Higher education is experiencing an unprecedented shift in student demographics, forcing admissions officers to take a systematic approach to current recruitment practices, activities, and investments. In the article “Knocking at the College Door,” the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education reports that the U.S. is experiencing its first overall decline in the total number of domestic highschool graduates in more than a decade. The report also indicates that the pool of future college students is notably more ethnically and socioeconomically diverse, and often less prepared to succeed in college. As a result, institutions must rethink their approach to recruiting to identify and engage new target audiences, both domestically and internationally. And they must be prepared to support these students in new and different ways.
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.
Background/Context: The implications of complexity theory have become a recurring topic in the literatures of a wide range of scholarly and professional fields including adult education. This paper builds on literature calling attention to the educational need for pedagogically addressing the implications of the intensifying complexity in the environments that
confront adults in their professional and personal lives.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: Three theoretical streams, (a) Complex adaptive systems; (b) learning through experience; and, (c) adult developmental theory provide the basis for the pedagogical approach that is presented. The focus is on contingently applying these distinct streams of theory into learning designs. We share our experiences in experimenting with course designs for preparing adult learners for taking action on personal, civic, and professional
challenges embedded in ambiguity and uncertainty in which rigid application of ready-made solutions is not possible. Our goal is to stimulate deeper experimentation. Accordingly, the question guiding this paper is, “How can we as adult educators create conditions in our classrooms, and other learning venues, for addressing the need for preparing adults to mindfully learn through
the challenges that confront them in the context of increasing complexity?”
Setting: For purposes of illustrating our experience and provoking questions, we draw on examples from our work in three graduate level courses in distinct disciplinary settings—specifically, organizational psychology and adult learning, adult education, and technology management.
The need for a reliable strategic planning framework for distance educators and their institutions has never been greater than it is now. Increased government regulations, accreditation standards, and competition are converging with decreased funding from federal, state, and private sources, and administrators require better strategic planning. A strategic planning model known as the Balanced Scorecard has met with widespread adoption and sweeping success among the business community, but, surprisingly, has not been widely adopted among institutions of higher and distance education. In this article the authors share what they have learned about this strategic planning model through a review of the available literature and their own early efforts to introduce it to their institution, the Division of Continuing Education at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
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.
For many years the blessings of the auto and industrial economy in Michigan – where one could earn a good living without a postsecondary education degree, or other credential —created an environment where higher education was desirable, but not essential. All that has changed, with huge implications for the education, skills, and preparation most relevant for individuals to succeed in the labor market.
This paper explores the potential of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), to provide new insights into community service-learning (CSL) in higher education. While CSL literature acknowledges the influences of John Dewey and Paolo Freire, discussion of the potential contribution of cultural-historical activity theory, rooted in the work of Russian psychologist
Lev Vygotsky, is noticeably absent. This paper addresses this gap by examining four assumptions
associated with activity theory: the rejection of a theory/practice divide, the development of
knowledge as a social collaborative activity, the focus on contradictions in and across activity
systems, and the interventionist approach
aimed at transformation.
Dalhousie University’s Centre for Learning and Teaching offers a Certificate in University Teaching and Learning, which includes a 12-week course entitled Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. This course provides the certificate’s theory component and has evolved to reflect the changing needs of future educators. One significant change is the development of a blended course model that incorporates graded online facilitation, prompted by the recognition that teaching assistants and faculty are increasingly required to teach online or blended (i.e., combining face-to-face and online) courses. This study invited graduate students enrolled in the course to participate in pre- and post-facilitation questionnaires that assessed their awareness, competence, confidence, and attitudes towards online and blended learning. Students recognized the value of the online component for future teaching expertise and experienced increased awareness, competence, and confidence regarding teaching online. However, preference for face-to-face teaching and student learning did not change.
This roundtable will focus on access to capital markets to meet the needs of a growing number of First Nations businesses and communities seeking financial participation in projects that can be valued in hundreds of millions of dollars. Based on the analysis below, we propose the following key issues and questions for discussion:
In today’s digital age, social media competence is a critical communication tool for academics. Whether you’re looking to engage students, increase awareness of your research, or garner media coverage for your department, engaging in social media will give you a competitive edge.
When there are debates about the world's top performing education systems, the names that usually get mentioned are the Asian powerhouses such as Singapore and South Korea or the Nordic know-alls, such as Finland or Norway.
But with much less recognition, Canada has climbed into the top tier of international rankings.
In the most recent round of international Pisa tests, Canada was one of a handful of countries to appear in the top 10 for maths, science and reading.
Occasionally I’m asked about quitting, particularly “quitting” a PhD program. This happened several times last week,
when I was in Vancouver.
Contrary to what you may hear or what your own internal critics tell you, there’s no shame in moving on. I remember a long post on a Versatile PhD forum from “PJ,” an ABD thinking about leaving instead of spending another two years (minimum) to finish their PhD. In response, one commenter wrote, “But the real question is, do you want to be a quitter? Now, not everyone will view that question the same, and I’m sure many will say that equating quitting a PhD program to being a quitter is not valid, but in reality, it is.” No! Thankfully, most other commenters on the thread offered more nuanced and helpful reflections and advice. “Finishing is not just about the destination,” one former tenure-track professor pointed out. “If that’s the only thing you want, then it’s a tough few years ahead.” Indeed.
“905” Residents are most likely to identify jobs/unemployment” as the most important issue currently facing the Ontario government.
Friendships can blossom naturally between scholars and students, but are they always problematic? Nina Kelly
navigates the boundaries.
During the last third of the twentieth century, college sectors in many coun-tries took on the role of expanding opportunities for baccalaureate degree attainment in applied fields of study. In many European countries, colleges came to constitute a parallel higher education sector that offered degree pro-grams of an applied nature in contrast to the more academically oriented pro-grams of the traditional university sector. Other jurisdictions, including some Canadian ones, followed the American approach, in which colleges facilitate degree attainment for students in occupational programs through transfer arrangements with universities. This article offers some possible reasons why the Ontario Government has chosen not to fully embrace the European mod-el, even though the original vision for Ontario’s colleges was closer to that model to than to the American one.
Au cours du dernier tiers du 20e siècle, les réseaux collégiaux de nombreux pays se sont donné comme mission d’accroître les occasions d’obtention de baccalauréat dans des domaines d’études appliquées. Dans de nombreux pays d’Europe, les collèges ont progressivement constitué un secteur parallèle d’enseignement supérieur offrant des programmes d’études appliquées menant à un grade, à l’inverse du secteur universitaire traditionnel, lequel favorise plutôt les études théoriques. Dans d’autres juridictions,dont certaines au Canada, on a plutôt suivi le modèle américain selon lequel les collèges facilitent l’obtention de grades dans des programmes axés sur les professions par le biais d’ententes de transfert avec les universités. Le présent article propose certaines raisons susceptibles d’expliquer pourquoi le gouvernement de l’Ontario a choisi de ne pas adopter entièrement le modèle européen, malgré le fait que la vision initiale des collèges de l’Ontario se rapprochait davantage de ce dernier que du modèle américain.
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.
The Cloud Goes to School
Vocational education and training are highly valued by many. The European Ministers for Vocational Education and Training, the European Social Partners and the European Commission have issued in 2010 the Bruges Communiqué, which describes the global vision for VET in Europe 2020. In this vision, vocational skills and competencies are considered as important as academic skills and competencies. VET is expected to play an important role in achieving two Europe 2020 headline
targets set in the education field: a) reduce the rate of early school leavers from education to less than 10 percent;
b) increase the share of 30 to 40 years old having completed tertiary or equivalent education to at least 40 percent. However, there is limited hard evidence that VET can improve education and labour market outcomes. The few existing studies yield mixed results partly due to differences in the structure and quality of VET across countries.
This article makes the case that Canadian universities—both within and be- yond their campuses—must broaden their visions of third-age learners. Ca- nadian third-age learners—defined for the purposes of this article as persons seeking formalized education who are in the stage of life beginning at retire- ment—are more numerous, active, financially stable, and diverse as well as healthier and better educated than at any other time in our history. It follows that Canadian universities have much to offer and gain by both deepening and broadening their involvement with these learners. I argue that universi- ties must consider multi-pronged forms of collaboration and must be motivated, at all times, not by short-sighted financial concerns but by their core obligation to serve the public good by fostering community engagement.
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).