Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tasked with examining the future of online
education have
returned with a simple recommendation for colleges and universities: focus on people and process,
not technology.
Back in 2013, an MIT task force presented a vision of undergraduate education at the institute in which students spend half as much time on campus as they do today. Freshman year would be fully online, and instead of a senior year, students would take online continuing education courses to refresh their knowledge and add new skills. That vision leaned heavily on MIT’s work with edX, the massive open online course provider it founded with Harvard University.
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?
Engagement in a continuous, systematic, and well-documented student learning assessment process has been gaining importance throughout higher education. Indeed, implementation of such a process is typically a requirement for obtaining and maintaining accreditation. Because faculty need to embrace learning assessment in order for it to be successful, any misconceptions about the nature of assessment need to be dispelled. One way to accomplish that is to “rebrand” (i.e., change perceptions) the entire process.
Discussed below are seven classroom strategies that are frequently encouraged by teacher trainers and/or administrators and are assumed to be useful. However, when examined more closely what one sees is that they are actually highly ineffective and tend to encourage negative effects on the classroom climate, students’ psychology and level of function and order in the class. We need to therefore stop suggesting teachers use them, and if they have been suggested to you, you might politely decline and instead consider implementing better alternative practices that will get you long-term positive results such as those described below.
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?
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.
a b s t r a c t
This study examined the trajectories of depressive and anxious symptoms among early-career teachers (N ¼ 133) as they transitioned from their training programs into their first year of teaching. In addition, perceived school climate was explored as a moderator of these trajectories. Multilevel linear growth modeling revealed that depressive and anxious symptoms increased across the transition, and negative perceived school climate was related to more drastically increasing symptoms. Results suggest that this career stage may be a time when teachers are particularly vulnerable to declines in mental health, and speak to some within-school features that may be related to teachers’ experiences.
What annoys me about the teaching profession, more than anything else, is the constant grousing about students. A certain slice of the faculty seems to enjoy complaining about how bad their students are — especially, of course, today’s students, who are clearly worse than any other generation in history. I’ve been hearing the same gripe for my entire 33 years of college teaching.
The ways in which university quality assessments are developed reveal a great deal about value constructs surrounding higher education. Measures devel- oped and consumed by external stakeholders, in particular, indicate which elements of academia are broadly perceived to be most reflective of quality. This paper examines the historical context of library quality assessment and
reviews the literature related to how library value is framed in three forms of external evaluation: accreditation, university rankings, and student surveys. The review finds that the library’s contribution to university quality, when it is considered at all, continues to be measured in terms of collections, spaces, and expenditures, despite significant expansion of library services into non- traditional arenas, including teaching and research, scholarly communica- tions, and data management and visualization. These findings are contrasted with the frequently invoked notion of the library as the heart of the university.
In summary, the OECD assessment of the strengths and challenges of the Canadian postsecondary vocational education and training (VET) system is as follows:
Messy breakups between colleges and universities and their presidents made headlines again this summer. Trustees have accused presidents of poor judgment, unapproved and unauthorized spending, lack of professionalism, and inadequate goals and objectives. The separations played out in public, and many of them required a legal resolution.
But litigation costs are only a fraction of the harm done to both the college and the president in these kinds of terminations.
The reputations of both the college and the president are damaged by the controversies. Stories that portray a board as not supporting its president will probably cause future candidates for leadership positions at the college to think twice about applying. Community supporters and donors may withdraw support from the institution in response to the negative press that often accompanies the termination of employment of top leadership. For their part, presidents who are fired often have trouble overcoming the damage to their careers and successfully securing a leadership position at a different college or university.
n November 2005, the province of Ontario and the federal government signed two historic agreements – the Canada-Ontario Labour Market Development Agreement and the Canada-Ontario Labour Market Partnership Agreement. One year later, on Nov. 24, 2006, key labour market stakeholders, including users, delivery agents and government came together to collectively take stock of progress and to explore how partners can help governments move forward with successfully implementing the agreements.
It is entirely possible that a common definition of quality in education is an impossible goal. This is puzzling, since everyone knows what it looks like. It is the transfer of enthusiasm for knowledge and discovery from professor to student. It sparks the desire in a new generation to push the envelope of human understanding further than it has ever been pushed. It teaches the weight of responsibility to conduct this discovery responsibly, ethically and with future generations in mind.
College presidents’ partners and spouses aren’t all wives hosting receptions in the president’s house.
Many work jobs outside of their role as presidential partners. A growing number are men. And many say the expectations placed upon them by a college or university influence their spouse’s decision to work as the institution’s president.
A new study from University of Minnesota researchers examines the role of the presidential spouse or partner at a time when it is becoming increasingly complex and challenging. Researchers called the survey, which was released Monday after being presented at the Council of Independent Colleges’ Presidents Institute last week, the “largest and most diverse known sample of presidential partners to date.” The results of the study, which involved the leaders of public and private colleges, were earlier presented at a CIC meeting.
Nature of Leadership
Effective leadership is a key factor in the life and success of an organization
Leadership transforms potential into reality.
Leadership is the ultimate act which brings to success all of the potent potential that is in an organization and
its people.
Leaders propose new paradigms when old ones lose their effectiveness.
I had coffee a few weeks ago with another displaced administrator at my university. Like me, he had arrived within the past decade to build something new and different. To some extent, he had succeeded. But, also like me, he had been informed that his leadership services would no longer be required beyond this year.
When he invited me, he asked if I would be uncomfortable meeting in one of the more popular campus coffee spots. "It’s in the shadow of the main administration building," he warned via email.
A total of 1,518 on-line interviews were conducted for the study between December 10th and 14th, 2012. The margin of error for a representative sample of this size is 2.5 percentage points within a 95% confidence interval. The margin of error is greater when looking at sub-segments of the population.
Questions are a common way for teachers to check for understanding, right? The answer we’re looking for is "yes." Who hasn't questioned a group of students to determine whether or not they understood the content? Unfortunately, not all questions are created equally. We propose four over-arching questions that can be used to scaffold students' thinking about complex texts. You can tailor these questions to any book that your students are reading:
What does the text say?
How does the text work?
What does the text mean?
What does the text inspire you to do?
Study looks at the reasons why people pirate scholarly articles from peer-to-peer research sharing communities -- it's more convenience than ideology.
A number of programs are exploring options for applied scholarship within the PhD.