Researching Teaching and Student Outcomes in Postsecondary Education: An Introduction

Research Summary:

New edition of research guide helps practitioners assess teaching and learning

The second edition of Researching Teaching and Student Outcomes in Postsecondary Education: An Introduction is now available online.  The guide is produced by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario.

All sections have been updated, with additional content on student recruitment and ethics. Endorsed by the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services (CACUSS), the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education (CSSHE), the free, 54-page guide is available in English and French on the HEQCO ,  CSSHE and CACUSS websites. As an introduction to research methods and techniques that encourage innovation and evaluation of teaching practices, the guide provides an overview of research protocols including methodology, sampling, ethics, data collection and analysis, interpretation, reporting and dissemination.

The University of Toronto’s Centre for Teaching Support and Innovation and the McMaster Institute for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning (MIIETL) provided feedback for the new edition, which includes a tribute to the late Susan Vajoczki for her leadership in the creation of the first edition. An associate professor of geography and geology  at McMaster, she was also director of the university’s Centre for Leadership in Learning (now MIIETL), which published a research guide in 2011 that informed the development of the HEQCO guide.  In 2013, she was posthumously named one of Ontario’s most outstanding university teachers by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations.

Lead author of Researching Teaching and Student Outcomes in Postsecondary Education: An Introduction is Susan Elgie, in collaboration with Ruth Childs, Nancy E. Fenton, Betty Ann Levy, Valerie Lopes, Karen Szala-Meneok and Richard Dominic Wiggers.