Since their creation in 1965, Ontario’s colleges have played a pivotal role in providing PSE opportunities to all residents (Rae, 2005). Often located in smaller and more geographically dispersed communities than Ontario’s universities, colleges were intended to be more responsive to and reflective of these communities (Canadian Council on Learning, 2010) and to work closely with business and labour sectors to ensure programming that produced employment-ready graduates (Rae, 2005).
“We need to be having more substantive conversations about teaching and learning in our department meetings. We talk about course content, schedules, and what we’re offering next semester but rarely about our teaching and its impact on student learning. What do you think about circulating a short article or article excerpt before some of our meetings and then spending 30
minutes talking about it? Could you recommend some readings?”
It is a fundamental responsibility and obligation of government and of institutional leaders to assure that postsecondary institutions are sustainable and capable of providing a high quality academic experience.
This paper offers a conceptual framework for examining the sustainability of Ontario’s public postsecondary institutions. It discusses the definition of the term “sustainability,” how it can be measured and the various tools and strategies available to both institutions and government to meet sustainability risks when they are identified.
Motivating students to be enthusiastically receptive is one of the most important aspects of mathematics instruction and a critical aspect of any curriculum. Effective teachers focus attention on the less interested students as well as the motivated ones. Here are nine techniques—based on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation—that can be used to
motivate secondary school students in mathematics.
As reported in June 2016, UNHCR estimates that 65.3 million persons were forcibly displaced displaced, 21 million of whom were refugees. Such staggering numbers are unprecedented. Here, we explore the response of Canadian universities and colleges to the crisis in ways that are fulfilling their role as actors for social public good. In addition to offering courses and conducting research that delve into global forced displacement issues across a variety of disciplines, the response of Canadian higher education institutions can be organized broadly into three types of activities. One, they have intensified involvement with refugee sponsorship and scholarships. Two, they have provided advocacy and legal assistance for sponsors and refugees. Three, institutions have organized and participated in forums to share and discuss ideas and engage with other actors to identify needs, effective practices and innovative interventions.
Scrutiny: students’ attention to performance measures ‘plays to the UK’s strengths’
Chinese students have an increasingly “open attitude” when applying to university, with many now focusing on institutions’ teaching quality and student satisfaction scores, according to the director of the British Council in China.
Carma Elliot said that there had “traditionally been a strong preference among Chinese students for ‘elite’institutions, but there was now a more open attitude to the widest range of options available”.
he elevated attention paid to sexual and interpersonal violence, coupled with new legislative requirements, is eading colleges and universities to improve the ways that victims and survivors can report incidents of such iolence. Providing additional resources and educating students about reporting options can lead to a significant ncrease in those reports. That is a positive step forward. However, surges in reporting can, in turn, stress nstitutional resources and delay or stop colleges and universities from shifting their focus to actually preventing sexual violence and bringing reporting numbers back down.
Background/Context: Facilitating dialogues about racial issues in higher education classroom settings continues to be a vexing problem facing postsecondary educators. In order for students to discuss race with their peers, they need skilled facilitators who are knowledgeable about racial issues and able to support students in these difficult dialogues. Yet previous research on difficult dialogues has largely focused on students experiences in these dialogues and the outcomes they gain from participating in them with little knowledge about the olres of facilitaros of these dialogues.
Colleges and Institutes Canada’s (CICan) priorities for the Federal Election and Budget 2016 on behalf of publicly-funded
colleges and institutes are as follows:
Increase funding for college and institute applied research
Key to improving productivity and innovation for companies and communities
Invest in college and institute infrastructure and equipment
Strategic investments to meet the needs of employers and communities
Increase access to post-secondary education and upskilling for Aboriginal peoples
Essential to support reconciliation and improve education and employment outcomes
Invest in improved labour market information, apprenticeship completion and employability of youth
Key to expanding employment opportunities for Canadians
In June 2016, the Ontario government launched its five-year Climate Change Action Plan, which builds on a bold strategy to reduce the province’s green-house gas (GHG) emissions by 15 per cent below 1990 levels by the year 2020. Universities are stepping up to the challenge by demonstrating leadership, reinforcing their role in helping meet these targets, and supporting campus-based initiatives to spark broader action.
University campuses across Canada are struggling with a mental health tsunami that is reordering priorities in every
community and educational institution. Dealing with crises and the potential for suicide has altered the lives and agendas of people working in schools, hospitals, municipalities and service agencies, as well as parents and students. If mental health is the problem, suicide and suicide attempts are the outcome that tells us that we have to do better.
Major study of adaptive learning finds inconclusive results about its ability to improve outcomes and lower costs, but use at two-year colleges and in remedial courses shows potential.
The focus of this project is on the assessment of transferable skills, and specifically resilience. Resilience has been defined as “the capacity of the person, family, or community to prevent, minimize, overcome, or thrive in spite of negative or challenging circumstances” (Wagnild & Young, 1993). In this report, Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) investigates the most appropriate measures to assess resilience as a learning outcome of Ontario’s postsecondary education (PSE) system. The long-term aim is to support the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) in its efforts to determine the role of PSE in enhancing resilience as a transferable skill.
1. Public support to families with pre-school children can be in the form of cash benefits (e.g. child allowances) or of “in-kind” support (e.g. care services such as kindergartens). The mix of these support measures varies greatly across OECD countries, from a cash / in-kind composition of 10%/90% to 80%/20%. This paper imputes the value of services into an “extended” household income and compares the resulting distributive patterns and the redistributive effect of these two strands of family policies. On average, cash and in-kind transfers each constitute 7 – 8% of the incomes of families with young children. Both instruments are redistributive. Cash transfers reduce child poverty by one third, with the estimated impacts in Austria, Ireland, Sweden, Hungary and Finland performing above average. When services are accounted for, child poverty falls by one quarter and poverty among children enrolled in childcare is more than halved. This reduction is highest in Belgium, France, Hungary, Iceland and Sweden.
Canada's post-secondary institutions are at the forefront of excellence in science, research and innovation. They help to
train the workforce of tomorrow and create the knowledge and insights needed by the private and public sectors to build a
clean, sustainable economy.
Welland, Ont.-based Niagara College offers tourism, hospitality and business courses at its campus in Taif, which opened in 2014, while Ottawa's Algonquin College offers 10 programs, including business, accounting and electrical engineering technician, at a campus opened in 2013 in the city of Jazan.
The Local 242 OPSEU rep said faculty members are uncomfortable with the school's association in Saudi Arabia, a country with a "horrible" human rights record, he said. Ramkissoonsingh said staff has been against the Saudi expansion since day one, and have continued to feel uncomfortable as their course material is taught at the segregated campus.
Two years ago, Niagara College successfully bid to open a campus in Saudi Arabia. At the time, the school said they expected an annual injection of $8 million to the college budget, said Ramkissoonsingh.
Historically, much of education research has focused on exploring the classroom as a context for learning, explaining the learning processes that occur in the classroom, and designing lessons that help students learn. The past decades have seen considerable research on the various social factors that affect learning; they have also seen increasing research into the effects of policy on educational attainment.
The Liberal government is moving to make it easier for international students to become permanent residents once they have graduated from Canadian postsecondary institutions.
Immigration Minister John McCallum said he intends to launch federal-provincial talks to reform the current Express Entry program, a computerized system that serves as a matchmaking service between employers and foreign skilled workers. Thousands of international students have been rejected for permanent residency because the program favours prospective skilled workers from abroad.
The wave of upcoming retirements is a myth and PhD numbers have little to do with the academic job
market anyway.
In my last post I took a look at some of the history and context of Canadian universities’ hiring of contract faculty. While I was digging around for information, I couldn’t help noticing the relevance of some of the material to another ongoing debate in higher education: that of the “overproduction” of PhDs. Since “too many PhDs” is a recurring theme in media commentary about
graduate education (e.g. Nature, The Economist), I thought I’d explore the issue in more depth and connect it to some of the research I found. Are we really “producing” too many PhDs, and if so, is this a recent problem?
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.