National statistics indicate that more than 6.4 million children and youth with disabilities between 3 and 21 years-of-age received special education services during the 20132014 academic school year (U.S. Department of Education, 2015). In addition, 95% of these students received special education services in public schools, with 61% or more of them said to be highly included80% or more of their school dayin general education classroom settings (U.S. Department of Education, 2015). On one hand, these estimates may be quite positive given the high number of students educated in inclusive settings. On the other, they can be disconcerting because inclusion greatly relies on educators who are ill-prepared to meet the needs of all students, and would prefer not to do inclusion (p. 307).
Building prosperity through university research.
Technology moves at lightning speed, Facebook’s algorithm has new rules daily and marketing strategies are ever evolving as the audiences we all seek to reach become increasingly fragmented. And yet, some of us find ourselves
in workplaces where the prevailing sentiment is don’t rock the boat—if it worked in the past, let’s not make any
major changes.
If the culture at your college is all about not fixing what’s not broken, you may have a challenge ahead of you as you
try to suggest and implement some needed change. Turn that challenge into an opportunity with these tips for
shaking things up in a change-averse environment:
Le projet Comprendre le concept de force en sciences est né de l’initiative des ministères de l’Éducation de l’Ontario et du Québec dans le cadre d’une entente de collaboration signée par les deux Premiers Ministres de ces provinces concernant le secteur de l’éducation ainsi que d’autres secteurs d’activité.
C’est une étude comparative, de nature collaborative et de type exploratoire, qui s’est déroulée de mai 2007 à mai 2008. Elle pourrait être suivie d’une étude plus approfondie et de plus d’envergure selon l’intérêt des résultats présentés ci-dessous de même que la disponibilité des ressources disponibles.
University research drives innovation, builds economic prosperity and improves quality of life for all Canadians. We can be proud of our globally competitive research infrastructure, the excellence and capacity of our faculty, and the international scope of Canada’s research initiatives.
Canada has the necessary building blocks to become a world leader in innovation, and universities are at the heart of this work. Investing in university research is integral to a nation’s long-term economic growth and productivity. Universities, industry and governments need to work together to encourage creativity and risk-taking and support students, researchers and entrepreneurs to cultivate a robust innovation system.
This study examined the assessment literacy of primary/junior teacher candidates in all four years of their concurrent program. Candidates from each year of the program completed a survey pertaining to self‐described level of assessment literacy, main
purposes of assessment, utilization of different assessment methods, need for further training, and suggested methods for promoting assessment literacy in university and practice teaching settings. Levels of self‐efficacy remained relatively low for teacher candidates across each of the four years of this program. Most candidates suggested summative purposes for assessment and only a minority expressed formative purposes. They favoured observational techniques and personal communication.
Key words: classroom assessment; preservice education
Cette étude porte sur la capacité d’évaluation chez les étudiants en pédagogie durant les quatre années de leur programme de formation à l’enseignement au primaire et au premier cycle du secondaire. Des étudiants de chaque année du programme ont
rempli un questionnaire portant sur les sujets suivants : auto‐estimation de leur aptitude à l’évaluation, buts principaux des évaluations, utilisation de diverses méthodes d’évaluation, besoin d’une formation plus poussée et suggestion de
méthodes pouvant aider à perfectionner l’aptitude à l’évaluation à l’université et lors de stages pédagogiques. Les répondants dans chacune des années du programme estimaient que leur capacité d’évaluation était relativement faible. La plupart ont
parlé d’évaluations sommatives et seulement une minorité, d’évaluations formatives. Les répondants favorisaient les techniques d’observation et les communications personnelles.
Mots clés : évaluation des élèves, formation à l’enseignement
According to researchers, better-educated parents generally provide their children with a more favourable learning nvironment, increasing the likelihood that they’ll pursue higher education. These parents also have higher educational aspirations for their children, reinforcing this dynamic. On the other hand,“first-generation” youth – those whose par- ents haven’t attended a
postsecondary education institution – are “less likely to plan for higher education, to be convinced of its benefits or to have above-average high school grades,” according to a report from the defunct Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation.
OUSA asked students about their experiences of living in the community where their university is located: from how far they felt their municipality sought to engage students, to their housing situation, and their use of public transit.
Overall, students responded positively regarding many aspects of their experiences. For example students were broadly positive about the range and quality of off-campus housing available, and many of the students who relied on public transit to commute to school felt it was meeting their needs.
Whether the separation is voluntary or not, losing a tenure-line or otherwise full-time faculty member is always a costly to an institution. The departing professor will take any external research grants with him or her, not to mention the sunk costs of hiring and training. Then there are additional costs that are harder to quantify, such as those to morale, mentorship, service and leadership in a department.
After years of teaching face to face, many instructors are able to begin teaching a traditional, classroom-based course without having the entire course laid out ahead of time. This approach doesn’t work very well in the online classroom where careful planning and course design is crucial to student success.
Good online course design begins with a clear understanding of specific learning outcomes and ways to engage students, while creating activities that allow students to take some control of their learning. It also requires a little extra effort upfront to minimize
two of the most common frustrations of online learning: 1. confusing course organization (how course elements are structured within the course) and 2. unclear navigation (what links or buttons are used to access these elements).
There’s surprisingly little research on the effects of graduate student instruction on undergraduates and of teaching experience on graduate students’ eventual careers. But conventional wisdom suggests that seasoned faculty members make better undergraduate instructors and that graduate students benefit from more time spent on finishing their dissertations than on teaching. For those reasons and others, some institutions -- most recently Purdue University -- have taken steps toward increasing faculty-undergraduate interaction and limiting the use of graduate students as instructors.
For decades, research and public discourse about gender and science have often assumed that women are more likely than men to “leak” from the science pipeline at multiple points after entering college. We used retrospective longitudinal methods to investigate how accurately this “leaky pipeline” metaphor has described the bachelor’s to Ph.D. transition in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in the U.S. since the 1970s. Among STEM bachelor’s degree earners in the 1970s and 1980s, women were less likely than men to later earn a STEM Ph.D. However, this gender difference closed in the 1990s. Qualitatively similar trends were found across STEM disciplines. The leaky pipeline metaphor therefore partially explains historical gender differences in the U.S., but no longer describes current gender differences in the bachelor’s to Ph.D. transition in STEM. The results help constrain theories about women’s underrepresentation in STEM. Overall, these results point to the need to understand gender differences at the bachelor’s level and below to understand women’s representation in STEM at the Ph.D. level and above. Consistent with trends at the bachelor’s level, women’s representation at the Ph.D. level has been recently declining for the first time in over 40 years.
Colleges and institutes play a lead role in strengthening regional capacity to innovate and work with industry partners to enhance competitiveness in the sectors and communities they serve. They conduct leading-edge applied research projects with industry partners to provide market ready solutions.
Whether it’s the creation of a rapid oil containment cling pad to clean up small scale oil or fuel spills, the development of intelligent textiles to meet consumer specific needs, or building award winning cutting edge web technology, colleges and institutes help small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) innovate and grow by focusing on improvements in technologies, processes, products and services.
The Government of Canada’s Tri-Council College and Community Innovation (CCI) Program administered by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council in collaboration with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research is making a real difference in growing the capacity of colleges and institutes to engage in industry-driven applied research and providing SMEs with the expertise required to be more innovative and productive.
Tim Clydesdale’s The Purposeful Graduate: Why Colleges Must Talk to Students About Vocation outlines the results of a multiple campus initiative that encouraged students to critically examine how they might lead meaningful lives. The Lilly Endowment initially supported the initiative. When the Lilly funds came to an end, many campuses continued supporting these so-called pro-exploration programs, encouraged by the enthusiasm of students, faculty, staff, and alumni. This initiative and related programs explored the idea of vocation, defined not as a person’s main employment or occupation, but rather as a sense of purpose that gives meaning to their lives.
The term pro-exploration undoubtedly has religious connotations, a fact that is acknowledged early in the text. The initial Lilly funding targeted institutions with a religious affiliation in keeping with the mission and history of the Lilly Endowment. However, Clydesdale is careful to note that all students possess a vocational identity regardless of their religious identity. In an era
of workforce development, where vocational training correlates with specific skill sets and employment opportunities, the idea of exploring vocation as an individual passion seems to be a luxury. Yet the book positions pro-exploration programs as a nod to the original purpose of higher education: educating globally knowledgeable, capable, and responsive citizens. This goal is too often not realized and pro-exploration programs provide an active path towards this end.
Whatever the budget or maturity level of a given educational institution, there is a trend toward putting assessments online. With this comes new opportunities, but also new challenges. In a recent webinar hosted by edWeb.net, administrators from the Hampton
Township School District in Pennsylvania point out that there is a wrong way to do online assessments. Here are a few of their top tips for making sure you do them the right way.
There can be little doubt that the reliance of community colleges on adjunct faculty has grwon significantly over the past several decades, especially with the cuts in budgets that institutions are being forced to make.
The purpose of this study was to identify how entrepreneurship education is delivered in Ontario colleges and universities. In Ontario, as in the rest of Canada, the increase in the number of entrepreneurship courses at universities and colleges, and the concurrent popularization and maturation of entrepreneurship programming, contribute to fostering entrepreneurial skills and mindsets, and the creation of businesses. The overall aim of this report is to inform debate and decision-making on entrepreneurship education through a mapping and assessment of existing programs in the province.
In 2011 Ontario joined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) feasibility study. The Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) led the project on behalf of the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) and in cooperation with the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC).
Initiated in 2006, AHELO was a feasibility study to determine if standard generic and discipline-specific tests could be used in different countries to measure what university students know and are able to do. Intending to contribute to the international conversation on establishing better indications of learning quality, the study aimed to develop common learning outcomes and assess student performance at the end of a bachelor’s degree (first cycle) in a variety of educational cultures, languages and institutions through standard tests. The feasibility study developed three assessments: one for generic skills and two for discipline-specific skills in economics and civil engineering.
Seventeen countries1 were represented in this global project and Canada was one of nine jurisdictions participating in the engineering strand. Nine out of ten Ontario universities with civil engineering programs participated in the study, representing approximately 61% of all Canadian civil engineering graduating students.
The following report reviews the experience of Ontario’s participation in the feasibility study, focusing primarily on the implementation and administration activities and the value to institutions. While the institutions did not gain specific insight into their programming, AHELO generated considerable interest in international assessments and comparative understanding and provided significant experience in the administration of large-scale assessments.
The skills that individuals develop play a pivotal role in determining their labour-market opportunities and life chances in general, and are of vital importance to a country’s economic performance and many social outcomes. Post-secondary education (PSE) is a primary means by which Canadians obtain the skills that they need.
It is therefore essential to have accurate, up-to-date, and relevant learning and labour market information (LLMI) that is widely available so that all players in the PSE system – students making their PSE choices, PSE institutions deciding which programs to offer, policy makers, and the general public – can make informed decisions.
Administrators at many colleges and universities have had online courses at their institutions for many years, now. One of the hidden challenges about online courses is that they tend to be observed and evaluated far less frequently than their face-to-face course counterparts. This is party due to the fact that many of us administrators today never taught online courses ourselves when we were teaching. This article provides six "secrets" to performing meaningful observations and evaluations of online teaching,
including how to use data analytics, avoid biases, and produce useful results even if observers have never taught online themselves.