Teaching assistants and interns are often used by instructors to review course material, mark student work and provide academic support through tutoring and meeting with students. The underlying assumption of this model is that the course assistant possesses an identical skill set to the instructor, just not on as advanced a level. What if, instead, the assistant had completely different skills than the instructor, and used them exclusively outside of the classroom? This session describes a teaching intern - a professional, recording musician, who worked with students in a Beatles course to coach and prepare song presentations. The instructor, a music historian, had no skills in this area, but wanted the students to get this important support, coaching, and instruction. By working together, the intern and instructor were able to offer the students two simultaneous "courses" that complemented and reinforced each other. The session challenges participants to seek out course experiences for their students that they alone could not provide so that learning can be greatly enhanced and expanded. Some excerpts from a final concert of the best in-class performances will demonstrate to session participants the outstanding results that accrue from establishing unique learning experiences outside the classroom.

We offered a Community Service Learning Option in our Doctor, Patient and Society course in 2005-06, which provided second year medical students the opportunity to exchange tutorial time and term projects in the regular curriculum, for volunteering in a community agency, reflection, and a final deliverable at the end of the academic year. Student-identified-learning aligned with competency areas in the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons framework where learning is less easy to achieve in a conventional medical educational setting (collaborator, communicator, manager, health advocate), and personal and professional development. Student satisfaction led to the programme developing from 20 students in 2005-6 to 90 students across the three campuses of the UBC Medical Programme by 2010. Placement of successive students over several years strengthened development of working relationships between community partners and faculty benefitting all constituents. Students now take ownership of recruiting the next student for the following year for "their" agency. Broader benefits resulting from this process are development of new skills and attitudes in faculty members involved, including tolerance of a more individualised educational format, and understanding community priorities.

Service learning can provide a catalyst for development of community partnership while providing innovative learning opportunities for students.

Can instructors use student diversity to promote out-of-classroom learning inside physical academic spaces? Welcoming participants from all disciplines, this interactive presentation demonstrates how cross-cultural communication reproduces out-of-classroom learning experiences normally unavailable inside academic spaces. This session will provide a brief overview of Cultural Diversity and Inclusive Teaching, in which Guo and Jamal (2007) examine the importance of integrating diversity into academia, stating that since "minority and international students bring their values, language, culture, and educational background to our campuses," they provide the framework for instructors to diversify how and what they teach (p.11). With Guo and Jamal's (2007) claim in mind, participants will discover how the complex identities of students provide resources that encourage a multicultural dialogue in the classroom. To reproduce this conversational environment educators will be guided through Guo and Jamal's (2007) model for culturally inclusive teaching, which encompasses student-teacher roles, classroom environment, curriculum design, as well as instruction and assessment strategies. To facilitate Guo and Jamal's (2007) model of culturally inclusive teaching, participants will engage in innovative icebreakers, short-writing exercises and small-group discussions. Through these activities, participants will learn that traditional academic spaces can become multi-culturally diverse environments that bring valuable out-of-classroom learning experiences inside the classroom.

It is important in laboratory sciences for students to arrive at the lab session prepared for the day's experiment. For instance, in CHEM 2401 (Introductory Organic Chemistry), students are required to complete pre-laboratory exercises in their lab notebook prior to each lab experiment. These exercises aim to familiarize the students with the experimental procedures, equipment, instrumentation, and theory of each experiment.

As a starting point for discussion, this workshop will describe the development, implementation, and iterations of the new CHEM 2401 online learning module (vignette, online quiz, and problem set) that was created to enable students to practice laboratory material outside the classroom prior to the experiment. The impact on student learning will be discussed in relation to collected student feedback.

What practices do you use to encourage student learning outside the classroom, whether it be pre-laboratory or post-laboratory? There will be plenty of opportunity to discuss and exchange ideas with your peers throughout the workshop.

Do we know how best to frame effective experiential learning activities within graduate professional programs? The goals of this presentation are three-fold: to present the results of research related to achievement of learning and fitness for stated professional outcomes; to explore the role of experiential learning in the various data sets analysed; and, to suggest a model that might be used in other graduate professional programs for program planning and review, with a focus on the role of experiential learning.

Both the MLIS and the Corporate Residency MBA programs at Dalhousie are recognized through international accreditation (from the ALA and the AACSB). The Standards for Accreditation of professional programs typically address six key factors: Planning, Curriculum, Students, Faculty, Administration & Finance, and Physical Facilities & Resources. Experiential learning is supported through all of these factors. This presentation includes analysis of continuous research (by term, by year; from students, faculty and employers) regarding the effectiveness of the two programs to meet professional needs, and the special role of experiential learning in achieving this. The speakers address issues related to beneficial practices in tracking trends in achievement of learning outcomes, and suggest, through the research findings, models for successful experiential learning.

Experiential learning brings learning out of the classroom into the "real" world providing the opportunity for students to attain, develop, and practice skill sets that can be capitalized on when they leave university. What kinds of experiential learning opportunities exist in our own university environment? The Atlantic Centre of Excellence for Women's Health (ACEWH) is an example of such an opportunity. Since 1999, undergraduates and graduates have had significant opportunities to develop research skills in addition to transferable professional workplace skills. This roundtable session will present the perspectives of both current and past students and staff. Opportunities such as those offered by ACEWH provide value added to both students and the university at the same time that ACEWH benefits from the resources provided by the students. The goal of this session is to explore ways to ensure that these opportunities do not get lost. How can they be marketed both within the university as well as to potential students? Are we, the university, taking advantage of these opportunities or are we a hidden asset? Do we know what other opportunities exist in the university community? Opening up dialogue on this topic will provide the chance to begin addressing these questions.

As the result of an investigation into the area of student self-authorship*, questions begin to arise as to whether academic institutions are best positioned to promote self-authorship through traditional curriculum and teaching practices. Should the opportunity to engage students in self-authorship be seen as a priority, both within the curricular and co-curricular experience, or are the ingrained patterns of a traditional university education too much of a barrier?

This will be examined through active discussion of self-authorship and its role on campus and by "charting" the role of student self-authorship as a function of student and faculty engagement and the relationship of the curricular and co-curricular experience. Discussions will include examples of research on the first year experience, the role of learning communities, a plotted faculty mentor program, and the role of problem-based learning inside and outside of the classroom. Attendees will be encouraged to actively share their thoughts and experiences with promoting self-authorship- whether they called it that or not.

*Self-Authorship can be defined as an internal authority, or the capacity to define one's beliefs, identity, and social relations—Baxter Magolda 2001; Kegan 1994.

At the University of Calgary several new programs have converged into an organized and institution wide initiative to promote and recognize the learning that students engage in outside of the classroom. In 2008 the University created a central office dedicated to community service learning and civic engagement to support both curricular and co-curricular service learning on campus. In 2009 the university launched a co-curricular record program, a new student leadership program and a grant program to support curricular service learning. In this presentation we will discuss how these and other programs have come together to enhance outside the classroom learning, leadership and service opportunities for students, to promote such opportunities across a large university with many faculties and disciplines, to support the learning component of co-curricular service and to provide official university recognition for all forms of outside the classroom learning. Student learning in the above programs is enhanced through the use of "learning plans" (in co-curricular CSL), mentorship for first year students (in the Emerging Leaders Program), and engaging classroom environments (through service-learning).This presentation will discuss the steps we have taken and are taking to build this culture of support and recognition for learning outside the classroom.

Your co-worker routinely makes anti-Semitic comments. A student uses the N-word in casual conversation. Your supervisor ribs you about your Italian surname, asking if you're in the mafia. Your classmate insults something by saying, "That's so gay."

And you stand there, in silence, thinking, "What can I say in response to that?" Or you laugh along, uncomfortably. Or, frustrated or angry, you walk away without saying anything, thinking later, "I should have said something."

Learn how to Speak UP! and respond to everyday bigotry. This interactive presentation is designed to have participants understand the impact of everyday bigotry and develop ways to respond to such incidents whether they happen inside or outside the classroom. One of the first steps to celebrating diversity is to end the everyday incidents of bigotry, ignorance and hatred that can happen so often on our campus. Let's create learning opportunities for students, staff and faculty in order to make Dalhousie a more accepting and inclusive place to be!

I will report on a survey now under way among undergraduate students at Dalhousie. The study's focus is students' use of social networking sites (SNSs) outside of formal course communications channels to achieve academic goals. We also know that students are making use of SNSs to communicate about academic work (ECAR study, 2008), but how and to what degree? This study surveys students' communication and collaboration with SNSs, and the factors that determine the scope of these uses.

The objective of this interactive session, about the Gallery Hop assignment, is to demonstrate how a 60-90 minute community-based, comparative exercise can provide an introduction to course concepts, get students in touch with the realities of the arts and culture sector, and build bridges to the local community. More specifically, the assignment requires students to use their powers of observation to compare three galleries of visual and media art on more than a dozen dimensions that distinguish them from each other and influence how they manage their art offerings for their publics. One is a university-based gallery, another is artist-led, and the third is a private gallery. The dimensions of comparison include location, programming, source(s) of funding, kind of art, and organizational structure. Virtually every student (so far) had visited at most one of the galleries prior to the assignment; therefore, pre- as well as post-assignment reflection is encouraged. Students may opt to submit their analyses as a written assignment after a discussion in class. They often reflect on it in their course learning portfolio. Improvements over the past five years have made this assignment an enjoyable and comprehensive "eye-opener" for students. The "hop" format may be applied to a variety of disciplines.

The presentation focuses on a Job shadow assignment, which students at the School of Information Management at Dalhousie University call year after year a highlight of the semester. The assignment is designed to make students move out of a familiar, "safe" world of the classroom with carefully modeled searches and mock reference interviews into the realm of real libraries with real users. When the students shadow reference librarians in one of Dalhousie libraries serving students from different schools and departments, the whole university becomes their "classroom." This step into a real work environment means entering a cognitive space in which all our learning occurs, a space that Vygotsky called a zone of proximal development. The assignment takes place during the students' first semester at the School. This timing is critical, because the students have enough knowledge and skills to apply, verify, and challenge. On the other hand, they have enough time to fine-tune their career goals and study plans. We argue that this model, including a brief "diving" into students' future professional settings (either through observation and/or limited participation) and a reflection on the experience, may be beneficial not only in Library and Information Science schools but within different curricula.

This year (2009/2010) Acadia University piloted Connections: Acadia's First Year Option with 20 students registered in Arts, Science and Business programs. Connections students completed three trans-disciplinary courses each term in addition to two courses required for their majors. The three Connections courses each had two instructors from different disciplines co-teaching, emphasizing the different approaches that are taken by disciplines studying similar issues. For instance, a course on Diversity was co-taught by a biologist and a sociologist. Each course was taught in a 4-week block and connections were emphasized between blocks. Students completed a community engagement project each term. Grades were assigned based on a Write! (a paper) Act! (complete a community-based project) Speak! (present) model and students received one grade for all 3 Connections courses each term. During this session, data from student surveys, including items from the National Survey of Student Engagement, focus groups, faculty interviews, and students' academic records will be presented. Data indicate that Connections has proven to be an engaging model of first year studies for students and faculty alike. Given the focus of the conference, discussion will focus on how to engage first-year students in community-based projects.

Service learning (SL) is an innovative approach to higher education teaching where students work with community members to address local issues and where academically rigorous assignments are designed to link those experiences back to specific classroom learning outcomes. The literature on SL points to a range of benefits for students: an enhanced understanding of course concepts, the development of leadership skills, an increased understanding of community issues, and a reinforced sense of social responsibility.

This teaching approach has gained tremendous momentum in Canada in the past few years as faculty appreciate its potential to engage students in an enriched learning opportunity. While the merits of SL may be easy to appreciate, it remains a complicated pedagogy to implement, and many faculty members are unsure where to start. One of the particular complexities of SL arises from the fact that community partners must be seen as equal participants: they must benefit from the experience to the same extent as the students and faculty members, and they must be seen as co-educators in the experience.

Participants will discuss the following questions: What does an authentic SL partnership look like? What do community agencies see as the challenges and benefits of participating in SL? How can faculty members work to build authentic partnerships? Where should faculty start?

Students are participating in increasing numbers in both formally established and self-arranged international service-learning (ISL) opportunities. Such opportunities are often set in vulnerable communities in resource poor settings. There is growing concern around the ethical implications of ISL. Student motivations may range from a positive desire to respond to inequities and to promote social justice, as well as, and sometimes primarily to practice technical or clinical skills, enhance a résumé, opportunities for travel, and to experience different cultures in far-away and exotic places. Some initiatives take an exclusively charity based approach rather than enabling an equal and collaborative partnership with communities for developing capacity to address the root causes of systemic social inequity and disparity. A short stint followed by sightseeing and cultural excursions can be seen as nothing more than voluntourism (used pejoratively). Vulnerable communities then become a means to the students' ends instead of serving first the community identified needs and empowerment interests. The undesirable impact (the potential for harm and exploitation) of ISL, or local service-learning initiatives for that matter, has not been adequately considered. I will begin with a formal presentation on how we are addressing these issues at the University of British Columbia, followed by an interactive discussion.

In the Killam Library's main floor Learning Commons, there is a large security door that stands as entry to the Atlantic Research Data Centre (ARDC). To many, this door appears both mysterious and intimidating.

The ARDC is a 10-workstation computer lab that houses many of Statistics Canada's social datasets and provides data access to university faculty and graduate students. Users of the ARDC obtain experiential learning from applying their knowledge of research methods to the challenges of working with Statistics Canada's data. These data are unique because of their complex survey design methods, survey weights, and variance estimation techniques. As research methods classes and textbooks rarely cover these topics, our users learn to analyze these complex data through trial-and-error, secondary research and consultation with on-site Statistics Canada staff. Graduate students who use the ARDC say that they appreciate working with these micro-data, as it provides them with employable skills in conducting quantitative analysis after graduation.

We would like to have the opportunity to describe our centre in more detail in a presentation to the participants of your conference–in hopes of removing both the mystery of what we do, and the intimidation that our required security measures often create.

The Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University provides integrated learning opportunities that enable students to become knowledgeable in different fields, willing to cross boundaries, and skilled in making appropriate decisions. This panel presentation will focus on two case studies that highlight the Faculty's commitment to integrating real-world learning with students' classroom experience. The School of Information Management course "Records Management" requires students to work with real clients in local communities to create effective records-management portfolios. Students are responsible for forming their own teams, choosing their clients, and negotiating the nature and scope of these portfolios.

Management Without Borders is a required class for all masters students from the five schools/programs in the Faculty and is designed to promote interdisciplinary and multi-perspective thinking in the management context. Through client-based projects, interdisciplinary groups of students undertake real-world projects for public, private, and non-governmental organizations, which is a key feature of the class. Students present poster presentations to their clients and interested attendees in an end-of-term conference. This presentation will focus on the structure, benefits, and challenges of client-based projects, as well as lessons learned.

Educating students in post secondary career paths through a relaxed and non-conventional way of learning—this concept is utilized by a program called Techsploration.

The Techsploration program is a three-fold career/education exploration model, which introduces high school students to women in fields where traditionally women have been under represented. Techsploration extends its 'role models' to 25 participating schools and approximately 15 guest schools by outreaching to grade 9-12 students and talking to them in small groups. Through a transformative method, students can participate in open forum dialogue, job shadowing, and hands on learning through the use of equipment and devices. The main objective is to allow students to gain an understanding of how they can pursue the same career path.

To inspire students, particularly females, to engage in career paths of which they were not familiar with, the ultimate objective of Techsploration is to achieve a gender balance in the workforce; specifically in science, trade, and technology. This outreach method has the potential to grow in size and should be adopted by all post secondary institutions in Nova Scotia.

What happens when students design curriculum for other students? What kinds of cognitive skills do they need to deploy, and what do they learn beyond the specific content of the course? In the winter term of 2010, students in a 4th year seminar that explores ghosts from a cultural perspective, worked collaboratively to design curriculum to be used in a second year ‘ghost' course. The course consisted of substantial discussion in class, as well as work outside of class through the use of wikis (on-line collaborative documents). This presentation will examine data obtained through questionnaires, structured notes that the students took throughout the course, and interviews, to determine the impact of this approach on the nature and quality of their educational experience. In particular, the presenters will assess whether the students' work on curriculum design facilitated the development of an understanding of their own learning experience, as well as their understanding of the nature of educational processes, and of collaboration and communication. The session will be interactive: the audience will be challenged to reflect with the presenters on the question of how the research findings are best interpreted, and they will be asked to consider the direction of further research.

The College of Sustainability at Dalhousie is a new interfaculty unit responding to global concern regarding environmental, economic, and social issues and the achievement of sustainable prosperity. The first college of its kind in Canada it uses a unique curriculum approach and pedagogical model to offer students the opportunity to meaningfully engage with professors, peers, and groups on campus and in the community. Recognizing the importance of student community engagement, the College is promoting learning outside the classroom in its courses and new certificate program initiative. Students enrolled in courses such as SUST/ENVS 3502 Environmental Problem Solving: The Campus as a Living Laboratory engage with their campus community in solving sustainability issues while in SUST 4000: Environment, Sustainability, and Society—Capstone, students collaborate with community partners on a service-learning project. Collaborating with the Faculty of Management, the College is working towards establishing a Certificate in Responsible Leadership where students would participate in "Leadership Weekends", engage in community service- learning, complete ‘leadership' courses, and reflect upon skills gained through service- and academic-learning. These courses and certificate program seek to contribute to the student learning experience by allowing students to gain leadership skills and encourage them to take sustainable action in their communities.

This presentation will highlight best practices and lessons learned from six years of global health education programming. Grounded in notions of social responsibility and keen to explore new cultures, students in the Faculties of Medicine, Health Professions and Dentistry are increasingly engaging in global health education placements in under-resourced communities, predominantly in the Global South. The International Health Office is responsible for supporting the development of students' professional and personal learning objectives in global health throughout their studies. The Global Health Education Program has developed a learning model of preparation, information-sharing, interprofessional opportunities, course work, clinical observation/engagement, self-reflection and follow-up that offers a continuum of learning for students. The primary aim of the Global Health Education Program is to offer a foundation of practical skills, relevant insights, and reflective tools that can support an individual's growing interest in global health throughout his or her career.

Learning outside the classroom is an excellent strategy for leveraging time and allowing flexibility in terms of overall student success. For this session, participants will be introduced to wikis. Why and how to use wikis, including the pedagogical benefits, will be explored. As wikis are usually asynchronous tools, this work is completed outside of class time. However, wikis can enrich the classroom environment and overall learning dramatically. This session will include the experiences of two faculty members who have used wikis in their classrooms. If time permits, participants will work in small groups to develop an outline of a wiki project for a class.

Considerable learning can occur through involvement in extra-curricular activities. Research indicates that involvement in extra-curricular activities is not only an important factor in students' persistence, but also has positive implications for students' academic learning and career development. Academic competitions are one type of extra-curricular activity used in a wider variety of disciplines. Examples include computer programming competitions, MBA games, Math league, and linguistic competitions. The involvement of faculty members as coaches for these competitions incorporates another advantage: increased student-faculty interaction.

This session will begin with an overview of related pedagogical studies followed by a case study from the computing science program at Saint Mary's University, which is the combination of a high school programming competition and a varsity computer programming team. We will explore how this extra-curricular activity got started, how it has evolved over a span of twelve years, as well as its challenges and triumphs including participation in the ‘Super Bowl' of computer programming. We will consider, from both the faculty and student perspectives, the opportunities it presented for learning and meaningful student-faculty interaction, as well as the resultant enhanced academic experience and personal satisfaction for those involved. Participants will be challenged to think about how to foster and support similar extra-curricular activities in their own contexts.

Mentorship is a nurturing process, which provides the opportunity for more experienced coach to directly share their professional knowledge and expertise with others who are less experienced. A mentor is someone who helps individuals reach their potential by guiding and encouraging them to excel and grow. Although this session will focus on student coaches the skills required are transferable to other situations. Mentorship is considered an increasingly important element of coach education. Coaches must continually strive to become more effective and an essential element of improving coaching practice is the process of self-reflection. Within the practical coaching situation, it can be used as a tool for the coach, enabling them to learn by relating theory to actual coaching environments (Crisfield, 1998) and the mentor coach can be instrumental in helping to develop the skills of self-reflection. The group will be broken down into small groups of 4-5 and given one example of a mentorship program to discuss and evaluate. The group will then present their ideas of required skills for a successful mentoring program. The goal is for the group to come to consensus as to what skills are required in a successful mentorship program.