“FBI Insider: Clinton Emails Linked to Political Pedophile Sex Ring,” declared a blog post just days before the U.S. presidential election.
And earlier this year [2017], an online headline blasted: “BOMBSHELL: Trump and Putin Spotted at Swiss Resort Prior to Election.”
There was only one problem. Neither was true at all. Even the sources were suspect.
The headlines, it turned out, were part of the onslaught of fake news that has proliferated. But for Texas A&M senior Ishanee Chanda, the task of discerning between fool’s gold and gold was a no brainer.
"Critical thinking has allowed me to look at the most recent election and the phenomenon of `fake news' with a careful eye," says Ishanee Chanda
“Wanted: former academic. Must have PhD in the humanities and at least two years of must be conversant in Chicago Manual ofStyle. Familiarity with plagiarism policies and competence in Blackboard a plus.”
As a minority group on university campuses, the unique needs of mature students can be easily overlooked. It is important that the term “mature students” does not disguise the heterogeneity of this group: “…it is erroneous to speak of ‘the adult learner’ as if there is a generic adult that can represent all adults.”1 However, amongst this varied group of students, there are common concerns that they share. This policy sets out students’ priorities in increasing the visibility of mature students on campus as well as optimizing their educational experience.
Mature students need more recognition of the different hurdles they face in achieving success. These can include situational barriers like a lack of time, lack of money, health issues, or dependant care,2 as well as attitudinal or dispositional barriers, including the fear of failure or alienation. Lastly, they also face systemic barriers such as restrictive course offerings and availability of instructors or support services outside of regular business hours
After years of collecting literally millions of documents and hearing the stories of thousands of aboriginal people who
experienced abuse at residential schools, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is ready to archive this material, much of it brutal and heartbreaking, in the new National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba. Scheduled to open to the public this fall, it will serve as a rich repository and essential historical record of a haunting and tragic chapter of First Nations and Canadian history.
If the Myers-Briggs assessment didn't do it, Susan Cain’s Quiet certainly did. The word “introvert” has become
common parlance. People now correct themselves if caught using the word “shy.” Cain has helped to develop
nuance and sensitivity around introversion (e.g., introverts don’t hate people, we need alone time to recharge, we
are great thinkers). But has higher education recognized the significance of this personality theory in order to better
support introverted students’ learning and success?
VANCOUVER – Reserve schools are failing Canada’s aboriginal students and there is no quick-and-easy fix, says a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute.
A study released Thursday by the research group found that only four of 10 young adults living on reserves across the country have finished high school.
Those figures contrast sharply with graduation rates of seven out of 10 for off-reserve aboriginals and nine out of 10 for non-aboriginals. The study also found eight out of 10 Metis graduate from high school across the country.
In recent years, Ontario universities have increasingly targeted Indigenous and international students for recruitment. Focusing on three southern Ontario universities, I examine how service delivery for these student groups is organized in space. In light of Henri Lefebvre’s work, I argue that the spatiality of the information hubs created to support them differs significantly, each
being defined in the interactions between institutional assumptions about the student group, the social presence and activities hosted, and the lived experiences of the students utilizing these services. Whereas Indigenous student services are organized as a resource centre to create a separate space for Indigeneity on campuses, international student services take the form of an
experience desk to emphasize rapid integration into the mainstream. Based on interviews with students and staff, I reflect on the differences between the two models to discuss the spatial politics of information hubs within the context of Ontario universities.
When it comes to shared governance, is OK good enough? That’s the question behind -- and the title of -- a new report from the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. It’s based in part on input from a focus group of faculty members, conducted earlier this year in conjunction with the American Association of University Professors. Three hundred presidents and several thousand board members weighed in via surveys; their feedback makes up the bulk of the report.
I have been teaching for 20 years, and after a range of adjunct and visiting gigs and two tenure-track jobs (one of which ended because the institution was on the verge of financially collapsing after the economic crash in 2008), I am up for tenure and promotion this year. As virtually every tenure-track professor experiences, I, too, have had to make choices about when, where, how and why to speak out and about what, and have had to weigh issues of silence and voice against the hope and need for job security, health insurance, retirement benefits and the like.
I have had to decide what is worth it and what is not when I have been on the brink of making my viewpoints clear to the campus community and the larger community.
Being untenured is the ultimate manifestation of “You just have to know how and when to pick your battles.” If President Trump could have been an adjunct or tenure-track professor first, perhaps he would be less impulsive and reactive, thinking before tweeting, speaking, banning and dictating.
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).
Canada has a long history of online and distance education, but until 2017 there had been no comprehensive national data on online enrolments in both the university and college sectors. However, in 2017 a team of independent Canadian researchers,
working in collaboration with the Babson Survey Research Group and WCET in the USA, raised the funding and conducted a national survey of online learning in all public post-secondary institutions in Canada. The results from the survey are
presented and discussed, as well as plans for further studies in the future.
Keywords: Online learning, Distance education, Canada, Survey methodology, Post-secondary education
Awareness contexts are useful concepts in symbolic interactionist research, which focusses on how everyday realities are constructed. To provide a fresh perspective on governance in Canada’s colleges, I sorted vignettes in interview data collected from administrators and faculty into four types of contexts originally derived from observation of interaction between physicians and patients around bad news. These theoretical categories were introduced by Glaser and Strauss in their 1965 book Awareness of Dying. Applying this lens revealed a “closed awareness” context around college fund-raising and a “mutual suspicion” context in administrator-faculty interaction around student success policy. Examples of “mutual pretense” included feigned administrator-faculty cooperation around changing college missions and faculty workload formulas. “Open awareness” or dialogue, however, occurred where professional bodies or unions intervened. Sorting by awareness contexts reveals similarities between doctor-patient and administrator-faculty interactions. For example, just as doctors feared that delivering bad news to patients might precipitate “mayhem” in the hospital, college administrators may fear that openness around divisive topics might precipitate “mayhem” in college management.
Chrarismatic leadership has been largely overlooked by organizational theorists. In part, the problem can be attributed to the lack of a systematic conceptual framework. Drawing from political science, sociology, and social psychology, this paper addresses the problem by proposing a model linking organizational contexts to charismatic leadership. A series of research hypotheses is offered.
So, the fall semester is about to begin and you’ve decided to try something new in one or more of your courses.
Maybe it’s a different quizzing strategy, a revised assignment, or a new group activity. Or perhaps you read about a note-taking technique or exam review strategy that you want to try. You want it to work—you want to make learning better for most students (hopefully better for everyone, but there’s value in being realistic). Here are some things you can do to increase the chance of success when you roll out something new in your courses.
Canada’s average or, in some cases, below-average performance in the OECD’s latest survey of adult skills (known as the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC)) sparked some observers to call the quality of Canada’s education systems into question. The reason: the results appeared to contradict the prevailing notion that our education systems are among the best in the world.
Student Success Program background The three pillars SSP assumptions SSP evaluation SSP year one SSP year two Lessons learned Conclusion
Over the past two decades, and across the nation, the university has been undergoing profound changes. These
structural changes underpin an emergent philosophy of the new university today -- one that should give pause to anyone concerned about the direction of higher education.
For much of the 20th century, and especially after World War II, the university served as the vehicle of upward mobility, the principal pathway to securing a middle-class and eventually upper-middle-class life. Yet that prevailing 20th-century model of the university began to give way in the late 1980s, slowly at first and then more dramatically and visibly with the onset of the new millennium.
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.
Yes, the stress of work can be immense, but I’ve developed a few simple tricks to keep it under control.
I have been feeling bit down lately. Maybe this is to be expected. It’s been a brutal winter and a stressful school year, my first as an assistant professor. I’m adapting to a new city, new job and new expectations.
But I’m not unique in feeling this way or facing these kinds of obstacles. All around me are students, colleagues, and staff who are dealing with the hurdles of work, life and mental health. And, if a recent series of articles and surveys by The Guardian are to be believed, then psychological distress is becoming a crisis on university campuses, and many students and academics are keeping their mental health problems hidden from colleagues.
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.