he government of Ontario went to some effort to showcase its planned Ontario Student Grant in its recent budget, nd with good reason: it’s an intelligent, progressive reform of student assistance, in all the ways that its previous eforms weren’t.
ather than offset the cost of tuition for every student, rich or poor, as under the province’s ill-starred “30 Per Cent ff” plan, the new plan would roll a number of existing grants and tax credits into a single grant targeted at those ost in need. Families earning less than $50,000 would essentially be tuition free, with lesser reductions for those on incomes between $50,000 to $85,000.
Readers of Faculty Focus are probably already familiar with backward design. Most readily connected with such
researchers as Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe, and Dee Fink, this approach to course construction asks faculty to initially ignore the specific content of a class. Rather, the designer begins the process by identifying desired learning goals, and then devising optimal instruments to measure and assess them. Only thereafter does course-specific content come into play—and even then, it is brought in not for the sake of “covering” it, but as a means to achieve the previously identified learning objectives. Courses designed this way put learning first, often transcend the traditional skillset boundaries of their discipline, and usually aim to achieve more ambitious cognitive development than do classes that begin—and often end—with content mastery as the primary focus. Although the advantages of backward design are manifest, it’s probably still the exception to, rather than the rule of, course planning.
This study examined aspects of approval processes for baccalaureate degree programs in colleges in the following 11 jurisdictions: Alberta, British Columbia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Flanders, Florida, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. More detailed profiles are provided for seven of the jurisdictions. In order to make the data more relevant for the Ontario reader, some comparisons with characteristics of the baccalaureate degree approval process in Ontario are noted.
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).
To compete in an interconnected and global marketplace, Canadian companies require an increasingly strong and skilled workforce.
However, a lack of comprehensive labour market data, particularly on employment trends and skill requirements, makes it difficult to identify and analyze the current state of the Canadian job market.
Tioga High School senior Emily Kennedy studies a child development college course online in Groveland, as part of
a collaboration with Columbia College.
As the year 2015 has begun, a worldwide racialized conversation continues about the inability of police, judicial systems, and public policy to address what Derrick Bell (1992) has long framed as the “permanence of racism” (see also Knaus, 2011; Ladson-Billings, 1999). Race riots and police brutality in Ferguson and the Charlie Hebdo murders and their aftermath in Paris punctuate a constant backdrop of racialized policy-making, violence, and inequity. While small, short-lived protests sprang up in reaction to these events, systemic and long-term responses to the larger global context of racism are less common and largely not deemed media-worthy. Within the U.S. context of charges of sanctioned, racialized police brutality representing American racism being framed around the killing of individual Black men, larger arguments about the role of public education in challenging the very conditions that lead to such racism become silenced.
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.
In the latest edition of our blog, we hear from Dr. Adam Gaudry. In this piece, Adam explores the historical and contemporary tensions that exist between units like Indigenous Studies and the academy. Perfectly timed, Adam’s piece draws our attention to the calls to Action in the recently released Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Background/Context: PISA has come up with an ingenious solution to the problem of how to measure student achievement across national school systems with different curricula. Instead of measuring how well students learn what they are taught in each system, it measures a set of economically useful skills that no one teaches.
Whenever I assign a long reading for homework or offer to peruse one collectively, a tremendous
sigh can be heard filling up the room. Groans of “Do we have to?” or “I’ve never read anything that
long in my life” punctuate the anticipated boredom, and everyone settles in to (grudgingly) do the
work.
For instructors, that isn’t a rare occurrence. Our roles require us teach basic tenets of literature, engage students in thinking about rhetoric and symbolism, and ideally guide them as they evolve into better writers and critical thinkers. However, as we try to reach students who are reading increasingly shorter and shorter pieces, or not at all, one question arises: Do we need to change how and what we teach in English courses, or is it already too late?
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.
Dark economic times have come to the province. The Premier, under pressure from business groups, appoints a prominent citizen to review the government‟s finances. His report proposes dramatic cuts to most social programs and the public sector, including education. There is no broad -based public consultation involving public servants, teachers, doctors or university faculty.
Claiming that talking about race causes more racism is akin to suggesting that it would not rain if people would just stop carrying umbrellas. Conversely, just as umbrellas protect against the rain, talking about race can serve as a defense against racial microaggressions and onslaughts. Researching Race in Education: Policy, Practice, and Qualitative Research provides a 'storm
olars can gather under as we ride out another racial storm.
The Canadian Graduate and Professional Student Survey (CGPSS) is a national survey that was completed by over 51,000 students across 48 universities in 2013. This comprehensive survey includes questions covering a broad array of topics including students’ satisfaction with their departments, programs and advisors, availability of funding, use and quality of university services, and satisfaction with professional development supports (CAGS, 2010). This report uses data and opinions collected from graduate students through the CGPSS in an effort to contribute to the conversation on graduate student education in Canada.
In any Ph.D. job search, if there is an application process, you should read the instructions before you do anything,writes Natalie Lundsteen. You should take your time, be thoughtful and follow directions.
Despite research interest in the motivations, experiences and challenges of Ontario postsecondary students who have transferred from college to university, there has been too little in-depth quantitative analysis on these topics. This study contributes to the literature by documenting transfer between York University and Seneca College – two institutions whose strong partnership has encouraged a high volume of transfer in both directions – over a period of 12 years (2000-2012).
The primary goal of this study was to identify a wide range of characteristics of college students that may influence their decisions to select online courses. The motivation underlying this study is the realization that online courses are no longer exclusively being taken by non-traditional students (for undergraduates, that would be students age 25 years and older with career, family, and/or social obligations). In fact, there are recent reports indicating that traditional undergraduate students (on-site students that are age 18-24) are now including online courses in their course curriculum. To accomplish the goal of this study, an ordered logit model was developed in which a Likert scale question asking students how likely/unlikely they were to take an online course was used at the dependent variable. The independent variables were based on a wide range of responses to questions regarding student demographic, experience, and preference information (these are the students’ characteristics). The data for this study is from a 2010 Oklahoma State University campus-wide student survey. The results of the study have identified a number of considerations that may be helpful to administrators wishing to improve and/or expand online course offering, as well as areas that can be further investigated in future studies. For example, undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in business majors were more likely than those in other majors to select online courses. On the other hand, undergraduate students(traditional and non-traditional) enrolled in engineering majors and graduate students enrolled in anatomy,biochemistry, biology, and botany major were the least likely groups of students to select online courses.Freshman and sophomores were found to be more likely than juniors and seniors to select online courses, and were much more likely than graduate students to select online courses. With respect to residency, out-of-state/non-residents (not including international students) were the most likely to select online courses, while international students were the least likely to select online courses. Finally, a significant and positive relationship was identified between some web 2.0 technologies, such as online social networking (e.g.Facebook) and live video chatting (e.g. Skype), and students’ likelihood of selecting online courses.
The central goal of the Canadian residential school system was to ‘Christianize’ and ‘civilize’ Aboriginal people, a process intended to lead to their cultural assimilation into Euro-Canadian society. This policy goal was directed at all Aboriginal people and all Aboriginal cultures. It failed to take into account the devel-opment of new Aboriginal nations, and the implications of the Indian Act’s definition of who was and was not a “status Indian” and the British North America Act’s division of responsibility for “Indians.” In the government’s vision, there was no place for the Métis Nation that proclaimed itself in the Canadian Northwest in the nineteenth cen-tury. Neither was there any place for the large number of Aboriginal people who, for a variety of reasons, chose not to terminate their Treaty rights, or for those women, and their children, who lost their Indian Act status by marrying a person who did not have such status. These individuals were classed or identified alternately as “non-sta-tus Indians,” “half-breeds,” or “Métis.” In different times or different places, they might also identify themselves by these terms, but often they did not. Instead, they might view themselves to be members of specific First Nations, Inuit, or Euro-Canadian societies. For the sake of clarity, this chapter generally uses the term Métis to describe people of mixed descent who were not able, or chose not, to be registered as Indians under the Indian Act. It should be recognized that not all the people described by this term would have identified themselves as Métis during their lives, and that the histo-ries of these people varied considerably, depending on time and location.
This report was commissioned by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) as part of a multi-year effort to improve the quality of education and skills training in Canada while enhancing young people’s ability to succeed in the 21st century job market. Opinions in the paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCCE or its members.