods case study examined the impact of CBL on international students' developments in five areas: academic, sociocultural, personal, professional, and global citizenship. Through discussions on the benefit, barriers, and implications of providing CBL to international graduate students, this article offers recommendations for improved higher education policy, programs, and praxis to make CBL more inclusive and responsive to international graduate students.

As digital education at the postsecondary level continues to grow, robust professional development that prepares faculty to teach in online and blended settings is necessary. In this study, we analyzed open-ended comments from the Canadian Digital Learning Research Association's annual survey of Canadian postsecondary institutions (2017-2019) to deepen our understanding of faculty training and support for digital education as articulated by higher education institutions. We found that: (a) digital education orientation or on-boarding processes for faculty vary widely; (b) institutions employ an extensive array of professional development practices for digital education; (c) institutions report culture change, work security, and unclear expectations as challenges in providing digital education training and support; and (d) institutions articulate aspirations and hopes around professional development investments in order to build digital education capacity. These findings have significant implications for research and practice, which we describe in this article.

There is little published research that examines the supervision experience of field attachment supervisors in Kenya. In this study, we identify the challenges encountered by field supervisors during student field attachments with community organizations. Fifteen organizations that had hosted third year students from the Department of Community Resource Management and Extension (CRM&E) at Kenyatta University during their practicum attachment were sampled using purposive and convenience sampling. Data was collected using face-to-face key informant interviews with field supervisors (n = 15). Data was analyzed using NVivo10 software for qualitative analysis. Thematic analysis resulted in the identification of key themes related to clarity of learning objectives for students and the supervision challenges encountered by field supervisors during practicum. Key findings indicate that the supervisors largely lacked a clear understanding of practicum expectations and the academic preparation of students in the Community Resource Management and Extension program. The main supervision challenge is largely on orienting students to community based field work so as to enable them link theory to practice. These results can be helpful for any academic program to improve the field attachment experience of university students and the community organizations hosting the students. A better understanding of the challenges that field supervisors' encounter is fundamental to the enhancement of the practicum experience of university students since the requisite and appropriate support can be provided to the host organizations. Subsequently, the students will be more likely to optimize the intended benefits of the practicum as a result of the host organizations enhancing the quality of field-based learning.

This study aimed to develop a deeper understanding of the long-term impacts of place-rich community-based learning on university students. This study was informed by transformative learning theory, which recognizes how learning experiences that expand the learner’s worldview help develop autonomous thinking. A mixed-methods approach was used to explore the perspectives of graduates who participated in immersive community-based learning (CBL) experiences. Graduates from two programs at the University of Prince Edward Island between 2004 and 2017 completed the Civic-Minded Professional scale online. A subset of respondents were invited to participate in interviews. Students’ experiences of dissonance, transformational learning moments, reflection, and civic engagement were also assessed. Key findings include participants’ expanded and deeper appreciation for cross-cultural awareness, their more deliberate engagement with volunteer opportunities, and their emergence as advocates for the communities they worked with. Findings will be used to improve, diversify, and develop new CBL experiences for university students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]