In the winter term of 2016, Cape Breton University launched a revised version of a second year Mi’kmaw Studies course entitled Learning from the Knowledge Keepers of Mi’kmaki (MIKM 2701). This course was designed to be led by local Elders and Knowledge Keepers with facilitation support from university faculty. It was designed by course facilitators as a dual-mode course, with the opportunity for students to participate face-to-face and online, and the excitement it generated quickly went “viral.” In this paper, we describe the experiences of the participants in the course through an analysis of their own reflections on the 13 weeks of instruction. The aim of this analysis is to share course design considerations for post-secondary institutions attempting to “Indigenize the academy” at a course level, but also to evaluate the process of co-learning as it was evidenced in the course as a means to address educational complexity and decolonization efforts in the classroom.

No abstract

A current trend in Air Traffic Management research is the development of decision support tools to aid in the sequencing and scheduling of terminal area and en route traffic as a means of increasing overall capacity and efficiency of operation. What is emerging as an increasingly important factor for terminal operations, however, is the environmental impact-in particular that of noise exposure. Thus, "noise-aware" decision support tools are needed so that the decision process includes consideration of noise exposure levels, particularly for the population within the immediate vicinity of the airport. This paper describes two elements of our ongoing work in this direction. We first present results from simulation of the effects of noise-aware decision support tools at four U.S. airports having drastically different features and constraints. These results indicate the potential for noise-aware decision support tools to significantly improve noise exposure profiles. We also discuss the means by which a newly developed noise-aware decision support tool, the Noise Avoidance Planner, is incorporating a noise figure of merit into real-time, dynamic determination of sequencing and routing information. This work complements the simulation study, and provides additional indications of the benefits of including noiseawareness in terminal area decision support tools.

No abstract

No abstract