This is a "best practices" article focused on sharing six new academic scheduling strategies recently employed by the BYU Salt Lake Center to optimize course offerings and increase enrollments. These strategies are generalizable to other academic programs that help extend academic programs at a distance, including online courses. The Center is an extended campus in Salt Lake City, Utah situated 46 miles to the north of the main campus of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. The distance between the flagship university and its Center pose unique challenges in relation to course and enrollment optimization. Some of these strategies are made possible with the help of new software tools recently licensed by the university to help mine "big course and enrollment data" (current and historical) of a large university with 30,000 students.
Students returning to class after the longest strike in the history of Ontario’s college system must wait awhile longer before cracking open their books: OPSEU has suggested its 12,000 unionized instructors start the day with a 20minute talk about their walkout before restarting any teaching.
It’s understandable that teachers want to speak their mind after walking the line these last six weeks. It’s debatable whether nearly 500,000 students will be of a mind to hear them out, or feel very understanding when forced to listen to a labour lecture from the front of the class.
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.
Investigation into Cambrian College’s administration of its Health Information Management Program and the oversight provided by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities
While competency-based education is growing, standardized tools for evaluating the unique characteristics of course design in this domain are still under development. This preliminary research study evaluated the effectiveness of a rubric developed for assessing course design of competency-based courses in an undergraduate Information Technology and Administrative Management program. The rubric, which consisted of twenty-six individual measures, was used to evaluate twelve new courses. Additionally, the final assessment scores of nine students who completed nine courses in the program were evaluated to determine if a correlation exists between student success and specific indicators of quality in the course design. The results indicate a correlation exists between measures that rated high and low on the evaluation rubric and final assessment scores of
students completing courses in the program. Recommendations from this study suggest that quality competency-based courses need to evaluate the importance and relevance of resources for active student learning, provide increased support and ongoing feedback from mentors, and offer opportunities for students to practice what they have learned.
Even among the business savvy, it’s not at all uncommon for these marketing terms to be thrown around almost interchangeably, when they actually mean very different things and play very different roles in business development and promotion. So we thought it was high time to clear it up and help you know and understand the difference so you can be better informed buyers and users of marketing, design and branding services.
Recently, I received an email from a student asking me the name of a writer -- a writer whose book we’d been reading for two weeks. (And discussing in class. And writing about in class.) It was not a textbook, anthology or unusual digital source. It was an old-fashioned printed book containing one play by one writer.
I knew that the student owned the book, because I had seen her with it in class, and in fact, she had told me she was enjoying the reading. However, when it was time for her to do an assignment on the playwright … well, she was stumped. She just didn’t know his name.
I had to explain to her, carefully, and with what I hope was compassion, that if she hadn’t picked up his name in the class discussions so far (or, I was thinking, in the course syllabus and calendar), then she could always try looking on the front cover of the book.
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.
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.
Administrators at many colleges and universities have had online courses at their institutions for many years, now. One of the hidden challenges about online courses is that they tend to be observed and evaluated far less frequently than their face-to-face course counterparts. This is party due to the fact that many of us administrators today never taught online courses ourselves when we were teaching. This article provides six "secrets" to performing meaningful observations and evaluations of online teaching,
including how to use data analytics, avoid biases, and produce useful results even if observers have never taught online themselves.
When the path is clear and given, when a certain knowledge opens up the way in advance, the decision is already made, it might as well be said there is none to make: irresponsibly, and in good conscience, one simply applies or
implements a program. Perhaps, and this would be the objection, one never escapes the program. In that case, one must acknowledge this and stop talking with authority about moral or political responsibility. The condition
of possibility of this thing called responsibility is a certain experience and experiment of the possibility of the impossible; the testing of the aporia from which one may invent the only possible invention, the impossible invention
(Jacques Derrida, 1992b, p. 41, italics in original).
What some universities are doing to weave indigenous peoples, cultures and knowledge into the fabric of their campuses.
Mentoring is one of the many aspects of faculty positions that are not generally taught, even though it is crucial in higher education. Faculty members are expected to advise undergraduates, graduate students and colleagues, although rarely with any support or recognition for this work. As a result, faculty members often mentor as a response to how they were mentored: a cold and distant adviser may serve as a cautionary tale or a role model.
Some of Ontario’s universities may have to reconsider their plans to expand master’s and PhD programs as the province tries to encourage the sector to focus on training students who graduate with skills that are in demand.
Over the next few months, the Liberal government will begin negotiations with the province’s universities that will ultimately lead to a higher portion of funds being linked to each institution’s outcomes, such as graduation or employment rates.
As part of those talks, the government will hold discussions on how and where it provides grants for graduate-level programs. In an earlier round of agreements, the province had agreed to support a certain number of spots at each university. Universities that have not yet attracted enough students to meet those targets will have to explain how they plan to fill the spots or face losing them to programs that are running at capacity, sources said.
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.
The development of outcomes-based educational (OBE) practices represents one important way in which a learning outcomes approach to teaching and learning can be applied in the postsecondary sector. This study adopts a multiple case study design and profiles seven OBE initiatives being implemented in Ontario’s colleges and universities to better understand the scope of outcomes-based educational practices in the province’s postsecondary sector. ‘OBE initiatives’ are defined as purposeful
actions undertaken by postsecondary providers directed at defining, teaching toward and assessing learning outcomes in their
educational practice (modified from Jones, Voorhees & Paulson, 2002).
In the Fall of 2011, the Toronto School of Theology (TST) within the University of Toronto (UofT) underwent a rigorous quality assurance review of its academic programs by its theological accrediting agency in North America, the Association of Theological Schools (ATS). In all, twenty-one scholars from university-related or free-standing accredited theological institutions with an intimate knowledge of North American theological education—in teams of three, one for each of the six member-institutions of the Toronto School of Theology, and one for the TST consortium itself—strongly affirmed the quality of the programs, including the Doctor of Theology (ThD) research degree program.
The Survey of First-Year University Students was co-ordinated by the Department of Housing and Student Life at the University of Manitoba and represents the fourth co-operative study of undergraduate education completed by The Canadian Undergraduate Survey Consortium. The nineteen universities participating in this year’s survey were Acadia University, Brandon University, Carleton University, Concordia University, Dalhousie University, Laurentian University, McMaster
University, Memorial University, Nipissing University, Queens University, Ryerson Polytechnic University, Simon Fraser University, St. Francis Xavier University, University of British Columbia, University of Lethbridge, University of Manitoba, University of Ottawa, University of Waterloo, and Wilfrid Laurier University.
Abstract
Canadian students have academic and non-academic obligations, and their ability to balance them may impact university experience. Involvement in academic and non-academic activities, and the perception of balancing them was compared between students with and without disabilities. Results revealed that both groups of students participated in employment, social activities, and family obligations. Furthermore, perceived ability to balance academic and non-academic activities was associated with higher academic self-efficacy and resourcefulness in all students. Relative to non-disabled peers, students with disabilities spent fewer hours participating in non-academic activities, had fewer course hours, but studied as many hours. Students with disabilities who had difficulties balancing their multiple roles were less adapted to university. The time to access accommodations for learning may act as a barrier to adaptation. Creating university policies around accommodations for learning would benefit students with disabilities, and the incorporation of resourcefulness and time-management into university curriculum would benefit all students.
Résumé Les étudiants canadiens ont tous des obligations scolaires et parascolaires, et leur capacité à les équilibrer entre elles peut avoir des répercussions sur leur expérience universitaire. La participation à des activités scolaires et parascolaires, et la perception d’arriver à les équilibrer entre elles a été comparée entre étudiants avec handicap et étudiants sans handicap. Les résultats ont démontré que les étudiants avaient tous des obligations professionnelles, sociales et familiales, peu importe s’ils étaient affligés d’un handicap ou non. En outre, la perception de pouvoir équilibrer entre elles les activités scolaires et parascolaires a été associée à une meilleure efficacité scolaire autodidacte et à un meilleur esprit d’initiative chez tous les étudiants. Comparativement à leurs camarades sans handicap, les étudiants avec handicap consacraient moins d’heures à des activités parascolaires, disposaient de moins d’heures de cours, mais étudiaient autant d’heures. Les étudiants avec handicap qui avaient de la difficulté à équilibrer leurs multiples rôles étaient moins adaptés à la vie universitaire. Comme le temps nécessaire pour accéder aux installations d’apprentissage peut constituer une barrière à l’adaptation, l’élaboration de politiques universitaires autour des installations d’apprentissage serait bénéfique pour les étudiants avec handicap. De même, l’intégration de l’esprit d’initiative et de la gestion du temps dans le programme d’études universitaires profiterait à tous les étudiants.
For the past fifteen years, I’ve taught first-year writing at a small liberal arts college, and though I teach essentially the same course every semester, I never get bored. The students I work with are on the brink of adulthood, and their energy is xhilarating. They are goofy and raw, flinging themselves confidently into the world, yet they are full of self- doubt at times. With these students, I try to create a classroom environment that encourages uninhibited free thought and conversation. And yet, no matter what I do or achieve in the classroom, my pedagogical accomplishments will always be perceived as inferior to those of my colleagues. I am “contingent faculty,” otherwise known as an adjunct professor, hired each year on an as-needed basis, though
the college always seems to needme.