For-credit LS courses are still a rare breed in Canada (sadly!). In this session we will survey two for-credit learning skill courses offered in two different post-secondary settings (U of Guelph and Camosun College) to two different student populations.

First, we will describe the courses themselves, who they serve and an overview of the content they cover – including a wee bit about their theoretical underpinnings.  Secondly, we will discuss the somewhat convoluted process we both navigated to bring these courses into existence. Lastly, we will share what we’ve learned in the process and explore future directions.

Learning specialists, especially those of us who are not affiliated with health, wellness or access services at our institutions, work outside of a box when we write and store case notes of student meetings. Although professional policies and legislation direct case note practices within health care settings, learning specialists in Canada have only very limited guidelines for recording and storing confidential interactions with students. In this interactive workshop, the presenters will share relevant legislation and research related to best practices in writing and storing case notes. As a group, we will co-create a draft of best practices for case notes with the ultimate aim of publishing these guidelines on the LSAC website. Come ready to share your practices and create a preliminary set of guidelines to support our profession.

There are many challenges and opportunities in the recruitment, selection, training, and professional development of student leaders (or student staff) in peer-led academic support programs (SI, SL, PASS, FSGs). Over the years, peer led program staff will train and support hundreds of peer leaders, who in turn, will have an impact on the persistence and success of many thousands of students. This session will explore some foundational steps to building your team, in ways that enrich the institution, the program, the students, and the leaders themselves.

In the session, experienced SI/SL/PASS Supervisors from two Canadian universities will facilitate discussion of the challenges and opportunities for building a robust peer-led student support team. The focus will be on a creating, nurturing, and sustaining that team, based on our conviction that the foundation of a strong academic support program is a strong and capable team of peer leaders.  Those with experience in peer-led academic support, as well as those who might be new to the role—or indeed, any one interested—are all welcome to participate and to share their wisdom and their challenges.

Most post-secondary institutions make use of both a student portal for college-level communication and a learning management system (LMS) for subject-specific resources. Durham College (DC) students access essential information and resources through MyDC and DC Connect.

Student Academic Learning Services (SALS), the learning centre at DC, leverages MyDC and DC Connect to provide a wide variety of interactive supports, available to all our students, including academic integrity, learning strategies, academic writing, LMS navigation, and subject-specific content.

This session will outline how SALS uses MyDC to connect with and prepare incoming students with key foundational supports. We will also provide an overview of the academic support units in the LMS and share best practices and lessons learned for those interested in implementing similar approaches to supporting student success. Finally, we will discuss how the practices can be used to extend your own reach and support more students.

First Year Experience programs aim to provide students new to the university community with transition support, community and resource connection, and the development of learning and life skills. While many FYE programs exist as independent for-credit courses or pre-university courses, Saint Mary’s University’s First Year Experience resource, SMU Spark, has been directly integrated into first-year courses and developed with our particular community in mind to provide meaningful support to students.

SMU Spark has been collaboratively developed with input from faculty, staff, and students across the university, prioritizing community belonging, relevance to students, EDIA, and UDI. This interdepartmental intervention is uniting faculty and staff across the institution to prioritize student success and wellbeing, developing a culture of support and care within the community of practice.

For the pilot of the resource, we explored the effectiveness between two different approaches to FYE programming, comparing SMU Spark with a generic approach previously used at SMU. In this session, we present SMU Spark and the results of our comparative research, discuss successes and challenges in the development of the program, and explore next steps.

I wish someone had facilitated my understanding of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) at the level of heart-knowledge before I began incorporating it into my teaching. The practical applications and context of UDL were missing and despite my investing a lot of time and effort, the needs of students were not being met at the level of my expectations. Once I augmented my definition of context, communication with students and the benefits of UDL flourished.

The goal of this session is to raise awareness of and appreciation for expectations of the assumed elements for success when connecting UDL with technology. Examples from various software applications used in the Academy, will illuminate the important role of the educator. Understanding the interface between teaching and technology will have a significant impact on designing learning adventures in the AI and Quantum Computing environments.

In the winter of 2023, Deena launched #LearnThat. Born out of frustration with what isn’t usually allowed to “count” as a learning strategy, deep distaste for the so-called expertise rampant on social media platforms like Instagram, a punk attitude, and a desire to create something beautiful, heartfelt, and helpful, #LearnThat emerged into being. Over the next year or two (or more), Deena has set out to interview hundreds of folks–all ages, all lived experiences–posing the question, “what was the hardest thing you ever had to learn, and how did you learn that?” Ever compelled by the “how” of how learners learn, Deena wants to share this messy but full-hearted project, and invite participants to (1) co-design their own messy projects, and (2) answer the #LearnThat question.

As learning professionals, we are often guided by the insights of our educator colleagues as we develop strategies to support students. We work within and across departments to detect and navigate gaps, to fill needs, procure equipment, and develop training practices. What would be different if we prioritized student voices?

This facilitated workshop begins with a presentation of four student-identified domains for educator practice: develop an atmosphere of safety and respect, facilitate connectedness, provide equitable access to academic success, and recognize the whole person. Next, we will share insights from learners as these domains are related to accessibility and learning practices. While many of the insights shared emerge from dialogue with international students, we acknowledge that these students’ experiences are often “canaries in the coalmine” (Ryan & Carroll, 2005) that reflect the needs of many other learners. We take the position that a truly accessible institution embraces these domains. The student-centered taxonomy also uniquely highlights the need for holistic engagement with our learners, broadening our considerations beyond what might traditionally be considered “academic support” and widening our concept of accessible learning.

Finally, we will move into an interactive time of generating applications for our personal and collective practices. We will consider how the taxonomy prompts us to shift our current actions, how we might more effectively advocate for students within our institutions, and how we might more effectively learn from our students.

[This Recording is missing about 15 minutes at the beginning] PAW (Procrastination Avoidance Week, later Procrastination Awareness Week) emerged during the COVID lockdown in early 2021 as a way to leverage the necessity of offering virtual programming by connecting Learning Specialists and students from across the country.  Started by three professionals with no budget and very little time or technology, we were surprised by the enthusiastic embrace of the LSAC community, and delighted by the way PAW brought our professional community together as much as it connected students from institutions across Canada.  We were even more surprised – and stressed out – when our colleagues and student participants started talking about making PAW an annual event.  Thanks to LSAC’s generous sponsorship and an expanded organizing committee, PAW has recently completed its third iteration.  Members of the organizing committee will discuss the evolution of PAW and the student experience with it.  We will take questions and comments, and will seek feedback and suggestions from session participants.

[This recording is missing about 15 minutes at the beginning] Are you involved in an SI session for a first or second year course? Do you supervise or mentor SI leaders who are in second year? If yes, then this workshop is for you. Learn about the unique challenges that students in second year of university face and get equipped with the facts on how to better support students facing these difficulties. In this interactive workshop, we will explore solutions to the Sophomore Slump as it relates to first and second year SI attendees. We will discuss the especially important role that SI has to play in supporting students with the Sophomore Slump.

The recording was lost midway through this session – sorry!!] Each year we as learning specialists meet students who need support with exam preparation. These appointments are routine and can start to feel stale for us. Sometimes we deliver Exam Prep workshops which help some of our students, but unfortunately do not benefit everyone. How can we improve our support to struggling students who need us? I think we can collectively share ideas and come up with excellent ways (maybe some that no one else has ever thought of) to approach this problem. In the workshop we will look at exam prep through seven lenses. Then we will look at some common scenarios that students experience and brainstorm how to help. Our resulting worksheets will be shared with our entire group. If two heads are better than one, imagine what a whole room full of professionals can come up with!

Stay on Track is a staff-supported and peer-led academic support program at McGill University that offers three distinct tracks for undergraduate students to improve their academic skills. As program coordinators, we are conducting a study to understand the effectiveness of the program by evaluating the impact on students’ learning behaviors and study strategies through their participation in one or more of the program’s tracks. By using learning assessment tests and surveys to evaluate the growth of participants’ academic skills during the program, we hypothesize that students participating in multiple tracks improve in more areas than participants in just one track. With this study, we hope to better understand the program’s strengths and weaknesses to use this information to improve the program for current and future McGill students.  Overall, the benefits are expected to create growth for the program, improved marketing strategies, and more accessible data-sharing opportunities with other institutions.

This presentation will introduce the preliminary data of the study’s findings and will offer an example of how a research study provides a stronger understanding of a student academic support program’s impact and further opportunity for development.

Using storytelling as a form for research communications has long been recognized as an incredibly engaging and effective tool by career researchers and communicators. As humans we are inherently attracted to narrative structure, and we retain information longer and more accurately when it is delivered through story. In this way, storytelling in the realm of research communications unites audience members from different situational contexts; bringing with them experience, knowledge, and expertise in their lives, together into trans-disciplinary spaces to learn, engage, and partake in knowledge creation, and knowledge dissemination.

Equipping graduate students who are embarking on research with tools, strategies, and templates for research storytelling can help them to develop their own voices as authors, while providing them with low barrier opportunities for exploration in story type, structure, and mode of delivery. The University of Calgary, Faculty of Graduate Studies’ Workshop for Research Storytelling allows graduate students to engage with peer created content while collaboratively reflecting and exploring possibilities for their own topics. With this proposed session I hope to share our graduate student directed resources with other practitioners to spark conversation, collaboration, and an opportunity to share best practices and other helpful resources.