Students' performance in online learniong environments is associated with their readiness to adopt a digital learning approach. Traditional concept of readiness for online learning is connected with students' competencies of using technology for learning purposes. We in this research, however, investigated psychometric aspects of students' preparedness for online learning.
Ontario's provincial government recognizes college to university transfer as increasingly important. The challenge that Ontario faces is that its college and university systems were created as binary structures, with insufficient credit transfer opportunities for college students who wish to access universities with appropriate advanced standing. This paper discusses Fanshawe College's consequent attempt to create new pathways for its students within the European Higher Education Area, whose Bologna Process provides an integrated credit transfer system that is theoretically very open to student mobility. This unique project is intended to act as an exemplar for other Ontario colleges seeking similar solutions, and to support an articulation agreement between Fanshawe's Advanced Diploma in Architectural Technology and a Building Sciences Master's program at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.
It’s easier than ever for students to buy assignments. Until universities have better measures for rooting out this kind of cheating, professors are focusing on prevention.
How do you deal with cheating if you can’t be sure it’s happening? For universities across the country, it’s an important question as online services and message boards have made it increasingly easy for students to buy whole, made-to-order essays and pass them off as their own. It’s very difficult for professors to catch, and no one is sure just how big an issue it is.
International students are valuable members of a university community, and bring a range of benefits to Ontario. These include economic impacts - contributing $2.9 billion to the provincial economy and creating just under 30,000 jobs1 – as well as contribu
ing to diverse and vibrant classrooms and communities.
Mount Royal University (MRU) has a long-standing history of student-centered leadership and learning. We are known to be an institution that cares about the success and the health of our students, and we have strong services that support mental health promotion and respond well to mental health issues and concerns. In addition to excellent service providers, MRU has many positive practices and policies in place to support students. Recent trends suggest that the prevalence of mental health issues is on the rise among young adults. More students are entering into university with pre-existing mental health conditions, more are seeking help, and often issues are complex and multifaceted. Given that rates of mental illness are on the rise, and given that our student population has reported stress levels higher than other students at post-secondary institutions in North American, a review of our student mental health practices and procedures was warranted.
Two organizations have recently made themselves more than eligible to be inducted into the hall of shame when it comes to the sexual abuse of powerless children. And the negligent bystanders who knowingly ignore the immorality of it all and those who spend too much energy on not knowing, continue to be a large part of the problem.
This document was written by a working group of the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies* and is intended to promote and facilitate discussion on the doctoral dissertation of the 21st century among those responsible for or undertaking doctoral education. The outcome of these consultations will help inform the development of a series of recommendations by the working group.
A primary task of leadership is to drect attention. To do so, leaders must learn to focus their own attention. When we speak about being focused, we common ly mean thinking about one thing while filtring out distractions. But a wwealth of recent research in neuroscience shows that we focus in many ways, for different purposes, drawing on different neurtral pathways-some of which work in concert, while others tend to stand in opposition.
Names … why do we have such trouble learning them? For those of us who struggle with names, it never gets easier, no matter how many tricks we try. It can be embarrassing—to ourselves and to others. I remember once visiting a mall while out of town and hearing someone calling my name.
Soon, a vaguely familiar person was greeting me with enthusiasm. “I am so happy to see you! It’s
been so long? How are you?”
Who is this?, I’m thinking to myself. Course rosters roll through my mind. Nothing. No associations. No connections. Finally, in embarrassment I admit. “I’m terribly sorry but I can’t remember your name.
In our second annual student survey, Maclean’s reached more than 17,000 students at almost every university campus across the country. They told us how often they’ve cheated as well as how much time they spend studying, partying, working and on extracurricular activities. It is one of the largest surveys of its kind and provides a wideranging snapshot of student life on university campuses across the country in real time.
Respondents also told us whether they feel their school has prepared them for the workplace, offering insight into which universities—and which programs—are doing the best job preparing students for the real world. St. Francis Xavier came out on top for this one measure, with 53% of students strongly agreeing they had the skills and knowledge needed for employment. For some programs, the results were even better, with 71% of St. FX nursing students saying they’d been well prepared. We also asked whether the schools helped with writing ability, with St. Thomas ranking first on that front. In addition, we surveyed professors to see whether incoming university students had the academic skills needed for success.
Are Women More Emotional Than Men? This idea that men and women think, talk, and understand things differently has existed for decades—inspiring books, college courses, research studies, and countless sitcoms. The truth is much more complicated and nuanced, of course.
Employers are uniquely positioned to encourage positive financial behaviors in their early career workers, say human resources leaders at three universities.
“By leveraging the full range of the institution’s resources,” says Laurita Thomas, associate vice=president for human resources at the University of Michigan (U-M), “employers can create the right climate to promote Gen Y’s financial wellbeing.” Here are some of the ways, according to Thomas, that employers can set early career workers up for success:
A partnership between the Mastercard Foundation, Rideau Hall Foundation, Vancouver Island University and Yukon College has ambitious aims.
Tasha Brooks likes to have an open-door policy. As one of Vancouver Island University’s four new “education navigators,” her job is to help First Nations students to transition into university and complete their education. “I’m very open about my own struggles through university,” says Ms. Brooks, who earned two degrees in business administration at VIU. “They can look at my past and say, she was also like me, very close to dropping out at some point. … I’m there to not only support them but I can empathize with them.”
In an effort to measure the effectiveness of faculty development courses promoting student engagement, the faculty development unit of Penn State’s Online Campus conducted a pilot study within a large online Bachelor of Science in Business (BSB) program. In all, 2,296 students were surveyed in the spring and summer semesters of 2014 in order to seek their perspectives on (1) the extent of their engagement in the courses and (2) the degree to which their instructors promoted their engagement. The survey comprised three sub-scales: the first and third sub-scales addressed instructional design aspects of the course, and the second sub-scale addressed attitudes and behaviors whereby the instructors promoted student engagement. The results showed a significant difference on the second sub-scale (sig = 0.003) at the .05 level, indicating that students rated instructors with professional development higher on instructor behaviors that engaged them in their courses than those instructors who received no professional development. There were no significant differences found for the first and third sub-scales indicating that the instructional design aspects of the courses under investigation were not influenced by instructors’ professional development. Qualitative data showed that three quarters of the students who had instructors whose background included professional development geared to encouraging student engagement felt that their courses had engaged them. Future research will focus on increasing the response rate and exploring in more depth both the instructional design and qualitative aspects of student engagement.
This has been a very difficult year for Western. The issue of the President’s compensation and the move for votes of non-confidence at the university’s Senate in the spring deeply affected the community, including the members of the Board of Governors. As is so often the case when organizations face significant challenges, there is an opportunity to review governance policies and procedures and make them better. Over the course of this review, in addition to hearing criticisms and concerns, the Task Force heard a common refrain that we all need to work to make the university stronger. The Board is made up of dedicated individuals who believe in Western and share that interest. The members are committed to working with the Western community to address the concerns that have been raised about how governance is carried out at this institution and to develop practices and processes that will allow the Board and the many stakeholder groups that make up the university, to communicate with and understand each other better.
This report is only a first step. It outlines the concerns that were presented to the Task Force by members of the community and by members of the Board, and provides recommendations for moving forward. Some of those recommendations can be implemented relatively quickly; others will take time and effort. However, it is critical to persevere and to keep the conversation going.
The Task Force also recognizes that Senate is conducting its own review of governance. The Board looks forward to receiving their report and finding opportunities to work with Senate to improve governance at Western.
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.
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.
College completion is on the agenda — from the White House to the statehouse to the family house. Improving college completion is essential, but increased degree and certificate completion, in and of itself, is not a sufficient measure of improvement. Genuine progress depends on making sure that degree completion is a proxy for real learning — for developing thinking and reasoning abilities, content knowledge, and the high-level skills needed for 21st-century jobs and citizenship.
The consolidation of the scientific publishing industry has been the topic of much debate
within and outside the scientific community, especially in relation to major publishers’ high
profit margins. However, the share of scientific output published in the journals of these
major publishers, as well as its evolution over time and across various disciplines, has not
yet been analyzed. This paper provides such analysis, based on 45 million documents indexed
in the Web of Science over the period 1973-2013. It shows that in both natural and
medical sciences (NMS) and social sciences and humanities (SSH), Reed-Elsevier, Wiley-
Blackwell, Springer, and Taylor & Francis increased their share of the published output, especially
since the advent of the digital era (mid-1990s). Combined, the top five most prolific publishers account for more than 50% of all papers published in 2013. Disciplines of the social sciences have the highest level of concentration (70% of papers from the top five publishers),while the humanities have remained relatively independent (20% from top five publishers). NMS disciplines are in between, mainly because of the strength of their scientific societies, such as the ACS in chemistry or APS in physics. The paper also examines the migration of journals between small and big publishing houses and explores the effect of publisher change on citation impact. It concludes with a discussion on the economics of
scholarly publishing.
Disciplinary experts have a responsibility to engage in nuanced thinking about teaching and learning.
Recently, i had a conversation with a colleague that stopped me dead in my tracks. I was in the middle of extolling the virtues of SoTL (the scholarship of teaching and learning) as a research field that is multidisciplinary, accessible and increasingly relevant as we shape what higher education looks like in the 21st century.
Feeling the wonderful effects of a mid-afternoon caffeine rush, I was exclaiming that SoTL has wide appeal for many members of our learning community and provides: 1) support to inform teaching practices; 2) fresh solutions andnew ideas, such as how to jump-start a sluggish class or reach the latest generation of students or harness a new technology; 3) opportunities for cross-fertilization between research and teaching; and 4) the option to develop a secondary research field without costly infrastructure.