Few counseling programs directly address the importance of self-care in reducing stress and burnout in their curricula. A course entitled Mind/Body Medicine and the Art of Self-Care was created to address personal and professional growth opportu-nities through self-care and mindfulness practices (meditation, yoga, qigong, and conscious relaxation exercises). Three methods of evaluating this 15-week 3-credit mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course for counseling students indicated positive changes for students in learning how to manage stress and improve coun-seling practice. Students reported positive physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and interpersonal changes and substantial effects on their counseling skills and thera-peutic relationships. Information from a focus group, qualitative reports, and quan-titative course evaluations were triangulated; all data signified positive student responses to the course, method of teaching, and course instructor. Most students reported intentions of integrating mindfulness practices into their future profession.
The demand for faculty development is ongoing, and many medical schools will need to expand their pool of faculty
developers to include physicians and scientists whose primary expertise is not education. Insight into what motivates
occasional faculty developers can guide recruitment and retention strategies. This study was designed to understand the
motivations of faculty developers who occasionally (one to three times each year) lead faculty development workshops.
Macleans article about how colleges are seen in the current environment.
The purpose of this non-experimental, cross-sectional, descriptive research was to survey faculty and staff perceptions of mentorship in a postsecondary institution in order to determine gaps and strengths in the current mentorship
environment. The anecdotal activities we present reflect our educational practice environment through the work of our Mentorship Team. Data were collected utilizing Zachary’s Mentor Culture Audit tool. The culture building block measured 4.65 on a 7-point Likert scale, suggesting the presence of a weak mentorship culture. However, the infrastructure building block measured only 3.41, showing that organizational resources and supports are below average. We also present eight hallmark category results to further identify strengths and gaps. This is the first assessment of our mentoring culture at an organizational level. Other postsecondary institutions may benefit from formally assessing the gaps in and strengths of their mentorship culture toassist them with acquiring adequate resources to further develop and sustain their mentoring activities.
Canada is at a crucial point: we are well-positioned to manage the opportunities and challenges of the global economy, but despite existing efforts, we are falling behind in investing in people and encouraging research and innovation.
The need to improve postsecondary education and skills training in Canada is driven by global and local challenges. In the global marketplace, our key competitors are moving ahead with economic restructuring, investment in the education and skills of their
people, technological change, research and innovation and aggressive competition. The rapid growth of emerging economies, especially in China and India, along with high oil prices and the strong Canadian dollar, are posing substantial challenges for Canada's industries. To remain prosperous in the face of this competition, Canada needs a workforce that is qualified, flexible, adaptable, and innovative, with employees and employers who embrace lifelong learning.
The Survey of Earned Doctorates, the data source for this report, is an annual census of individuals who receive research doctoral degrees from accredited U.S. academic institutions. The survey is sponsored by six federal agencies: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Agriculture, and U.S. Department of Education. These data are reported in several publications from NSF’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. The most comprehensive and widely cited publication is this report, Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities.
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.
Collaboration helps to develop many of the key skills that will be required of students for their future success. Students can develop many of these so-called “soft skills,” or Essential Employability Skills, by engaging in group work and other forms of collaboration (Ontario Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development 2005). Collaboration leads to greater retention, improved student achievement, and increased self-esteem and metacognition, and it can be used to facilitate active learning and to promote inclusion by increasing contact among diverse groups (Bossert 1988; Bowman, Frame, and Kennette 2013; Hennessey 1999; Kennette and Frank 2010; Kramarski and Mevarech 2003; Rajaram and Pereira-Pasarin 2007; U.S. Department of Education 1992). Despite the many benefits of group work, instructors are sometimes hesitant to use it due to some of its well-known pitfalls
(social loafing, disputes, individualized grading, student bemoaning, etc.).
This paper examines the policies surrounding international students and international education from the perspective of college students in Ontario. The goal of this paper is to inform the discussion on the federal, provincial, and institutional policies surrounding international students as they pursue Ontario credentials and international education in general. International student currently represent about 10% of the overall college population. Their experiences are different from typical college students’, in part because international students undergo a different process of applying to an Ontario college. Furthermore, these students typically come from cultures that are different than that of Ontario, and may have difficulties in adapting to the way of life and the stresses associated with being an international student. It is important to make sure there are supports in place to address the differing needs these students have as they study in Ontario.
The mental health of Canadian university students is fairly well researched, but there is relatively little evidence concerning the mental health of Canadian university student-athletes. Recent research in the United States and Canada has suggested that mental health (e.g., anxiety and depression) differs between student-athletes and student non-athletes. However, the results are
ambivalent as to whether student-athletes experience more or less psychological distress than their non-athlete peers. To address this gap, the purpose of the current study was to measure the levels of psychological distress in a national sample of 284 university student-athletes. Each athlete completed the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K6; Kessler et al., 2002) via a secure online platform. The average score on the K6 for student-athletes was 8.2 out of 24; 19.8% of the sample surpassed the cut-off for assessing the prevalence of severe mental illness. A regression analysis found that gender, starting status,
and scholarship status significantly predicted levels of psychological distress. Females, non-starters, and student-athletes without a scholarship were associated with increases in K6 scores.
KSU redefined the MOOC value proposition through collaboration of university leadership and faculty. The new proposition shifts measures of success beyond just course completion to include measures that benefit students, faculty, and the institution. Students benefitted through access to open educational resources, the acquisition of professional learning units at no cost, and the potential of college credit at a greatly reduced cost. Academic units benefited through a mechanism to attract students and future revenue while the university benefited through digital impressions, branding, institutionally leveraged scalable learning environments, streamlined credit evaluation processes and expanded digital education.
Teaching. So many things have been said about teaching. "Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students." "A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning." "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." Whoa. That is some heavy stuff right there. Makes being a teacher sound noble, important, and oh so awesome, does it not?
But there’s one question that we should all put down immediately, and rage against with the last shreds of our academic
freedom: the old refrain, "When am I going to use this?"
This question, I think, manages to embody the worst of our cultural situation. It is a complaint, a subterfuge, an insult, a lazy way out. And before you think I am simply railing against the generational deficiencies in our current crop of students, I’m not. I’ve heard versions of the theme from parents, administrators, politicians, and even, I am chagrined to add, esteemed colleagues. We must put an end to it all.
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.
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.
Redefine participation. Let it include more than verbal comments. Invite students to contribute electronically—with an email or post on the course website—with a question they didn’t ask in class, a comment they didn’t get to make, or a thought that came to them after class. Remind students that listening is also part of participation! Model and promote good listening skills. “Did you hear what Fredric just said? That’s an explanation that belongs in your notes.” Let the definition of participation honor silence—and give students the time needed to think about a question and assemble an answer. Maybe it’s time to stop grading participation and let students speak because they have something to say.
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.
Canada’s universities put ideas to work for Canadians.
Canada needs ingenuity, creativity, entrepreneurship, new ideas and competitive drive. We need to compete on our wits to succeed in the global economy. Canada’s universities are centres of knowledge, learning and innovation. Through teaching, research and community engagement, Canada’s universities help deliver the solutions needed to achieve ongoing prosperity for Canada. University faculty, researchers, graduates and students put their knowledge and skills to work for the benefit of Canada and Canadians now, and in the future.
If we believe in the active-learning classroom — that the only way to bring about real learning is to engage students in ways that help them revise and broaden their thinking — then student participation is a nonnegotiable part of the equation. Learning does not happen without the student actively taking part.
Oddly, however, given its importance, our own definition of “student participation” is often quite limited. In the scholarship on teaching and learning, that term is almost always defined narrowly as the degree to which students take part in class discussions. And while discussion is obviously an important component of an active-learning classroom, it’s not the only component. There are many other ways in which students participate in class: writing, researching, and contributing to small group activities are just a few. If we want to accurately assess and reward participation in our courses, we need to expand our definition to include more than just the amount of times that students raise their hands.
Increased demands in professional expectations have required online faculty to learn how to balance multiple roles in an open-ended, changing, and relatively unstructured job. In this paper, we argue that being strategic about one’s balance of the various facets of online teaching will improve one’s teaching efficiency and effectiveness. We discuss the balancing issues associated with four key online teaching facets: course design/development, delivery of the course content, assessments/feedback, and professional development. We conclude with a template for a strategic professional development plan that addresses these key facets.