How do you blend General Education competencies (i.e. communication, ethical/logical/mathematical reasoning) across an institution and curriculum? Kaplan University’s General Education program integrates and assesses student proficiency in General Education disciplines across all undergraduate programs. The datais used to inform curricular improvements in a continuous process for maximizing student learning.
Higher education is experiencing more change than ever before. For those in higher education, change is coming at lightening speed and from multiple directions. On a macro level, we’re experiencing change in terms of greater accountability and regulation from our individual states, the federal government, and our accrediting bodies. At the same time, at the micro level, we are experiencing demographic shifts and changing workforce needs in our local communities and districts. The term “sea change” is used frequently to describe the events shaping higher education, particularly community colleges, today. In so many ways, this is an apt description of the swiftly changing landscape we face.
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).
Research and experience have demonstrated that early childhood development (ECD) is integral to future outcomes. Quality ECD programming contributes to healthy growth and development, as well as school readiness and success. Given the legacy of colonialism in Canada, access to culturally relevant ECD programs can play a key role in bridging gaps in life-chances between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children.
In Ontario, the topic of increasing transferability between colleges and universities has recently attracted the attention of
numerous individuals in the fields of higher education, politics and the local media – many of whom have suggested that increasing the availability of college to university transfer programs, also known as articulation agreements, would facilitate pathways to higher education for a greater number of students from diverse backgrounds. However, there are many issues surrounding the transfer of students from colleges to universities in Ontario, most of which are connected to the historical structure of the system of postsecondary education in the province. Any progress towards a system of greater transferability between community Ontario and universities would require a careful analysis of the success of existing college to university transfer programs as well as a radical reconsideration of the provincial system of postsecondary education as a whole.
Currently, there is great interest across Ontario in the expansion of pathway programs between colleges and universities. Through strategic partnerships, two Ontario-based postsecondary institutions (a college and a university) have developed innovative and effective pathway programs that facilitate the transition of students between institutions for the completion of degrees, diplomas, and certificates. These programs support the training of highly qualified, market-ready graduates. This paper reports on a mixed-methods study of the successes and challenges of a particular Ontario college and university
pathway program, with a focus on the Bachelor of Commerce Pathway program. Preliminary results indicate that pathway students were more academically successful than their traditional university student counterparts but did experience a number of challenges in transitioning from college into university. Principal challenges included inefficient communication between
program administrators, academic advisors, and students; lack of orientation activities for pathway students; lack of college student preparedness in communication and critical thinking skills; and difficulties experienced by college
students integrating into the social–cultural life of the university.
Have you ever witnessed a Ferpa freakout? Maybe you've had one yourself, as you worried about whether trying a new digital tool in class might violate the federeal alw that protects student privacy.
Public and Political attention is increasingly focused on growing soci-oeconomic inequality, in particular the decline of secure, full-time work and rise of more precarious forms of employment. The trend is more evident in some sectors, like retail, than others, but few sectors — whether in the pri-vate or public spheres — appear to be completely immune.
This report explores the extent to which conditions for workers in Can-ada’s post-secondary institutions are shifting as well. More precisely, it asks whether employment on university and college campuses in Ontario is be-coming more precarious, for whom and for what reasons.
A new measure of motivation toward education has been developed in French, namely the "Echelle de Motivation en Education" (EME). The ME is based on the tenets of self-determination theory and is composed of seven aubscales assessing three types of intinsic motivation.
This report documents the central role of the college-educated workforce in improving labour productivity across the economy and supporting an innovation culture in the workplace. It describes critical “enabling occupations” that play a key role in allowing
companies to build a culture of innovation in the workplace which they need if they are to continually restructure for success. It develops a “Prosperity Cycle” model and demonstrates the importance of college graduates in building a culture of innovation in a
dozen key Ontario industries.
The governance of complex, decentralised, multi-level education systems poses two fundamental questions for both policy- and research discussions: What are innovative contemporary governance strategies for the central level in education systems? How can these approaches be described and analysed to identify commonalities that might help to understand how and if they work? In addressing these questions, this paper’s aim is twofold: first, to inform the policy-discussion by presenting empirical examples of new governance mechanisms that central governments use to steer systems across their levels; and second, to contribute to the conceptual discussion of how to categorise and analyse the evolution of new governance structures. To do so, the paper starts with identifying core features of multi-level governance and the respective conceptual gaps it produces. It then introduces a simple analytical categorisation of modes of governance. An analysis of three
empirical cases (an institutionalised exchange between governance levels in Norway, a capacity building programme in Germany, and the Open Method of Coordination within the European Union) then shows how various education systems address these gaps and design the role of the central level in complex decision-making structures. A comparison of the three cases identifies – despite the heterogeneity of the cases – several communalities, such as multi-staged policy processes,
transparency and publicity, and soft sanctions. The paper concludes that the Open Method of Coordination, even though often criticised for its inefficiencies, might serve as a promising template for national approaches to soft governance in education. Further research on OECD education systems is needed to gather more empirical examples; these may help to get a better
understanding of what is needed for successful steering from the central level in decentralised contexts.
Ontario students are supportive of the provincial government’s recent decision to create an Ontario Online Institute. This endeavour could significantly advance access, especially for traditionally underrepresented groups facing financial, physical, social, cultural, and geographic barriers which prevent them from attending a traditional post-secondary institution. Moreover, such an Institute could provide increased flexibility for the thousands of current students looking to blend online learning with an in-class education.
Education is consistently one of the least covered topics in the Canadian news media. According to Influence Communication, a Canadian research firm, only 0.16% of 10.9 million stories published or broadcast in Canadian media in 2014 concerned education, both the K-12 and postsecondary education sectors (Influence Communication, 2014).
However, research has found that news coverage of more specific policy areas, such as the environment or health, has stronger effects on public perception than coverage of broad policy issues such as the economy and jobs (Brown, 2010; Kingdon, 2003; Soroka, 2002). An evaluation of the frequency and tone of media coverage of postsecondary education (PSE) in Canada can thus yield valuable insights about public awareness and opinions of this sector.
Research Question
How has coverage of Canadian postsecondary education in the Canadian media changed over the last 15 years?
Attention now turns to the upcoming report of the fundamental science review panel chaired by David Naylor.
The Trudeau government tabled its second budget on March 22, promising to address economic challenges facing the country and cultivate a nimble workforce through investment in education and skills development. Among its many elements, the budget expands the Canada Student Loans and Grants program and earmarks $90 million over two years for Indigenous students. However, the budget included no new funding for the three major research granting councils – the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research – dismaying many in the research community.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s “Missing Children and Unmarked Burials Project” is a systematic effort to record and analyze the deaths at the schools, and the presence and condition of student cemeteries, within the regulatory context in which the schools were intended to operate. The proj-ect’s research supports the following conclusions:
• The Commission has identified 3,200 deaths on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Register of Confirmed Deaths of Named Residential School Students and the Register of Confirmed Deaths of Unnamed Residential School Students.
• For just under one-third of these deaths (32%), the government and the schools did not record the name of the student who died.
• For just under one-quarter of these deaths (23%), the government and the schools did not record the gender of the student who died.
• For just under one-half of these deaths (49%), the government and the schools did not record the cause of death.
• Aboriginal children in residential schools died at a far higher rate than school-aged children in the general population.
• For most of the history of the schools, the practice was not to send the bodies of students who died at schools to their home communities.
• For the most part, the cemeteries that the Commission documented are aban-doned, disused, and vulnerable to accidental disturbance.
• The federal government never established an adequate set of standards and reg-ulations to guarantee the health and safety of residential school students.
• The federal government never adequately enforced the minimal standards and regulations that it did establish.
• The failure to establish and enforce adequate regulations was largely a function of the government’s determination to keep residential school costs to a minimum.
Can a new institutional leader succeed after making damaging remarks that are informally shared?
Changes to immigration rules are a boon to international student recruitment
International students have become an increasingly integral part of Canada’s immigration strategy
as a result of
ongoing changes to federal regulations aimed at recruiting more highly skilled newcomers to the
country.
The federal government has made incremental revisions to immigration rules in recent years designed to tap into this desirable pool of potential immigrants, said Harald Bauder, academic director of Ryerson University’s Centre for Immigration and Settlement. It’s been “a creeping transition” away from a system that assesses would-be economic migrants on a points system towards a two-step process that admits international students and foreign skilled workers on a temporary basis before allowing them to transition to permanent residency status.
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:
As our nation strives to have all students graduate from high school ready for college and other postsecondary learning opportunities, we have to confront the reality that we are far from achieving this goal. The problem is most severe with
economically disadvantaged students. For example, in states where all eleventh graders take the ACT® college readiness assessment, only 45% of low-income students in 2012 met the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks in English, 30% in reading,
21% in mathematics, and 13% in science. For many students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, learning gaps
appear in early childhood.2 Large numbers of disadvantaged students enter kindergarten behind in early reading and mathematics skills, oral language development, vocabulary, and general knowledge. This situation poses a challenge for
intervention models that presume that 15% or so of students need short-term additional help, 5% or so need long-term intervention, and the regular academic program will take care of the rest. In cases where the great majority of students are
academically behind and need major assistance, the regular academic program must be upgraded to deliver a richer curriculum to all students. Such a curriculum is highly beneficial for all students, but is especially critical for disadvantaged students, who often arrive from home with limited knowledge and vocabulary. School districts must develop a system of practices that enable such a curriculum to be taught effectively.
This handbook is intended to serve as a resource for fculty, staffk academic leades and educational developers engaged in program and course desing/review, and the assissment of program-level learning outcomes for program improve. The assessment of learning outcomes at the program-level can assist in making improvements to curricula, teaching and assessment plans.