Academic freedom controversies continue to bedevil universities, highlighted most recently by the stunning episode at Wilfrid Laurier University. That a teaching assistant in a communications program would be reprimanded for showing video clips of a debate on the use of gender-neutral language is almost incomprehensible.
Academic freedom is not absolute, and there are some reasonable constraints that govern its application. But none have been offered that justify Wilfrid Laurier’s rebuke of the teaching assistant. She appeared to have been encouraging debate and civil discourse on a topic about which people disagree. That, indeed, is a key function of academic freedom, and of the university itself.
What will it take for students to succeed beyond high school? How are schools preparing students for the reality of
college-level work?
One method that has gained popularity in the United States is allowing students to take college-level courses that apply toward their high school credits and can also be transferred to colleges, if they choose to pursue postsecondary education. This is known as a dual-credit program, and it is widely used and popular in the United States.
Executive Summary
The upcoming (Fall 2014) undergraduate student referendum on the desirability of a Fall Break and recent adoption of a Fall Break on a three-year trial period by Wilfrid Laurier University have independently re-ignited the discussion at the University of Waterloo. Fourteen Ontario universities currently have a Fall Break, varying from 2-5 days in length. UW is among a small
number of institutions within Ontario who do not currently have one.
The primary challenge to arranging a Fall Break is finding sufficient space to schedule: 60 teaching days, a minimum of 2 pre-exam study days, and a minimum of 12 exam days while finishing by December 22. This challenge seems relatively easy to accomplish most years but is complicated by the occasional late Labour Day holiday.
IN THIS ISSUE:
• Rethinking Higher Education’s Leadership Crisis: page 7
• Meeting Adaptive Challenges: The New Leadership Skill Set: page 9
• Identifying Leadership Potential in Your Staff: page 12
• Building an In-House Leadership Development Program: page 14
• Deepening Your Talent Bench: Horizontal Career Ladders: page 16
Two major developments in the financial management of higher education have occurred more or less contemporaneously: incentive or performance funding on the part of government and incentive-based budgeting on the part of institutions. Both are based on fiscal incentives. Despite their several inherent and interconnected similarities, incentive funding and incentive-based budgeting have been viewed and appraised on parallel tracks. This study investigates their convergence. In doing so, it sharpens the definitions of both, identifies their respective track records, and discusses problems that are chronic to both. The study concludes that although incentive funding and incentive-based budgeting are sometimes at cross-purposes, they are func-tionally interconnected. The study uses Canada as an example because it is the jurisdiction that so far has seen the most extensive mutual deployment of performance funding and incentive-based budgeting.
Putting Students In Charge of Their Learning
Through inquiry, Wildwood works to ignite passion, inspire relevance, and develop ownership in their students. Using student inquiries and questions as guidance, teachers develop lessons that engage and excite, teaching their students to be active thinkers rather than passive learners.
ONTARIO COLLEGES OF APPLIED ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY: PRECURSORS AND ORIGINS
On May 21, 1965, the Minister of Education, William G. Davis, introduced legislation for the establishment and operation of a system of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology. In his statement in the legislature, the Minister noted that the legislation provided for the introduction of “a new level and type of education, one which is still in keeping with our traditions and accomplishments” (Davis 1965, 5). The objective of this paper is to examine just how the new college system built on previous accomplishments and continued existing traditions. The paper describes the educational institutions that were the precursors of the new colleges and examines the connection between the new colleges and their predecessor institutions. It argues that previous accomplishments and traditions significantly influenced choices about the shape of the new colleges.
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.
The question of how to hold Ontario’s universities accountable to the needs of students is a relatively complex one. One must be careful to balance the need for academic freedom with the public’s (and especially students’) right to be assured that its considerable investments into postsecondary institutions are being used effectively and appropriately. OUSA’s Accountability paper offers recommendations to improve quality assurance and strategic goal-setting in Ontario’s universities. In essence, it describes students’ vision of to whom, for what, and how universities should be held accountable.
Ask most people who don’t teach online about the likelihood of academic dishonesty in an online class and you will likely hear concerns about the many ways that students could misrepresent themselves online. In fact, this concern about student representation is so prevalent it made its way into the Higher Education Opportunities Act (HEOA).
Passed into law in 2008, the act brought a few big changes to online education, including a new requirement to “ensure that the student enrolled in an online class is the student doing the coursework.”
It’s no breaking news that technology is here to stay. Among other things, this means that all schoolkids today, including your child, grandchild, niece and nephew, rely on their tech skills to excel at school. By the time they finish school, they will be required to implement a variety of tech skills on a daily basis at work.
As a parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle you now have to teach your child a new skill: tech intelligence. And the worst part is that by their teens, your kids are likely to surpass your tech-savviness, so you have to do it as early as you can
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.
Twenty-one-year old Christian McCrave feels like he did his part.
He got good grades in high school and completed a four-year degree at the University of Guelph in southwestern Ontario. He studied mechanical engineering, in part because he thought it would land him a job.
It hasn't.
"I actually thought that coming out of school that I would be a commodity and someone would want me," McCrave said. "But instead, I got hit with a wall of being not wanted whatsoever in the industry."
McCrave says he believed in the unwritten promise of a post-secondary education: work hard at school, and you'll end up with a good and stable job.
Now, he's not so sure.
ackson started speech class barely audible. A thin, Latino teen, with an Abe Lincoln beard, ear gauges the size of silver dollars, and a loose, enigmatic smile, you couldn’t help liking him. If you could hear him, that is.
ut the other night, hot off winning a video game tournament, he demonstrated how to play Street Fighter Five, his assion. He leaned toward the audience, core muscles taut, arms swinging, and illustrated in ringing tones the omplex moves and strategies of an expert gamer.
t was the first time I saw video games as something akin to playing cello, rather than a brain-dead addiction. fter the speech, he mentioned that people had asked him to give them lessons, and I said he should charge oney. $25 an hour would be cheap compared to violin teachers who charge $60 an hour. I could see his eyes grow big as thoughts whirled behind them.
As a new academic year approaches, universities across Canada are struggling to develop policies in response to the legalization of recreational cannabis. Many uncertainties remain, and while universities differ in how they plan to deal with cannabis on campus, they tend to agree on one thing: it’s complicated.
This quantitative study examined the relationship between the Big 5 personality traits and how they relate to online teacher effectiveness. The primary method of data collection for this study was through the use of surveys primarily building upon the Personality Style Inventory (PSI)(Lounsbury & Gibson, 2010), a work-based personality measure, was the instrument used to assess personality measures. In addition an evaluation instrument was developed by the researchers to evaluate classroom performance across a 10-point scale. In total 115 instructors from a large predominantly online university were surveyed through Qualtrics for personality traits and then had their courses evaluated for effectiveness and quality utilizing measures based on the Quality Matters program. Using a Pearson product moment correlation coefficient, it was found that 9 personality traits were significantly correlated with online teaching performance. While the results of this study can only be seen at this point as preliminary, it does open the door to further studies to determine if online teacher training or professional development interventions should take a different approach. Ultimately, the findings of this study demonstrated that personality does play a significant role in the effectiveness of online teaching performance.
Governments are increasingly looking to international comparisons of education opportunities and outcomes as they develop policies to enhance individuals’ social and economic prospects, provide incentives for greater efficiency in schooling, and help to mobilise resources to meet rising demands. The OECD Directorate for Education and Skills contributes to these efforts by developing and analysing the quantitative, internationally comparable indicators that it publishes annually in Education at a Glance. Together with OECD country policy reviews, these indicators can be used to assist governments in building more effective and equitable education systems. Education at a Glance addresses the needs of a range of users, from governments seeking to learn policy lessons to academics requiring data for further analysis to the general public wanting to monitor how its country’s schools are progressing in producing world-class students. The publication examines the quality of learning outcomes, the policy levers and contextual factors that shape these outcomes, and the broader private and social returns that accrue to investments in education.
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.).
Doctoral supervisors are often said to “go the extra mile” for their students, but few academics will do this literally.
Sarahjane Jones, research fellow at Birmingham City University’s Centre for Health and Social Care Research, is, however, one academic who can actually make that claim.
While most scholars confine one-on-one tutorials to their office, Jones prefers to take her PhD charges on a walk along Birmingham’s canal towpaths to discuss their research, covering three to four miles in a typical “walking supervision”.
Landing a postdoc, particularly for the social sciences and humanities, is increasingly difficult as Keisha N. Blainrecently noted in Inside Higher Ed. Many postdocs are as competitive as tenure-track jobs.
But if you are one of the lucky few to receive a postdoc, what’s next?
I’m finishing my one-year National Center for Institutional Diversitypostdoc at the University of Michigan. I’m fortunate enough to have a postdoc that requires no teaching or service, and provides a generous research budget. I’m also a sociologist, so my perspective reflects that of a scholar in the social sciences and humanities. Still, no matter if your postdoc is for one year or three, or whether you are teaching, in a lab or on your own, I’ve developed some tips that
I think can help you make the most of your postdoc.