In early 2015 the government of Ontario announced that it would be conducting a review of the processes by which it funds universities. In order to best capture the needs of those that consume, deliver and fund higher education, the government has commissioned extensive consultation with parents, students, universities, employers, agencies, and sector experts. This submission will serve as a summary of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance’s contributions to those discussions, as well as a statement of our principles in the area of funding priorities that could benefit students.
Through the writings and research of pre-eminent online learning expert, Dr. Tony Bates
For almost 50 years, Tony Bates has been a consistent, persistent and influential voice for the reform of teaching and learning in post-secondary education, notably through the effective use of emerging technologies. Author of 11 books and 350 research papers in the field of online learning and distance education, Tony Bates is also an advisor to over 40 organizations in 25 countries, and publisher of what is arguably the most influential blog on online learning (link is external) with over 20,000 visits a month. A Contact North | Contact Nord Research Associate, Dr. Bates has helped educators, academic administrators and policy makers grasp key concepts, trends and challenges in online learning. This posting is one of a series that looks at Tony’s perspectives and advice on key issues in online learning.
This series was researched and developed by Contact North | Contact Nord Research Associates, Dr. Jane Brindley and Dr. Ross Paul.
Critical thinking is no longer a strange concept in this world. It is being talked about all over, from university to the
workplace, from developed countries to poor ones. The importance of thinking critically has never really been
considered properly until recently. In fact, critical thinking is believed to be the new intellect of the modern era that
reflects a person’s ability to analyze daily problems and make the right decision.
As it’s not a specific talent that people are born with, critical thinking requires practice and effort. Ironically, while
critical thinking has become popular all over the world, not many people know how to develop their critical thinking
skills effectively. Therefore, we are about to show you how you can effectively develop these skills.
Starting in the fall of 2018, most international PhD students at the University of Toronto will pay tuition fees equivalent to those of domestic students.
“This is very positive news for the University,” said Joshua Barker, dean of the School of Graduate Studies (SGS) and vice-provost of graduate research and education. “We strive to remove any barriers, financial or otherwise, that graduate students might face as they look to attend our university.”
A growing number of education and social science researchers design and conduct online research. In this review, the Internet Research Ethics (IRE) policy gap in Canada is identified along with the range of stakeholders and groups that either have a role or have attempted to play a role in forming bet- ter ethics policy. Ethical issues that current policy and guidelines fail to ad- dress are interrogated and discussed. Complexities around applying the hu- man subject model to internet research are explored, such as issues of privacy, anonymity, and informed consent. The authors call for immediate action on the Canadian ethics policy gap and urge the research community to consider the situational, contextual, and temporal aspects of IRE in the development of flexible and responsive policies that address the complexity and diversity of internet research spaces.
Losing a faculty member always hurts, but many administrators believe they have little control over whether professors move on. A new effort seeks to provide meaningful data.
Even if the adjunct movement for better working conditions succeeds, most adjuncts will lose. That’s one bold claim
of a recent paper on the costs associated with a number of the movement’s goals, such as better pay and benefits.
While activists and scholars have been quick to criticize what they call the paper’s inherently flawed logic, the
study’s authors say it is a first step in a more critical dialogue on the adjunct “dilemma.”
“905” Residents are most likely to identify jobs/unemployment” as the most important issue currently facing the Ontario government.
Prior knowledge is essential for learning because it helps us make sense of new ideas and information. But when that prior knowledge is incomplete, confused, or flawed, it can create barriers to learning. Consider the following scenarios.
As recent state critiques of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) make clear, the states and federal government are far apart in their understanding of how the spirit of NCLB might continue to take tangible form. This brief article lays out some of the major divides and their implications and urges that the two sides work in good faith to bridge them.
It comes as little surprise that the consensus forged around the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) back in 2001 has begun to unravel. The surprise was that such a consensus was achieved at the time—and doing so required, besides hard work, an appeal to ambiguity during the legislative process that could not be sustained once implementation of the law began. Once the Department of Education, states, and districts had to tangle with the tangible requirements of (among other things) setting standards, creating tests, hiring highly qualified teachers, and providing supplemental tutoring, the widely supported ideal of “accountability” was bound to give way to a series of definitional disputes.
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.
No validated tools assess all four competency domains described in the 2011 report Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (IPEC Report). The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a tool based on the IPEC Report core
competency domains that assesses the interprofessional attitudes of students in the health professions.
13 lessons I wish someone had taught me before I became an academic administrator
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.
There’s mounting evidence suggesting that student evaluations of teaching are unreliable. But are these evaluations, commonly referred to as SET, so bad that they’re actually better at gauging students’ gender bias and grade expectations than they are at measuring teaching effectiveness? A new paper argues that’s the case, and that evaluations are biased against female instructors in particular in so many ways that adjusting them for that bias is impossible.
Moreover, the paper says, gender biases about instructors -- which vary by discipline, student gender and other factors -- affect how students rate even supposedly objective practices, such as how quickly assignments are graded. And these biases can be large enough to cause more effective instructors to get lower teaching ratings than instructors who prove less effective by other measures, according to the study based on analyses of data sets from one French and one U.S. institution.
Georgia State University (GSU), a public university in Atlanta with nearly 33,000 undergraduates, has dramatically improved its rates of student success over the past decade. GSU’s six-year graduation rate has increased from 32 percent in 2003 to 54 percent in 2014.1 During the same period, GSU has made a concerted effort to increase enrollment for traditionally underserved students. Remarkably, the share of its students who are Pell eligible nearly doubled, from 31 percent in 2003 to 58 percent in 2013.
GSU’s success with traditionally underserved students has received broad recognition. National media outlets have touted the innovative programs undertaken at GSU,2 and President Obama praised GSU during the 2014 White House College Opportunity Summit.3 GSU is a core member of the University Innovation Alliance, and now hosts approximately 80 visits each year from representatives of other colleges and universities seeking to understand how GSU has achieved its success.4 To research this case study, we visited GSU’s downtown Atlanta campus in March 2015, spending two days meeting with 17 administrators and staff members.5
The past decade has witnessed an explosion in online learning opportunities for post-secondary students throughout the United States. The university has developed a Faculty Online Observation (FOO) model to allow for an annual observation of online adjunct faculty with a focus on five major areas of facilitation. To test the effectiveness and support of the FOO, a survey related to the observation areas was administered to online faculty and students. The results determined a number of areas of agreement and non-agreement between the groups. The findings will provide valuable information for future training and professional development needs of online instructors, and processes of teaching based on perspectives of instructors, course developers, students, and discipline managers.
When this semester started, I spent the first two weeks tracking down students — via email and other methods — so that I could invite them to use the digital tools I’ve assigned for my online survey course on U.S. history. I could have just sent emails to their university accounts but, in my experience, most students hardly ever check their campus email. Getting the address that they do check was the first step in trying to bring my course to where students live their already-busy digital lives.
Introducing education into their digital lives sometimes requires teaching students how to use new web tools. For example, I’ve found a messaging app called Slack to be much more effective than any existing learningmanagement system discussion board. A key reason why: It has a cell phone app that notifies users of messages at the very top of their screens. I certainly don’t expect students to respond to class messages instantly, but those notifications serve as a constant reminder: You are part of an online class, and that class requires your eventual participation.
I have written this Guidebook to assist users interested in creating a campus that will be more global in its mission, programs, and people. My approach is to focus on the views and contributions of the people who are engaged in higher education. Thus it has a “person” emphasis rather than a structural or policy point of view. I do this since I think that the goals, aspirations, and achievements of those working and studying on campus is the critical factor in creating a campus with a global perspective. (Campus is to be broadly defined to include both “in-place” multiple sites and virtual.)
Listening: An Introduction
There seems to be a growing realization of the importance of solid listening and communication skills. After all, lack of attention and respectful listening can be costly ‐ leading to mistakes, poor service, misaligned goals, wasted time and lack of teamwork.