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.
OUSA’s LGBTQ+ Student Experience Survey was a mixed methods research project conducted in Novem-ber 2014 designed to gain understanding of the opinions and experiences of Ontario university students who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Questioning, or other orientations or identities that do not conform to cisgender and heterosexual paradigms (LGBTQ+). The purpose of the survey was to identify any gaps that might exist in university services, programming, and supports that can diminish or negatively impact university experiences for these students.
Management vs. Leadership - PPT presentation
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.
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.
LEESA WHEELAHAN
This contribution to the symposium on Michael Young’s article ‘Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: a knowledge based approach’, supports his contention that curricu- lum theory has lost sight of its object—‘what is taught and learned in schools’, and argues that this has particularly deleterious consequences for vocational education and training (VET). VET is
unproblematically positioned as applied, experiential and work- focused learning, and it is seen as a solution for those who are alienated from or unsuc- cessful in more traditional forms of academic education. This article argues that rather than being a mechanism for social inclusion, VET is instead a key way in which social inequality is mediated and reproduced because it excludes students from accessing the theoretical knowledge they need to participate in debates and controversies in society and in their occupational field of practice. It presents a social realist analysis to argue why VET students need access to theoretical knowledge, how a focus on experiential and applied learning constitutes a mechanism for social exclusion and what a ‘knowledge rich’ VET curriculum would look like.
Keywords: vocational education and training; social realism; applied
disciplinary knowledge; curriculum; knowledge
OISE/UT Guidelines for Theses and Orals
A healthy university system is essential for Ontarians. University education leads to the best long-term career prospects for individuals and benefits the province as a whole by generating a more civically engaged population with the skills and tools needed to succeed in the knowledge economy of today.
To prepare for the future needs of the economy, the province has committed to foster a highly skilled workforce. To this end, the Premier’s office has assembled an expert panel to address this issue, and broad ranging consultations have already begun. In January 2016, the Ontario Talent and Skills Summit brought together leaders from the corporate sector, the public sector, the non-profit sector, and the post-secondary education sector to have meaningful discussions about developing future leaders and innovators; OUSA was proud to be a part of this initiative.
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?
Studies of faculty development efforts at a liberal arts college and a landgrant university suggest the programs can have an impact on student outcomes.
Intuitively, it makes sense that professors who spend time developing their teaching skills will become more effective instructors -- and that that will eventually translate to better student outcomes. Practically speaking,
though, the challenges of (and the variables involved in) tracing the effects of professional development on student learning are myriad. That’s probably why the research on the matter is patchy, relying largely on self-reported measures. But a new book based on data from two very different institutions purports to show that faculty members can learn to become more effective teachers.
How to resolve the top enrolment barriers that decrease student satisfaction and negatively impact enrolment efforts.
They’re called “Enrolment Barriers” for a good reason. If your institution isn’t doing all that it can to remove them, there’s a good chance your future students will enrol, uninhibited, at a PSE institution down the road, and your current student satisfaction will be underwhelming. Looking for common barriers? Poor relationships with transactionally focused front line staff, disingenuous interactions with parents, behind-the-times processes/communications and siloed operations are just a few to seek out.
Public post-secondary institutions are responsible for delivering both high-quality education and research in the public interest. This responsibility requires the right for academic researchers to exercise independent inquiry that is free of influence or restrictions from both the government and private industry.
Over the last two decades, there has been increasing pressure from the private sector to re-shape the mission of the university to be more closely aligned with the needs of business. In the area of university research, this has led to a premium placed on research commercialisation. This shift in focus of publicly-funded institutions is a significant departure from the academic principle of independence on which universities have operated for centuries.
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.
The leadership of Higher Education institutions has been placed under increasing scrutiny since the 1980s with the expansion of student numbers, changes in funding for student places, increased marketization and student choice, and continuing globalisation of the sector. In this climate of change Higher Education institutions have been required to consider how to develop their leaders and what might be appropriate leadership behaviour to enable adaptation to these new circumstances. When the various paradigms of leadership encountered in the Higher Education sector are compared with established leadership theory and practice it is possible to identify further intricacies in the development of Higher Education leaders. Further consideration of practicalities within Higher Education identifies whether competence frameworks might assist in leadership development. An examination of a recently-developed comprehensive framework of leadership capabilities applied in an alternative sector leads to an evaluation as to whether the same constructs apply to the demands placed upon leaders in Higher Education. Analysis demonstrates that, with minor changes in terminology, the constructs remain appropriate and valid. The definitions Higher Education leaders could be developed and therefore form a potential framework of leadership capabilities for Higher Education.
If we don’t move quickly, Canada risks seeing many of these young, bright minds take their talents elsewhere.
Ambitious, skilled and often multilingual, international students are a great source of talent. They fill jobs and create
new ones through innovation and entrepreneurship — Silicon Valley is a prominent, international example. Research by the Conference Board of Canada shows immigrants help expand and diversify Canada’s global trade. International students could do the same, helping Canada trade in markets such as Asia, where economic growth is greater than in the U.S. and EU — Canada’s largest trading partners.
Existing estimates of the labor-market returns to human capital give a distorted picture of the role of skills across different economies. International comparisons of earnings analyses rely almost exclusively on school attainment measures of human capital, and evidence incorporating direct measures of cognitive skills is mostly restricted to early-career workers in the United States. Analysis of the new PIAAC survey of adult skills over the full lifecycle in 22 countries shows that the focus on early-career earnings leads to underestimating the lifetime returns to skills by about one quarter. On average, a one-standard-deviation increase in numeracy skills is associated with an 18 percent wage increase among prime-age workers. But this masks considerable heterogeneity across countries. Eight countries, including all Nordic countries, have returns between 12 and 15 percent, while six are above 21 percent with the largest return being 28 percent in the United States. Estimates are remarkably robust to different earnings and skill measures, additional controls, and various subgroups. Intriguingly, returns to skills are systematically lower in countries with higher union density, stricter employment protection, and larger public-sector shares.
Résumé
This paper explores the concept of accountability as it relates to the University of British Columbia. It examines the discourse surround- ing social accountability laid out in the university’s Trek 2010 vision and then juxtaposes this with the private accountability to commercial and government interests as evidenced in other documents and recent university decisions. The paper, thus, concludes that both private and public attempts at accountability are present yet the call to account to a wider social public gets muffled by the vagueness of the goals and, in particular, the appeals to excellence.
Aboriginal women with higher levels of education had slightly higher employment rates than non-Aboriginal women in 2011. Specifically, 81.8% of Aboriginal women with a certificate, diploma or degree at the bachelor level or above were employed, compared with 79.5% of their non-Aboriginal counterparts. The same pattern held true for all three Aboriginal identity groups: First Nations, Métis and Inuit women.
Intellectual property is important in our universities but it sometimes raises thorny issues. Unlike the United States, which has the Bayh-Dole Act – legislation governing intellectual property generated by federally funded research – Canadian universities are free to have their own individual IP arrangements. The Bayh-Dole act permits 50 percent of the IP to be assigned to the researcher and another 50 percent to the university. This act presumes that the universities will play a role in the protection and commercialization of the IP. Certain institutions, such as MIT, contribute a certain portion of their share back to the researcher.
The rapid turnover of technology and ever expanding network of data and information which underpin the knowledge economy have led to a reevaluation of the importance of knowledge to the economic process. Economists now conclude that human capital - the ideas, skills, and expertise of people - is a fundamental driver of economic growth. Demand for employees that possess a mix of both “hard” and “soft” skills is rising as companies respond to intensified global economic competition.