As a minority group on university campuses, the unique needs of mature students can be easily overlooked. It is important that the term “mature students” does not disguise the heterogeneity of this group: “…it is erroneous to speak of ‘the adult learner’ as if there is a generic adult that can represent all adults.” 1 However, amongst this varied group of students, there are common concerns that they share. Mature students need more recognition of the different hurdles they face in achieving success. These can include situational barriers like a lack of time, lack of money, health issues, or dependant care,2 as well as attitudinal or dispositional barriers, including the fear of failure or alienation. Lastly, they also face systemic barriers such as restrictive course offerings and availability of instructors or support services outside of regular business hours. 3 Our Mature Student Policy sets out students’ priorities in increasing the visibility of mature students on campus as well as optimizing their educational experience.
In the last two decades, distance education has grown worldwide and is now established as a reliable educational method. Accompanying this development, questions about low rates of student persistence havecome to interest governments, institutions, and university management. This article is based on an original local study at a university in Sweden investigating what it takes to get students to continue their enrolment in courses or programs. Teachers' views were captured in interviews and focus groups. These views were analyzed in the context of research in the field catalogued under the keywords "retention" and "persistence" in"distance education" and "distance learning." The results indicate that the teachers would like to see a shift in focus from students to the organization and its technical and administrative teacher and learner support. Staff attitudes, institutional structure, and the management views towards distance education seem to be critical factors.
The Strategic Mandate Agreement (SMA) exercise was intended to address at least three desired
outcomes:
1. To promote the government’s stated goal1 of increasing the differentiation of the Ontario
postsecondary system by asking each Ontario postsecondary institution to articulate an
institutional mandate statement identifying its distinctive strengths or aspirations and to
identify key objectives aligned with that aspiration.
2. To advance and inform the discussion about how the Ontario system could increase its
productivity to deliver a quality education to more students within the financial constraints
expected in the public sector.2
3. To elicit the best thinking from institutions about innovations and reforms that would support
higher quality learning and, in its most ambitious form, transform Ontario’s public
postsecondary system.
Imagine if a college, using learning analytics, has determined that students of a specific ethnic background who live in a handful of zip codes and score a certain way on standardized tests are highly likely to earn a low grade in an important course -- potentially jeopardizing their chances of graduating on time. Should the college actively prevent those students from enrolling in the course?
That is an example of the type of dilemma researchers from more than a dozen colleges and universities debated earlier this month as they made progress toward developing a set of shared standards for ethical use of student data, including how the data should be used to improve higher education.
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.
As spring semester winds down on college and university campuses across the country, faculty thoughts often turn to what we’re doing over the summer — research, course redesign, family vacations, recharging, perhaps teaching a course or two. But then academic reality rears its head and our thoughts are forced from their Summer Happy Place to somewhere far more mundane: The Assessment Mire.
If where you teach is anything like my university, in addition to the assessment work we do for our own courses (grading piles of student essays, projects, and tests) there is often a layer of institutional assessment on top of that. We use various assignments to assess the outcomes in our institution’s core curriculum, for example, and then we aggregate the data to see how students across the university are doing with the core’s various dimensions.
"I had a career," she told me, her eyes welling with tears. "I took care of my kids and myself, and I didn’t need anyone’s help … and now, I’m here," she said, referring to Oregon State University’s Human Services Resource Center, a facility for low-income students which I directed until last year. As she spoke, the floodgates opened, and I handed her a box of tissues. She told me she had not eaten and was worried about being evicted. She said she could not get a job to support her family without a degree.
OUSA’s policy on system growth is a broad based look at the future structure and function of Ontario’s post-secondary system. Throughout the past decade, Ontario has seen unprecedented growth in undergraduate enrolment across universities and colleges, successfully achieving the highest provincial post-secondary attainment in Canada. OUSA is supportive of the
Ontario government’s work towards the goal of a more prosperous society and workforce.
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
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.
Context: There is growing interest in the integration of meditation in higher education.
Purpose: Here, we review evidence bearing on the utility of meditation to facilitate the achievement of traditional educational goals and to enhance education of the “whole person.”
Research Design: We examine how meditation practices may help foster important cognitive skills of attention and information processing, as well build stress resilience and adaptive interpersonal capacities through a review of the published research literature.
Conclusions/Recommendations: We offer directions for future research, highlighting the importance of theory-based investigations, increased methodological rigor, expansion of the scope of education-related outcomes studied, and the study of best practices for teaching meditation in educational settings.
"If you look closer," sang Smokey Robinson, “it’s easy to trace the tracks of my tears.” Clearly he never experienced the flow of tears at the end of a semester.
Whenever midterm and final exams loom, students’ tears during faculty office hours become as commonplace as requests for extra credit and do-overs. Low grades produce desperation and despair. In deciding how to respond, professors first must identify the reasons for the crying because not all tears are equal.
Some students cry because they lack the necessary skills to succeed in the course. Others are dealing with the stresses of life and, particularly if they're young, haven't developed coping mechanisms. There are tears from students who are dealing with the very real traumas of microaggressions, racism, homophobia, rape, and the failure of their institutions to recognize those pressures or listen to their voices. And there are tears that surely produce less empathy — from the grade grubbers crushed by a B or the slackers who simply didn't do the reading but know how to turn on the waterworks.
Five principles of deliberate practice can help teachers consistently improve their teaching.
New school. New city. New structure.
It can all feel so daunting. Especially if you're 18 years old, not really sure what program you should be in and unprepared for the demands of what your new post-secondary education reality truly is.
Many students lack the right knowledge, tools and resources to make an informed decision when choosing their higher ed path. Universities see about 14% of first year students drop out, in comparison to an even higher 20% at college, simply because it's just not the right fit.
Despite efforts to decrease attrition in North America, a PSE attrition rate of 30-40% has persisted for over 30 years. That means post-secondary institutions are suffering financial losses as first year students continue to drop out. But why aren't students finding the right fit?
Best Practices in Measuring the Impact of Student Success Strategies
An expat explains how a temporary leave to study in the U.K. turned into a life abroad – and what the government could do to bring him back.
Growing up in small-town Ontario, I always had a nagging feeling that Canadians who moved abroad were traitors. They had shunned our country for monetary gain, or sunshine or fame. But I’ve become one of those people – part of the nation’s brain drain – and I can assure you that it was entirely accidental.
Like me, every year hundreds of Canadians head abroad to do PhDs or postdocs, intent on gathering international experience, and every year a few of them don’t come back. In my case, I was drawn to the U.K. to do a PhD in history and, two years after finishing, I am still there, now working as an academic historian. I’d like to share how that happens and what Canada might do to prevent it from happening again and again.
I did not go abroad to get a “better” education. This is what the British think draws international
students, but this is a patronizing assumption and not a reflection of reality for most. For me, the
move was part quest for adventure and
part practical desire to get my PhD completed quickly so that I could get on with a career.
Definition of Leadership
Characteristics of a Quality Leader
Various Leadership Style
Contingency Approach to Leadership
The Path - Goal Approach to Leadership Effectiveness.
II. Social Responsibility
Social Responsibilities of Managing
Arguments for and against Social Involvement of Business
Social Responsibility & Social Responsiveness
Ethics in Business Management
Ethical Theories and a Model for Business Orientation
Institutionalizing Ethics
Code of Ethics and its Implementation
Factors that Raise Business Setting
In this ongoing series focused on flipped and active-learning classrooms, we’re taking a deeper look into how to create successful learning experiences for students. We’ve examined how to encourage students to complete pre-class work, how to hold students accountable for pre-class work, and how to connect pre-class work to in-class activities. Now let’s focus on the challenge of managing the in-person learning environment.
When a campus crisis occurs, it’s critical that the president and the board are in close communication and have built a sense of trust.
a b s t r a c t
This study examined the trajectories of depressive and anxious symptoms among early-career teachers (N ¼ 133) as they transitioned from their training programs into their first year of teaching. In addition, perceived school climate was explored as a moderator of these trajectories. Multilevel linear growth modeling revealed that depressive and anxious symptoms increased across the transition, and negative perceived school climate was related to more drastically increasing symptoms. Results suggest that this career stage may be a time when teachers are particularly vulnerable to declines in mental health, and speak to some within-school features that may be related to teachers’ experiences.