CLIF Abstracts 2017-18

A Living Learning Community (LLC) is a group of students from the same faculty living together in a dedicated area of residence. LLCs give students the opportunity to share both their academic and non-academic experiences in a supportive environment that easies their transition into university and builds a sense of belonging. Although the University of Windsor does have some residence-themed LLCs, there is no LLC in residence that brings together students majoring in science programs. Hence, this proposed project is focused on creating and piloting a new and engaging Science LLC in residence to strengthen the connections between science students to each other and the Faculty of Science. The Science LLC will have a leading Resident Assistant, as well as a peer support group, who will guide our new science students throughout their first year. Students in this community will have the opportunity to 1) participate in science-based, high-impact activities, workshops and information sessions, 2) better connect and engage with their Science professors, and 3) gain academic support from their student peers. A set of student-centered group discussions will also be organized so students can share their experiences and provide feedback that will aid in the further development and management of the new Science LLC. The outcome of this project will provide significant contributions towards creating a learning environment that supports the personal growth and wellness of Science students living in residence, strengthens their collaborative and interactive skills, and enriches their overall first-year experience.

The Master of Medical Biotechnology (MMB), a highly-successful professional graduate program run through the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, is entering a period of rejuvenation and expansion: student enrollment has increased (now necessitating two “intakes” of ~50 students per academic year), the course sequence has been optimized, and new lab space will become available following completion of the Science and Research Innovation Facility this Spring. The sole experiential course in the MMB program, Biotechnology Laboratory (59-677), will transition after August 2018 from its current exclusively Summer-based delivery, to a Fall-Winter double-offering, also becoming the capstone course to be taken by all students in their final semester of the program. The changing format and location of Biotechnology Laboratory affords us a unique opportunity- but with a relatively small time window- to heavily revamp this capstone course before its relaunch in Fall 2019.
All current laboratory protocols and assessments in the single-semester MMB Biotechnology Laboratory course were selected and condensed from an existing two-semester undergraduate Biotechnology Laboratory course (59-380), without regard to the vastly different learning outcomes needed for MMB professional graduate students (versus undergraduates). This project specifically addresses this issue, developing lab content directly relevant to professions in the medical biotechnology industry. Funding through CLIF will facilitate work with senior undergraduate students over 2018-2019 year to develop and evaluate new lab protocols, effectively replacing one-third of the existing course content. Special emphasis will be placed on creating industry-relevant experiences and authentic assessments, bringing a contemporary graduate-oriented component to the course.

For more than a decade, I have been compiling a list of teaching case studies that are relevant for sport management education. These case studies cover a wide variety of functional content areas, industry segments, and global contexts that are appropriate for a broad range of courses within the sport management field. I have found this list of cases to be useful for my own teaching practice, and have received numerous inquiries from colleagues at the University of Windsor and abroad to share the contents of my list. With over 1,000 disciplinary-specific cases at our disposal, derived from dozens of published sources and case clearinghouses, one of the greatest challenges facing today’s sport management educators is locating cases that are relevant for their specific pedagogical needs in a timely fashion. In order to address these problems, I am working with a computer science professor at the University of Regina to establish the 'Sport Management Case Studies Repository,' an online database that supports keyword searching and topical browsing of the published case studies in my list. A web interface will enable broad access and distribution to sport management educators from around the world. This repository will provide a unified and curated collection of information drawn from disparate sources, presented in a format that is easily accessible, that will support sport management educators around the world to integrate case pedagogy into their teaching.

From 1971 to present, Canada, through various parliamentary acts, declared a solid commitment to the principle of multiculturalism. Since that time there has been a great deal of confusion around culture and its effect on the delivery and receipt of health care. Discourses about terms such as cultural awareness, cultural competence, cultural sensitivity and now cultural safety, have muddied the waters, creating diverse challenges and expectations among nurses, nursing students, and nurse educators. Both the College of Nurses on Ontario (2009) and the Registered Nurses Association (2007) published practice guidelines on cultural competency, but neither address the central concept of cultural safety. To address this shortcoming, the Healthcare Digital Storytelling Project will seek ethno-culturally diverse university students to share their stories about encounters within our health care system around which we will create a pilot online learning module for nursing students to teach them about Cultural Safety within health care contexts. Impactful first-hand stories told through the use of Digital Storytelling will be used to help students authentically explore how cultural differences can influence one's perceptions of health care received. The Faculty of Nursing professors will develop and implement the Healthcare Digital Storytelling Project as an online learning module for nursing students. They will assess students' satisfaction with the program and ensure that learning has taken place using a Pretest-Post-test design followed by a sixth-month follow-up retest to assess knowledge retention, awareness of, and reported practice patterns around cultural safety in health care.

We will explore the best practices and institutional fit for implementing a science-wide, first-year seminar program at the University of Windsor. This is part of a strategy to implement more High-Impact Practices in Science. As part of this project, we will carry out a literature scan to determine the current practices for implementation of a first-year seminar. By engaging with the Science Program Development committee, we will develop a format design for an implementation at Windsor that takes into account institutional and curricular fit as well as the fit of the learning outcomes within faculty-wide learning goals. Part of the design will be to determine resources for scale-up of the initiative so that a large proportion of first year students will be able to take this seminar. Partnering with the USci Network, we will run pilot workshops to test our format design with volunteer students and faculty.
This project is important because many of the larger Canadian universities have started offering first-year seminar courses, and use them as evidence of high-impact learning both in their recruiting and reporting efforts. In the Faculty of Science, we offer several high-impact learning experiences for upper-year students, but we would like to formalize a high-impact offering in the first-year as a tool for retention as well as effective documentation.