A core competency framework for EAP pathways to business streams was developed based on the analysis of 215 assignments from five mandatory first-year Bachelor of Commerce courses. The framework recommends that specific EAP skills such as proficiency reading at CEFR C1 level as well as listening-while-doing be prioritized in the Pathways curriculum to assist students to complete their assignments effectively.

In this session, I’ll discuss online course design principles that provide multiple entry points for learning so that students, with all their diversities, can adapt activities to fit their needs, emergent abilities, and interests. With this new design, students can take personalized paths to achieve the course outcomes while engaging in the material in a manner appropriate to their current situation. As giving students choices is paramount to their success, this new design draws from Principles of Universal Design (PUD), which can be expressed in four sub-principles: 1) providing multiple means of representation, with spaces for unanticipated possibilities to emerge; 2) providing multiple means for students to express what they know and what they have learned; 3) offering ways into and explorations beyond planned experiences; and 4) permitting and nurturing specialized interests of individuals while enhancing possibilities for the collective. I will share my experience implementing this new design for higher education courses as well as offer several examples of strategies and design implementations. 

Presenters: Drs. Soroush Sabbaghan, PhD and Ismaeil Fazel, PhD

This session will bring to fore (OR highlight) the oft-neglected discord between equity and integrity in high-stakes standardized language tests. The equity issues surrounding these so-called standardized language tests can potentially precipitate and predispose academic dishonesty. This presentation will discuss the ramifications of inherent inequities in high stakes language proficiency tests for academic integrity, and will call for a more critical consideration of commercialized high stakes language tests. Redressing equity issues in language assessment can serve to promote academic integrity and reduce academic dishonesty. 

Investigations of English for academic purposes (EAP) testing have favoured large-scale examinations such as the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) and TOEFL, mainly due to the number of resources and technical expertise available to these initiatives. In-house EAP placement tests have received little attention in the literature, although these instruments are widely used in many colleges and universities in Canada and elsewhere to assess the English competencies of non-native speaking students. The growing, complicated activity surrounding the development and administration of these tests are generally small operations. So, we believe there is a case for sharing experiences in test development at a single institution, particularly given the constraints of limited expertise, time, and other resources. I this session, I offer our lessons' learned from the experience.