Engaging Graduate Students in Educational Development Activities in Canadian Teaching and Learning Centres: A Report
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2021-12
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Abstract
While engaging with students as partners has been a valuable focus in higher education teaching and learning practice and scholarship for the past decade (Mercer-Mapstone et al., 2017), expanding the students-as partners model (Healey, Flint, & Harrington, 2014) to educational development (ED) activities is a relatively new area of focus (Felten et al., 2019; Marquis, Power, & Yin, 2019).
The authors, a graduate student currently researching the experiences of international Teaching Assistants and an educational developer who designed and led a teaching development certificate program for graduate students, embarked on a research project to learn more about how Canadian teaching and learning centres (TLCs) are partnering with graduate students to design or co-design, lead or co-lead educational development activities. While the engagement of students in ED activities has been recognized as one of the pathways to introduce people to a career in educational development (Linder et al., 2011; McDonald & Stockley, 2008; Meizlish & Wright, 2007), there is little research documenting current practices in Canada.
We began this research by conducting an environmental scan of TLC websites (Arshad & Grant, 2020). This report builds on those initial findings and focuses on the results of a Canadawide survey, funded in part by a grant from the Educational Developers Caucus of Canada. Through the survey, we found that the engagement of students as partners in educational development is more widespread and has a longer history than was apparent through our website scan.
Our aim is that sharing our findings will a) help TLCs across Canada learn more about how other centres are partnering with graduate students, b) inspire new ways to partner with graduate students in ED, and c) spark further research about different approaches and lived experiences, particularly those of graduate students, in these programs.
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Arshad, M.A., & Grant, K.A. (2021). Engaging Graduate Students in Educational Development Activities in Canadian Teaching and Learning Centres: A Report.