For a guy hauling around almost $300 billion of debt, Charles Sousa was in a buoyant mood. Ontario’s finance minister had just announced that families making less than $50,000 would soon have free post-secondary education, and when we spoke, it was as if he were daring me to find fault in the idea. After all, he said, the Liberals were removing a critical barrier to higher education, the
looming threat of a massive student debt. The idea was instantly applauded by a syllabus of education groups.
Increasingly, graduate teaching assistants serve as the primary instructors in undergraduate courses, yet research has shown that training and development for these teaching assistants is often lacking in programs throughout the United States and Canada. Providing mentoring and skill development opportunities for graduate teaching assistants is vital, as many will become the next generation of faculty. This paper discusses the literature on effective training programs, which underscores the importance of consistent feedback from mentors, intrinsic motivation, and practical applications. Afterwards, we examine an existing training program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Specifically, we focus on an institute for teaching assistants that helps graduate students understand applied learning as an effective pedagogical modality and helps them implement applied learning lesson plans tailored to their disciplines. Suggestions for strengthening training programs are discussed.
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.
Most of the time, instructors use activities as a way for students to demonstrate their mastery. But activities can be used differently — to spark curiosity and get students thinking, before they know much of anything about a particular topic. That was the premise of “The Power of the ‘Naïve Task,’” one of the most interesting sessions I attended at the Designing Effective
Teaching conference in Bethesda, Md., last week.
Consider this scenario: as an editor of a scholarly journal, you are informed that an anonymous blogger has publicly accused your journal of publishing an article with allegedly numerous ethical violations and acts of misconduct from 20 years before you became editor. Your journal has no archives or records from that long ago, but you are being contacted by current authors and the media to respond. Who ya gonna call? If you are one of the approximately 11,500 members of a voluntary organization called COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics), that’s probably who you’ll call.
The first thing I do when I walk into a seminar room or lecture hall is to glance around and
register if the class is diverse. If, to the naked eye at least, there appears to be a good mix of
genders and races, and perhaps a headscarf or a turban, I’m satisfied.
But what exactly does this mean, and where does it lead?
When I was an undergraduate at the University of Illinois in the early/mid 1990s, I remember a professor saying that he maintained an online chat room for one of his courses because he found that Asian and Asian-American students who did not participate in class discussion asked questions and made comments online. He made it clear that organizing this online forum was an inconvenience to him (this was right at the start of the Internet era, when this practice was not yet de rigueur) but he wanted to be ethnically/racially sensitive.
The Shrinking Ph.D. Job Market
As number of new Ph.D.s rises, the percentage of people earning a doctorate without a job waiting for them is up.
While all disciplines face the problem, some have particularly high debt levels.
The Liberal government is moving to make it easier for international students to become permanent residents once
they have graduated from Canadian postsecondary institutions.
Immigration Minister John McCallum said he intends to launch federal-provincial talks to reform the current Express Entry program, a computerized system that serves as a matchmaking service between employers and foreign skilled workers. Thousands of international students have been rejected for permanent residency because the program favours prospective skilled workers from abroad.
Many academic institutions are struggling to put their data to work. According to KPMG’s recent Higher Education Industry Outlook Survey, 39 percent of the respondents said adopting new analytical techniques is a top data challenge, and just 29 percent report using data to inform strategic decisions. Still, 36 percent say that while they have good data, they lack the resources to conduct analyses.
The reading and math skills of 15-year-old immigrant students, as measured by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) between 2000 and 2012, vary across regions of Canada.
Regional variations were also observed in the high school and university completion rates of youth who immigrated in Canada before the age of 15, as measured in 2011.
Competition between providers in any market incentivises them to raise their game, offering consumers a greater
choice of more innovative and better quality products and services at lower cost. Higher education is no exception.
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of peer-level tardiness on individual-level socio-emotional outcomes utilizing nationally representative, longitudinal data.
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.
While more information than ever is available about autism, there are still prevalent stereotypes: The “Rain Man” stereotype of the severely impacted person with savant skills, and the less severely impacted “Bill Gates” stereotype, a scientifically or mathematically brilliant person with limited social skills.
Stereotypes, by definition, are oversimplifications, which means that many layers and nuances are frequently missed.
Question: I’m preparing my job documents for the fall and looking for ways to economize. Can I just write a really short cover letter since all the information I would put in a letter is already on my CV? The cover letter feels redundant.
NO.
And the reason for that is — they are two different documents. They have different functions and are designed to help the search committee ascertain distinctly different things. Summer is a good time to go over the basics of both documents as candidates prepare for a new academic hiring season.
Many senior faculty members take on an administrative position, serving as chair of their department, undergraduate or graduate program director, or in upper administrative levels outside the department. Academic leaders step up for many reasons, including because they believe they can make a positive difference. Yet academic leadership comes with substantial challenges.
Such administrators often find themselves exhausted as they burn the candle at both ends. Leading is not only timeconsuming
but also unpredictable. Concerns, requests and demands come from every side -- students, staff members, faculty members -- and from administrators above them. Finding balance as an academic leader may seem impossible. As one chair told us, “My balance is that I’ll be done chairing after three years, so I’m just trying to ride this out.”
The College Standards and Accreditation Council is presenting Ontario’s Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology with an important challenge. CAATs must comply with CSAC requirements, among which is an overall commitment to general education. CSAC has voiced the employers’ need for graduates who combine vocational skills with demonstrable communicative competence, social awareness, and critical thinking. It has recognized that vocational training alone cannot foster personal growth and enrichment.
Technology’s potential to transform education has become a mantra of the 21st century. Much has been said about the tools and solutions that can provide opportunities for enhanced student learning. Frequent discussions have focused on the need for schools to have a robust infrastructure that supports continually evolving educational models. However, not as much has been written about the teacher’s role in this dynamic environment and the fundamentally new and different functions teachers
may have.
The days of teachers covering a defined number of pages in a textbook and assigning work at the end of a chapter are quickly disappearing. Instructors are leveraging technologies that give students access to interactive content from myriad sources. In this digital classroom, the teacher is more than a static oracle of information who delivers lectures. Instead, he or she is an active participant and facilitator in each student’s path of discovery and exploration.
A fraternity member from the University of Oklahoma is otaped chanting a racist sont. At the University of Missouri, a slow response to racial slurs and graffiti fueld protests and led to the resignation of top administrators.
Life after high school comes with a unique set of lessons in financial management. Whether studying full-time, starting an apprenticeship or renting your first place, developing smart financial habits now can lead to a more secure future.
With so many financial options available to students and young adults, it's important to learn how to manage money sensibly to build a strong credit record and limit additional debt.