This course examines a moving target, the interface between emerging technologies, primarily information and communication technologies, and the workplace. Drawing from various disciplinary perspectives, including education, sociology, social psychology and communication studies; the course provides an opportunity for students to interrogate the ways in which technology is embedded in the work place. Some topics that will be covered include the knowledge economy, virtual teamwork, surveillance and the future of authority. The course is designed as a hybrid or blended course, which means that it is taught through face-to-face and online sessions and activities. A mixed course format allows participants to experience diverse technology platforms and applications and illustrates course content.

Humans are fundamentally social creatures, depending on good relationships with those around us for optimal functioning. When harm is done in these relationships people suffer. If restoration does not occur and the underlying structural and cultural issues are not addressed, suffering and violence will likely continue, whether acted out inwardly within the individual or group, or outwardly, directed to others. Reconciliation, the complex, dynamic, long-term process of restoring relationships, structures and identities after violent conflict, is a concept that is becoming increasingly relevant. This course has been developed to study reconciliation in accordance with the following principles: reconciliation is necessary; reconciliation is complex; reconciliation is praxis; and reconciliation has implications for adult education and community development.

Following the lead of American essayist Wendell Berry, who has argued that eating is an agricultural act, this course will focus on the idea that eating is also a pedagogical act. What do we learn, and unlearn, from the food we eat? How is the food on our plate connected to such issues as food systems, food politics, food justice, food security, food sovereignty and food movements? Can we consume our way into a more sustainable future, or does this simply reinforce our current unsustainable way of life? This course will explore these and other questions, keeping in mind that food can be a catalyst for learning, resistance and change.

An examination of some of the many issues that have been characteristic of postsecondary education in the past and are likely to continue to be faced in the future.

This course provides an overview of the history, philosophy and evolution of community colleges. While the focus will largely be on the Ontario college system, students will also engage in exploration of wider issues, controversies, challenges and opportunities that community colleges face more broadly in Canada, the United States and in other countries, particularly Anglophone countries with similar systems. The themes of social justice, access and equity run through all topics, as a key purpose of community colleges is to promote these objectives.

A comparative description and analysis of tertiary-level systems of education with special attention to their structure and governance and the relevant features of the societies in which they operate.

This course is about system-wide policy and planning in higher education. The primary goal of this course is to help students understand how to conduct sound analyses of major policy issues at the system level, and make well-grounded recommendations on how to address them. This course is organized around a realistic planning assignment to address a policy issue, following a problem-based approach.

This course explores how administration, management, and leadership are conceptualized, studied, and practiced in higher education institutions. The course will contrast mainstream and critical perspectives on administration, management, and leadership and examine the specificity of academic settings in shaping both the practice and the investigation of administration in colleges and universities.

This course examines multiple theories and concepts that will help learners better understand colleges and universities as complex organizations and how they change. The aim is to help learners acquire a strong conceptual foundation for their analysis of organizational issues faced by colleges and universities, and to familiarize themselves with useful theoretical tools for interpreting and explaining organizational change in higher education.

This course reviews theoretical debates regarding the nature of professions and professional education, placing them within their historical context in western societies. Contemporary issues that are addressed include the implications of globalization of the professions, diversity in the professions and the ''entrepreneurial university'' and the professions. Perspectives of practitioners as well as faculty teaching in the professions are considered.

This course on lifelong learning and professional and vocational education has four broad aims: First, it explores debates about: the learning society and lifelong learning; globalisation, the ‘risk’ society and reflexive modernisation; and, the knowledge society and the knowledge economy. Second, it explores the nature of, and debates concerning, professional and vocational education. Third, it explores different ways in which post-secondary education systems can be structured and organised, the relationships between universities and colleges and how this helps to structure relationships between professional and vocational education. Fourth, it explores regulation of post-secondary education through qualifications frameworks, and considers debates about the Ontario Qualifications Framework. It explores debates about skills, employability skills, generic skills, learning outcomes and competency-based education/training. It considers the contrasting theoretical frameworks that underpin various positions in these debates.

The course is about the resources — public and private — that support schools, colleges, and universities: how the resources are raised, how they are allocated, how they are budgeted for, how they are economically justified, and how they are accounted for. The course is also about the connections: connections between investments in education and the larger economy, between the organization of systems and the way funding is allocated and accounted for, between forms of budgets and the efficiency with which funding is deployed, and between funding and educational quality. Although the ideas of classical economists – Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Becker, Rostow – about the formation of human capital will be discussed, the course does not require a background in economic theory.

This course applies key sociological theories and concepts to issues in higher education. The course examines both how society affects access to and outcomes of higher education, and conversely, how higher education has played a role in forming modern societies. Topics include: the role that higher education plays in social mobility, social reproduction, and the production of elites; faculty labor, knowledge production and dissemination; and, student campus life and identity formation. The course draws on various sub-fields in Sociology, including Social Stratification, the Sociology of Education, Sociology of Organizations and the Sociology of Knowledge.

This course examines the field of higher education through a political lens and covers relations between higher education institutions and states, between institutions, and within institutions. The aim is to introduce students to the fundamental assumptions and applications of political theories as they relate to international, national, organizational, and individual levels of analysis. Topics covered during this course include political theory, political dynamics, sources of power, and political behaviour. These are in turn used to analyze current debates and events in higher education such as higher education as a public or a private good, academic freedom, accountability, internal governance, leadership and administration, and labour relations.

This course addresses the arrangements for governance in higher education. It examines formal models and theories of governance; the legal and institutional framework of higher education governance; the role and characteristics of higher education intermediary bodies, governing boards, and academic senates and their relationships to one another; and current challenges and issues pertaining to university and community college governance.

This course develops an understanding of the principles of teaching and learning in higher education, and it develops skills in the practice of teaching in higher education.

This course introduces the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education with a particular focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning in professional education. The scholarship of teaching and learning engages teachers in scholarly inquiry into teaching and learning with the aim of improving student learning, and advancing curriculum and pedagogy. The emphasis is on undertaking systematic scholarly inquiry into one’s teaching either individually or collegially, and sharing the outcomes of this inquiry in a variety of ways, including in practitioner seminars and conferences, journals and websites, as well as in refereed conferences and journals so that knowledge about how to improve learning in one's field is advanced.

This course provides an overview of the evolution of comparative education as a field of study, covering historical-philosophical, positivistic, phenomenological and neo-Marxist approaches to the field. It also looks at how comparative education scholars have responded to the literature of postmodernism and globalization. Central themes of the course are the purpose of comparative education, the impact of diverse views of social change, and the idea of scientific method. The role of such international organizations as the International Bureau of Education, UNESCO, and the World Bank in comparative education is discussed.

This course provides an overview of the field of comparative higher education, beginning with perspectives from the different civilizations which fostered higher learning in the pre-modern era. It considers theories from comparative education and disciplines such as history, sociology and anthropology as they apply to understanding higher education in global context. It also takes both a regional and a thematic approach in looking at higher education across different societies. Themes covered in the course include gender in higher education, curricular patterns across different societies, student issues and the relation of higher education to the state.

This course investigates the theory and practice of evaluation in higher education, including admissions processes, assessment of student learning, student evaluation of teaching, and program and institutional evaluation. By the end of the course, students should be able to explain purposes and principles of evaluation; critique uses of evaluation in higher education; apply evaluation principles in higher education;  create and critique logic models, change models, and action models for higher education programs; plan evaluations of higher education programs; and discuss ethical issues in evaluation.

This course is designed for students who are planning, collecting data, analyzing or writing up thesis or other qualitative research. Classes will involve reading about the theoretical paradigms (e.g. interactionish, phenomenological, critical feminist, postcolonial/emancipatory) and research methodologies and types of analysis and interpretations being used by students (e.g. participant observation, thematic analysis, focus groups, individual interviews, ethnography, autoethnography, grounded theory, critical ethnography, participatory action research, life histories/narratives, institutional ethnography, textual analysis, policy or program analysis). Selected ethical issues that are often encountered in the process of doing research will also be covered. Special attention will be paid to analysis and interpretation of the data, with students presenting their changing views of their chosen topic for feedback and referral to relevant literature.

This course examines the logics and strategies of case study research used in the social sciences, as well as their applications to higher education and related fields. The main goal of the course is to help students develop skills for designing, conducting, evaluating, and critiquing case studies. Hand-on activities and intensive reading and discussion are employed towards helping students achieve this goal. This course is designed for graduate students who are interested in conducting case study research as part of their thesis projects and/or future academic and professional work. While the course uses themes related to higher education, this course is appropriate to graduate students from other fields who have had an introduction to qualitative research.

This course will focus on the critical analysis of interdisciplinary research conducted within the higher education context. Participants will begin with an exploration of the fundamental characteristics and underlying theories of quantitative, qualitative and mixed mode research methodologies, and the strengths and limitations of each in relation to issues relevant to higher education. Building on this foundation, the participants will analyze and critique publications and theses reporting higher education research. Recommendations and implications suggested in these documents will be critiqued with respect to their potential impact on decisions made by organizational leaders with respect to equity issues, policies and procedures. Finally, participants will develop a sound research proposal that could conceivably be conducted within the higher education context.

This course will examine the legal framework of higher education, including laws, regulations, and judicial interpretations that impact upon the governance and conduct of higher education. Particular attention will be placed upon the tension between academic autonomy and individual rights as they affect students' rights, faculty status, sanctions against discrimination, and the conditions attached to government funding.

This course will explore the theoretical and conceptual foundations of the student experience in postsecondary education. As well, we will study the nature of work in postsecondary education that supports students' development and learning. Students in this course will review and discuss broad forms of literature/documentation that addresses various components of the student experience. A particular focus of this course will be on exploring the various outcomes of postsecondary education and examining forms of assessing the various student outcomes in and beyond postsecondary education.

The field of Student Affairs strives to understand and support students. While student affairs core courses include content regarding marginalized and BIPOC populations, Indigenous students are distinctive as the institution-student relationship is complicated by Treaty and the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report. The population is also growing which has implications for higher education generally and student services specifically. This course focuses on Indigenous students in higher education to ethically prepare student affairs professionals and scholars. In addition to academic readings, students will contrast and compare Indigenous experiences with other minoritized and racialized groups, including their own. Pidgeon’s (2016) Indigenous Wholistic Framework and the TRC are foundational in this course. Indigenous social media representation of Indigenous student services, academic departments, and scholars will also be explored.

The purpose of this course is to examine the complex phenomenon of internationalization from both conceptual and applied perspectives,. The course explores and develops a conceptual framework for internationalization through a rigorous analysis of different meanings of the concept; shifting rationales, benefits, risks, and outcomes; and the diversity of actors and stakeholders; Students will apply the conceptual framework to a region or group of countries in the world, by analyzing the key priorities, policies and issues. Comparing different approaches among the regions and countries will raise important questions about the different roles and implications of the internationalization process. Emerging trends and issues linked to internationalization including commercialization, brain drain/gain, quality assurance, cultural homogenization, neo-colonization and world rankings will be examined. This course has a definite policy orientation and students with some academic or professional background in higher education will benefit most from it.

This course will explore and discuss models of and approaches to leadership as they pertain to higher education. Particular attention will be paid to equity and diversity issues within human resources, recognizing the increasing diversity of the higher education environment. The course will include an examination of (a) how equity and diversity inform our models of academic and administrative leadership; (b) what leaders might do to ensure that their institutions are viewed as Employers of Choice both nationally and internationally; (c) the role of leadership within the post secondary system in the promotion and enhancement of student learning and literature.

This course explores how educators in higher education and professional programs approach curriculum development from an innovative perspective. Curriculum theories, philosophic perspectives in the literature, and current realities in the classroom will be explored. Curriculum challenges with respect to access, quality and funding in higher education will be identified and analyzed, and innovative strategies for addressing these challenges will be generated.

Individual Reading and Research courses are taken as specialized study, under the direction of a staff member, focusing on topics of particular interest to the student that are not included in available courses. While credit is not given for a thesis investigation proper, the study may be closely related to a thesis topic.