The Ontario government has indicated its intention to negotiate individual mandate statements with each of Ontario’s public postsecondary institutions and to amend funding formulas to focus resources on what each institution does best. These actions signal the government’s desire to pursue a policy of greater institutional differentiation within the Ontario public postsecondary system. The purpose of this paper is to inform and assist the development of a differentiation framework for the university sector by describing the diversity of Ontario universities on variables that other jurisdictions have used to differentiate their university systems. These variables are important to consider first because they are globally accepted, and therefore influence the way the rest of the world will judge the Ontario system and its quality.
Canada’s universities are critical to Canada’s
international assistance and to mobilizing people and ideas for an innovative, inclusive and
prosperous world. Through leveraging research expertise and networks, engaging researchers and
students, working with communities,
and supporting the provision of quality higher education in partner countries, universities play an
active role in reducing poverty, creating
new opportunities for the world’s poorest and most marginalized, and building more inclusive societies. Canada’s universities are a key, and often underleveraged, asset in shaping an effective and innovative approach for the delivery of Canadian development assistance for the benefit of all citizens in partner countries.
As the voice of Canada’s universities at home and abroad, representing the interests of 97 Canadian public and private not-for-profit universities, Universities Canada is grateful for the opportunity to provide input into this important process of re-examining and re-think-ing Canada’s international assistance policy.
By this point in the Covid-19 transition to remote instruction, you’ve probably had a few sessions on Zoom. You’ve taught a few classes, met students for office hours. No doubt more than once, you’ve seen a lot of students staring blankly at you after you pose a question. (Insert crickets-chirping sound.)
Faculty members are getting a crash course in Zoom and finding it can be supremely awkward, at least at first. One reason for our collective uneasiness: Most of us are not well acquainted with the "hidden curriculum" of Zoom — all the unwritten rules and
expectations that you’re supposed to know but none of us have been taught. Faculty members and students together are diving into a new tool with little to no experience with it, technically or culturally.
In this paper we utilize interview data to explore the workings of a college–community partnership program that delivers tuition-free, for-credit courses to low-income adult students in neighbourhood-based settings. Addressing the interplay of individual and structural barriers on the educational readiness of students, our findings explore how the program builds participants’
confidence and self-belief, and how the neighbourhood-based delivery model encourages their engagement with post-secondary education (PSE). We find that the value of embedding PSE capacity and resources in low-income communities lies not only in its potential to engage adult learners, but also in how it nurtures a greater sense of community integration and social inclusion. We
conclude by suggesting that our study provides a useful foundation for institutions elsewhere aiming to recalibrate and extend their community outreach strategies when seeking to promote post-secondary access and engagement for low-income populations.
If you or someone you know is suffering from depression, it can be difficult to know where to turn. There are many excellent resources online that you can use to find out more about depression, including treatments, where to get help, and support for family and friends.
Below is a selection of some of the best websites, organizations and other helpful resources available to anyone who has been diagnosed with or suspects they are suffering from depression.
The key to graduating in four years (at least in the minds of many parents) is picking a major early and sticking with it. But a new report suggests students who change their major as late as senior year are more likely to graduate from college than students who settle on one the second they set foot on campus.
The report, published by the Education Advisory Board, a research and consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., challenges the notion that changing majors is keeping students in college past their intended graduation date and driving up their debt. Instead of looking at when students first declared a major, the EAB's study explored the connection between students' final declaration and how it affected their time to degree and graduation rates.
The low-down about learning at Ontario’s 20 public universities, 24 colleges or 400+ registered
private career colleges.
This time of year has always been my favorite. Back to school once meant new clothes, new notebooks, and new
hopes of avoiding the dreaded bottom locker. Now, as a professor, I retain the joy I have every August when I get
new colleagues, new students, and yes, new clothes. Mostly though, I’m excited about the opportunity to start fresh
and do a better job than I did the year before.
To begin that process, I revise and enhance my professional networks — because a new academic year should
bring with it new relationships and new opportunities.
In Prime Minister Trudeau’s mandate letter to the Ministry of Canadian Heritage, copyright policy received not a single mention. The mandate letter, which sets out the ministry’s main agenda, contains extensive directives to establish programs and artists’ subsidies, but none to the fundamental rights on which the arts rely.
Yet, as demonstrated by the ministerial briefing book (prepared to inform incoming ministers of active issues in their
portfolios), many important copyright issues are outstanding, including implementation of treaties, Internet piracy, the
2017 review of the Copyright Act, extending the term of protection for copyright-protected works, and the efficiency of
copyright collectives. Perhaps most urgent, and instructive, is another issue mentioned in the briefing book:
copyright clearance by educational institutions. In this case, bad law is destroying an entire industry.
This report explores undergraduate students’ involvement at The Ohio State University’s Columbus campus based on Student Life Survey data collected during Spring Semester 2016. The report focuses on differences between domestic and international students’ levels of engagement and belonging on campus. Specifically, this report examines students’ overall involvement in a range of co-curricular activities, their reasons for getting involved, their participation in different types of student organizations, their participation as student leaders and students’ sense of belonging at The Ohio State University.
New ideas germinate everywhere, seeking to force their way into the light, to find an application in life; everywhere they are opposed by the inertia of those whose interest it is to maintain the old order; they suffocate in the stifling atmosphere of prejudice and traditions.
I recently overheard a faculty member talking about students, and it wasn’t good. She sounded very much like a conference presenter whom Melanie Cooper describes in a Journal of Chemical Education editorial. The presenter’s talk had a strong “students these days” undercurrent.
Sometimes we do need to vent. It isn’t easy teaching students who don’t come to class prepared, seem to always want the easiest way, are prepared to cheat if necessary, don’t have good study skills, and aren’t interested in learning what we love to teach. Venting, especially to a trusted colleague, helps us put things in perspective. At some point, though, venting morphs into
complaining, and what we say about students becomes what we think about them. And that’s when it starts getting
dangerous, because it affects how we teach.
For the last decade and a half, I’ve engaged in anthropological research on higher education, identifying several
challenges and mismatches between what we know about learning “in real life” and learning in college. In my most
recent book, “I Love Learning; I Hate School”: An Anthropology of College , I identified a number of ways that formal
education has led to a lack of learning. Colleges promote credentials, obedience and the sorting of haves and havenots, but not necessarily learning.
Generally, data mining (sometimes called data or knowledge discovery) is the process of analyzing data from different perspectives and summarizing it into useful information - information that can be used to increase revenue, cuts costs, or both. Data mining software is one of a number of analytical tools for analyzing data. It allows users to analyze data from many different dimensions or angles, categorize it, and summarize the relationships identified. Technically, data mining is the process of finding correlations or patterns among dozens of fields in large relational databases.
This report is the culmination of a three‐year research project conducted by George Brown College (GBC). As a member of the Learning Outcomes Assessment Consortium, sponsored and funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), this project responds to HEQCO’s request for colleges and universities to develop, implement and share new assessment tools that “measure and validate the attainment of these generic learning and cognitive skills.”
In this project, we focused on critical thinking (CT), with the goal of addressing a fundamental question:
How do we measure student learning of this essential employability skill during the course of a program of
study?
In 2004, the Lumina Foundation for Education approved a generous grant to support validation research to explore and document the validity of the Community College Student Report (CCSR), add to the higher education field’s understanding of student engagement, and help to identify research or institutional practices that require further attention. The study was conducted in three strands that linked Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) respondents with external data sources: (1) data from the Florida Department of Education; (2) data from the Achieving the Dream project; and (3) student record databases maintained at community colleges that have participated in the CCSSE survey and are either Hispanic-Serving Institutions or members of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU). All participating students had participated in the 2002, 2003, or 2004 administrations of the Community College Student Report, CCSSE’s survey instrument.
Earlier this semester, I received a complaint from an applicant who we had opted not to hire. In his email, which he also sent to a parade of others, he said that — given his obvious qualifications — he was both surprised and angered by the rejection. He was so angry, in fact, that he called for the hiring supervisor and several others to be terminated for incompetence.
Fair process is important to me so I looked into the situation to determine if there was anything to the conspiracy he described. I soon learned that the position was not going to be filled and the department was in the process of sending out notification letters to all the applicants. I sent our angry correspondent a brief message explaining all of that and expressing regret that we had inconvenienced him. The applicant — clearly needing to get in the last word — responded with a series of messages condemning my writing skills, integrity, and personal character.
Despite our best intentions every university president (or chancellor) eventually leaves the job. Most presidents are more than happy to retire into the sunset after a decade of fundraising, strategic visioning and crisis management. Others return to their research or are recruited elsewhere to lead another organisation.
Whatever the cause – and we must admit the cases where controversy cuts short the presidential term – at some point universities will find themselves in need of a new leader. The majority of institutions have detailed policies outlining the search process, but there are often bumps along the way.
Often the most challenging factor is the imperfect transfer of knowledge between committee and board members in charge of the search process. Fortunately, some recent research in the Canadian context highlights key techniques to facilitate a successful search process when choosing a new university president.
Abstract
Our qualitative study explored transition in seven Canadian universities—early providers of distance education that transitioned to online learning between 2002 and 2017. We interviewed 16 individuals who were involved in the design, planning, r implementation of online learning. Participants reported their universities experienced significant impacts on organizational structure and roles. Many saw an increased focus on learning and teaching. Access, revenue generation, and technology were identified as drivers of online learning; traditional learning and teaching practices were shifting; challenges experienced included resistance to change and lack of dedicated resources; and effective, visionary leadership was seen to be critically important. We propose that the roots of today’s challenges and opportunities in online learning may be found in the experiences of distance educators who were early adopters.
Keywords: organizational change, distance education, online learning, Canadian universities
McGill University is committed to creating and sustaining a safe environment through proactive, visible, accessible and effective approaches that seek to prevent and respond to Sexual Violence. The University further recognizes the singular importance of striving toward an equitable environment in which all Members of the University Community feel respected, safe and free from
violence, especially Sexual Violence.
The University does not tolerate Sexual Violence in any form. It acknowledges that attention to Sexual Violence is particularly important in university campus settings, and that the University has a role to play in preventing and responding to Sexual Violence. It further acknowledges that, while Sexual Violence impacts all members of society, Sexual Violence and its consequences may disproportionately affect members of social groups who experience intersecting forms of systemic discrimination or barriers (on grounds, for example, of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, race, religion, Indigenous identity, ethnicity, disability or class).