Abstract: Research on personal space has found that individual cultures and ethnic groups have a similar preference for the use of personal space within each respective group. Differences in the use of personal space exist across gender, as women tend to share a closer proximity than men. The purpose of this study was to measure the use of personal space among college students. Use of personal space was defined in this study as the preference or need for a specific amount of personal space. Specifically, the researcher hypothesized differences across gender and ethnicity would be found. Survey methodology was used to measure different variables of personal space among private university students (N=102). The results indicated that male students feel more comfortable than female students in greeting an acquaintance of the opposite gender with a hug or a kiss. Female students reported being more comfortable than male students in greeting an acquaintance of the same gender. An agenda for future research that includes cultural differences among college students was described.
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 preclass 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
It’s usually late in the job interview when I pose one of my favorite questions to faculty and administrative candidates — after they’ve already spent a good amount of time talking about their work in the loftiest of terms. They’ve described their guiding values and philosophies and touted their most-successful projects and lessons. That’s when I say: “So far we've talked about the visionary aspects of your position. Now I'd like to talk about the execution. Specifically, much of teaching/administrating is small and procedural. Tell me how you handle the ‘boring basics.’”
Six months after the Ontario government announced a new funding model for the province’s universities, questions are being raised about whether the framework is flexible enough to respond to the challenges facing both Ontario’s more remote regions as well as its booming Greater Toronto Area.
Currently, universities and colleges receive funds tied to their enrolment. Under the new plan, institutions will have to keep enrolment within several percentage points of a target that is now being negotiated between each school and the provincial government. Funding will not be available for enrolment growth beyond that target.
The Ontario provincial government is spending $4 million on a marketing program aiming to draw students from southern Ontario to colleges in the north.
Sault College president Ron Common says the goal of the program, called Study North, is to attract youth who wouldn't otherwise consider Ontario's six northern colleges as a primary destination.
The Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation funds the program.
One of the most frequent questions faculty ask about the flipped classroom model is: “How do you encourage students to actually do the pre-class work and come to class prepared?”
This is not really a new question for educators. We’ve always assigned some type of homework, and there have always been students who do not come to class ready to learn. However, the flipped classroom conversation has launched this question straight to the top of the list of challenges faculty face when implementing this model in their classrooms. By design, the flipped model places more emphasis on the importance of homework or pre-class work to ensure that in-person class time is effective, allowing the instructor and the students to explore higher levels of application and analysis together. If students are unprepared, it leads to frustration, stress, and anxiety for everyone.
To strengthen pathways to college completion, many in higher education are zeroing in on improving completion rates among transfer students—a growing undergraduate subpopulation on campuses of all types.
To support this effort, this report looks beyond transfer students’ test scores and grade point averages at a range of “non-cognitive” attitudes that infl uence their motivation, engagement, persistence, and college completion. The report is based on student survey responses drawn from a sizable sample of transfer students enrolled at four-year and two-year institutions from 2010 to 2012.
This semester I’m teaching a comparative-literature class that deals with the connections among empathy, literature, and human rights. As in most of my classes, which all circulate around these difficult topics, I constantly prepare my students for their own navigation into the worlds of trauma and critical understanding. The problem this semester, and most semesters, is not the voyage inside historical traumas. The problem goes much deeper — it is my students’ fragility.
What would happen if you were to arrive to your classroom, unplug the devices, turn off the projector, and step away from the PowerPoint slides … just for the day?
What would you and your students do in class?
This was the challenge I presented to 100 faculty members who attended my session at the Teaching Professor Conference in St. Louis this past June. The title of the session was, “Using ‘Unplugged’ Flipped Learning Activities to Engage Students.” Our mission was to get “back to the basics” and share strategies to engage students without using technology.
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.
For years, many academics have questioned the importance — even the justice — of requiring college students to master standard English. The discussion 20 or 30 years ago was about a student’s right to his or her own language — the implication being that the rest of us have no right to impose "our" language on those who are not native or proficient speakers. More
recently we’ve heard claims that the English language is itself discriminatory, even racist.
Employers and higher ed institutions have acknowledged the value that this type of experience could bring to the
country’s workforce. But only 3.1% of full-time university students and 1.1% of full-time college students have studied abroad as part of their postsecondary education.
Existing research shows that Canadian students are generally interested in studying abroad, yet they face a number of obstacles. These obstacles have been categorized as the four Cs: cost, curriculum, culture, and circumstance.
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.
A number of studies suggest that student evaluations of teaching are unreliable due to various kinds of biases against instructors. (Here’s one addressing gender.) Yet conventional wisdom remains that students learn best from highly rated instructors; tenure cases have even hinged on it.
What if the data backing up conventional wisdom were off? A new study suggests that past analyses linking student achievement to high student teaching evaluation ratings are flawed, a mere “artifact of small sample sized studies and publication bias.”
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.
Multiple and competing priorities within a dynamic and changing academic environment can pose significant challenges for new faculty. Mentorship has been identified as an important strategy to help socialize new faculty to their roles and the expectations of the academic environment. It also helps them learn new skills that will position them to be successful in their academic ca-reer. In this article, the authors report on the implementation and evaluation of a mentorship circle initiative aimed at supporting new faculty in the first two years of their academic appointment. Participants reported that the men-torship circle provided them with a culture of support, a sense of belonging, and a safe space to discuss concerns and learn strategies from both mentors and fellow mentees as they adjusted to their new position. The interdisci-plinary nature of the mentorship circle further facilitated faculty members’ capacity to navigate their role as new faculty and foster colleagueship.
Collaboration: a popular idea in the modern workplace, school, and government. Effective group-work is a skill of increasing importance, visible in the classroom with group assignments, projects, and even tests becoming more prominent and contributing to an increasing portion of students' grades. At the university-level, student unions function on successful collaboration: among student leaders both within and outside of the union, with full-time staff, university administration, stakeholders, and any other campus and community partners.
Any college leader considering a curriculum change for his or her institution has a lot of questions to ask and answer. First, what are the specific goals? To increase graduation rates? To increase particular knowledge in certain majors? And what changes in the curriculum would achieve those goals? We’ve gone through multiple curriculum reforms at the City University of New York over the past 15 years, and it’s never an easy process. Some faculty members, as well as administrators, can be sceptical and resistant to change, and resources to carry out the reforms are hard to obtain. One of the most important things we have learned during that time is that relevant, clear data can help you make better decisions about curriculum reform. That means you need to put a premium on data — both collecting it and analyzing it.
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.
The current public assumption that safe spaces and trigger warnings conflict with academic freedom and are the result of political correctness gone mad is a false dichotomy. If students today are indeed more fragile, then it is vital that we in higher education understand: (1) the specific nature of this sensitivity and (2) what colleges can do to help.
After this divisive election, we will need more capacity for talking about controversial issues. While the anonymity of social media may have escalated invective, it has not made for more ease with difficult conversations. Technology has allowed a generation to end relationships by text message, or even by “ghosting” an ex -- deleting a relationship from your life without any conflict or effort.