Collaboration helps to develop many of the key skills that will be required of students for their future success. Students can develop many of these so-called “soft skills,” or Essential Employability Skills, by engaging in group work and other forms of collaboration (Ontario Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development 2005). Collaboration leads to greater retention, improved student achievement, and increased self-esteem and metacognition, and it can be used to facilitate active learning and to promote inclusion by increasing contact among diverse groups (Bossert 1988; Bowman, Frame, and Kennette 2013; Hennessey 1999; Kennette and Frank 2010; Kramarski and Mevarech 2003; Rajaram and Pereira-Pasarin 2007; U.S. Department of Education 1992). Despite the many benefits of group work, instructors are sometimes hesitant to use it due to some of its well-known pitfalls
(social loafing, disputes, individualized grading, student bemoaning, etc.).
Abstract
Achieving tenure and promotion are significant milestones in the career of a university faculty member. However, research indicates that racialized and female faculty do not achieve tenure and promotion at the same rate as their non-racialized and male counterparts. Using new survey data on faculty in eight Canadian universities, this article examines differences in being tenured and promoted between racialized and non-racialized faculty and between female and non-female faculty. It also investigates the extent to which explanations of human capital theory and cultural or identity taxation account for these disparities. Logistic regression confirms that controlling for human capital and cultural or identity taxation washes away the differences between being tenured and promoted for female faculty. Differences for racialized faculty remain, offering evidence of racial discrimination in the academic system.
Résumé
L’obtention de la permanence et la promotion sont des jalons importants de la carrière d’un professeur d’université. Cependant, des recherches scientifiques indiquent que les professeurs racialisés et les femmes n’obtiennent pas de permanence et de promotion au même rythme que leurs homologues non racialisés et de sexe masculin. En utilisant de nouvelles données provenant d’une enquête menée auprès de professeurs dans huit universités canadiennes, cet article scrute les différences entre les taux de permanence et de promotion des professeurs racialisés et non racialisés, ainsi qu’entre femmes et non femmes, afin d’analyser dans quelle mesure la théorie du capital humain ou celle de l’imposition culturelle ou identitaire explique
ces disparités. La régression logistique confirme qu’en contrôlant le capital humain ou l’imposition culturelle ou identitaire, les différences de permanence ou de promotion parmi les femmes disparaissent. Cependant, même avec ce contrôle, les différences demeurent pour les professeurs racialisés, ce qui fournit une preuve que la discrimination raciale existe dans le système universitaire.
Abstract
The emergence of service-learning pedagogies in Canada has received a varietyof critical responses. Some regard service-learning as a public relations effort of universities and colleges; others see it as a countermovement to academic
corporatization; still others consider it part of a wider cultural project to produce self-responsible and socially responsible, enterprising citizens. In this article, we argue that each type of response rests on a different critique of the neo-liberal context of post-secondary education; these critiques, in turn, stem from different conceptions of neo-liberalism: as policy, ideology, or governance (Larner, 2000). Rather than attempt to resolve contradictions among these conceptualizations, we address them as a framework for understanding divergent responses to service-learning. We illustrate the framework with the example of a high-enrolment undergraduate course, and we call for future research and educative engagement with the politics of post-secondary servicelearning that is informed by a multi-faceted analysis of neo-liberalism.
Résumé
L’émergence au Canada de la pédagogie d’apprentissage par le service communautaire a suscité une grande variété de réactions. Certains y voient une opération de relations publiques de la part des universités et des collèges, d’autres un mouvement à l’encontre du corporatisme académique, d’autres encore un volet d’un vaste projet culturel ayant pour but de former des citoyens entreprenants, et responsables envers eux-mêmes et la société. Dans cet article, nous avançons que chacune de ces réactions repose sur une critique particulière du contexte néolibéral de la formation postsecondaire,
découlant elle-même de conceptions diverses du néolibéralisme : comme politique, comme idéologie ou comme gouvernance (Larner, 2000). Plutôt que de tenter de résoudre les contradictions qui opposent ces concepts, nous en faisons le cadre qui permet de mieux comprendre les réactions divergentes face à l’apprentissage par le service communautaire. Nous illustrons ce
cadre en donnant l’exemple d’un cours populaire du premier cycle, puis soulignons le besoin d’entreprendre des recherches et d’étayer, par une analyse du néolibéralisme à multiples facettes, la politique de l’apprentissage postsecondaire par le service communautaire.
Occasionally I’m asked about quitting, particularly “quitting” a PhD program. This happened several times last week,
when I was in Vancouver.
Contrary to what you may hear or what your own internal critics tell you, there’s no shame in moving on. I remember a long post on a Versatile PhD forum from “PJ,” an ABD thinking about leaving instead of spending another two years (minimum) to finish their PhD. In response, one commenter wrote, “But the real question is, do you want to be a quitter? Now, not everyone will view that question the same, and I’m sure many will say that equating quitting a PhD program to being a quitter is not valid, but in reality, it is.” No! Thankfully, most other commenters on the thread offered more nuanced and helpful reflections and advice. “Finishing is not just about the destination,” one former tenure-track professor pointed out. “If that’s the only thing you want, then it’s a tough few years ahead.” Indeed.
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.
Survey of counseling center directors finds continued high demand from students for various conditions. Data show centers are diversifying clinical staffs, a demand of many minority student protests.
A number of programs are exploring options for applied scholarship within the PhD.
Right near the core of education, just past tolerance and just short of affectionate connectivity, is the idea of
empathy. University of California Berkley's Greater Good Science Center explains empathy:
The term "empathy" is used to describe a wide range of experiences. Emotion researchers generally
define empathy as the ability to sense other people's emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine
what someone else might be thinking or feeling.
American colleges are educating more international students than ever before, according to a new report, “Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange,” released by the Institute of of International Education. The widely anticipated report finds that nearly 1 million international students—many of them from countries such as China, India, Kuwait—were educated in the United States in the 2014-15 school year, up 10 percent from the previous year. These students typically arrive with the means to pay the full price tag for college.
While the 974,926 international students who studied in American colleges last school year accounted for only about 5 percent of the country’s entire higher-education population, their numbers are increasing rapidly with high concentrations in certain states, colleges, and majors. The significant increase in students from overseas highlights the need to understand more about their behavior, income, and impact on higher education—and how the country’s universities should capitalize on the trend without
compromising the education of in-state students and residents.
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.
With information collected on 2,400 PhD graduates, we can begin to see what humanities programs contribute to the
academy and beyond.
In May 2015, the Future Humanities conference, put on by McGill University’s Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, or IPLAI, brought together more than 130 graduate students, faculty and administrators from 26 Canadian universities (francophone and anglophone), along with a number of PhD holders with careers outside the academy and representatives from organizations such as the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies, the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences and MITACS. (For an overview of what transpired at the conference, see this video and article.)
This paper is about the two million students in Ontario’s publicly funded school system.
In our first mandate (2003-2007) the government inherited a crisis in education. We responded by making education our first priority, set bold targets, and invested in the improvement of schools in partnership with local educators and communities. Together we were successful— test scores are up, the graduating rate from high school has increased, teacher morale has improved, and overall, people are satisfied with the direction of the reform.
But this is not nearly enough as we begin a second mandate. There are two kinds of dangers. One that we merely continue down the linear path of incremental improvements, or two that we enlarge the agenda so much that it becomes unwieldy and diffuse. We have struck a middle ground in this paper that involves substantially extending and building on our first platform.
It is common for second term governments to lose the fresh momentum they had created in their first term. England obtained substantial improvements in literacy and numeracy in its first term under Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1997-2001. Then performance plateaued as the government lost focus in its second term (2002-2006) even though it had received a decisive majority from the electorate. Recently, Sir Michael Barber, the chief architect of England’s literacy and numeracy strategy was asked what he wished they had done differently in their second term. He responded by saying, “I wish we had:
The combination of work and study has been hailed as crucial to ensure that youth develop the skills required on the labour market so that transitions from school to work are shorter and smoother. This paper fills an important gap in availability of internationally-comparable data. Using the 2012 Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), it draws a comprehensive picture of work and study in 23 countries/regions. Crucially, it decomposes the total share of working students by the context in which they work (VET, apprenticeships or private arrangements) and assesses the link between field of study and students’ work. The paper also assesses how the skills of students are used in the workplace compared to other workers and identifies the socio-demographic factors and the labour market institutions that increase the likelihood of work and study. Finally, while it is not possible to examine the relationship between work and study and future labour market outcomes at the individual level, some aggregate correlations are unveiled.
Several years ago, I served as the acting dean of Michigan State University’s College of Arts and Letters -- one of
our institution’s three core colleges with 20 departments, programs and centers, 250 faculty members, and a mix of
graduate and undergraduate offerings. It was a wonderful opportunity to get to know another part of the university
and experiment with running a college with a very different structure. At the same time, knowing the appointment
was for just a single year made me approach it rather differently than my usual (and concurrent) gig as the dean of
Lyman Briggs College, a residential undergraduate science college with 2,000 students and no formal sub-units.
We know students are afraid of making mistakes, often dreadfully so. And so we talk a good line about the learning potential inherent in mistakes.
But are we afraid to let students make mistakes? Is it just a problem with students not wanting to be wrong, or does our need to control learning experiences keep students from making mistakes?
Studying and working abroad transforms Canadian students into global citizens, helping them develop inter-cultural awareness, adaptability and problem-solving skills. It also gives them a hiring edge with today’s employers. Leaving one’s home province to study can also be a transformative experience, increasing students’ understanding of the diverse cultures, histories and values that make up our country.
Whether learning abroad or in another province, these experiences deepen students’ awareness of the diversity of Canadian and international communities, while strengthening bonds between campuses across Canada and worldwide.
Too few Canadian students, however, benefit from the mobility experiences that can prepare them to enter a globalized labour market. Improving the international and interprovincial mobility of university students is a crucial step in developing our next generation of leaders and sharpening Canada’s competitive edge.
Designing an online course shares many of the same elements and processes that go into designing a traditional face-to-face course, however the online environment brings a unique set of challenges that require special attention and a different approach.
Building on StudentsNS’ quality and accessibility values, this report discusses the systemic barriers that persons with disabilities face when pursuing post-secondary education. Providing an in-depth discussion of the supports and challenges found within the academic system, this paper begins to re-conceptualize how disability is viewed and accommodated. Nova Scotia has made great strides toward enabling persons with disabilities to access post-secondary education in the past several decades, but we still have a long way to go. Persons with disabilities remain among the most underrepresented and underemployed groups in Canada. Ensuring persons with disabilities have access to and adequate support during post-secondary education is fundamental if we want this to change. Programs aimed at increasing persons with disabilities’ participation in post-secondary education, and in the work force are often insufficient. Similarly, the supports offered by post-secondary institutions (funded through the province) could be improved to better support students with disabilities. We make suggestions for the post-secondary system to further develop present accessibility measures and improve the quality of education delivered to students with disabilities. Recognizing that providing support for students with disabilities is not purely an academic matter, this report will be complimented by future reports on campus health services, social determinants of access to post-secondary education, and discrimination and human rights.
In the mid-1980s as a further education lecturer I was mocked by some more traditional colleagues for using “lantern slides”, their term for the then newfangled technology of the overhead projector, or OHP. These Luddites strutted the corridors with coffee-tinted sheaves of notes stuffed untidily under their arms. They would sweep into the classroom, fling their pencil-written papyri on the lectern and, without so much as a glance at their students, commence reading out loud.
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.