This chapter examines how the three most common types of engagement found among adolescents attending high-performing high schools relate to indicators of mental and physical health.
Can college students text and tweet their way to a better grade?
In “Mobile Phones in the Classroom: Examining the Effects of Texting, Twitter and Message Content on Student Learning,” Jeffrey H. Kuznekoff, assistant professor in the department of integrative studies at Miami University (Ohio) at Middletown, explores if texting, tweeting and note taking can be combined. The article [1] appears in the most recent edition of Communication Education, a journal of the National Communication Association.
The good news is that Canada is home to so many great universities that it’s difficult to make a poor decision. That’s why choosing the school that best suits you requires going beyond rankings and reputation, and considering the unique culture and educational environment of your potential alma mater.
So what do you really want to get from your university experience? According to multiple surveys, the majority of young people today seek more than just a paycheque from their career. A recent Millennial Branding report found that 72 per cent of this demographic seek work with greater meaning. “Having a job where I can have an impact” ranked higher than wealth or prestige in a 2012 workforce survey conducted by Net Impact.
That’s why, in this year’s Canadian University Report, we looked at how universities are helping undergraduate students make an impact on their careers and in their communities. We spoke to students, faculty and university officials about opportunities to develop the skills needed for a meaningful career and life after graduation (from co-op programs to social entrepreneurship curriculums, from volunteering to purpose-driven business incubators). What we heard was that students aren’t waiting to don their cap and gown before they get started; they are already working with organizations in their communities and beyond, and launching their own businesses and non-profits to tackle our most-challenging social and environmental issues.
This semester I’m teaching a comparative-literature class that deals with the connections among empathy, literature, and human rights. As in most of my classes, which all circulate around these difficult topics, I constantly prepare my students for their own navigation into the worlds of trauma and critical understanding. The problem this semester, and most semesters, is not the voyage inside historical traumas. The problem goes much deeper — it is my students’ fragility.
This paper reports the results of an analysis of persistence in post-secondary education (PSE) for college students in Ontario based on the extremely rich YITS-B dataset that has been used for other recent studies at the national level. We calculate hazard or transition rates (and cumulative transition rates) with respect to those who i) graduate, ii) switch programs, and
iii) leave PSE (perhaps to return later). We also look at the reasons for switching and leaving, subsequent re-entry rates among leavers, and graduation and persistence rates once switchers and re-entrants are taken into account. These patterns are then probed in more detail using hazard (regression) models where switching and leaving are related to a variety of individual
characteristics, family background, high school outcomes, and early pse experiences. Student pathways are seen to be varied. Perhaps the single most important finding is that the proportion of students who either obtain a degree or continue to be enrolled somewhere in the PSE system in the years after entering a first program remains close to the 80 percent mark for the five years following entry. Seventy-one percent of students graduate within five years of starting, while another 6 percent are still in the PSE system.
A total of 61,696 full-time applicants to Ontario colleges opted-in to participate in the 2015
UCAS™:
59,568 English-speaking applicants and 2,128 French-speaking applicants at the time of survey
administration.
• Academica Group provided unique web links as well as the invitation email text to the Ontario
College Application Service (OCAS). OCAS then sent the survey invitation email to college
applicants. Applicant contact information was not shared with Academica Group at any point in the
process.
• The survey was in-field from March 12 to April 21, 2015. Reminder emails were sent on March
24 and April 8 to those who had not yet responded. Respondents who completed the survey were
entered into a draw to win over $5,000 in prizes.
• 14,331 college respondents completed the survey (13,661 English and 670 French) providing an
overall
response rate of 23%.
• This sample size provides results at the 95% confidence level of plus or minus 0.39
percentage points.
• Respondent data was weighted by gender and language to reflect the original population
invited to
participate.
State regulators, not the federal government, were in the best position to crack down on Donald Trump's now-defunct educational venture, which has become a hot campaign issue.
TORONTO -- It is "unacceptable" for publicly funded Ontario colleges to operate campuses outside Canada that exclude women, the premier of Ontario said Friday when asked about two men-only schools in Saudi Arabia.
I’ve never been too big on New Year’s resolutions. That probably has a lot to do with January’s place in the school year. The changing of the calendar year is really just a short gasp of air between semesters. The real new year in academe— the time for new beginnings and fresh starts — comes now, in August. I’ve had time away from the classroom to recharge my batteries and to forget about teaching for a while. I want to be a better teacher this year than I was last year. August is my month of big plans, of good intentions, of new leaves ready to be turned over.
Given the apparent importance of making such plans public, I thought I’d share some of my new (school) year resolutions, and ask you to share your own in the comments below. Here are some of the things I want to do this year:
It comes as news to no one that 8am classes are too early for some students.
A recent study published in Frontiers of Neuroscience, and reported at NPR finds that “the ideal start time would be more like 10 or 11am.” Most traditional-aged college students just aren't wired to be awake and productive at 8am.
Over the last sixteen years, I have taught an 8am class probably about 2/3rds of the semesters.
I like 8am classes. When I taught at Clemson I had a 45 minute commute and four sections crammed into a TTH schedule. Starting at 8am meant I could avoid traffic and finish up the day at a reasonable hour.
I don’t mind getting up early and going to bed before 10pm. I’m basically worthless in terms of higher order thought after 6pm. My natural rhythms sync with 8am classes.
This is not true for many students. I became well-familiar with the research when a team of students in an 8am technical writing class tackled class scheduling for their group project. The genesis of their interest was their loathing of their 8am technical writing class, a section they felt they’d been conscripted into because of curricular requirements combined with a shortage of
sections. For several, the choice was either take it at 8am or don’tgraduate.
ADMINISTRATION AND CONTROL.—Under the Canadian Constitution, education is the responsibility of the provincial governments. There is no single, national school system; each of the provinces grapples with the problem in its own way. Yet the similarities among the provincial school systems are more striking than the differences. In every province education is administered by a Minister of the Crown, advised and aided by a group of employed experts. The chief of these is usually
styled deputy minister or superintendent of education. In every province except the smallest (Prince Edward Island), the provincial contribution to educational budgets is much less than the amount derived from local taxes on real property; in all provinces the degree of provincial control of education is high, especially over such items as the training and certification of teachers, curricula, standards, and supervision. Every province requires school attendance to the age of fourteen, some to the age of sixteen. Although junior high schools or intermediate schools are found in many urban centers, the usual pattern is the familiar 8-4 arrangement. Quebec has a seven-year elementary school and two of the provinces have five-year secondary schools.
Enrolments in Canadian public postsecondary institutions (colleges and universities) reached more
than 2 million in the 2013/2014 academic year, up 1.2% from a year earlier.
There is no formal mandate for or tradition of inter-sectoral collaboration between community colleges and universities in Ontario. Follow- ing a regulatory change introduced by the College of Nurses of Ontario in 1998, all Registered Nurse educational preparation was restructured to the baccalaureate degree level through province-wide adoption of a college-university collaborative nursing program model. Despite complex sectoral differences in organizational culture, mandates, and governance structures, this program model was promoted by nursing educators and policy-makers as an innovative approach to utilizing the post-secondary system’s existing nursing education infrastructure and resources. This paper provides an overview
of the introduction of Ontario’s collaborative baccalaureate nursing programs and discusses some of challenges associated with implementing and maintaining such programs.
En Ontario, il n’y a pas de mandat offi ciel ni de tradition de collaboration intersectorielle entre les collèges communautaires et les universités. À la suite d’une modifi cation réglementaire apportée par l’Ordre des infi rmières et infi rmiers de l’Ontario en 1998, toute la formation pédagogique de niveau baccalauréat du personnel infi rmier a été restructurée par l’adoption à la grandeur de la province d’un modèle de programme de formation en sciences infirmières offert conjointement par les collèges et les universités. En dépit de différences complexes entre ces deux secteurs aux plans de la culture organisationnelle, des mandats et des structures de gouvernance, les enseignants en soins infirmiers et les décideurs ont fait la promotion de ce modèle de pro- gramme en tant qu’approche novatrice pour utiliser l’infrastructure et les ressources de formation en sciences infirmières déjà en place dans le réseau postsecondaire. Cet article offre un aperçu de l’introduction des programmes ontariens de baccalauréat conjoint en sciences infir- mières et examine quelques-uns des obstacles associés à la mise en œuvre et au maintien de ces programmes.
THE POSTSECONDARY REVIEW led by Bob Rae has presented a bracing diagnosis of a system he accurately describes as strong, but in serious jeopardy. OCUFA agrees that Ontario’s community colleges and universities are “on the edge of the choice between steady decline and great improvement” and that making the choice for improvement “will require more resources as well as a will to change.”
In other areas, Mr. Rae’s framing of the questions suggests a direction OCUFA would find troubling. The Discussion Paper’s section on “Accessibility” does not consider at all the financial barriers to participating in higher education. Instead, tuition and student aid are a major focus of the “Funding” section, pointing to an apparent belief that reformed student assistance accompanied by higher tuition fees could be a significant source of increased resources for community colleges and universities. In this submission, OCUFA calls attention to evidence from other jurisdictions that student aid innovations, in
particular the “go now-pay later” example currently being exported from Australia to the United Kingdom, will not deliver the hoped-for salvation. Instead, we set out the case for significantly increased public funding for higher education.We have organized our submission along the five main themes set out in the Discussion Paper: accessibility, quality, system design, funding and accountability.
Organizations depend upon capable leadership to guide them through unprecedented changes. Yet, there is ample evidence in
the news and in recent research reports that even some of the best and most venerable organizations are failing to adapt to
change, implement their strategic plans successfully or prepare for a more uncertain future. We believe the turmoil we
are currently observing has something to do with leadership, and that if we don’t change our current approach to leadership
development, we will see even more of the same.
FREUD commented on the insults heaped on man since the Renaissance. He suggested that all the discoveries made by man in recent centuries have automatically, as it were, become techniques of debunking. And he saw psychoanalysis in this light too, as meeting resistance bewcause of its wound to human pride.
There has been much hype of late about building 'global citizens' out of our internationally mobilehigher education students and academics.
IT HAS become a truism that we live in an age of rapid and profound change. The growth of freedom of thought, the use of the scientific method, the advance of the industrial revolution, the rise of political and economic democracy, and the everwidening applications of technology— culminating in the atomic age—are recasting the thoughts and actions of men into strange new patterns.
This study contributes to the literature on the schooling of homeless and highly mobile students. Although previous work has detailed the demographics of home- lessness, the effects of homelessness on academic progress, and particular legal issues in homeless education, this research focused on how individual and institutional relationships influence homeless education.
International learning experiences are invaluable for students. Those who undertake education outside their country of residence develop leadership, self-reliance, language skills, intercultural understanding, sensitivity to local and global issues, and specialist skills when they participate in work placements and field schools. Employers also say that international experience gained through education makes a positive contribution to the workplace.1
Both students and educators have long recognized the value of learning abroad. Despite this, and the fact that almost all Canadian colleges and universities offer education-abroad opportunities (including semester exchanges, short-term study abroad, field school, and service learning), relatively few post-secondary students actually participate. Only 3.1 per cent of full-time university students2 and 1.1 per cent of full-time college students3in Canadian have gone abroad for part of their studies. Compared to some OECD countries, these figures are slim. In Germany, for example, fully 25 per cent of students in bachelors and masters programs have participated in a study abroad experience, and the country hopes to raise this number to 50 per cent by 2020.4