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PurposeIn this paper, the challenging and thorny issue of assessing graduate attributes (GAs) is addressed. An interdisciplinary team at The University of Alberta ----developed a formative model of assessment centered on students and instructor interaction with course content.Design/methodology/approachThe paper starts by laying the theoretical groundwork on which this novel GA assessment tool is based, that is, competency-based education, assessment theory and GA assessment. It follows with a description of the online assessment tool for GAs that was developed in the course of this project.FindingsThe online assessment tool for GAs targets three types of stakeholders: (1) students, who self-assess in terms of GAs, (2) instructors, who use the tool to define the extent to which each GA should be inculcated in their course and (3) administrators, who receive aggregate reports based on the data gathered by the system for high-level analysis and decision-making. Collected data by students and professors advance formative assessment of these transversal skills and assist administration in ensuring the GAs are addressed in academic programs. Graduate attributes assessment program (GAAP) is also a space for students to build a personal portfolio that would be beneficial to highlight their skills for potential employers.Research limitations/implicationsThis research has strong implications for the universities, since it can help institutions, academics and students achieve better results in their practices. This is done by demonstrating strong links between theory and practice. Although this tool has only been used within the university setting by students, instructors and administrators (for self-, course and teaching and program improvement), it could increase its social and practical impact by involving potential employers and increase our understanding of student employability. Moreover, because the tool collects data on a continuous basis, it lends itself to many possible applications in educational data mining,Practical implicationsThe GAAP can be used and adapted to various educational contexts. The plugin can be added to any Learning Management System (LMS), and students can have access to their data and results throughout their education.Social implicationsThe GAAP allows institutions to provide a longitudinal formative assessment of students’ graduate attributes acquisition. It provides solid and valid evidence of students’ progress in a way that would advance society and citizenship.Originality/valueTo date, the GAAP is the first online interactive platform that has been developed to longitudinally assess the acquisition of GAs during a complete academic cycle/cohort. It provides a unique space where students and instructors interact with assessment scales and with concrete data for a complete university experience profile.

In this chapter, the authors propose an overview on the use of learning analytics (LA) and educational data mining (EDM) in addressing issues related to its uses and applications in higher education. They aim to provide meaningful and substantial answers to how both LA and EDM can advance higher education from a large scale, big data educational research perspective. They present various tasks and applications that already exist in the field of EDM and LA in higher education. They categorize them based on their purposes, their uses, and their impact on various stakeholders. They conclude the chapter by critically analyzing various forecasts regarding the impact that EDM will have on future educational setting, especially in light of the current situation that shifted education worldwide into some form of eLearning models. They also discuss and raise issues regarding fundamentals consideration on ethics and privacy in using EDM and LA in higher education.

This article explores how a focus on ‘student centeredness’ can lead to ‘innovation’ and how innovation can enhance student centeredness. Putting students at the centre of all considerations can unleash their creative and innovative potential. And recent innovations have made it easier to make students the focal point of service delivery. After a description of what we understand under these two guiding concepts, a case study is presented in which an AI-powered Student Virtual Assistant was developed at York University in Toronto, Canada. All steps of the product creation, including envisioning, designing, prototyping, and evaluating are described, as well as the following steps involving maintenance and expansion.

This paper explores a possible and desirable future of technology-enhanced teaching and learning in higher education. It takes a normative lens that defines what ‘ought to be,’ based on considerations grounded in the philosophy of education. In other words, its aim is more prescriptive than predictive. It will suggest we embrace technology only to the extent that it brings us closer to realizing the pedagogical ideals of educability, personalization, and active, experiential learning. This paper examines how these principles prove helpful in prioritizing the technologies worthy of being adopted and how technology can contribute in a meaningful way on all three fronts. In addition to the principles of pedagogical innovation, practical considerations for realizing the future state will be identified. In this context, it is argued that the envisioned future of technology-enhanced teaching and learning in higher education can come to fruition only when education becomes collaborative and course creation builds incrementally on previous educational iterations, made possible through institutional support and collaborative design.

Educational Data Mining (EDM) is the field of using data mining techniques in educational environments. There exist various methods and applications in EDM which can follow both applied research objectives such as improving and enhancing learning quality, as well as pure research objectives, which tend to improve our understanding of the learning process. In this study we have studied various tasks and applications existing in the field of EDM and categorized them based on their purposes. We have compared our study with other existing surveys about EDM and reported a taxonomy of task.

Cet article défend la thèse selon laquelle le tournant conservateur de Harper doit être compris moins en termes hayékiens que comme un désir de redéfinir la « philosophie publique » du Canada dans le sens du toryisme canadien. Les conservateurs chercheraient à repenser ce qu’on appelle communément les « valeurs canadiennes » et l’identité canadienne, que les Libéraux ont pu façonner à leur guise au cours d’un demi-siècle, et de réorienter l’identité nationale vers des principes conservateurs qui prévalaient dans un passé pré-libéral au Canada, avec pour point d’ancrage le monarchisme et le militarisme. This article defends the idea that Harper’s conservative turn should be understood less in Hayekian terms than as an attempt to redefine Canada’s “public philosophy” in keeping with Canadian Toryism. Conservatives are seeking to revisit what is commonly referred to as “Canadian values” and Canadian identity, which the Liberals have been able to shape as they pleased over half a century. The goal is to reorient national identity towards conservative principles that prevailed in a pre-Liberal Canada, based on monarchism and militarism.

Ce texte cherche à introduire de deux façons la question des frontières culturelles au Canada : géographiquement et historiquement. Selon la première, il s’agit de mettre en relief une influence culturelle déterminante pour le Canada qui, bien que provenant de l’extérieur, définit en propre le Canada d’aujourd’hui. Selon la seconde, il s’agit de remettre en question des moments charnières ou des moments frontières qu’on réaffirme continuellement dans le cadre d’une histoire publique du Canada. Une telle période charnière est l’adoption en 1971 de la politique canadienne sur le multiculturalisme. Selon la narration qui prévaut, le Canada d’avant 1971 était, dans sa perception de soi, essentiellement britannique et française. Après, on adopta une solution made in Canada en se tournant vers une société multiculturelle. Le présent texte propose un déplacement de ce moment-frontière afin de conférer une importance plus grande à la période d’entre-deux-guerres (1918-1939) relativement au développement culturel du Canada. Y sera étudiée en particulier l’influence d’A. Zimmern, J. Buchan et E. Montpetit dans la promotion d’un idéal multiculturel pour le Canada. This text introduces in two ways the question of cultural borders in Canada: geographically and historically. In the former, significant cultural influences on Canada are highlighted. Although foreign in origin, they inherently define Canada today. In the latter, key moments – one could say “border” moments that define a before and an after – that are continuously reaffirmed in Canadian public history are questioned. One such defining moment is Canada’s 1971 Multiculturalism Policy. According to the prevailing narrative, pre-1971 Canada was essentially, in its self-perception, British and French. Post-1971, a “made in Canada” solution was adopted by turning toward a multicultural society. This text proposes to push back this border-moment in order to attach a greater importance to the interwar period (1918-1939) with regard to Canada’s cultural development. In particular, A. Zimmern, J. Buchan and E. Montpetit’s influence on the promotion of a multicultural ideal for Canada will be studied.

In this article, I explore the subject of Switzerland's nationhood in light of a theoretical approach based on normative principles. This approach has the advantage of avoiding the definitional conundrum arising from the plurality of purely descriptive (often historical) definitions of nationhood. Instead, in accordance with certain normative inferences concerning what the nation ought to be given the principles of democracy, law and inclusion, it portrays the nation as a political entity having the largest possible group of individuals instituting a space of public discussion within a state. In this normative definition, attention should be drawn to the concept of ‘space of public discussion’, which, to my mind, entails the existence of a common public language used by its citizens – something notably different from either the multilingualism of the elite or a common parliamentary language. Proceeding in this way, I will defend the idea that Switzerland is a multinational state on the basis that cantons may be considered small nations, although certain pressures on the boundaries of the cantonal public spaces tending to expand them to the whole of the linguistic region must also be taken into consideration.

This article aims to make sense of the apparent incoherencies in Michael Ignatieff's theory of nationalism by first considering how he interprets his mentor's theory of nationalism. Ignatieff was greatly influenced by Isaiah Berlin in his writings on liberalism and nationalism, to the point of mirroring some of his inconsistencies. The resulting discrepancies in the two men's theories arise from a certain tension between liberalism and nationalism that has induced them both to define the latter in terms reflecting the integrity of the former. Understanding Ignatieff's interpretation of Berlin's ideas makes apparent that, in his own work, he draws on Berlin's use of empathy as a method, and on his rejection of violence as a criterion, in distinguishing between fundamental types of nationalism.

Dans un contexte de mondialisation, plusieurs penseurs ont cru nécessaire de repenser nos pratiques morales, tant chez les individus que chez les groupes. On défend alors l’idée d’une morale qui s’étendrait par-delà la nation, de même que l’illégitimité de toute division de l’espace moral en « communautés morales ». Selon l’auteur, une moralité transnationale n’implique cependant pas forcément la dissolution des espaces moraux que sont les nations. Afin d’explorer cette problématique, les pensées de Peter Singer, de Robert Goodin et de Thomas Pogge sur cette question seront analysées et confrontées l’une à l’autre. Une approche contextualiste sera privilégiée, qui conclura à un devoir cosmopolite de faire respecter les devoirs nationaux., In a context of globalization, many — individuals and groups alike — have thought it necessary to rethink our ethical practices. In this context, what is defended is the idea of an ethical openness that extends beyond our nation as well as the illegitimacy of any division of moral space into moral communities. However, according to the author, a transnational morality does not necessarily imply that moral spaces (i.e. nations) must be dissolved. In order to explore these issues, the positions of Peter Singer, Robert Goodin and Thomas Pogge will be analyzed and compared. A contextualist approach will be favored, which will lead to the idea of a cosmopolitan duty to enforce national duties.

This article seeks to bring to the fore the intrinsic link between constitutional democracy and the civic nation, relying on Jurgen Habermas's theory of democracy. This theoretical framework will serve as the basis for a communicative understanding of civic nationalism, underscoring the notable role played by language. Attention will be given to the normative dimension that allows for the legitimisation of national divisions of a civic space bound by universal rights. The prime motivation behind this article is thus political-philosophical, although empirical examples, drawn particularly from the French revolutionary discourse, will be brought to bear. And since a civic nation construed in communicative terms has necessary linguistic implications, cases of multilingual and multinational states will be examined.

Dans les debats sur la nation et le nationalisme, la Suisse est souvent presentee comme un cas d'exception par les tenants d'un nationalisme subjectiviste, surtout lorsqu'il s'agit de prendre position contre une conception linguistique de la nation. Nous aimerions quant a nous contribuer a la these du fondement linguistique de la nation en refutant le caractere exceptionnel de la Suisse. Selon nous, la Suisse est soumise au meme titre a la logique communicationnelle – et donc linguistique – ous-tendant la nation moderne que le sont les grandes nations. Dans ce contexte, la Suisse constituerait un Etat “multinational“ respectant la logique communicationnelle propre aux Etats democratiques. Notre approche se voudra theorique et historique.

RésuméLes aspects polémiques et rhétoriques de la réhabilitation des préjugés chez Gadamer font non settlement violence à la pensée de Descartes, mais obscurcissent le sens véritable de la théorie gadamérienne sur ce point. Pour en arriver à une compréhension plus adéquate de la position de Gadamer, il faut rendre explicites différents éléments qui renvoient à des motifs de la Kehre heideggérienne et mettre l'accent sur le rôle de principes herméneutiques développés par Gadamer, tels la tradition et le langage. On peut alors arguer que la pomme de discorde entre Descartes et Gadamer ne se trouvepas dans la théorie des préjugés, lew position sur cette question étant plus complémentaire qu'opposée, mais dans la théorie de la subjectivité.

Graduate attributes (GAs) have become a necessary framework of reference for the 21 st century competency-based model of higher education. However, the issue of evaluating and assessing GAs still remains unchartered territory. In this article, we present a criteria-based method of assessment that allows for an institution-wide comparison of the various acquisition levels of different GAs. In order to achieve this, we first propose an understanding of GAs as knowledge, skills and attitude constructs, which directly impacts the operational development of GA scales. Second, after briefly discussing some shortcomings in current assessment/evaluation tests for GAs, we present the many features of the criteria-based model for assessing GAs, such as the importance of the proper interpretation of GAs as can-do statements, a theory-based development of the abstract categories that make up a scale for GA assessment and concrete examples of GA scales based on these abstract theories.

This text views the case of Quebec nationalism from the vantage point of the debate between Habermas and Taylor on this question. This case highlights the problem of articulating the sphere of civic rights, whose claims are universalist, to that of culture and collective identity, whose essence is particularist. It seems that the multinational context of the Quebec-Canada confrontation needs to be approached in a manner that cannot be fulfilled by a strict proceduralism and a purely formal universalism. The Habermasian position will thus be criticized for these reasons, while Taylor's stance, which contemplates the integration of material considerations in a dialogue open to ideological alterity, will be taken into account so as to make up for the shortcomings of the former.

A travers la perspective d'une epistemologie hermeneutique, il est possible d'etablir la pertinence du mythe pour le discours scientifique. Pour ce faire, l'article entreprend d'une part de caracteriser le mythe proprement platonicien, lequel se prete tout particulierement a un traitement hermeneutique- epistemologique, et d'autre part de retracer une filiation qui mene au mythe scientifique contemporain. La psychanalyse, parce qu'elle met particulierement en relief la dyade epistemologique, c'est-a-dire la co-originarite de l'aspect heuristico-hermeneutique et de la rigueur falsificatrice dans la science, servira de modele.

Though Habermas explicitly rejected psychoanalysis as a model for a critical theory of society, it seems to have continued to shape his thought beyond the publication of Knowledge and Human Interests. The conceptual framework underlying his more recent social theory (Theory of Communicative Action,) would also be indebted to the psychoanalytical paradigm. This thesis is developed through the idea of the pathology of society, which represents the cornerstone of a specifically critical theory of society. In his demonstration, the author establishes a structural relationship between psychical and social organization, and between individual pathology and the diagnostic of modern societies.

One of the most widely accepted tenets in postmetaphysical normative ethics is the principle of dialogue as a foundational authority. Conceptually, the dialogical model is valuable, in that it allows a binding yet mutable underpinning of moral discourse. However, dialogue has its limits. The main drawback lies in the fact that deliberations can be very lengthy, perhaps even infinite. In other words, deliberation does not always lend itself to action. From the vantage point of applied ethics, in this case, bioethics and forensic ethics, this is not a minor shortcoming since these disciplines are concerned with situations involving some sort of urgency. Aporia is not an option in most cases. It is thus pressing to consider the moment of decision inherent to moral judgement and action that puts an end to dialogue. From the realm of abstract norm justification, one must move on to the contextualist discourse of application. To be rational, however, decision must avoid authoritativeness or any type of arbitrariness. What, then, could serve as a reasonable criteria for the rational application of norms? What aspects should be envisaged for a sound reflective decision? This paper will attempt to sketch some answers that could contribute to the question of the necessary contextual application of accepted norms by paying heed to, systemizing and sometimes finding fault in the arguments given by judges who had to settle cases touching sensitive moral issues.

Cet article cherche à défendre la thèse selon laquelle il ne conviendrait pas de percevoir le patriotisme constitutionnel — et sa variante canadienne, le patriotisme de la Charte — comme la négation et le substitut potentiel du nationalisme, puisqu’il s’arrime non pas aux fonctions de la nation, mais bien à celles de l’État. Patriotisme constitutionnel et nationalisme agiraient sur des plans différents, suivant une logique différente. Au mieux, le patriotisme de la Charte peut, selon cette perspective, se « superposer » au nationalisme, québécois par exemple, comblant ainsi des besoins distincts. Il s’agit donc de clarifier le rapport théorique entre nationalisme et patriotisme constitutionnel en s’appuyant sur l’exemple canadien., This article defends the theory by which it is inappropriate to view constitutional patriotism—and its Canadian variant, Charter patriotism—as a negation of, and potential substitute for nationalism, because constitutional patriotism does not concern the functions of the nation, but rather those of the State. Constitutional patriotism and nationalism act on different levels and follow a different logic. At best, Charter patriotism, according to this perspective, can "superimpose" itself to nationalism, for example Quebecois nationalism, thus fulfilling distinct needs. The purpose of this article is to clarify the theoretic link between nationalism and constitutional patriotism, using the Canadian example.

Cet article cherche a determiner la place qui revient a l'hermeneutique a l'interieur du discours epistemologique. La discussion se fera sur la base de la realite de la psychanalyse. La these principale soutient que cette derniere pourrait etre elevee au rang de paradigme, de ce qu'elle met en evidence comme nulle autre science individuelle la dyade epistemologique, c'est-a-dire le double principe de la science qui suppose un fond hermeneutique et une alienation methodique. La psychanalyse met particulierement en relief la productivite ou la fecondite propre a la dimension heuristique de l'hermeneutique