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.
The aim of this paper is to describe the technical issues to be addressed in enhancing the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) contextual questionnaires instruments for the PISA for Development (PfD) study. We discuss the conceptual framework for the contextual questionnaires used in PISA, describe the evolution of the PISA contextual questionnaires, review the measures used in several other international studies, and consider how the PISA data have been used to address the policy questions relevant to the OECD member countries. This research, alongside discussions with
key stakeholders, including those from participating countries, enabled us to identify seven themes in which the PISA contextual questionnaires could be enhanced and made more relevant for low- and middle-income countries: early learning opportunities, language at home and at school, family and community support, quality of instruction, learning time, socioeconomic status, and school resources. We discuss various options for enhancing these measures.
Hilda Neatby, the author of So Little for the Mind, which stirred up a national debate about education in the 1950s, finds an unlikely ally in Michel Foucault. Both believe that progressive education, grounded in scientific pedagogy, is a means of domination rather than liberation. Both trace its roots to the 18th-century Age of Reason, which, according to Foucault, gave birth to the “disciplinary society” and, in Neatby’s view, destabilized the balance between faith and reason. Although they are philosophically far apart (Foucault, a Nietzschean; Neatby, a Christian), they have a startlingly similar appraisal of the progressive school.
Executive Summary
The upcoming (Fall 2014) undergraduate student referendum on the desirability of a Fall Break and recent adoption of a Fall Break on a three-year trial period by Wilfrid Laurier University have independently re-ignited the discussion at the University of Waterloo. Fourteen Ontario universities currently have a Fall Break, varying from 2-5 days in length. UW is among a small
number of institutions within Ontario who do not currently have one.
The primary challenge to arranging a Fall Break is finding sufficient space to schedule: 60 teaching days, a minimum of 2 pre-exam study days, and a minimum of 12 exam days while finishing by December 22. This challenge seems relatively easy to accomplish most years but is complicated by the occasional late Labour Day holiday.
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.
There has been rapid growth in value-added assessment of teachers to meet the widely supported identifying the most effective and the most ineffective teachers in a school system. The former group is to be r epwoalircdye gdo walh oilfe the lpartotbelre mgrso.u Cph iise tf oa mbeo nhge ltpheedm o ris f tirheed c foomr mthoenilry pfooourn dp ecrlfaosrsm-taon-cclea.s sB uatn,d v yaeluaer--taod-dyeeadr a upnprreolaiachbeilsi ttyo i nte tahceh escr oerveasl uoabttiaoinn ehda.v Tee macahneyr fvraolume -caladsdse tdo s ccloarsess a acpropsesa rt wtoo baed jhaicgehnlty yuenasrtsa.ble across two classes of the same subject that they teach in the same semester, or
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.
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.
After struggling for months to receive the accommodations she was entitled to, one student shares her story as a lesson for university administrators, faculty members and front-line staff.
Students' understanding and participation in "work" affects their university in many ways. Employment can serve as both a motivator and hindrance to academic success. It can teach valuable lessons while also detracting from academic work. It is the number one reason why students attend post-secondary school. Unfortunately, numerous barriers stand in the way of increasing the employment rates of highly educated youth. These barriers must be treated as distinct yet interconnected, and necessitate multifaceted approaches. This OUSA policy paper outlines how government, employers, educators, and students can work together to overcome barriers and move towards a more prosperous, productive future.
Women in the sciences who earn PhDs are less likely than their male counterparts to pursue tenure-track positions at research universities. Moreover, among those who become STEM researchers, men have been found to publish more than women. These patterns raise questions about when sex differences in publication begin. Using data from a survey of doctoral students at one large institution, this study finds that men submitted and published more scholarly works than women across many fields, with differences largest in natural/biological sciences and engineering. Potential contributing factors are considered, including sex differences in faculty support, assistantships, family responsibilities, and career goals.
Keywords: career development; doctoral students; equity; faculty development; gender studies; graduate education; higher education; publications; regression analyses; research; secondary data analysis; sex; STEM; survey research; women’s issues
In Quebec, a new law calls for universities to adopt a code of conduct covering faculty-student relationships.
On December 8, the Quebec government passed Bill 151, an act aimed at preventing and combatting sexual violence on the province’s university and college campuses. Among other things, the new law mandates that universities and CEGEPs (Quebec’s colleges) develop standalone sexual violence policies. British Columbia, Manitoba and Ontario all passed similar legislation that came into effect during the past year.
However, Quebec’s new law has generated much discussion because it has a provision requiring postsecondary institutions to adopt policies governing intimate relationships between students and university personnel, including professors and lecturers. Quebec’s minister responsible for higher education and the status of women, Hélène David, said during public hearings on the bill that the government can’t ban such relationships. But, she said universities and CEGEPs would have the authority to do so.
If you are leading a class and imagine that students seem more distracted than ever by their digital devices, it's not your imagination. And they aren't just checking their e-mail a single time.
A new study has found that more than 90 percent of students admit to using their devices for non-class activities during class times. Less than 8 percent said that they never do so.
American colleges are educating more international students than ever before, according to a new report, “Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange,” released by the Institute of of International Education. The widely anticipated report finds that nearly 1 million international students—many of them from countries such as China, India, Kuwait—were educated in the United States in the 2014-15 school year, up 10 percent from the previous year. These students typically arrive with the means to pay the full price tag for college.
While the 974,926 international students who studied in American colleges last school year accounted for only about 5 percent of the country’s entire higher-education population, their numbers are increasing rapidly with high concentrations in certain states, colleges, and majors. The significant increase in students from overseas highlights the need to understand more about their behavior, income, and impact on higher education—and how the country’s universities should capitalize on the trend without
compromising the education of in-state students and residents.
Addressing financial and psychosocial barriers to retirement can benefit both faculty and their institutions.
About a third of tenured faculty age 50 or older expect to retire by “normal” retirement age, while fully two-thirds anticipate working past that age or have already done so. This latter group is sometimes called “reluctant retirees,” and when their numbers swell on campus, it can lead to productivity declines, limited advancement opportunities for junior faculty, a lack of openings for new hires, and difficulty reallocating institutional resources. To address a reluctant retiree pheno- menon and better manage faculty retirement patterns, college and university leaders need to understand the thought process among senior faculty regarding whether and when to retire.
This year, students recommend that the budget represents a commitment to increasing affordability, supporting student health and employment, and expanding student mobility.
To achieve these ends, the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, representing over 155,000 professional and undergraduate university students, submits the following recommendations for the 2013 Provincial Budget to improve the accessibility, affordability and quality of Ontario’s post-secondary education system.
Women are much less likely to be reappointed as faculty deans than men, says a new study of hiring at Canadian
universities.
While recruitment of new deans at Canadian universities largely reflects the overall gender balance of its academic sector, a University of Toronto researcher has found that women were far less likely to be reappointed once their five-year office had concluded.
Analysing almost 300 appointment and reappointment announcements from the Canadian publication University Affairs between 2011 and 2016, Eric Lavigne, a PhD student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, found that 58 per cent of appointments for dean positions went to men and 42 per cent were awarded to women.
This article examines the differences in the location of study of immigrant adults aged 25 to 64 with a university education (i.e., with at least a bachelor’s degree). It provides results by period of immigration (pre-1990, the 1990s, and the 2000s) and provides a more in-depth analysis of factors that are linked to the location of study for the most recent cohort of immigrants (i.e., those who immigrated in 2000 or later).
Student evaluations of teaching reflect students’ biases and are otherwise unreliable. So goes much of criticism of these evaluations, or SETs. Increasingly, research backs up both of those concerns.
On the other side of the debate, SET proponents acknowledge that these evaluations are imperfect indicators of teaching quality. Still, proponents argue that well-designed SETs inevitably tell us something valuable about students’ learning experiences with a given professor.
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.