Canadian accomplishments in science and scholarly inquiry have long been a source of national pride. However, by various measures, Canada’s research competitiveness has eroded in recent years when compared with international peers. The change coincided with a period of flat-lining of federal spending through the four core funding agencies that support researchers in universities, colleges, institutes, and research hospitals. In those years funds were also directed preferentially to priority-driven and partnership-oriented research, reducing available support for independent, investigator-led research by frontline scientists and scholars.
As longtime practitioners in our disciplines, we develop implicit skills that can be the source of some of the deepest learning for our students. In his book Experience and Education, John Dewey describes habit as “the formation of attitudes, attitudes that are emotional and intellectual…our basic sensitivities and ways of responding to all the conditions we meet in living” (35). Experiencing implies the sensing body, embodied learning, and Dewey does not shy away from the emotional dimensions of learning—both of which are often where the deepest learning happens, where students’ passion for a discipline ignites, and where experts’ best ideas originate. These often-overlooked dimensions of learning are also where empathy lives, and so it is there that knowledge might blossom not only into expertise but into wisdom
Students in residence at the University of Guelph shouldn't be surprised if the president of the school knocks on their door starting Monday.
That's because president Franco Vaccarino along with other administrators, faculty members and counsellors will be making house calls to check on the mental well-being of students.
Many higher education institutions use student satisfaction surveys given at the end of a course to measure course and instructor quality. But is that really a true measure of quality? All things being equal, an instructor who teaches a rigorous course will likely score much lower than an instructor whose course is a little less demanding.
Then there’s the whole timing of the satisfaction surveys. For the most part, students are simply glad the course is over (even if they liked it) and put little thought or time into completing the survey. Unless of course they know they failed, in which case you will get a detailed assessment of how you are boring, inflexible, out of touch, or otherwise unfit to teach.
TORONTO -- Ontario's minister of post-secondary education says he's concerned that two publicly-funded Ontario colleges have opened campuses in Saudi Arabia that don't allow women.
On Wednesday, Colleges and Universities Minister Reza Moridi said decisions on the operation of a campus, including student composition, are up to each college's board of governors.
But late Thursday, after a lot of criticism on social media about the male-only campuses, the minister had a change of heart about Ontario colleges teaching courses that deliberately exclude women.
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.
How to resolve the top enrolment barriers that decrease student satisfaction and negatively impact enrolment efforts.
They’re called “Enrolment Barriers” for a good reason. If your institution isn’t doing all that it can to remove them, there’s a good chance your future students will enrol, uninhibited, at a PSE institution down the road, and your current student satisfaction will be underwhelming. Looking for common barriers? Poor relationships with transactionally focused front line staff, disingenuous interactions with parents, behind-the-times processes/communications and siloed operations are just a few to seek out.
With the ever-increasing availability of online education opportunities, understanding the factors that influence online student satisfaction and success is vital to enable administrators to engage and retain this important stakeholder group. The purpose of this ex-post-facto, nonexperimental quantitative study was to investigate the impact of faculty professional development, faculty degree status, and faculty longevity upon online student satisfaction and success. A large, archived dataset from an online public
state university was analyzed. Repeated measures Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) analysis was used to explore changes in student satisfaction over time. Results showed that both training and degree were not significant predictors of student satisfaction. On the contrary, faculty longevity was found to be a predictor of student satisfaction. Recommendations for future research include incorporating qualitative analysis and expanding the study to diverse institutional types to determine whether findings are consistent.
During the past year and a half, our faculty development unit has been gathering data from students about how engaged they felt in their online courses. We wanted to use this data to develop a variety of strategies for faculty to use to better engage their students. Research provides evidence for the connection between higher student engagement and persistence and retention in online programs (Boston, et al., 2010; Wyatt, 2011). Encouraging student engagement is especially important in the online environment where attrition rates are higher than in the face-to-face setting (Allen & Seaman, 2015; Boston & Ice, 2011).
Our campus teaching center recently invited a brave group of student tutors to share their views on effective teaching with our faculty. The four tutors reported what they had heard from students about course designs and teaching practices that seemed to help, and ones that seemed to interfere with learning. Three recurrent themes in the tutors’ remarks caught my attention.
When Western Illinois University’s Board of Trustees on Friday approved cutting four degree programs as majors and modifying four more, it looked like another chapter of belt tightening at a cash-strapped public institution suffering collateral damage amid state budget difficulties.
But administrators didn’t come out and blame finances. The programs arrived on the chopping block because they exhibited declining or low enrollment, Western Illinois leaders said -- not because the university needed to find millions of dollars in savings to make up for an expected plunge.
How to create a targeted resumé for industry positions.
It is well known that a strong curriculum vitae is crucial when applying to positions within academia. The same holds true if you are applying for industry positions. However, an application for those types of roles will require you to submit a concise resumé instead of a lengthy CV. Many graduate students may be inclined to include all of their accumulated academic experience on the resumé with the hope that the hiring manager will be able to assess what is most relevant to the job posting. In this case, however, more is not always better, as employers prefer resumés that outline the skills and experiences relevant to the position, presented in a succinct and tailored format. Given the years of experience gained throughout your academic career, it can sometimes be an overwhelming task to condense the information from your CV into a resumé that is often only two pages long. The following recommendations are designed to help guide you through the process of converting your CV into a targeted resumé.
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.
Cognitive processes constructs provide a framework for analysis of transformational leadership and transactional leadership behaviors. Working memory, attribution, expectation, schema, script, and strategy processes are viewed as mediators in the relationships between feedback and environmental inputs and leadership behaviors. While these processes are the bases for both transformational and transactional leadership behaviors, the specific cognitive content differs between them. Whether an individual leads by developing a vision and enlisting subordinates' ego involvement in it or by setting goals and structuring tasks, depends upon the content of relevant schemata and scripts. This content is developed through experiences in similar situations or through vicarious Iearnmg. Literature relevant to the leadership and cognitive processes areas is reviewed, propositions are presented, and implications for research and practice are discussed.
The Halton Catholic District School Board may be on the verge of deflating one of the biggest bubbles in Canadian public education. Later this month, the school board will consider ending its French immersion program.
Many middle-class parents will find this heretical, as they have flocked to the program in droves over the last decade. But just as the GTA’s frenzied housing market experienced a much-needed return to sanity, it is high time for our schools to be released from the spell of French immersion.
French immersion programs started in the 1970s as a nation building effort in what had then become an officially bilingual country. For years, it remained a small boutique program within most school boards. However, within the last decade, enrolments across the country have exploded.
The need for online and blended programs within higher education continues to grow as the student population in the United States becomes increasingly non-traditional. As administrators strategically offer and expand online and blended programs, faculty recruitment and retention will be key. This case study highlights how a public comprehensive university utilized the results of a 2012 institutional study to design faculty development initiatives, an online course development process, and an online course review process to support faculty participation and retention in online and blended programs. Recommendations based on this case study include replicable strategies on how to increase faculty participation and retention in online and blended programs using collaboration, support, and ongoing assessment. This case study is a compendium to the 2012 Armstrong institutional study highlighted in the article "Factors Influencing Faculty Participation & Retention In Online &Blended Education."
ADMINISTRATION AND CONTROL.—Under the Canadian Constitution, education is the responsibility of the provincial governments. There is no single, national school system; each of the provinces grapples with the problem in its own way. Yet the similarities among the provincial school systems are more striking than the differences. In every province education is administered by a Minister of the Crown, advised and aided by a group of employed experts. The chief of these is usually
styled deputy minister or superintendent of education. In every province except the smallest (Prince Edward Island), the provincial contribution to educational budgets is much less than the amount derived from local taxes on real property; in all provinces the degree of provincial control of education is high, especially over such items as the training and certification of teachers, curricula, standards, and supervision. Every province requires school attendance to the age of fourteen, some to the age of sixteen. Although junior high schools or intermediate schools are found in many urban centers, the usual pattern is the familiar 8-4 arrangement. Quebec has a seven-year elementary school and two of the provinces have five-year secondary schools.
It happens nearly every semester: I get a paper so bad I don't know how to grade it. I'm not talking about a late paper, or one that's been plagiarized, or is too short or off topic. No, I’m referring to a species of essay that checks all of the superficial boxes but is so poorly written, so shoddily done, that it seems to demand a special response.
It’s actually hard for students to get a bad grade on a piece of writing in my courses. I do in-class workshops on topic choice, thesis construction, rough drafts, and revision. Students have many opportunities to find out that their essay is on the wrong track, and fix the problem. It’s almost impossible for them to leave the writing to the last minute. But there's always one ...
In this essay I discuss the effects of globalization on Canadian community colleges. I apply contemporary social theories culled from the fields of feminism, geography and political science to understand one hidden manifestation of globalization in community colleges: involvement in global civil society via participation in international development projects. I begin by discussing the history of community colleges, highlighting their flexible missions, as a way of understanding how they have changed within the current socio-economic climate. I then present evidence of community colleges participating in international development projects, and provide an analysis of what participation might signify on the broader social level. I end with a call to understand more about these somewhat overlooked activities in order to ensure that they are carried out effectively whilst keeping in mind the needs of both ‘local’ communities.
E-learning holds the potential to profoundly change the way post-secondary education (PSE) is designed and
delivered.
From a quality perspective, e-learning may be more engaging, less passive, and more customized to different
learning styles than traditional lecture-based learning.
There are about 1.3 million enrolments in fully online university and college courses in Canada. E-learning
accounts for between 10 and 15 per cent of PSE learning.
Greater adoption of e-learning will happen if institutional focus on traditional classroom delivery can be reduced;
faculty are adequately supported when they teach online; and e-learning design, development, and delivery
practices improve.