Many countries strive to make postsecondary education maximally accessible to their citizens under the assumption that educated citizens boost innovation and leadership, resulting in social and economic benefits. However, attempts to increase access, especially in contexts of stagnant or diminishing financial support, can result in ever-increasing class sizes. Two aspects of large classes are extremely worrisome. First, economic and logistical constraints have led many such classes to devolve into settings characterized by lectures, readings and multiple-choice tests, thereby denying students experience and exercise with important transferable skills (e.g., critical thought, creative thought, self-reflective thought, expressive and receptive communication). Second, such classes are depicted as cold and impersonal, with little sense of community among students.
Workshops on how to encourage class participation are a staple of teaching and learning centres across the
country. However, little of that advice is geared to the needs on an oft-neglected subset of introverted university
students: the ones who aren’t shy.
Even though Susan Cain’s book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, was a
bestseller, and her TED Talk has been viewed more than 10 million times, I’m not sure that our postsecondary
teaching and learning community has fully appreciated its implications.
If we want to encourage all of our students to participate in class, we have to accept that shy students are not
necessarily introverted. And introverts are not necessarily shy.
In this commentary, I reflect on the value of qualitative research methodology classes. As I show in my discussion of the classes I teach, what students learn from the class is not solely a methodological approach to inquiry, but a different (and for many, a new) way to ask questions, and as I suggest, to see the world anew.
On October 17 1990, the members of the Canadian Federation of Students presented the first edition of its alternative funding model for post-secondary education. The proposal, entitled Strategy for Change, articulated students’ concerns about public funding for post-secondary education, as well as problems with federal student financial assistance programs.
In the intervening seventeen years since the first version of this document was published, federal funding and student aid policies have changed substantially, as have many provincial approaches to post-secondary education. Perhaps the single over arching trend is the federal government’s retreat from a leadership role in broad higher education policy.
Exploring the relationship between research universities and schools, Lieberman asks us to think seriously about the real meaning of collaboration and of how real, notjust creden tialed, teacher leaders can be developed. She points out many things we have already found out about the characteristics and learning experiences that good teacher leaders have and how detached university faculties have been from the schools.
Abstract
First-year seminars (FYS) have become increasingly prevalent in North American postsecondary institutions. The popularity of such initiatives owes much to the belief that providing unprepared students general life and academic skills can bolster engagement and thereby improve retention. In this paper we argue that, despite their good intentions, many FYS actually perpetuate the kind of disengagement they were designed to alleviate due to their reliance on a narrow, instrumental view of education. To demonstrate, we briefly outline the history and curricula of the FYS movement to draw attention to its dependence on marketplace ideals, rationales, and strategies. We demonstrate some of the ways this vision of education impoverishes the university experience and suggest that, in order to be robust, FYS must focus first and foremost on cultivating rich understandings of the broader purposes of higher education and its relation to the good life, both for and beyond one’s own fulfillment.
Résumé
Les séminaires de première année sont devenus de plus en plus répandus dans les énstitutions d post-secondaires en Amérique du Nord. La popularité de telles initiatives doit beaucoup à l’idée que le fait de fournir des aptitudes
générales et académiques aux étudiants non préparés peut renforcer leur engagement et ainsi améliorer leur taux de rétention. Dans cet article, nous soutenons que, malgré leurs bonnes intentions, beaucoup de sention. Dans cet aère année perpétuent le même genre de désengagement qu’ils essaient d’atténuer en raison de leur dépendance envers une vision instrumentale
mais étroite de l’éducation. Pour le démontrer, nous décrivons brièvement l’histoire et les programmes de ce mouvement qui vise à attirer l’attention sur sa dépendance à l’égard des idéaux de marché, des justifications et des stratégies. Nous démontrons quelques-unes des façons par lesquelles cette vision de l’éducation appauvrit l’expérience universitaire et nous suggérons que pour être robustes, les séminaires de première année doivent d’abord se concentrer à cultiver la richesse de compréhension des objectifs plus larges de l’enseignement supérieur et de sa relation au bien-vivre, pour la r ur n-viv
personnelle des étudiants et au-delà.
All post-secondary teachers and students use educational technology– whether for classroom-based, blended or fully online learning and teaching.
This three-part series, Three Pillars of Educational Technology: Learning Management Systems, Social Media, and Personal Learning Environments, explores the Learning Management System (LMS), social media, and personal learning environments – and how they might best be used for enhanced teaching and learning.
Algonquin College teachers call for closure of Saudi Arabia campus.
This is the first article in a series designed to help you create an Individual Development Plan (IDP) using myIDP, a new Web-based career-planning tool created to help graduate students and postdocs in the sciences define and pursue their career goals. To learn more about myIDP and begin the career-planning process, please visit: http://myidp.sciencecareers.org.
We are a group of undergraduate and graduate students from York University connected with each other through sociology professor Cary Wu’s research methods courses. Led by Dr. Wu, we recently came together as a virtual group to discuss what makes in-person classes unique and different from online-learning. Through this productive discussion, we were able to determine what it is about in-person classes that we long for. Here, we share with you seven main themes that emerged in our conversations.
Students are the innovators of the future, and to succeed they need access to modern, high-quality programs at Canadian educational institutions. Universities and colleges are built to educate students, develop global citizens, support research, and foster a sense ofcreativity that will benefit Canadian society both socially and economically.
Engineering is synonymous with design. It is a skill that is inherently understood by experienced engineers, but also one of the most difficult topics to teach. McMaster University’s first-year Design & Graphics is a required course for all engineering students. The course has taught hand-sketching, 3D solid modeling, system simulation, 3D rapid prototyping, and culminated in a project in gear train design that requires a combination of the core course topics. Students chose their own three-member teams and lab sections were randomly assigned one of three modalities for completion of the design project: Simulation (SIM), in which they produced and verified a design using a simulation tool; Prototyping (PRT), in which they used a 3D printer to create a working plastic model of a design; or Simulation and Prototyping (SIM+PRT), in which they used both tools to complete a design.
Colleges and institutes contribute to the research and innovation cycle in Canada through applied research. More specifically, they directly contribute to applied research through enhanced research infrastructure, involvement of faculty and students, and the creation of partnerships with the business, industry and social innovation sectors. Colleges and institutes receive the majority of their funding from the Government of Canada.
For the 2013-14 fiscal period, $85,124,512 were granted, up 19% from the previous year. At $78,275,654, funding from the private sector rose 9% from 2012-13 levels, making it the second greatest source of external funding for applied research.
reconceptualizing Cohens politics of deviance, this paper leans on post-structuralist thinkers to develop a conceptualization of the cultural repertoires of marginalized communities, hereafter referred to as deviantly marked cultural repertoires, that places at the center labeled practices of deviance. It is posited that in these labeled deviant cultural practiceswhich are often overlooked, shunned, and ignoredare valuable and me experiences of learning and development.
Technology has changed just about every facet of our economy and society — from how we travel to how we bank to how we communicate with each other. But perhaps no part of the economy has been as fundamentally transformed as our nation’s workforce.
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.
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.
In this case the Union alleges that the College has violated the collective agreement by failing to staff teaching positions for English courses in its School of Business in Continuing Education, with full time teachers rather part time ones. The Union alleges that this constitutes a violation of Article 2 of the collective agreement between the parties.
A widely held belief in Canada, as in many countries, is that expanding access to tertiary education is integral to improving national productivity. It also plays into the Canadian sense of
equality of opportunity and the just society.
In addition, Canada is not alone in beginning to experience a decreasing labour force participation rate as the baby boomer generation enters retirement. Even the country’s large immigration flows are not sufficient to compensate for the labour force shrinkage. This puts additional pressure on productivity; across the 20 largest members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, this would need to increase at an average of 0.4 per cent
per year to offset the loss of gross domestic product per capita.
This short piece addresses the question: “What strategy-based knowledge do we possess that will be effective in addressing the needs of the lowest performing 20% of students in large education systems?”
My first and most important response is that in order to improve part of the system you have to focus on the entire system — raise the bar and close the gap for all. But let me start with a single school example.