Kozanitis, A., & Nenciovici, L. (2023). Effect of active learning versus traditional lecturing on

the learning achievement of college students in humanities and social sciences: a meta-analysis. Higher Education, 86(6), 1377–1394. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00977-8

Thinking of traditional modes of lecturing in the Humanities and Social Sciences can often conjure mental images of the ‘sage on a stage’ framework, where a professor at the front of a large lecture hall verbally delivers material to a group of students that passively take notes. However, recent studies have shown that lecture delivery that prioritizes active learning methods are much more effective in increasing student engagement, knowledge retention, and creating a positive learning experience. The problem? The majority of these studies trace the impact of active learning on STEM courses. Kozanitis and Nenciovici, however, have undertaken the first meta-analysis of the impact of active learning on Humanities and Social Sciences courses.

What did the researchers do and find?

Kozanitis and Nenciovici’s meta-analysis looked at 104 papers, which collected data from 15,896 students. The goal of this work was to provide instructors with sound scientific research-based evidence in order to choose student-centric teaching methods that support student learning. They were building on the previous work of Freeman et al. (2014) which was a meta-analysis of the impact of active learning on STEM courses. The result of Kozanitis and Nenciovici’s meta-analysis is that courses who used active learning methods resulted in higher test scores, regardless of assessment type, group size, and course level, which is in line with Freeman et al.’s findings in STEM courses.

Through the study, Kozanitis and Nenciovici found that four variables had significant effects on student learning: course subject matter, assessment type, class or group size, and course level (Kozanitis & Nenciovici, 2023, p. 1390). They found that eight of the twelve active learning modes studied (“problem-based, clickers, flipped classroom, peer-based, computer-based, writing, quizzing, experiential” (p. 1388) resulted in higher assessment scores. This doesn’t mean that the other four modes, “project-based, case study, role-play, and combination,” are ineffective, but rather have insufficient evidence to support their effectiveness in Humanities and Social Sciences classrooms. Active learning in the Humanities and Social Sciences classroom resulted in higher levels of student engagement, increased time spent on tasks and the opportunity for teachers to maintain higher quality personal interactions with their students, tailor instruction to their ability levels and interests, and better monitor students’ progress.

Their recommendation? Faculties should seriously consider switching passive to active instruction, and institutions and future policy making should encourage the wide-spread adoption of active learning in the Humanities and Social Sciences, not just STEM fields.

How might you use this research in your teaching?

If you are an instructor in the Humanities or Social Sciences, here are some things to consider as you think about active learning’s place in your classroom. Kozanitis and Nenciovici’s evidence supports active learning as a beneficial learning mode that will help students retain knowledge and practice concepts as they are being taught. Instructors can harness the potential of active learning when designing their courses

They also share a non-exhaustive list of research-supported active learning assessment methods . These assessments were proved valuable to student’s learning in the meta-analysis and helped students achieve higher test results (see Table 4 in the article). An Active Learning course will benefit the students, as supported by the literature, but perhaps instructors can work their way up to designing a wholly active course, instead working to first add active learning activities or assessment methods into existing courses

If you have been considering trying to implement active learning in a Humanities or Social Sciences course, perhaps this article will be the final push you need to encourage you to try something new. And if you need more tools on implementing active learning in your classroom, check out the MacPherson Institute’s learning catalogue module on active learning.

Works Cited

Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., &

Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: PNAS, 111(23), 8410–8415. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319030111.

Park, A. S., Bahia, J., & Bing, A. (2024). Racialized and Colonial Experiences of Graduate Teaching Assistants: Oppression, Meaning and Transformation. Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 15(3), 4. https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotlrcacea.2024.3.17213

As we enter Black History Month, we share a summary of research by Park et al. (2024), examining how institutional whiteness and coloniality shape the experiences of 37 Black, Indigenous, or people of colour (BIPOC) domestic graduate student TAs at a Canadian University. Participants report microaggressions, disrespect, and exclusion from students, supervising instructors, and administrators. Yet TAing also emerges as a site of resistance, offering opportunities to foster critical thinking, affirm student identities, and model inclusive practices.

What did the researchers do and find?

As a part of a larger project on Black, Indigenous, or people of colour (BIPOC) graduate student experiences as teachers and learners, Park et al. (2024) conducted 37 semi-structured interviews with BIPOC domestic graduate student TAs from a Canadian post-secondary institution. These students were enrolled in various programs and departments throughout the university, and many participants had been a TA in multiple courses. The study examined how institutional whiteness and coloniality shape these TA’s experiences.

Through thorough thematic coding of interview transcripts, the researchers found that their participants had experienced racism in every facet of their role as teaching assistants, from students (disrespect, challenges to authority, microaggressions, and exposure to racist discourse), difficulties with TA supervisors (being unheard, discriminatory discipline, political alienation), and administrative racism (insensitivity and exclusion).

Despite these experiences, the graduate TAs also described enjoyment in certain aspects of their jobs, such as their ability to mentor students. They saw the role as a place for meaning and transformation, both transmitting their knowledge to students, and being a space for sparking discussion and critical thinking about race and racial identity. Despite the complexity of TA experiences, many described wanting to contribute to a post-secondary experience that is better than the one they received.

How might you use this research in your teaching?

Park et al. (2024) acknowledge the vital role that TAs play in post-secondary institutions. Therefore, supporting them in a holistic manner should include addressing the racism that they experience. Their research is important to understand how instructors can support TAs in a meaningful way. To do this, the TA participants made some recommendations to improve the experiences of BIPOC graduate students, including:

• Proactively checking-in with TAs and their wellbeing when course content is likely to affect BIPOC TAs
• Ensure consistent enforcement of regulations (or more regulation in general) in the TA supervisor-TA relationship
• Cultivating an environment that values and respects TAs

Based on the experiences that TAs described, other suggestions for supervising instructors to support BIPOC TAs may include:

• Create clear guidelines for student behaviour and enforce consequences for hate speech within the classroom
• Establish clear guidelines for grade disputes that allow for a respectful exchange (e.g. implementing a 24 hour “cool down” period before disputes are allowed)
• Engage in critical reflection on their own identities and how both their own positionality, and the positionalities that are showing up in their curriculum may impact BIPOC students and TAs.
• Seek out training related to equity, diversity, and inclusion, and decolonization such as the MacPherson Institute’s Inclusive Teaching and Learning Resources

See all Spotlight on SOTL articles.

I have written the final exam.

That sentence still makes me exhale with relief. Not because I enrolled in a first-year computer science course to prove anything, but because there were moments where I wasn’t sure I would make it to the end. I asked myself many times: Why did I do this? For two simple reasons: I wanted to keep a promise to my son, and I believe deeply in the power of learning something new. But back in September, the thought of documenting this experience left me feeling very anxious—especially because I didn’t know if I would succeed.

It’s uncomfortable to admit that, but it goes against what I believe about learning. Learning is relational. The struggle is part of the work. And a triumph isn’t necessarily what makes a good learning journey.

So instead of going with my gut reaction, I made the conscious effort to share what it felt like in real time: the wins, the confusion, the persistence, the parts that didn’t fit neatly into competence. Because learning is not a solitary performance. And struggle in learning is not a personal flaw. It is innately human.

The Exam

The final exam was what you might expect from a large first-year course: multiple-choice scantron exam invigilated in a huge room under intense scrutiny. The same thing I experienced as an undergraduate student thirty years ago, and never again since. It was fast. It was detailed. And it was unforgiving of my shaky foundation. It required that I recognize ideas under pressure, trace logic carefully, notice edge cases, remember definitions precisely, and keep going even when my confidence wobbled. And wobbled it did.

I left the exam with that familiar mix of emotions: relief that it was done, dread about what I might have missed, and pride that I showed up anyway. After the exam, Trevor and I met at the Phoenix and reviewed as many questions as we could recall. I remember being relieved when he said he got a similar answer as I got. And I remember beating myself up on questions we discussed that I realized just an hour too late that I had made silly mistakes.

Relief from having that behind us, we were into the 10-day wait to find out our results.

What this experience is forcing me to ask of higher education

Let me be very clear: this blog series is not a commentary of any one instructor or any one course. I’ve experienced thoughtful decisions and genuine care in this course, including collaborative midterm rounds that begin to recognize learning as something we do with others, much dedication to providing learning advice, many opportunities for students to work through low-pressure exercises, and heaps of encouragement to keep students engaged.

However, even thoughtfully designed courses live inside larger cultures that shape how students experience rigour, success, and failure. From where I sit, we have some bigger questions to wrestle with as an education sector:

• Who are we designing our courses for? Who is our “ideal” student? When we design an undergraduate course, who are we imagining as our learners? A full-time student with strong preparation in certain subjects, no caregiving responsibilities, good mental health, and infinite evenings free? Who falls outside that picture, and what story do they tell themselves when they fall outside that imagined norm?
• What do we think rigour is for? Is rigour about sorting and filtering, or about deepening understanding? Are we using difficult assessments to identify and nurture potential, or to gatekeep those who arrive with less background or less experience with and tolerance for repeated failure?
• How does feedback shape belonging and motivation? We say we want students to be motivated, but then we design systems where most of the feedback they receive is about what they got wrong. People naturally move toward what they feel they’re doing well. Thoughtful, specific, positive feedback doesn’t weaken standards; it grows the discipline by inviting more people to see themselves in it.
• What would it look like to actually honour mistakes as learning? “Learn from your mistakes” is a familiar piece of advice from educators. But our grading structures often make it impossible to recover from early errors. If learning after a mistake is richer and more durable — and it often is — why is our system set up to punish it?
• What kinds of knowledge and demonstration do we value? Could we imagine rigorous courses that also make room for collaboration, explanation in plain language, story, and multiple ways of showing understanding? The collaborative midterm rounds I experienced hint at this, and I can’t help but wonder: What if collaboration was a core design principle?

Behind all of this is a simple, uncomfortable realization: We can build courses that are constructively aligned, intellectually defensible, and still quietly telling many students: “This place wasn’t built with you in mind.” As someone who helps lead teaching and learning at this university, I can’t un-see that, especially after experiencing the effects of it first-hand.

Where I land (for now)

I have learned a new vocabulary, a new way of thinking, and a basic ability to write Haskell. My learning experience has:

• reintroduced me to the emotional cost of trying and “failing” in public, or at least feeling like I am
• reminded me how much courage it takes to simply show up to class when you’re not sure you belong
• deepened my respect for students who keep going, even when the system doesn’t bend toward them
• and sharpened my commitment to centring student voice, especially the voices of those who are struggling or coming from non-traditional backgrounds

Students hold a tremendous amount of practical wisdom about our courses, because they are the ones inside them, trying to survive and grow as beginners. We could be far more intentional about inviting that wisdom into how we design and teach.

Ultimately, I want us to create learning environments where challenge is real, belonging is actively cultivated, and learning is relational and collaborative. Because if higher education is only a place where the already-prepared, already-confident, already-resilient can thrive, then we need to be more honest with ourselves about how public, accessible, and transformative we truly are.

Did I do it?

In the end, I passed the exam and finished the course with an A-. That was far better than I thought I would in the hardest weeks and a good reminder that it isn’t about the letter grade. It’s about what it took to get there. I am so proud of myself for what I learned on this journey, all the parts I can’t un-see now: how easily capable people can start to believe they’re not when the learning environment makes struggle feel like a signal to exit.

My hope is simple: we continue to work at building learning experiences where challenge and belonging are not in competition, where teaching and learning are seen as relational, and where students come out feeling more confident in their learning and growth.

I am so grateful for this experience, both to have learned so much about myself and to have shared it with my son. I’m glad I kept this promise to him and I’m proud to have pushed through the challenge.

Plaisance, K. S., Logel, C., & Lok, C. (2024). Making Collaboration Work: Fostering Positive Experiences and Attitudes around Psychological Safety, Diversity, and the Value of Teamwork. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 15(3).  https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotlrcacea.2024.3.14531

Groupwork has the potential to be a transformative experience where ideas are shared and workloads are divided. When all group members are aligned towards a common goal, it can be a rewarding experience. But with diverse perspectives and differing opinions, there is also an increased potential for tension, conflict, and an imbalanced workload. One way to maximize the collaborative potential of groupwork is to build each group on a foundation of psychological safety. This idea of psychological safety as the core of positive collaborative experiences is explored by Plaisance, Logel, and Lok, three undergraduate professors from the University of Waterloo who designed an experimental, interdisciplinary course and used their findings to create a framework that can be applied to all group collaborations at the undergraduate level and beyond.

What did the researchers do and find?

Plaisance, Logel, and Lok designed INTEG 201, an interdisciplinary undergraduate course on collaborative theory and practice, teaching students about psychological safety and diversity in teams. They ran the course in Fall 2018 (n=33 students) and Fall 2019 (n=25 students), and collected data from 53 students on their student experience and knowledge production around collaborative group work and psychological safety using a pre-survey (at the beginning of the course), immediate post-survey (after he course), and long-term post-survey (four months after the course ended).

They defined psychological safety as “a measure of how safe a team is for interpersonal risk-taking” (Plaisance et al., 2024, p. 1). The concept is that if a team feels safe to share and take risks, there is more potential for team members to get creative, share diverse perspectives, and offer feedback to help the group reach their goals. Plaisance et al. understand that group work is necessary to build collaboration skills and increase knowledge production, but groups with the highest potentially for doing ‘good work’ are groups that value diverse perspectives and have a foundation of psychological safety.

Overall, students felt equipped with knowledge and tools to be successful in both their current and future group work, psychological safety was extended outside of course, they felt safe to engage in group work with strangers after having learned the tools for psychological safety from INTEG 201.

How might you use this research in your teaching?

Plaisance, Logel, and Lok outlined six suggestions for instructors to follow in order to place psychological safety at the fore of group collaborations (p.15):

• Teach students about psychological safety and its importance as a predictor of team success
• Discuss the research on the potential benefits of diversity, and how psychological safety can harness diverse perspectives
• Give students time in class to get to know each other
• Design group projects and collaborative experiences that requires students to address complex problems and/or think creatively
• Emphasize and asses the collaborative process in addition to the products of group work
• Ask students to reflect on what did and did not work in their group, and what they can do next time to improve

Using these six suggestions as guideposts, educators can provide opportunities for students to practice collaboration skills, teach them to foster positive and productive collaboration, which, as the literature shows, successful teams are the ones that value diverse perspectives and have a great degree of psychological safety.

In order to make this kind of groupwork meaningful for students, instructors can highlight the necessity for collaborative skills both now and in their futures. By showing students how to support psychological safety in their groupwork, students can take this learning to support their collaborative potential in future undergraduate course work or prepare themselves for graduate programs or the workplace.

See all Spotlight on SOTL articles.

As I’m writing this, the final exam for my first-year computer science course is a week away. I don’t know yet how this story ends. What I do know is that there have been nights where I’ve stared at my screen and thought:

“Maybe I’m just not cut out for this.”

That’s a vulnerable thing to admit when you’re serving as the Director of a teaching and learning centre, when you have spent decades studying and working in higher education, leadership, and organizational development. And yet, I’ve had marks come back low enough, and confusion that has run deep enough, that it has genuinely felt like I might not make it to end of the course. I can’t help but wonder, if I am feeling like this, what is happening to students who don’t have the same power and privileges that provide me with the protective buffers I have?

The hidden cost of rigour

We are great at saying that university is “rigorous.” What we don’t say is that rigour often comes with a cost: anxiety, shame, and quiet exit. I walked into this course thinking I understood the student experience. I’ve spent years listening to and working with students. But what I hadn’t felt in a long time was the day-to-day texture of it:

• the anxiety of not knowing if you’re on the right track
• the emotional toll of working endlessly and still coming up short
• the evaporating confidence when there’s a mismatch between “I am following this lecture” and “I can answer this exam question”
• how much courage it takes to ask for help when you already feel behind
• the quiet shame of looking around and thinking, “Is it just me?”
• the very real temptation to drop the course so you won’t have to feeling this out of place

We tend to label the students who persist as “resilient,” as if that’s something they simply brought with them. This resilience has looked more to me like daily acts of resistance against the pull of self-doubt. I have also learned that course design choices either support that resistance, or they make it harder. Our marking schemes, exam formats, pacing, and prerequisite assumptions can either soften or sharpen the edges of student anxiety, often without us even realizing.

I’ve also been reminded what it feels like to be a true beginner again: not just “a bit out of my depth,” but regularly encountering concepts, notation, and tools for which I have no prior schema. Being a true beginner can be cognitively tiring and emotionally exposing. There’s a deep humility in that and it has affirmed for me that learning is relational: not knowing is okay if we are willing to listen, to try, and to connect with and respect each other’s knowledges.

Alongside the hard parts, there have been genuine flashes of joy: the first time a piece of code finally compiled and behaved as expected; the moment a recursive definition actually started to make sense. Those small “I can do this” moments are disproportionately powerful in sustaining effort. As an educator, I’m reminded that it is not fluffy to help students notice and name what’s going well, it’s integral in keeping them engaged with difficult material.

It’s been disorienting to inhabit multiple identities at once: a first-year student who is often lost; a lifelong learner with more degrees than anyone needs; and the Director of the MacPherson Institute. If someone like me, with institutional knowledge, long experience as a learner, and relative power, hesitates to ask basic questions or feels like they don’t belong, what does that suggest about the emotional hurdle for a student in their very first semester? These questions have sharpened my sense of how much courage it takes simply to show up and admit confusion.

Learning with my son, with AI, and against the grain

For most of my academic life, my strengths served me well: I can read deeply, write analytically, and connect conceptual ideas. This course has demanded a different kind of thinking and learning, writing and debugging code, tracing recursive definitions, drawing out tree diagrams and reasoning through edge cases, memorizing heavily detailed properties for multiple-choice midterms and exams. It has felt, at times, like being dropped back into the first years of my B.Sc., except now I also am working full-time, studying in an MBA part-time, transitioning to a new home in the empty-nesting phase of life, and working with a brain that can no longer pull off all-nighters.

The most interesting part is that I’m not doing this alone. I’m doing it with my son. Trevor’s approach is radically different from mine: “Just try it. See what the compiler says. If it doesn’t work, find a way to fix it.” Where I want theory, pre-reading, and carefully constructed understanding before I touch the keyboard, he is willing to dive in, break things, and learn from the debris. He searches the web, tests, iterates. It’s messy and fast and, frankly, brilliant. Watching him has made something click for me: students are already experts in surviving our courses. They are constantly hacking together strategies to make things work under conditions we educators only partially see or understand. Seeing this reminds me how important it is to view students as learning co-designers. They have the best “on the ground” tactics using wide breadths of technologies, and they really are well-positioned to be not just recipients of teaching, but co-constructors of learning strategies.

I’m not just learning alongside my son. I’m learning with him. I’m learning from him. His trial-and-error approach has shifted how I think about learning strategies, and how often our high-stakes assessments don’t make enough space for this kind of exploratory, iterative learning.

Like many students, I’ve also experimented with tools like AI in this course, especially to help coach me through prerequisite calculus (which is rusty for me after thirty years). AI has helped me to identify where my understanding is thin, to get explanations in different words, and even to debug code I had written that just would not work. I believe that the work I’ve submitted is indeed my own, a product of my own struggles, informed by the added learning and lessons from this “coach on the side.” Sometimes that coaching has been genuinely helpful. Sometimes it is misaligned with the course’s framing or the instructor’s expectations, or outright wrong. Being able to discern the difference is fundamental to its use, but beginners do not often know enough to recognize its limits in a particular area. It has made me more aware of how students are triangulating between lectures, peers, online resources, and AI. It also makes it important for instructors to be explicit about where those tools are helpful, where they are risky, and how to use them critically.

I have felt an enormous range of emotions while taking this course. I have had the opportunity to experiment with new technologies, learn new concepts, experience new perspectives and generally take myself out of my comfort zone. While I may never become an expert computer scientist, I know this experience has been an important exercise in gaining a unique student perspective at a moment of both great disruption and deep introspection in the teaching and learning sector.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I am an Associate professor at W Booth School. I am the chair of Software Engineering Technology program and also the endowed chair of the Engineering/Technology Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program. I teach courses in math, programming, and more recently in business management. I have always been excited about providing transformational learning education for my students. The environment within the Booth School provided the right impetus for me to engage in SoTL to continuously refine my classroom pedagogical strategies to provide an optimal learning environment.

Can you describe your SoTL research focus?

I recognize that the learning needs of students vary and so my quest is to provide a flexible and empathetic learning environment for all my students. At the core of this is McMaster’s EDI framework that I incorporate in my teaching as well as leadership roles. My pedagogical work helps students learn at a time and place of their choosing, providing them with the most flexible education environment that is suited for their learning style. I also actively engage in designing and developing forward looking curriculum with modern pedagogical schema for an optimal delivery of topics, helping students imbibe an array of skills and competencies for immediate deployment at workplace. I work with my colleagues within and outside McMaster to develop these approaches.

What are some key insights or outcomes from your research?

In my experience, students want to learn and experience the essence of the discipline. Under my leadership, the Software Engineering Technology is offered as a fully online undergraduate program, foundations of which were laid by my predecessor. In addressing student anxiety levels associated with assessments, a ubiquitous problem, I conceived the Residency Model of education that is now offered by all courses in this program. This model emphasizes learning, discovery, innovation, and exploration. In this pioneering approach at the Faculty of Engineering, grades have been completely abolished, and this has significantly deflated students’ anxiety levels with assessments, encouraging them to take more risks and explorations in their education journey. In my opinion, this is a major transformation that can significantly benefit other programs at McMaster, helping us graduate innovative minds who will lead our society.

What advice do you have for others interested in SoTL?

Being passionate about teaching and being empathetic towards students’ educational needs will naturally make you inquisitive about improving your pedagogical strategies. This is the stepping stone to SoTL. Engaging with like-minded people on campus helps. It is important to be patient and to recognize that propagating change through the system takes time.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I am excited about the launch of the reimagined version of the Masters in Engineering/ Technology Entrepreneurship and Innovation program.

If you are interested to speaking further with Sesha Srinivasan about their SoTL research, please contact them at [email protected].

Anxious Tears and Jolts of Joy

If you read my September Reflections, you’ll know that I started this computer science course with equal parts curiosity, humility, and mild terror. I even joked about needing help with how to find and open the “terminal” on my Mac! Since then, I’ve been keeping up with the lectures and tutorial activities and trying to see the logic that other people seem to just get. 

However, I have to be honest with you, I’ve shed more tears over this course than any I’ve taken in years. Not out of despair, but out of the exhaustion that comes from trying so hard and realizing I’m still coming up short.  

In the weeks leading up to the midterm, I spent hours every night taking notes, re-watching lecture videos, re-doing the tutorial activities, and practicing in Visual Studio Code. Then, I attempted the multiple-choice practice test. Despite my best efforts I failed on my first attempt. Failed badly. I scored less than 30% and landed in disbelief: somewhere between horror and laughter. How could that be—after I had dedicated so much time and effort? I was left feeling anxious and insecure, and questioning what and why I was doing this. 

The dissonance between mission and reality

The course aims to introduce students to the world of computational thinking, which is thinking that’s inspired, supported, or enabled by computing. The professor believes every university student should learn computational thinking, and I would agree that these skills are important in our increasingly digital world.   

The lectures and assignments are theoretically rich, the topics are interesting and thought-provoking, and the course provides great conceptual overviews focusing on overarching questions each week. But the midterm practice questions went much deeper into tricky logic puzzles, syntax details, historical facts, and complex mathematical equations. As a true beginner in computer science, this dissonance was a jarring experience.  

Still, I persist

Maybe it’s stubbornness. Maybe it’s that strange alchemy of learning that turns humility (or humiliation?) into motivation. After that disastrous first attempt on the practice test, I dove into learning even more actively, drawing out truth tables, tracing recursive functions, testing out various codes, and making many mistakes. 

Every so often, the logic would finally click, like when the recursion unraveled in my brain or when the function returned exactly what I hoped for, and it was euphoric. Those small wins were like jolts of electricity that reminded me why I love learning in the first place.   

So how did the midterm go?

After many hours of late night and weekend preparation, I arrived at the exam room. The lobby buzzed with anxious energy as I sat waiting with my son—his confidence a stark contrast to my nervousness. I have so much respect and admiration for how quickly he learns and how much his own ways of thinking align with the foundations of computational thinking.  

The doors opened, the TAs allowed us to enter, and we found seats with the exam question packages and scantron sheets laid out. They announced we could start and the time flew by. I worked through the problems just as I had during my practice and I was even impressed with my ability to work through some of them with confidence. Two hours later, I left the exam room with some relief and a renewed belief in myself that I am indeed learning (slowly) how to think like a computer scientist. A small win worth celebrating at the Phoenix with my son after the test!  

Remembering what it feels like to be a beginner

As an educational developer, I have spent much of my professional career supporting instructors in designing academic programs, courses, assessments, and learning experiences. But this course has flipped the mirror on me. I’ve been living the very experience I ask faculty to consider: the vulnerability of not yet knowing, the challenge that exists in the dissonance of expectations and reality, the emotional roller coaster of learning at the edge of your competence. 

It has been uncomfortable. Sometimes brutally so. But it has also been profoundly illuminating. I’m re-learning empathy for every student who has ever sat in a classroom feeling lost, terrified to be called on, or convinced they’re not smart enough. In this course, despite my past success in completing six other academic degrees and diplomas, I am experiencing all these same anxieties that my first-year peers are experiencing. 

While I see opportunity for this course to spark more curiosity and less anxiety, there’s one thing I can’t deny: I am learning about computer science, about recursion, about logic, and, about myself. 

The joy in the struggle

About a week after the midterm exam, the results were posted, and I did in fact pass! Despite my anxieties and insecurity, I managed to push through the setbacks and prevail.  

It reminded me that there’s a moment in every steep learning curve when the frustration starts to feel familiar, even friendly. When you realize the struggle is the point and that it is the proof that you’re stretching into new territory. That’s where I am now. Somewhere between tears and triumph. Between anxious doubt and fleeting joy. 

Computational thinking may be about algorithms and logic, but for me, this journey is also about persistence, humility, and remembering what it means to be a beginner again. 

And that, as it turns out, has been the most valuable lesson of all. 

Hall, W., & Liva, S. (2022). Falling through the Cracks: Graduate Students’ Experiences of Mentoring Absence. Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 13(1), n1.  https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotlrcacea.2022.1.10957

Graduate students have academic, personal, and professional stressors that significantly impact their mental health. Despite the impact of mentorship on the graduate experience, there is insufficient research on the effects of poor mentorship. The researchers in this article conducted a secondary analysis of fifty-four students and identified the way in which graduate students are currently falling through the cracks when it comes to mentorship.

What did the researchers do and find?

Effective mentorship can help with graduate student success, retention, and motivation to complete, whereas poor mentorship can contribute to the isolating and stressful nature of graduate studies. Through a secondary analysis of fifty-four graduate students in the setting of focus groups, the researchers identified a major theme of graduate students falling through the cracks when it comes to mentorship on four connected fronts.

• First, students described falling through the cracks due to missing mentorship—when mentors lacked commitment and care, students described feeling a violation of their expectations.
• Second, students described falling through the cracks when it came to struggles related to finding mentorship that was a strong fit. Students struggled to identify their own needs and advocate for themselves while seeking mentorship.
• Third, students described falling through the cracks due to university structures that undermine mentorship—there is a lack of administrative attention and university-led initiatives to oversee and improve mentorship.
• Finally, students identified how all of these factors damaged mentees, including adverse outcomes regarding mental health, productivity, and motivation.

How might you use this research in your teaching?

This research illustrates the vulnerable position that graduate students occupy in relation to mentors. In particular, when university-wide structures seek out little oversight and improvement, students can feel reluctant to report poor mentorship or seek help. Since students can struggle to express their needs and might be unsure where to turn for help, those in mentorship roles should aim to support their students on multiple fronts. The researchers suggest that students would benefit from centralized training or workshops about how to respond to bullying or neglect from faculty members and peers. Further, establishing some way for students to pass along anonymous feedback or evaluation on their mentors could help create a way to oversee and improve mentorship without fear on the part of graduate students. Finally, mentors should take advantage of the network of mental health resources and supports at McMaster, especially through the Student Wellness Centre (SWC) https://wellness.mcmaster.ca/resources/. 

Tell us a bit about yourself

I am an Assistant Professor (Teaching-Track) in the Information Systems Area of the DeGroote School of Business. I teach project management as well as introduction to information systems courses, mostly at the graduate level.

I am also the Director of the MSc eHealth program, which is an interdisciplinary program offered through the Faculties of Business, Health Sciences, and Engineering. It is in this role that I identified a SoTL research topic that is a great fit for me.

Can you describe your SoTL research focus?

As the Director of an interdisciplinary program, I have experienced firsthand the uniqueness of delivering this type of program. Since they exist outside of or across traditional institutional boundaries (such as Faculties or Departments), interdisciplinary programs have many inherent complexities. My research aims to understand the nature of these complexities, how different programs approach them, and how institutions can support them. The goal is to discover best practices or suggestions for the support and evolution of these programs at McMaster, thereby improving student learning and experience where there is opportunity. I have been fortunate to collaborate with a diverse group of colleagues on this project. Members are directors or leaders in interdisciplinary programs from multiple Faculties, with consultation from members in the Vice-Provost Teaching & Learning office.

What are some key insights or outcomes from your research?

Although I knew at the outset of this project that interdisciplinary programs have some similar challenges, I was surprised to learn just how unique programs and circumstances are. We did discover some groupings of program characteristics that tend to exist together, but there are a wide range of programs and structures within our institution. This implies that the support and nurturing of these unique programs will be most effective when tailored appropriately. We hope that sharing our findings with the university community will encourage consideration of the uniqueness of interdisciplinary programs in decision-making for the benefit of all involved. For me, my initial challenge was finding a research topic that was really exciting and important to me. It took some time for that to happen in my case. Fortunately, by getting involved in working groups that seemed important to me (around interdisciplinary programs and learning), the research idea arose naturally from my activities. This was also a great way to encounter likeminded collaborators. I suggest keeping an open mind and getting involved in activities that ignite your curiosity and passion, and hopefully things will fall into place.

What advice do you have for others interested in SoTL?

For me, my initial challenge was finding a research topic that was really exciting and important to me. It took some time for that to happen in my case. Fortunately, by getting involved in working groups that seemed important to me (around interdisciplinary programs and learning), the research idea arose naturally from my activities. This was also a great way to encounter likeminded collaborators. I suggest keeping an open mind and getting involved in activities that ignite your curiosity and passion, and hopefully things will fall into place.

Anything else you’d like to share?

We were fortunate to be invited to present this topic at the Society for Teaching & Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) 2025 conference earlier this year. We also have a manuscript approaching completion for journal publication and are working on plans to communicate our findings within McMaster.

If you are interested to speaking further with Nicole Wagner about their SoTL research, please contact them at [email protected]