Colleges and universities generally try to make information about mental health services accessible to students. But at Northwestern University, students may start seeing such information in a surprising place: syllabi.
Wanting the campus to be “accessible and welcoming to all students,” Northwestern’s Faculty Senate last week passed a resolution encouraging “all faculty to include language in their syllabi similar to the following: ‘If you find yourself struggling with your mental or physical health this quarter, please feel free to approach me. I try to be flexible and accommodating.’” The statement ends with phone numbers for health and student services.
Student mobility refers not to just the physical ability of a student to move from one institution to another, but the more comprehensive understanding of a student as an independent agent who - as their own needs and desires change - requires the ability to move from one institution to another to achieve their educational goal, be it a college certificate, diploma, or undergraduate degree. The policy has been broken into three key pillars, which cover the mobility parency, Consistency, and
Student Support.
HubSpot is 9 years old. I consider that we spent our first 6–7 years in “startup” mode, where we got through
product/market fit and got our customer economics to work. Over the last few years, we’ve been in “scale-up” mode, where we’re adding fuel into our engine and growing fast in a great market with nice barriers to entry. It turns out that many of the skills I need as the leader of a scale-up are much different than the skills I needed as the leader of a startup. This article attempts to lay out some of the skills and tools I’ve needed to develop in this scale-up phase.
13 lessons I wish someone had taught me before I became an academic administrator
Universities are getting mixed grades when it comes to how they deal with sexual violence on campus, according to
the members of Our Turn, a student group that's analyzed more than a dozen provincially mandated sexual assault
policies across the country.
For young Canadians, a university education remains a path to success in the job market. Canadian universities share the federal government’s concern about youth unemployment, and are committed to the goals of helping to create jobs and growth for the benefit of all Canadians, especially young people. Universities are taking steps to ensure that graduates are equipped with the skills they need to be competitive in a mobile and globally-connected knowledge labour market.
This paper proposes a new measure of skills mismatch that combines information about skill proficiency, self-reported mismatch and skill use. The theoretical foundations underling this measure allow identifying minimum and maximum skill requirements for each occupation and to classify workers into three groups, the well-matched, the under-skilled and the over-skilled. The availability of skill use data further permit the computation of the degree of under and over-usage of skills in the economy. The empirical analysis is carried out using the first wave of the OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) and the findings are compared across skill domains, labour market status and countries.
It’s hard to pick up a publication these days without reading something about blended course design or the flipped classroom. Even mainstream media have begun to cover these new approaches to teaching and learning that put more emphasis on active learning.
But despite their growing popularity, defining blended learning and flipped learning is more difficult than one would expect. Both models have a variety of definitions, and many consider the flipped classroom a form of blended learning. The Sloan Consortium has one of the most precise definitions, defining blended as “instruction that has between 30 and 80 percent of the course content delivered online.” For the sake of this report, we’re using a more broad definition of blended learning as a course that uses a combination of face-to-face and online learning.
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.
Three teacher education tasks are analyzed using Bateson's "levels of learning" and the distinction between reference experiences and cognitive maps (Dilts, l994). The tasks were 1) writing a risk log of classroom innovations, 2) writing articles, and 3) doing public presentations. Student feedback indicated perceived shifts in behaviors, beliefs, and identities
through both active tasking (reference experiences) and their ongoing dynamic "explanations" (cognitive mapping). The results and activities are then discussed in relation to Freeman's (1992, 1994, 1995) concept of the socialization of teachers into professional discourse and the value of communities of explanation toward continual teacher development.
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.
As an instructional technologist at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work, Tom Baer is no stranger to
working with faculty who struggle to understand the role of instructional designers. It’s not unusual for him to encounter instructors reluctant to give up their go-to lecture or PowerPoint Presentation, unsure of online learning’s effectiveness or resistant to a change in teaching style.
Enrollment in online courses at colleges and universities continues to grow, along with the need for IDs who help design curriculum and implement digital tools. IDs work closely with faculty members and subject experts to create measurable learning objectives, produce course content and craft engaging activities. But during the process, faculty may give IDs the cold shoulder for fear of having to give up control or appearing less knowledgeable in front of their students.
The debate over how universities and colleges should relate to one another has been lively in Ontario for at least two decades.
To my memory, I have never been physically afraid of a student.
The maddest I’ve ever seen a student was one calling me a “life ruining motherfucker,” when I told the student that passing the course was mathematically impossible.
As recent state critiques of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) make clear, the states and federal government are far apart in their understanding of how the spirit of NCLB might continue to take tangible form. This brief article lays out some of the major divides and their implications and urges that the two sides work in good faith to bridge them.
It comes as little surprise that the consensus forged around the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) back in 2001 has begun to unravel. The surprise was that such a consensus was achieved at the time—and doing so required, besides hard work, an appeal to ambiguity during the legislative process that could not be sustained once implementation of the law began. Once the Department of Education, states, and districts had to tangle with the tangible requirements of (among other things) setting standards, creating tests, hiring highly qualified teachers, and providing supplemental tutoring, the widely supported ideal of “accountability” was bound to give way to a series of definitional disputes.
We live in a world filled with physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual violence. This violence has, unfortunately, toxic consequences for us. It is definitely not a question of what doesn’t kill you makes you strong; it is a question of what doesn’t kill you leaves you scarred. This short article, directed at parents and teachers, highlights the emotional and psychological violence children experience at school. As the article suggests, this violence is ubiquitous and damaging.
Abstract
A number of factors have been identified in the research literature as being important for student success in university. However, the rather large body of literature contains few studies that have given students the opportunity to directly report what they believe contributes to their success as an under- graduate student. The primary purpose of this study is to explore students’ descriptions of the personal resources that they use to succeed while attempt- ing to reach their goals as well
as those personal characteristics or obstacles that keep them from reaching their goals. Prominent themes supportive of student success included having a future orientation, persistence, and executive functioning skills such as time management and organization. Results also demonstrate that stress, inadequate academic skills, and distractions are detrimental to student success in university. This study is unique in that it gathers the content data directly from the population of interest; it is one of the few qualitative studies of undergraduate students’ self-generated percep tions. Implications for university administrator and academic counsellors and directions for future research are discussed.
Résumé
Des travaux de recherche ont déjà relevé certains facteurs comme étant importants pour la réussite des étudiants de niveau universitaire. Mais bien qu’abondante, la recherche n’a cependant pas donné aux étudiants de premier cycle la possibilité de communiquer directement leur avis quant aux raisons de leur réussite. Le but principal de cette étude est d’explorer les descriptions que les étudiants font des ressources personnelles qu’ils utilisent pour atteindre leurs objectifs et, ubsidiairement, les caractéristiques personnelles ou les obstacles qui les empêchent d’atteindre leurs objectifs. Parmi les thèmes importants menant à la réussite des élèves on trouve l’orientation vers l’avenir, la persévérance et des compétences exécutives telles que la gestion du temps et l’organisation. Les résultats démontrent également que le stress, des compétences académiques inadéquates et les distractions représentent des obstacles à la réussite des études universitaires. Cette étude est unique car elle collige les données directement de la population concernée. Elle est aussi l’une des rares études qualitatives portant sur la perception des étudiants de premier cycle. On y examine les conséquences pour les administrateurs universitaires et les conseillers scolaires, de même que les orientations possibles de futures recherches.
Queen’s University will strengthen its international reputation by emphasizing what has built its enviable national reputation, namely the transformative student learning experience it delivers within a research-intensive environment. The overarching goal of the university’s Strategic Framework (2014-2019) is to support Queen’s vision as Canada’s quintessential balanced academy.2
Internationalization is one of the four strategic drivers of the Strategic Framework, which builds upon the university’s Academic Plan and Strategic Research Plan.
The number of postdoctoral researchers that burn out at an early stage of their career seems to be increasing, and
mental health has been a hot topic at universities and institutes across the world. The scientist in me always wonders why it is this group that is particularly at risk? Funding struggles, job insecurity and pressure to perform are obvious contributors but do they explain the whole picture? In this post, I dare to suggest that dangerous habits of thinking commonly found amongst the scientific community may also play a role. Do any of the following seem familiar
Audio, visual, textual—most people are willing and eager to identify themselves as a certain type of learner. And it follows pretty quickly that they learn better and faster when teachers approach a lesson in their “style.” Based on that logic, many school districts have poured money into training and materials to help teachers tailor their lessons to the various learning styles of their students. But haste makes waste, write Harold Pashler of the University of California, San Diego; Mark McDaniel of Washing-ton University, St. Louis; Doug Rohrer of the University of South Florida; and Robert A. Bjork of the University of California, Los Ange-les. There just isn’t sufficient evidence to support customizing education in this way.