Open Journals @ Queen's
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Preliminary Review of Instructor and Teaching Assistant Perceptions of Grading
No full textWell developed assessments are critical for student evaluation. However, even the best assessments are unable to be fully utilized if grading is done in an inconsistent, unfair, or invalid way. Additionally, poor-quality feedback can be linked to negative learning outcomes. Using responses from two perception surveys, we sought to examine how instructors perceive their instructions to teaching assistants (TAs) and, additionally, how TAs perceive guidance on marking from the instructor. Our preliminary results suggest differences between the perceptions of instructors and TAs with regards to how the characteristics of assessments (i.e. length, number, complexity) impact their grading. There were also differences with respect to the ease of carrying out specific facets of marking (i.e. consistency, fairness, feedback, harshness). Further results suggest subtle differences in engagement with TAs for instructors at different stages of their career (early, middle, and late)
Measuring Student Success in Engineering Co-op Education
No full textCo-operative (co-op) education programs have become integral to engineering curricula, merging theoretical learning with real-world experience and developing skills essential to student career readiness. However, defining and measuring success in these programs remains complex, given the diverse experiences and outcomes they produce. This paper presents a framework to evaluate student success in the Engineering Co-op program at Ontario Tech University. By examining academic outcomes, skill development, career readiness, and student and employer feedback, the framework provides a holistic view of success metrics. Data from the program, including Grade Point Average (GPA) trends, participation rates, and self-assessments, support the effectiveness of experiential learning in enhancing professional skills and academic performance. Preliminary findings suggest a positive correlation between co-op participation and GPA improvement, as well as an increase in students’ confidence and employability. These insights highlight the need for a multi-faceted evaluation model, offering engineering programs a pathway to refine co-op education to better prepare students for professional success
Factors for Consideration in Capstone Design Assessment Schemes: A Systematic Review and Critical Reflection
No full textGrading schemes in engineering capstone design courses—whether numeric, letter-based, or pass/fail—may impact student learning, motivation, and stress. Given the summative nature of capstone courses and their influence on graduate studies and employment, understanding grading implications is essential. Despite ongoing discussions about grading, there is limited research on how different grading schemes affect motivation and learning outcomes in capstone courses. A systematic literature review produced over 1000 results, of which 35 were deemed relevant and further analyzed. The review found no studies comparing grading schemes in capstone courses or their effects on motivation, stress, or mark inflation. Six key themes are highlighted: grading scheme characteristics, quantitative scoring, lack of critical grading, project variance, instructor competency, and team project challenges. The research highlights gaps in assessment methods and suggests future study areas to assess grading practices in capstone courses, including instructor training, assessment structures, and grading’s role in student development
Integrating ChatGPT as an Academic Assistant
No full textThis study considers the integration of custom GPT models into undergraduate courses to support students and teaching assistants in labs, tutorials and on assignments. GPTs were trained using course material, assignment instructions and lab content, acting as an academic assistant for students. The integrations significantly reduced the number of emails sent to teaching assistants (TAs) and professors, decreasing emails per week by a factor of up to five. Furthermore, custom questions were added to the GPT to encourage students to identify mistakes made by the GPT when providing advice or helping with solutions, promoting deeper understanding of core concepts. Feedback questions assessed students\u27 overall experience with the GPT as a learning tool
Canada\u27s Charter: A Balancing Act
No full textTo ensure that the Charter does not tend too far in the direction of judicial supremacy, the notwithstanding clause has provided a useful medium in rights arbitration by allowing legislatures to override judicial decisions where legislatures believe them to be inconsistent with democratic interests. When I set out to answer the question of the Charter’s role in promoting judicial legitimacy, it became clear that the merits of the Charter had often been related to its democratic foundations. Although some academics have discussed support for the judiciary among the Canadian public, few have attempted to explain their joint effect. As I have shown, the activities of an institution are more indicative of public support for it than are the nuances of an institution’s democratic foundations. The Charter has served as a source of diffuse support for the courts because of its novelty and its broad application. Despite the infrequent use of the notwithstanding clause, Section 33 of the Charter has enhanced rights dialogue. This dialogue has meant that the Charter has not handed rights adjudication over to the courts but that it has promoted a rights framework that is informed by two branches of government in a way that is unique to the Canada. 
Conference 2024 special issue: Another university is possible! Theories and practices of change related to engineering education in academic institutions
No full textThe full issue of the Conference 2024 special issue.
Updated with minor (mostly typographical) corrections : June 30, 2025
Locked In: Digital Colonialism and the Platformed Prison
No full textThis article examines the “prison platform” as a novel technology of digital confinement. The focus is how United States multinational Honeywell established a prison platform in Australia and New Zealand, neighboring settler colonies where the Indigenous peoples never ceded sovereignty, and prison systems continue to be stamped by deeply entrenched patterns of Indigenous hyperincarceration. While studies of digital colonialism have tended to focus on how Global North actors exploit data relations in the Global South, we examine Honeywell building its prison platform across the “North-in-South” divide in Australia and New Zealand, states that are located geographically in the South but have large settler majorities and close ties to the North. We argue that Honeywell exploits the power relations of Indigenous confinement in the settler colony to advance a novel form of tech-facilitated prison privatization. The analysis reveals three key dynamics of prison platforming: the private sector capture of prison infrastructure formally governed by settler state agencies (infrastructural capture), the commercial logic of continual platform expansion through the integration of new data-extracting technologies (extractive integration), and the leveraging of control over infrastructure to entrench power over competitors in commercial markets for prison technology (market gatekeeping). The paper extends research into platform power by shifting focus from online commerce and communications to the built environment of the prison, and spotlights a convergence between cutting-edge digital technology and much older practices of settler colonial social control
Paradoxes of Authoritarian Mundane Surveillance: The Use of Yandex.Eda Data Leak to Investigate the Powerful in Russia
No full textFor years, the Russian authoritarian regime has been seeking to expand its surveillance capacity and collect information on the whole population. The arrival of digital services has made it possible to collect vast amounts of data on their users. Since digital services are frequently designed to assist with various mundane tasks, state-affiliated individuals can also use them, sharing a range of personal data. In Russia, a legal framework has been developed to oblige private digital companies to share collected data with investigative and intelligence agencies. Simultaneously, the collected data, including data on the powerful, may not be adequately protected and, therefore, can be hacked and leaked, thus facilitating sousveillance. This paradox is at the centre of this study, which explores it via the example of the Yandex.Eda, a food delivery service, leak and its use by investigative journalism. This paper, drawing on the concepts of authoritarian surveillance assemblage and mundane surveillance, portrays how authoritarian regimes, through the means of law, engage private digital services in the mundane surveillance of the population. Additionally, the paper draws on the concepts of sousveillance and assemblage of resistance to explore how data leaks from mundane digital services collaborating with authoritarian regimes can stimulate investigation into state actors’ corruption through the work of leaktivism and investigative journalism. The paper shows that although high-profile political actors did not appear in the leak, people closely related to them, along with some lower-ranking special services agents, did. This paper argues that precisely because the app has a mundane nature and sharing personal data with it facilitates its use, these actors left some pieces of their personal information there. In turn, this data sharing has contributed to sousveillance over them
