As the world continues to change at a rapid pace, the future remains bright for university graduates. With a growing need for a skilled and adaptable workforce to contribute to the betterment of our businesses, our communities and our province, university-educated graduates are using the advanced knowledge and skills they learn at university to get well-paying jobs in their fields soon after graduation.
The latest Ontario government survey of graduates from undergraduate programs shows that almost 94 per cent have secured employment two years after graduation. The average salary for university bachelor’s degree graduates in full-time jobs was $49,170 two years after graduation, up from the average salary of $41,839 six months after graduation.
The survey of Ontario university students who graduated in 2013, conducted for the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development, concludes that university graduates get jobs related to their education. By giving graduates the advanced skills they need, Ontario’s universities are helping the province unlock the full potential of Ontario’s future and all who live here.
It’s no secret that high youth unemployment and record high debt levels mean youth in Canada are facing a difficult future. While the economy continues on a slow recovery, students and youth are being left behind through decreased program funding, ineffective employment plans, and a lack of federal strategies.
Over the last five years, high youth unemployment has been a constant challenge in the Canadian labour market. Attainment of a post-secondary education has become a prerequisite for participation in Canada’s workforce. It’s time for Canada to prioritise youth employment. We have looked abroad to find solutions, and Germany’s Dual Vocational Training System is a plan that values the work of youth and has long-term rewards for the economy and society. Publicly funded, and with no tuition fees, Germany serves as a model for us in Canada on how to build a thriving economy that values workers.
The procedures commonly employed for quality assurance in higher education are designed as if the endeavour were a technical process, whereas it may be more useful to view it as a political process. For example, quality assurance requires making choices among competing conceptions of quality, and in so doing privileges some interests over others. Moreover, some stakeholders tend to be given a greater voice than others in the design and implementation of quality assurance. The author concludes that rather than denying the political nature of quality assurance, it would be better to accept Morley’s claim that quality assurance is “a socially constructed domain of power”, and design procedures for it in a way that is appropriate for a political process. It is suggested that employing the “responsive model” of evaluation could make quality assurance more effective in improving educational quality. In the responsive model, evaluation is deemed to be a collaborative process that starts with the claims, concerns and issues put forth by all stakeholders.
Self-care -- maintaining a healthy and balanced lifestyle through individually determined activities -- has been found
to improve productivity and a sense of well-being as well as physical and emotional health in a variety of work
settings. Although it is still considered a somewhat controversial concept, many colleges and universities are now
regarding self-care as essential for the optimal well-being of everyone in their community: faculty, staff,
administrators, students, support personnel and others. The benefits of promoting self-care in the workplace are
well documented.
Toronto, Sept. 27, 2016 – Amid concern that today's postsecondary graduates are lacking critical employability skills, an international test on literacy, numeracy and problem-solving will be given to first-year and graduating students at 11 colleges in Ontario. A similar pilot for universities will follow in fall 2017.
The Essential Adult Skills Initiative (EASI) pilot project by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) marks the first time in Canada that core skills, considered foundational to success in work and life, will be evaluated at the postsecondary program and institutional level.
Eighteen months ago we set off on a path that would lead Ferris State University collectively to a new university-wide strategic plan. Just a bit of background: The last strategic plan was put in place in 2008 and served the university well. Over the past five years we saw record breaking enrollment, big increases in retention and graduation rates, exceptionally high infield job placement rates, and a strong financial position for the university. We also saw the creation of fifty-seven new programs, certificates, majors and degrees, while we eliminated or redesigned thirty-two programs. By almost any measure, the 2008 strategic plan was instrumental in providing the university community with a framework for moving forward in some very exciting directions.
College-Level Literacy: An Inventory of Current Practices at Ontario's Colleges instrument for gathering and reporting information. Three categories of college size, based on the Fall 2009 intake of students into postsecondary programs, provided further insight into the distribution of various practices. All 24 Ontario colleges participated in this study.
Effective classroom management is much more than just administering corrective measures when a student misbehaves; it's about developing proactive ways to prevent problems from occurring in the first place while creating a positive learning environment. Establishing that climate for learning is one of the most challenging aspects of teaching, and one of the most difficult skills to master. For those new to the profession, failure to set the right tone will greatly hinder your effectiveness as a teacher. Indeed, even experienced faculty may sometimes feel frustrated by classroom management issues. Strategies that worked for years suddenly become ineffective in the face of some of the challenges today’s students bring with them to the classroom.
Brought to you by The Teaching Professor, this special report features 10 proven classroom management techniques from those on the front lines who’ve met the challenges head-on and developed creative responses that work with today's students. This report will teach you practical ways to create favourable conditions for learning, including how to:
. Get the semester off on the right foot
. Prevent cheating
. Incorporate classroom management principles into the syllabus
. Handle students who participate too much
. Establish relationships with students
. Use a contract to help get students to accept responsibility
. Employ humour to create conditions conducive to learning
The goal of 10 Effective Classroom Management Techniques Every Faculty Member Should Know is to provide actionable strategies and no-nonsense solutions for creating a positive learning environment – whether you’re a seasoned educator or someone who's just starting out.
This document contains the appendices to CAAT baccalaureates: What has been their impact on students and colleges?
This document supersedes the sections outlining assessment, evaluation, and reporting policy in The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9 to 12: Program Planning and Assessment, 2000 and in curriculum policy documents for Grades 1 to 8, Grades 9 and 10, and Grades 11 and 12 published before the release of this document, with the following exception: The achievement charts in all current curriculum policy documents remain in effect.
OUSA’s LGBTQ+ Student Experience Survey was a mixed methods research project conducted in Novem-ber 2014 designed to gain understanding of the opinions and experiences of Ontario university students who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Questioning, or other orientations or identities that do not conform to cisgender and heterosexual paradigms (LGBTQ+). The purpose of the survey was to identify any gaps that might exist in university services, programming, and supports that can diminish or negatively impact university experiences for these students.
Post-secondary education is the great equalizer. It gives us all a chance to reach higher no matter where we come from or whatever our background. Both of my parents came from very modest upbringings and saw a university degree as a ticket to a good job and an entry to Ontario’s middle class. They, in turn, placed a high importance on post-secondary education and encouraged my sister and I to follow in their footsteps.
There is a lot about Ontario’s colleges and universities that we can be proud of, but we need to ensure our
students are getting the best value for their tuition. In Ontario today, we see far too many students graduate
with degrees and deep debts who can’t find a job.
We are spending a lot more money as a province, but we aren’t seeing the results. Government funding has increased by 84% since 2003, yet Ontario universities are slipping in international rankings, tuition keeps rising, new graduates keep heading out West and there are many jobs in the skilled trades that can’t be filled. This has got to change. We need to make the necessary changes to ensure our schools are the best in the world at preparing students for a career. The key will be incenting excellence, harnessing market forces, encouraging specialization and being honest. We cannot ignore the fact that increasingly university students end up in colleges, after accumulating significant student debt. We need a culture shift in our sytem. Promoting a ‘College First’ approach in our high schools will recognize the hundreds of thousands of jobs in the skilled trades and applied learning at risk of going unfilled and will help alleviate pressure on our universities while preparing those students who decide to
continue on to pursue a university degree.
We also cannot ignore the fact that our university rankings on the global stage have been slipping for some time. Our universities should be focused on quality, not quantity. Allowing undergraduate instructors to focus on teaching full time will improve the student experience by incenting excellence in teaching. Let us make no mistake about the promise we can offer our young graduates and the taxpayers who fund the system. A purposeful evolution of post-secondary education has the potential to do more for the long term health of Ontario than any other program or policy imaginable.
Progressive Conservatives Ontario
In the traditional college classroom today, faculty and students arrive with a certain set of expectations, shaped largely by past experiences. And although students may need the occasional (or perhaps frequent) reminder of what's required of them, there's usually something very familiar about the experience for both faculty and students alike. In the online classroom, an entirely new set of variables enters the equation. It's a little like trying to drive in a foreign country. You know how to drive, just like you know how to teach, but it sure is hard to get the hang of driving on the left side of the road, you're not quite sure
how far a kilometre is, and darn it if those road signs aren't all in Japanese. This special report explains the "rules of the road" for online teaching and learning and features a series of columns that first appeared in the Distance Education Report's "Between the Clicks," a popular column by Dr. Lawrence C. Ragan, Director of Instructional Design and
Development for Penn State's World Campus.
The articles contained in the report will help you establish online instructor best practices and expectations, and include the following principles of effective online teaching:
. Show Up and Teach
. Practice Proactive Course Management Strategies
. Establish Patterns of Course Activities
. Plan for the Unplanned
. Response Requested and Expected
. Think Before You Write
. Help Maintain Forward Progress
. Safe and Secure
. Quality Counts
.(Double) Click a Mile on My Connection
These principles, developed at Penn State's World Campus, outline the core behaviours of the successful online instructor, and help to define parameters around the investment of time on part of the instructor. In his articles, Ragan identifies potential barriers and limitations to online learning, and specific strategies to assist instructors in achieving the performance
Background/Context: Very little empirical research has been conducted on the issue of educator sexual misconduct (ESM) in secondary settings. The few reports available typically treat a larger social issue, such as sexual harassment or child abuse; therefore, data on ESM specifically must be extrapolated. When such data are obtained, the focus has been on rates of incidence rather than the nature of the problem. Feminist scholars have theorized embodiment in education and debated whether and to what extent an eroticized pedagogy is desirable, but scant attention has been paid to how and why erotic pedagogy can go awry.
Writing assignments, particularly for first- and second-year college students, are probably one of those items in the syllabus that some professors dread almost as much as their students do. Yet despite the fact that essays, research papers, and other types of writing assignments are time consuming and, at times, frustrating to grade, they also are vital to furthering student learning.
Of course part of the frustration comes when professors believe that students should arrive on campus knowing how to write research papers. Many do not. With as much content as professors have to cover, many feel they simply can’t take time to teach the research skills required to write a quality, college-level term paper. But as teaching professors who support the writing across the curriculum movement would tell you, improving students’ writing skills is everyone’s business, and carries with it many short- and long-term benefits for teachers and students alike. Further, many instructors are finding ways to add relevance to writing assignments by aligning them with the type of writing required in a specific profession as an alternative to the traditional, semester-long research paper.
This special report was created to provide instructors with fresh perspectives and proven strategies for designing more effective writing assignments. It features 11 articles from The Teaching Professor, including:
• Revising the Freshman Research Assignment
• Writing an Analytical Paper in Chunks
• Designing Assignments to Minimize Cyber-Cheating
• Chapter Essays as a Teaching Tool
• Writing (Even a Little Bit) Facilitates Learning
• How to Conduct a ‘Paper Slam’
While not every approach discussed in this special report will work for every course, every time, I invite you to identify a few that look appropriate for your courses, and implement them next semester. You just might be surprised by the results.
Equity and Access to Higher Education?
Participation rates in both university and college vary based on the student’s
family income. That variation is relatively small for college students, but
skews toward children from wealthy families for universities. College students
come almost evenly from the family income quartiles; regardless of
family income, about 25% of students come from each family income quartile.
In contrast, more university students come from wealthy families than
low-income ones. Almost 35% of all university students come from the top
quartile, compared to just under 20% from the poorest quartile.
Students are more likely to strive for and achieve success when they believe that their personal effort matters—when they think they can exert significant influence or control over the outcomes of their life and their future success (Bandura, 1997; Chemers, Hu, & Garcia, 2001; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Elias, & Loomis, 2002; Multon, Brown, & Lent, 1991; Solberg, et al.,
1993).
Joe Cuseo
Professor Emeritus, Psychology; Educational Consultant, AVID
([email protected])
In a project funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), a team of researchers completed three related studies exploring and assessing innovative practicum models included in a pre- service concurrent teacher education program across two campuses of an Ontario university.
These models are integrated into the field experience component of the Bachelor of Education degree and are intended to provide collaborative and diverse learning opportunities for teacher candidates in various practicum settings. Traditionally, teacher candidates in faculties of education complete their practicum in a school classroom for determined periods of time. In recognizing the need for teacher candidates to become contributing members of varied learning communities (Feiman-Nemser,
2001), the innovative practices studied in this project extend beyond the norm of placing a single teacher candidate with an associate teacher in a publicly funded school to include such models as peer mentorship, alternative service learning and international practicum placements.
Almost 40 Canadian universities in all regions of Canada responded to a detailed data survey aimed at ascertaining the characteristics and flows of students who left postsecondary institutions in one jurisdiction to continue undergraduate studies at a university in another. Two main types of student were considered: the transfer student who receives some transfer credit on admission to the receiving university and the mobile student who also moves between institutions but who does not receive transfer credit for prior studies. Some other studies of this type have not considered the mobile student, as defined here, although they make up about 20 per cent of the total flows.
Mohawk College promises its students a “college experience that empowers them to transform their lives.” Mohawk recognizes that student success depends on the entire experience students have at college, both inside and outside the classroom.