No one wants their writing to be the subject of ridicule and disdain, but that’s the lot of many academics, whose turgid, clumsy, lumpy prose is deemed unapproachable by readers outside the halls of academe. What’s the harm in writing for the few? Many good ideas that might be of public benefit are cloistered away. The articles in this collection describe what’s wrong with academic prose and how it could be improved.
Rapid scientific and technological advancement, globalization, cross-cultural encounters and changes in the balance of economic and political power show no sign of slowing down (Association of American Colleges & Universities, 2007). Canada has also been subject to these trends, which has resulted in greater demand for individuals with higher levels of education and skill (OECD, 1996). For example, Statistics Canada found that in Canada the number of high-knowledge businesses (such as those providing services in engineering, sciences and related disciplines) increased by 78% between 1991 and 2003, while the number of low-knowledge businesses (such as accommodation, and food and beverage services) grew by just 3% (Lapointe et al., 2006).
This purpose of this article is to introduce others to a successful, innovative, self-funding model of entrepreneurship education through a collaborative effort among seven universities and colleges in Northeast Ohio. Ashland University, Baldwin-Wallace College, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland State University, John Carroll University, Kent State University, and The University of Akron created a new 501(c) (3) non-profit corporation called the Entrepreneurship Education Consortium (EEC) http://www.eecneohio.com/acorn.php?page=home to stimulate
entrepreneurial activity within the region.
Ontario is reviewing its university funding model, an enrolment-based formula through which the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities distributes a $3.5B annual provincial operating grant to the province’s 20 publicly assisted universities.
We examined the existing model in our June 2015 paper The Ontario University Funding Model in Context. We observed that the model is a relatively small (27 %) component of total university system revenues. We concluded that this small slice of funding must be managed in a focussed and strategic way if it is to be effective in shaping behaviour towards desired provincial objectives (HEQCO, 2015).
Data on how well the information and communication technology (ICT) needs of 1354 Canadian college and university students with disabilities are met on and off campus were collected using the newly developed POSITIVES Scale (Postsecondary Information Technology Initiative Scale). The measure contains 26 items which use a 6- point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree) to indicate level of agreement with each of the positively worded items. It has three factor analysis-derived subscales (ICTs at School Meet Student’s Needs, ICTs at Home Meet Student’s Needs, E-learning ICTs Meet Student’s Needs) and a total score. Reliability and validity are excellent for both English and French versions. Versions that could be completed online, on paper (printable PDF), and within a Microsoft Word document were found to be equivalent.
There was a time not too long ago when the person with the most technical knowledge got promoted fastest. But hat’s often no longer the case.
Once someone gets promoted, technical skills become less necessary, and interpersonal ones become more critical in their place. You’ve probably already heard that emotional intelligence is a top factor in companies’ hiring decisions, but it plays a major role in how employers choose to promote their team members, too. This isn’t exactly news; in a 2011 Career Builder survey of more than 2,600 hiring managers and HR professionals, 71% said they valued emotional intelligence over IQ in general, and 75% said they’re typically more likely to promote an employee with high emotional intelligence and a comparatively lower IQ than one where that ratio is
flipped.
A growing number of Canadian universities offer graduate student certificate programs in university teaching. This paper examines such programs at 13 Canadian universities and presents a discussion of program structures and practices. The findings suggest that most programs were offered over one to two years, and upon successful completion, participants were issued a centre-approved certificate paired with a more formalized method of recognition, such as a transcript notation. The core focus of certificate programs appears to be divided between those that emphasize practical skill development (46%) and those that offer practical skill development along with a focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning (54%). Most certificates included ac- tive and authentic assessment methods, such as dossiers (69%), and practice teaching sessions (62%). These findings help to inform the continued evolution of graduate student teaching certificate programs.
Many countries strive to make postsecondary education maximally accessible to their citizens under the assumption that educated citizens boost innovation and leadership, resulting in social and economic benefits. However, attempts to increase access, especially in contexts of stagnant or diminishing financial support, can result in ever-increasing class sizes. Two aspects of large classes are extremely worrisome. First, economic and logistical constraints have led many such classes to devolve into settings characterized by lectures, readings and multiple-choice tests, thereby denying students experience and exercise with important transferable skills (e.g., critical thought, creative thought, self-reflective thought, expressive and receptive communication). Second, such classes are depicted as cold and impersonal, with little sense of community among students.
More than half of black college students fail to complete thier degree work - for reasons that have little to do with innate ability or environmental conditions. The problem, a social psychologist argues, is that they are undervalued, in ways that are sometimes subtle and somes not.
NEW YORK -- Administrators sometimes disagree with faculty members about the value of online education, and nthusiastic instructors sometimes clash with skeptics. But what can colleges do when their students are the ones esisting change?
he question emerged here last week as the Teagle Foundation, which supports liberal arts education, brought ogether grant recipients to provide updates on nine projects involving blended learning -- face-to-face courses with ome online content. The collaborative projects, many of which won’t conclude until 2017 and 2018, have attracted articipation from more than 110 faculty members and staffers and 115 students at about 40 colleges and universities in 16 states.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss various issues surrounding the community college baccalaureate. In 2009, President Barack Obama provided a vision to increase graduation rates for students across the nation and challenged higher education to double the number of college degrees conferred nationwide by 2020. In addition, the President urged the country’s 1,200 community colleges to be instrumental in this initiative, as they have the capacity to provide the education necessary to produce a competitive workforce. In 2011, the dialogue continues and intensifies. At the 2011 Building a Grad Nation Summit, Vice President Biden issued a call to action to boost college graduation rates across the country and help the nation meet the President’s goals. He states, “Right now we’ve got an education system that works like a funnel when we need it to work like a pipeline.”
In Canada, the demand and continued growth in demand, for access to degrees, has been well documented. The participation rate in Canada in degree programs of the typical grade 9 cohorts has almost tripled over the past 30 years to over 20 percent. As reported in the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) Trends in Higher Education (2002), we will need upwards of 100,000 new degree places in the next decade to meet the demand for participation in degree-level study.
Executive Summary
With a mandate to prepare students for the labour market, ‘communication’ figures prominently among the essential employability skills that Ontario’s colleges are expected to develop in students prior to graduation. As a result, many colleges have instituted measures to help shore up the skills of students who are admitted to college yet who do not possess the expected ‘college-level English’ proficiency. Several have addressed this challenge by admitting these students into developmental communication classes, which are designed to build their skills to the expected college level.
This study assesses the effects of developmental communication courses on students’ communication skills and persistence at four Ontario colleges. To do so, it measures student performance on a standardized communication test (Accuplacer’s WritePlacer) both before beginning (incoming) and after completing (outgoing) the developmental communication course. It also investigates persistence through the first academic year for students who took the course.
Students are paying higher tuition than ever. Why can’t more of that revenue go to the people teaching them?
A leader is assumed to be someone entrusted by his/her followers to lead, behave responsibly and be accountable for his actions. He/she would be someone righteous, with a high level of moral judgement and a good reputation, and thus, be held to a higher moral standard.
Keywords
leadership, performance, responsible, framework
While student data systems are nothing new and most educators have been dealing with student data for many years, learning analytics has emerged as a new concept to capture educational big data. Learning analytics is about better understanding of the learning and teaching process and interpreting student data to improve their success and learning experiences. This paper provides an overview to learning analytics in higher education and more specifically, in e-learning. It also explores some of the issues around learning analytics.
Work-integrated learning (WIL) has been identified as a key strategy for supporting Canada’s postsecondary education (PSE) system in responding to an increasingly dynamic, globalized, knowledge-based economy. Ontario in particular has been described as a “hot bed” of co-operative education (Ipsos Reid, 2010). However, while there is a common belief that WIL improves employment outcomes (see Gault, Redington & Schlager, 2000; Kramer & Usher, 2010), research on this topic has generally been specific to certain programs and types of WIL (Sattler, 2011).
"The current economic crisis is a structural one. Emerging industries require that young people possess new knowledge and entrepreneurial skills. Furthermore, tax and regulatory systems often inhibit business formation by young people. Systemic change is needed to help the new generation of young entrepreneurs to succeed in the innovative economy of the 21st century.”
Canada’s colleges, institutes, cégeps and polytechnics play a pivotal role in ensuring that Canada is “innovation ready,” providing students with the knowledge, advanced skills and work experience needed to maximize employment and entrepreneurship opportunities. They reach over 3,000 communities in urban, rural and remote areas from coast to
coast to coast, serving young people, adults requiring skills upgrading, Indigenous peoples, post-secondary graduates seeking specialized skills and work-integrated learning, newcomers to Canada and many more. These institutions serve 1.5 million learners with an extended reach that directly impacts the lives of one in eight Canadians. In 2014/15 alone, those who attended colleges and institutes generated $130.3 billion in added income through their higher earnings and increased
productivity of their
employers1.
Les étudiants français aiment le Québec : le coût de la vie y est abordable et les frais de scolarité peu élevés. En effet, depuis 1978, ils payaient le même tarif que les Québécois, contrairement aux autres étudiants étrangers, mais ce traitement de faveur a pris fin en septembre. Tous les nouveaux étudiants – ce qui exclut ceux qui ont déjà entamé leur baccalauréat et les étudiants aux cycles supérieurs – ont vu leur facture tripler, passant de 2 300 $ à 6 650 $ par année, soit le même montant que les étudiants venus des autres provinces canadiennes. Le gouvernement du Québec espère ainsi faire un profit de 30 millions annuellement.