Mike simply does not understand parametric statistics. He uses an app to connect to Uber-U and a tutor is online
from Chicago, Illinois, in just three minutes from the moment Mike asks for help. The tutor is offering an hour at a time support. After three hours of this tutoring, Mike completes the online assessment, passes this component of his statistics course and earns 0.33 credits towards his statistics course at ABC University. ABC accepts this credit because the transactions involved –
tutoring, online assessment, grading – are all recorded in the very detailed transaction record, which Uber-U uses, and which is compatible with their learning platform system. Six weeks later, Mike is struggling with a chemistry problem and makes a call to Uber-U. Five minutes later, a tutor from Nicosia, Cyprus, connects via FaceTime and spends an hour and a half with Mike. He completes the rich simulation assessment online, passes, and secures 0.25 credits towards his chemistry course, which is again automatically accepted by ABC. He uses Uber-U for a total of 42 credits towards his 120 credit degree.
Statistics Canada is moving to reinstate its Full Time-University and College Academic Staff System survey, and to include information on part-timers.
The data it will reveal is bound to shed much-needed light on a growing challenge that is already well-recognized but far too infrequently discussed in academia: the recent surge in numbers of underemployed PhD graduates at Canada’s universities.
Institutions have made their best efforts to encourage graduates to think beyond university jobs, and have directed more toward careers in government and the private sector. Yet serious challenges within the system remain — for recent PhDs themselves, for the renewal of the academy, and for Canada’s future research potential.
This article focuses on teachers’ experiences in implementing peer assessment with first semester students. It explores the relationship between teachers’ conceptions of teaching and their approach to peer assessment, where both conceptions and approaches are described as being either learning focused or content focused. Drawing upon analysis of interviews with eight teachers, the study found that one had a consonant view of the interrelationship be- tween conceptions of teaching and
approaches to peer assessment, while the remaining seven described their conceptions of teaching and their approach- es to peer assessment with a combination of learning-focused and content focused statements. These statements are labelled as dissonant. Discussion focuses on implications of consonant and dissonant relationships between conceptions of teaching and approaches to peer assessment for implementation of peer assessment; it also addresses academic development issues.
The study reveals that when implementing new methods (here, peer assessment), underlying assumptions will impact on the nature of teacher engagement.
Jobs paranoia is widespread in Canada. Elementary pupils are coming home after receiving the “job talk” from their teachers, typically emphasizing the importance of getting good grades so they can get into a high-quality university – rarely a college, a polytechnic institute or an apprenticeship program. Parents worry about enrolling their children in the “right” schools and academic programs. There is growing concern about the transition from school to work. News media, television programs and movies offer tales of underemployed university and college graduates, intense competition for decent jobs and chronic youth unemployment.
Before choosing a supervisor, get to know them—and get to know yourself.
Ask any of my family members and they will tell you that my middle name should be “indecisive.” I am in a constant battle with the “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” of life. When choosing my undergraduate institution I couldn’t make a decision, so I did what any rational person would do: I rolled a fuzzy dice. Even numbers were one institution and odd numbers were the other. I rolled an even number and based on that one moment in time, the next four years of my life were decided (please note, I do not recommend this method for others).
Part-time faculty teach approximately 58% of U.S. community college classes and thus manage learning experiences for more than half (53%) of students enrolled in community colleges (JBL Associates, 2008). Often referred to as contingent faculty, their work is conditional; the college typically has no obligation to them beyond the current academic term. At many colleges, the use of contingent faculty began with hiring career professionals who brought real-world experience into the classroom. Historically, colleges also have hired contingent faculty when enrollment spiked, the college needed to acquire a particular type of expertise, or full-time faculty members were not available to teach a particular course.
Increasingly, however, contingent faculty have become a fundamental feature of the economic model that sustains community college education. Because they typically have lower pay levels than fulltime faculty and receive minimal, if any, benefits, part-time faculty are institutions’ least expensive way to deliver instruction. As public funding, as a percentage of college costs, has steadily declined—and as colleges have been forced to find ways to contain costs so they can sustain college access—the proportion of part-time faculty has grown at colleges across the country. Today part-time faculty far outnumber full-time faculty at most colleges.
The Survey of Earned Doctorates, the data source for this report, is an annual census of individuals who receive research doctoral degrees from accredited U.S. academic institutions. The survey is sponsored by six federal agencies: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Agriculture, and U.S. Department of Education. These data are reported in several publications from NSF’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. The most comprehensive and widely cited publication is this report, Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities.
This report calls attention to important trends in doctoral education, organized into themes highlighting important questions about doctorate recipients. Online, the reader is invited to explore trends in greater depth through detailed data tables and interactive graphics (www.nsf.gov/statistics/ sed/). Technical notes and other online resources are provided to aid in
interpreting the data. The data tables are available as PDF and Excel files for easy viewing, printing, and downloading.
Faculty members play a central role in the development, implementation, and long-term sustainability of online and blended education programs. Therefore, faculty recruitment and retention strategies for these programs must align with the needs of the faculty. This article highlights the results of an institutional study conducted at a public comprehensive university in 2012 that examined factors influencing faculty participation and retention in online and blended education. This article also provides a comparative overview of the results of a similar institutional study conducted at The George Washington University (GWU) in 1997 that examined factors influencing faculty participation in distance education. The original surveys from the 1997 GWU study were updated for the 2012 Armstrong study. The results revealed that while technology and learning platforms have continued to evolve over the past 15 years, many of the needs and concerns of faculty are relatively similar. The results also revealed that faculty involvement is quintessential in the development and expansion of online and blended programs as well as in the design of faculty development initiatives.
One of the commitments emerging from the Canadian Education Association’s What’s Standing in the Way of Change in Education? workshop in Calgary in October 2013 was to convene a series of Regional Workshops designed to expand
the conversation about change in Canada’s education systems. To this end, in the Spring of 2014, similar workshops were held in New Brunswick, Manitoba, Ontario and British Columbia with a final session held in Quebec in August, 2014.
This week, Harvard Business School launched its first annual Leading People and Investing to Build Sustainable Communities program, which set out to equip professionals from First Nations and native-American communities with new ideas for managing their businesses and resources.
Over 60 Indigenous people from across Canada and the United States attended the four-day course, in which professors taught investment practices and governance strategies, and provided opportunities for participants to put their heads together to solve issues in their communities back home.
It's been more than seven months since Justin Trudeau pledged to develop an Indigenous Languages Act, and a Sudbury professor is hoping that the government eventually develops a preservation plan with "teeth."
Mary Anne Corbiere of the University of Sudbury said that some languages are on the brink of being lost.
"If they are not preserved, they will die when the last speaker dies," Corbiere told CBC's Morning North. "Some languages in Canada now just have fewer than 10 speakers who grew up with the language. Most of those speakers are elderly."
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”.
Picture it — a group of young people hurriedly making their way to Parliament Hill to meet with MPs
and senators.
Maybe it sounds unlikely, but it happened earlier this month, when student lobbyists had nearly 200
meetings with decision-makers to argue their case for accessible post-secondary education.
The Trudeau government says it’s focused on the promise of innovation and human potential.
Universities are a key part of the conversation — but would the Canadian Federation of Students’
idea of free tuition make Canada more
innovative?
This story begins late last school year, when I was standing in front of my Introduction to Film class, getting set up for the day’s session. The technology in the classroom was often glitchy, so I’d given myself plenty of time. I chatted with my teaching assistant about the new Twin Peaks while logging in to my email to retrieve the PowerPoint I’d sent myself.
That’s when I saw the message from my department with the subject header “2017-2018 Budget Cuts.” “Well, that can’t be good,” I thought and clicked to open it. It began, “Dear Sara, As you might know, the university is in the midst of a significant budget cut across all units for Financial Year 2018, which starts July 1.” And it ended, “Within this context, we unfortunately will not be able to offer the courses that we projected for you in 2017-2018. I am sorry to let you know about this development …”
Background/Context: Despite burgeoning racial and ethnic heterogeneity within the United States, many students grow up in racially
homogeneous schools and neighborhoods. This lack of interracial interaction appears to play a substantial role in shaping students racial attitudes and world views upon entering college.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The aim of the study was to examine the relationships among multiple forms of precollege exposure to racial/ethnic diversity and racial attitudes (e.g., perceptions of workplace discrimination) upon entering college.
I am writing to apply for your posted position as an assistant professor of philosophy. I believe that my specific qualifications — my postgraduate teaching experience, publications, and professional activities — constitute a very good fit for this position. One might even say a really rad fit.
But I wonder if we might go a tad off script for a moment and speak plainly? Then you can take a crack at my sparkling dossier.
First, it is important to say that I already am a philosopher. And yes, as you may surmise, I’m looking to move from one relatively junior-ish post to a slightly less junior-ish post. In so doing, I'm trying to follow the usual professional arc that will allow me to nurse my love of philosophy and teaching in a manner that jives with the capitalist paradigm of contemporary higher education. We’re all doing well enough following that arc. But it has come at a cost, no?
It is easy to silo away postsecondary education within the confines of our provincial borders. Our hope with this project is to shed light on an issue with which all students regardless of jurisdiction have to deal. The mental health of students is a unifying theme and priority for student organisations such as ours’ across the country.
Unlike some more-easily defined issues being tackled by student organisations, such as high debt
levels and youth employment, mental health-related problems remain somewhat of a taboo subject for legislators and university officials alike.
Traditional lack of awareness and a societal inability to separate mental illness from physical
ailments has contributed to a grossly underfunded and poorly-equipped postsecondary sector that, while well-intentioned, has failed to grasp the magnitude of the mental health challenges facing its students.
Canada seems perpetually fixated on the "knowledge economy," no matter the political stripes of the government in power. Budget 2017 will roll out the Innovation Agenda, where significant funds will be dedicated to supporting "super clusters" around the likes of aerospace, cyber security, or nanotechnology.
Policy-makers wish to prepare job markets for disruptions that will stem from automation, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and the industrial internet. The skills for the future? If you believe the pundits, they are coding, sales talent, and everything digital. Is Canada's economy of the future a place where the skilled trades will survive, let alone thrive?
It is a common practice at universities to have students complete end-of-term questionnaires about their courses and instructors. Sometimes called student evaluations of teaching (SETs) or student questionnaires on courses and teaching (SQCTs), these are often used to make decisions about faculty tenure and promotion without an appreciation of their limitations. These uestionnaires could be good for capturing the student experience, but responses are inherently influenced by factors outside of the professor's control, including the subject being taught, class size, and the professor's gender, race, or accent. Further, the comment sections in these anonymous questionnaires can and have been vehicles of harassment.
Ontario’s faculty understand the value of student feedback, but the manner in which this feedback is sought, and the ends to which it is used are problematic. The goal of student questionnaires should be to inform the understanding of the teaching and learning experience, not to punish faculty for their class size, instructional innovations, gender, or skin colour.
To consider these issues, the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) has set up a working group with experts in methodology, research ethics, and human rights. The group has been tasked with developing a deeper understanding of how student questionnaires are currently being used at Ontario's universities, defining the limitations of these questionnaires, and developing proposals for ensuring that these questionnaires are used appropriately. The working group is expected to release its report and recommendations later this year. What follows is a summary of the group’s findings so far.
Would you believe me if I told you that young Canadians likely had a major impact on the outcome of the 2015 Canadian general election?
Probably not. That’s because we have continually heard over and over that young people are politically disengaged. Few pay attention to politics. Few vote. And there is plenty of evidence that supports these claims. Elections Canada estimates that during the 2011 federal election, only 39% of Canadians aged 18 to 24 showed up at the polls. In 2008, it was 37%, down from 44% two years earlier.
But the 2015 Canadian election may have been the start of a political awakening of a new electoral powerhouse in Canada.