The first “teaching machine” was invented nearly a century ago by Sydney Pressey, a psychologist at Ohio University, out of spare typewriter parts. The device was simple, presenting the user with a multiple-choice question and a set of answers. In “teach mode,” the machine would advance to the next question only once the user chose the correct answer. Pressey declared that his invention marked the beginning of “the industrial revolution in education”—but despite his grand claims, the teaching machine failed to gain much attention, and soon faded into obscurity.
In Canada, the term “visible minority” is used to define one of four designated groups under the Employment Equity Act. The purpose of the act is to achieve workplace equality and to correct employment disadvantages affecting women, Aboriginal peoples, people with disabilities, and visible minorities. Within this context, visible minorities are defined as “persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.”
To some people, “reconciliation” is the re-establishment of a conciliatory state. However, this is a state that many Aboriginal people assert has never existed between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. To others, “reconciliation,” in the context of Indian residential schools, is similar to dealing with a situation of family violence. It is about coming to terms with events of the past in a manner that over-comes conflict and establishes a respectful and healthy relationship among people going forward. It is in the latter context that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (trc) has approached the question of reconciliation.
To the Commission, “reconciliation” is about establishing and maintaining a mutu-ally respectful relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in this country. For that to happen, there has to be awareness of the past, acknowledgement of the harm that has been inflicted, atonement for the causes, and action to change behaviour.
The philosophical halls are ringing lately with an argument over the virtue of graduate-student publication. J. David Velleman, a professor of philosophy at New York University, started the clamor in July when he posted "The publication Emergency" on a philosophers’ blog, "The Daily
Nous."
Velleman makes a simple but radical two-part proposal:
First, philosophy journals "should adopt a policy of refusing to publish work by graduate students."
Second, to give teeth to the ban, Velleman suggests that philosophy departments "adopt a policy of
discounting graduate-student work in tenure-and-promotion reviews."
Engagement can prevent struggling students from dropping out, and re-engagement in learning can help struggling students who have dropped out return to school and graduate. This chapter presents a case study about a struggling student who dropped
out and then came to Eagle Rock School and Professional Development Center, became engaged in her learning, and graduated. The authors provide policy and practice recommendations as well as a discussion of factors that affect engagement.
Immigrants will represent nearly 100 per cent of net labour market growth in Canada by the year 2011.1 More than ever, employers recognize the need to effectively integrate immigrants into the workplace and they seek solutions to leverage the talents and contributions immigrants bring to the Canadian economy.
Sometimes I watch my students in the hallways before class starts and marvel at the computing power (they call them 'smartphones') they hold in their hands. They use this power to text and share pictures and thoughts on social media. Then they stuff all that power in their pockets. In my small, private school, we have an "off and away" policy for cellphones in the classroom, which is supposed to eliminate the distractions. But it is not a perfect system, and students are still tempted to use their phones.
Perhaps you've had thoughts like mine: How can I get those supercomputers to work for their learning instead of being a nuisance? Why should I make them hide their mobile devices or fear they will get in trouble for using them? I'm just not satisfied with "off and away"! These questions have grown into a desire to find new ways to leverage my students’ mobile devices into learning tools.
As I've mentioned before, my 7-year-old daughter takes piano lessons. One of the biggest challenges has been getting her to play for herself, not for her parents. Often I'll ask her how she thought she played a song and I'll get a shrug in return. She plays, but she doesn't listen to herself play. That lack of listening, I fear, is a sign that she's just playing because we're making her.
Many of the teaching tips I've suggested in this column have been meant to encourage your students to take responsibility for their learning. For active-learning strategies to really work, I've argued, we need students to buy in completely to our courses. They need to want to learn for themselves — not for us or a grade. To accomplish that, we can invite students to take some control over the syllabus. We can turn course policies into collaborative projects, in which students have an equal say in determining important aspects of the course. We can encourage students to articulate their goals for the course, rather than just expect them to meet ours. And we can design our courses to make sure we haven't foreclosed any of those possibilities.
As academics who’ve made it to the tenure track, what can we do to help the adjuncts and underemployed Ph.D.s who haven’t? I mean, instead of just gaslighting them and insisting that the dismal faculty job market "was ever thus."
I received my Ph.D. from the University of Southern California’s English department in spring 2011. This past fall, I started work as an assistant professor of interdisciplinary studies at California State University-Dominguez Hills. It’s my dream job, teaching a student population I love in my home city of Los Angeles. Between 2011 and 2017 I was an adjunct at multiple colleges and universities in the Los Angeles area.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tasked with examining the future of online
education have
returned with a simple recommendation for colleges and universities: focus on people and process,
not technology.
Back in 2013, an MIT task force presented a vision of undergraduate education at the institute in which students spend half as much time on campus as they do today. Freshman year would be fully online, and instead of a senior year, students would take online continuing education courses to refresh their knowledge and add new skills. That vision leaned heavily on MIT’s work with edX, the massive open online course provider it founded with Harvard University.
Ontario’s professors and academic librarians are on the front lines of Ontario’s universities. They are uniquely positioned to assess the performance of the sector, and to identify trends that affect the quality of university education.
To take advantage of this insight, the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) surveyed Ontario faculty to gauge their opinions on the quality of university education in our province. The survey was also designed to assess the priorities of university faculty, particularly in regards to the balance of teaching and research in their work.
The survey was conducted online between March 21, 2012 and April 16, 2012. Responses to the questionnaire were received from over 2,300 faculty members, with a total of 2,015 complete responses from professors and academic librarians from all Ontario universities and a full range of disciplines. The following report presents the survey findings and provides additional commentary about key results.
In the national conversation about career opportunities for Ph.D. candidates, we hear a lot of dialogue about faculty
resistance and solutions for how faculty members can become more supportive of students considering wider career options. What we don’t hear as much about is student resistance to career exploration. I recently met with a student who told me he had no intention of considering anything but faculty jobs. He told me it was a waste of his time to take on any work during his program that was not teaching or research, since he was going to be a professor.
I have a PhD in the Humanities and I'm employed.
Gainfully employed, in fact - in every sense of the word, for myself, my employer, my communitym and those I work on behalf of. And I' no employed as a professor, thought I confess that's what I wanted todo when I started my graduate work, and I;ve swum in academic waters since earning my doctorate.
This paper seeks to address the challenges faced by international students pursuing a post-secondary education in Ontario, and to consider more broadly the growing internationalization agenda within education. OUSA recognizes the benefits both of international students coming to Ontario, both in economic and socio-cultural terms, and for Canadian students undertaking a period of study abroad. However, it is evident that increasing internationalization requires institutions, governments and students to address various concerns that impact the ability of international students to succeed, and to ensure we are building strong intercultural university communities. To this end, we offer recommendations in the following areas, aimed at improving the international student experience:
Lessons learned from the presidential transition committee at the University of Saskatchewan.
In 2015, the University of Saskatchewan undertook an extensive presidential transition process to welcome Peter Stoicheff to the role. As two individuals closely linked to this process, here are some lessons we learned that may be of value to colleagues undertaking a similar presidential transition.
The title of this piece notwithstanding, there are really only two main keys to a successful presidential transition: choose the right individual for the office and provide them with the right supports to be successful. Put another way, if you don’t have the right person and supports, the challenges you will face are likely insurmountable and the process will be unpleasant for all involved. If your incoming president tells you that no transition or mentorship is required, that is a signal that they are the wrong choice. Getting the right person is a necessary condition for success. It isn’t, however, sufficient.
Abstract: The paper presents the results of the second stage of training academia in designing e-learning courses in a foreign language. An action research conducted during such staff development project showed high appreciation of continuous mutual support, need for established channels for sharing, and raised confidence in designing own electronic courses by young specialists.
Key words: Staff Development, e-Learning, Higher Education, Language Teaching.
In order for teacher education programs to act as significant scaffolds in supporting new teachers to become informed, creative and innovative members of a highly complex and valuable profession, we need to re-‐‑imagine ways in which teacher education programs operate. We need to re-‐‑imagine how courses are conceptualized and connected, how learning is shared and how knowledge, not just “professional”, but embedded knowledge in authentic contexts of teaching and
learning is understood, shaped and re-‐‑applied. Drawing on our collective case study of instructors’ lived experience of a locally developed program in secondary teacher education called Transformative University of Victoria (TRUVIC), we offer a relational approach to knowing as an alternative to more mechanistic explanations that limit teacher growth and
development. To ground our interpretation, we draw on complexity as a theory of change and emergence that supports learning as distributed, relational, adaptive and emerging.
Trust Matters: Distinction and Diversity in Undergraduate Science Education
Higher ed is an industry built on relationships. This is no more so than on a traditional residential campus.
Much of the work of moving projects and initiatives forward happens in conversation. There is a reason that a shared joke across higher ed is that nobody can get any work done during the day - as everybody is too busy in meetings.
On most campuses, these conversations are face-to-face. They involve going to each other’s offices, finding a meeting room, and sometimes grabbing a coffee. (My preferred one-on-one meeting venue is a walking meeting).
A face-to-face meeting culture accomplishes many important goals. There is a ritual to the face-to-face discussion, one that involves norms of social connections. Meetings are places to do work - but they are also places to learn about and make connections with our colleagues.
I might never have sought an online teaching assignment if my husband hadn’t been diagnosed with cancer. Faced with a foreseeable future of his multiple hospital stays, home recovery, and anticipated need for my amateur nursing — all while trying to care for our two children — I jumped at the chance to temporarily transition to an online teaching schedule.
Having the option to work remotely and asynchronously was a godsend. I figured my online students would have no idea if I were moderating online discussions or grading papers while sitting next to a spouse hooked up to an Oxaliplatin IV. During this family crisis, I knew I would miss being in the same room with students, and the instantaneous give-and-take of a physical classroom. I only ever envisioned online teaching as a short-term reassignment.