Learning disabilities (LD) are a significant area of identified disability for children in North America and worldwide. We currently understand cognitive processing weaknesses to contribute to the developmental difficulties that children with LD face in learning and beyond. One of these areas of cognitive weakness, working memory, is an important target for intervention because it not only impacts learning but other important aspects of life. This project examines the working memory effects of a cognitive training program for children with LD, the Eaton Arrowsmith school.

Our goal is to continue to provide the solution to the problems that elementary schools are facing across Ontario. To re-define the existing culture of recess by providing healthy role models, options and equipment and advocating for spaces more conducive to play. Our research team is currently the only one in Canada dedicated to research on recess.

Games have, in the last decade, become an important tool for teaching in both the education and business section. The application of games, and game mechanics, in these areas is often called gamification. The aim of this project is to explore how games can be used to create rich, first hand, experiences that can be used by educators to improve learning.

Research on university graduates’ University-to-Work transition (UWT) is sharply polarized between two discourses: the smooth transition narrative and the crisis narrative. Proponents of the smooth transition narrative such as universities are reporting high-rates of student satisfaction, skill transferability as well as early-career earnings consistent with those of 1970s and 1980s’s graduates. At the same, the crisis narrative is pointing at rampant underemployment, a loose School-to-Work transition structure and a blunt lack of high-skilled technical labour.

The differences among today’s multiple generations of workers, such as Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials have received a great amount of attention from the media, business best-sellers and academic researchers. Much of the recent existing research has documented perceived and observed characteristics of the millennial generation (those born in the 1908s and after), who are said to differ from preceding generations in their perspectives on work and life in general.

Recent technological advancements have led to widespread usage of interactive and collaborative systems in educational settings. In particular, SMART Technologies’ interactive products are being widely used at schools and universities across the country. Although this is a valuable achievement, it also presents new challenges to evolve these systems to new user needs. For example, one of the main challenges of the teachers using SMART systems in classrooms is the need to “go back in time” and review missed meeting or class material.

Assistive Technology (AT) allows children with Specific Learning Disabilities (LDs) to adequately access school curriculum. There is a paucity of literature addressing perception of use and training for teachers to support use. Studies suggest that children with AT like their devices and find them useful. The proposed study will examine the ages of children provided AT devices, the types of AT hardware and software being used by children with various learning limitations in a school environment, and children’s perception of their AT devices.

The alignment of the dissertation and the CE in terms of preparing students as researchers in today?s environment or for innovative work outside the academy is in question. The purposes and structures of these basic PhD components have not changed significantly since the origin of the modern PhD, which was developed primarily as a vocational degree for the professoriate.

The current wellbeing crisis in Canada is magnified in rural areas. Also, rural economies are negatively affected by lack of suitable youth lifeskill training. Rural communities lack financial capital to address these issues on their own. 4-H has been building rural youth skill for over 100 years, offering a variety of options, including physical activities which occur on farms such as horse activity. For rural youth, there is potential for 4-H physical activity programs to be sport-for-development- a field combining physical activity and lifeskill development.

Properties of metallurgical coke are very important in production of iron using blast furnace. About 90% of the coking coals produced are used for this purpose. Coal rank was historically used to evaluate coal for production of metallurgical coke. Coke reactivity index (CRI) and coke strength after reaction (CSR) with carbon dioxide are now routinely used rank and value coking coals. The properties of the other components present in the ash may be the controlling parameters defining coke properties, which has not been studied well.