THE MOST RECENT National Science Foundation (NSF) “Survey of Earned Doctorates” raises eyebrows, not because it paints a predictably bleak picture for the job prospects of humanities PhD students, but because people are surprised that prospects for engineering and science PhDs aren’t looking so good either.
Student Success Program background The three pillars SSP assumptions SSP evaluation SSP year one SSP year two Lessons learned Conclusion
Instructors commonly cope with a missed test or failed exam (this may also apply to quizzes) by letting students drop their lowest score. Sometimes the lowest score is replaced by an extra exam or quiz. Sometimes the tests are worth different amounts, with the first test worth less, the second worth a bit more, and the third worth more than the first two—but not as much as the final.
With the rise in online and hybrid courses at the post-secondary level, many institutions are offering various online learning readiness assessments to students who are considering these instructional formats. Following a discussion of the haracteristics often attributed to successful online learners, as well as a review of a sample of the publicly available online readiness surveys, an application of one representative tool is described. Specifically, the Distance Education Aptitude and Readiness Scale was administered in both hybrid and face-to-face sections of beginning post-secondary French across a two-year span. Differences in scores between groups, as well as the relationship between scores and
grades are examined.
Abstract
Informal mid-term feedback processes create opportunities for students and academics to have a dialogue about their progress and to make any necessary or reasonable mid-stream corrections. This article reports on an action research project designed to see what impact mid-semester feedback might have on the classroom experience. The underlying motive for the study was to generate institution-specific “proof” which might encourage other academic staff to conduct informal mid-semester informal feedback exercises with their students.
End-of-semester data shows that both students and lecturers found the exercise to be a positive
experience. Students appreciated being able to voice their problems and opinions at a time when
mid-course corrections were possible. Lecturers felt there was an improvement in
the lines of communication, resulting in a friendlier teaching and learning environment.
The world is slowly moving out of the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes. With productivity, innovation, investment and trade not yet at full steam, the recovery still bears risks. It is also becoming clear that economic growth is not enough to foster social progress, particularly if the growth dividend is not shared equitably. Indeed, the social cost of the crisis continues to weigh heavily, with more than 46 million people out of work in OECD countries and relative poverty affecting millions more. In many countries the gap between the richest and the poorest is widening, youth unemployment remains high, and access to social services remains elusive for many. The world is looking for ways to spur economic growth in a more inclusive manner. The OECD contributes to this effort by developing the evidence and tools that policy makers can use to formulate new policies to achieve this goal.
This edition of Education at a Glance provides ample evidence of the critical role that education and skills play in fostering social progress. In addition to the usual data sources used for generating the OECD Education Indicators, this edition also draws on the rich database on skills provided by the 2012 Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), published in October 2013 (OECD, 2013a). Together with the 2012 data on the learning outcomes of 15-year-olds from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2012), published in 2013 and 2014 (OECD, 2013b and 2014a), and 2013 data on lower secondary teachers from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS 2013), published in June 2014 (OECD, 2014b), we now have the richest international evidence base on education and skills ever produced. And with our newly developed, web-based research tool, Education GPS, all this evidence is easily accessible at the click of a mouse.
The role of copyright within the Canadian education system was once an issue of interest to a relatively small number of scholars, librarians, authors, and publishers. With limited means to copy and distribute educational materials, the primary battle was over payments for photocopies of works that were distributed...
Women who start college in one of the natural or physical sciences leave in greater proportions
than their male peers. The reasons for this difference are complex, and one possible contributing factor is the
social environment women experience in the classroom. Using social network analysis, we explore how gender influences the confidence that college-level biology students have in each other’s mastery of biology. Results reveal that males are more likely than females to be named by peers as being knowledgeable about the course content. This effect increases as the term progresses, and persists even after controlling for class performance and outspokenness. The bias in nominations is specifically due to males over-nominating their male peers relative to
their performance. The over-nomination of male peers is commensurate with an overestimation of male grades by 0.57 points on a 4 point grade scale, indicating a strong male bias among males when assessing their classmates. Females, in contrast, nominated equitably based on student performance rather than gender, suggesting they lacked gender biases in filling out these surveys. These trends persist across eleven surveys taken in three different iterations of the same Biology course. In every class, the most renowned students are always male. This favoring of males by peers could influence student self-confidence, and thus persistence in this STEM discipline.
Abstract Since the 1990s, enrolment in postgraduate programs has increased significantly in Canada. In more recent years, this has led to concerns regarding overproduction and the labour market outcomes of those with postgraduate education. Women have played an important role in this growth, but questions remain as to whether women’s progress into the highest levels of education has helped ameliorate their wage disadvantage relative to men. Using the 2011 National Household Survey, this study finds large wage premiums for completing master’s and doctoral degrees for both men and women, especially in younger cohorts; however, there are important differences by field of study. The gender wage gap is smaller for women with master’s degrees than for those with bachelor or doctoral degrees. Occupational differences account for more of the gender wage gap than field of study, suggesting that after degree completion, university-educated women sort into occupations that are lower paid than their male counterparts’.
Résumé Depuis les années 90, les inscriptions aux programmes de deuxième et de troisième cycles universitaires ont augmenté de façon importante au Canada. Récemment, des inquiétudes ont été exprimées quant à la surproduction de diplômés et à ses conséquences sur le marché du travail. Bien que les femmes aient occupé un rôle important dans l’augmentation de ces inscriptions, il est encore impossible de savoir si l’avancement de celles-ci vers les niveaux académiques les plus élevés a contribué à l’amélioration de leurs conditions salariales, par rapport à celles des hommes. À l’aide de l’Enquête nationale auprès des ménages 2011, la présente étude conclut que les salaires des femmes, tout comme ceux des hommes, sont bonifiés après l’obtention d’une maîtrise ou d’un doctorat, surtout chez les cohortes plus jeunes. Par contre, d’importantes variations existent en fonction du domaine d’étude. Pour les femmes possédant une maîtrise, l’écart salarial entre sexes est moindre que pour les femmes possédant un baccalauréat ou un doctorat. L’écart salarial est davantage dû aux variantes sur le plan professionnel que celles des domaines d’étude, postulant donc qu’après avoir obtenu un diplôme universitaire, les femmes se lancent vers des professions moins rémunérées que ne le sont celles de leurs homologues masculins.
According to data released by Statistics Canada in 2014, the years of 2000 - 2010 have seen significant increases in large and private debt among graduating students, and skyrocketing private debt among graduates with doctoral degrees. Although the
percentage of graduates in debt appears to be decreasing overall in this decade, this is both because of the introduction of the Canada Student Grants Program (which turns a portion of student loans into non-repayable grants) and because enrollment growth has outpaced increases in student loan borrowing. Even so, those who are borrowing are taking on much higher debts,and increasingly from private sources.
How to resolve the top enrolment barriers that decrease student satisfaction and negatively impact enrolment efforts.
I remember the first time I tackled the controversial subject of students as customers. It was in an in-house newsletter, well before the advent of the Internet and e-mail. Even so, I had numerous phone calls, memos, encounters on campus, and discussions about it in every activity the teaching center sponsored for the next year. I hadn’t even taken a side; I had simply listed arguments for both sides. But, as far as the faculty were concerned then and pretty much since, there aren’t two sides. Students are not customers. Tuition dollars do not buy grades. Education does not come with a money-back guarantee. And students don’t get to choose what they learn—well, they do, but if they don’t choose to learn what we require, the consequences are costly.
Applicants from institutions with grade inflation are favored over those who had more rigorous instructors, study finds.
When colleges crack down on grade inflation, students invariably complain that they will be at a disadvantage when they apply to graduate school without as many A grades as might otherwise be the case.
The students may be correct.
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.
Do we communicate more with students in writing than we used to? I think so. In addition to the course syllabus, the usual handouts, and written feedback on papers, projects, and performances, we now share all kinds of electronic messages with students. We exchange emails, post announcements on course management systems, and participate in online discussions. Those who use PowerPoint tend to make rather text-heavy slides. And if you happen to teach online, then virtually all your communication with students occurs via some written format.
The purpose of this commentary is to consider the role of contemplative practices in the teacher preparation curriculum. Contemplative practices help reduce stress, improve a sense of well-being, and increase coping abilities for professional demands. They can be particularly useful in managing stress in transition situations. We suggest
that students preparing to teach be provided specific training on how to use contemplative practices for sustaining positive personal and professional development.
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
Higher education's approach to fostering students' innovation potential has focused mostly on developing innovation leadership among a select cadre of students, originally in entrepreneurship and more recently in social sector innovation. But what about the rest of our graduates: what capability do all our graduates need if they're going to engage effectively with innovation in the workplace? Can elements of this capability be adapted to enhance their roles as community members and global citizens as well?
In order to develop the capability for workplace innovation in all our students, we're going to have to begin tackling the challenge in the space where all of them already participate – within our teaching and learning environments.
Doctoral supervisors are often said to “go the extra mile” for their students, but few academics will do this literally.
Sarahjane Jones, research fellow at Birmingham City University’s Centre for Health and Social Care Research, is, however, one academic who can actually make that claim.
While most scholars confine one-on-one tutorials to their office, Jones prefers to take her PhD charges on a walk along Birmingham’s canal towpaths to discuss their research, covering three to four miles in a typical “walking supervision”.
When I was younger, much younger, I read a science-fiction book where life on a particular planet was difficult because the landscape was constantly shifting. If one substitutes conceptual and occupational for physical landscape, one could as easily be talking about Earth at the beginning of the 21st century.
Our system of higher education was designed for a stable conceptual and occupational landscape, the kind where our parents and their parents grew up. One went to school, maybe even attended college, and took a job. One retired from this job, perhaps having been promoted along the way. Many of today’s jobs did not exist during our parents’ days and those still existing often have the same name as before but require much more sophisticated skills. Jason Wingard and Michelle LaPointe note in Learning for Life: How Continuous Education Will Keep Us Competitive In the Global Knowledge Economy that we have left many of today’s citizens ill-prepared for the current occupational landscape. Our citizens’ skills, even many of our youngest, mismatch with the demands of today’s economy. Cynical politicians sometimes promise a return to the good old days, but they do so only
to collect the votes of the disenfranchised. Similar to other educated people, they know that the old jobs a e not coming back because the world has moved on; many people have not moved with it, are stuck in an occupational landscape that no longer
exists, and have become lost.