MyLivePD is a completely new model of
PD that focuses on delivering timely,
relevant and actionable coaching for math teachers through live online sessions with no appointments needed. For the first time, math teachers can connect with an experienced coach to ask a specific question about their teaching on their own schedule from any Internet-enabled computer. The service was created to be
completely driven by the teacher. It is also meant to be a continuous process where teachers get help throughout the school year. This level of personalization and privacy does not exist in any other PD model.
MyLivePD was implemented in three
districts and several Teach for America
regions in the fall of 2011. All districts and teachers have been granted access to the service through December 2012. This paper will provide further details on how MyLivePD works, the initial results from the pilot program to date and conclusions on how MyLivePD can be used by schools as part of their PD
programs.
KPI 2015
In 2008, the OECD launched the AHELO feasibility study, an initiative with the objective to assess whether it is possible to develop international measures of learning outcomes in higher education.
Learning outcomes are indeed key to a meaningful education, and focusing on learning outcomes is essential to inform diagnosis and improve teaching processes and student learning. While there is a long tradition of learning outcomes’ assessment within institutions’ courses and programmes, emphasis on learning outcomes has become more important in
recent years. Interest in developing comparative measures of learning outcomes has increased in response to a range of higher education trends, challenges and paradigm shifts.
AHELO aims to complement institution-based assessments by providing a direct evaluation of student learning outcomes at the global level and to enable institutions to benchmark the performance of their students against their peers as part of their improvement efforts. Given AHELO’s global scope, it is essential that measures of learning outcomes are valid across
diverse cultures and languages as well as different types of higher education institutions (HEIs).
When teachers think the best, most important way to improve their teaching is by developing their content knowledge, they end up with sophisticated levels of knowledge, but they have only simplistic instructional methods to convey that material. To imagine that content matters more than process is to imagine that the car is more important than the road. Both are essential. What we teach and how we teach it are inextricably linked and very much dependent on one another.
This special report features 11 articles pulled from the pages of The Teaching Professor to help you discover new ways to build connections between what you teach and how you teach it. The report offers tips on how to engage students, give feedback, create a climate for learning, and more. It also provides fresh perspectives on how faculty should approach
their development as teachers.
It’s been said that few things can enhance student learning more than an instructor’s commitment to ongoing professional development. Here’s a sample of the articles you will find in Effective Strategies for Improving College Teaching and Learning:
• Faculty Self-Disclosures in the College Classroom
• A Tree Falling in the Forest: Helping Students ‘Hear’ and Use Your Comments
• Understanding What You See Happening in Class
• Can Training Make You a Better Teacher?
• Striving for Academic Excellence
Although there is no single best teaching method, approach, or style, this special report
will give you a variety of strategies to try. Those that work effectively with your students
you should make your own.
Maryellen Weimer
Editor
The Teaching Professor
What is the evolutionary process of leadership theories?
The overall goal of the ARUCC PCCAT National Transcript Standards and Transfer Credit Nomenclature Project is to contribute to enhanced student mobility by creating standards and tools that facilitate the efforts of registrarial and pathway practitioners and policy developers at Canadian postsecondary institutions and allied organizations. A core component of Phase 2 is to further engage the national community in a discussion about what the future transcript standards and transfer credit nomenclature should look like. To quote the 2003 ARUCC Transcript Guide, the main transcript issues remain “’what information to record’ on the transcript and ‘how to record’ the needed information, so that the transcript accurately and equitably reflects educational achievements, and the information it conveys is clear and unambiguous for present and future users” (ARUCC, 2003, p. 10).1 For transfer credit nomenclature, the primary goal is to seek agreement on what terms and definitions to adopt in a database that are
reflective of common and promising practice.
While much of the world is understandably focused on the current recession, there is a looming demographic and labour market
crisis which has the potential to shake the very foundations of our society and economy. Our population is aging; as the baby boomer generation advances into the age of normal retirement, there will be a significant decline in the proportion of our opulation in the prime working years (15 to 64). Using Ontario Ministry of Finance data, the projected shortfall in the availability of workers is shown to rise to at least 200,000, and to as high as 1.8 million by 2031,depending on our levels of population growth.
Even in the midst of a recession, we have to understand that a labour shortage looms. Unfortunately, this is only half of the bad news. At the same time as our population is aging, the requirements of the labour market are changing. With the emergence of our knowledge economy, the proportion of the labour force requiring some form of education or training beyond high school will increase dramatically.
Using a variety of Canadian and U. S. estimates,it is concluded that by 2031 we will need 77% of our workforce to have post-secondary credentials (apprenticeship, university, college, industry, professional). Overall, we now stand at about 60%, with our younger population (25 to 34 years of age) at just over 66%. So, we will need both a larger workforce and increased skills. For potential solutions, increasing the size of the population (immigration) with more skilled workers could help, but it will not solve the problem. Increasing the participation rates of those currently under-represented in the labour force is another option that needs to be explored, as do ways of accelerating graduations, increasing employer-provided training, improving literacy rates, and creating a more unified educational system. But what is most clearly needed is a change in our society’s attitude towards post-secondary education.
We have to accept attainment of post-secondary education or training as the expectation for all but a small minority of Ontarians. Without effective action, we face a future with large numbers of unskilled workers looking for jobs that require skills they do not possess, and a large number of jobs that will go unfilled. The time for action is now. It will take planning, hard work, cooperation, and difficult decisions to secure our future. An alternative outcome is simply unacceptable.
Rick Miner Report
Key Findings
This report highlights the importance of college readiness for persisting in college to timely
degree completion. Primary findings suggest that:
• Being better prepared academically for college improves a student’s chances of completing a college degree.
• Using multiple measures of college readiness better informs the likelihood of a student persisting and succeeding in college.
• College readiness reduces gaps in persistence and degree completion among racial/ethnic and family income groups.
• Early monitoring of readiness is associated with increased college success.
Most, if not all, faculty and graduate students will agree with Dr. Joli Jensen’s statement that “academic writing is a perplexing burden, a source of constant anxiety, self-doubt, and confusion” (p. 4). When we and our colleagues discuss our own writing struggles or those of our graduate students, we recognize that there are many potential issues underlying writing problems: research design issues, lack of knowledge of other scholarly literature, underdeveloped academic writing skills, an
emerging identity as an academic writer, and ineffective writing processes and practices. Jensen, the author of Write No Matter What: Advice for Academics, claims that her book focuses solely on “offering academic colleagues process-oriented strategies for overcoming writing obstacles” (p. 88). In fact, we find that Jensen offers more than just process strategies in that she also details the affective and psychological barriers to writing; the things that happen in writers’ heads when they have carved out time for writing but still struggle.
Approaches to higher education have been evolving at an increasingly rapid pace over the past decade, and graduate education is a critical part of that evolution. In Ontario alone, the number of new programs offered at our institutions has increased dramatically since 2004, and between 1999 and 2009, the number of PhD students enrolled in Ontario universities has nearly doubled (Maldonado, Wiggers, & Arnold, 2013). Students are coming to graduate school at different stages of their lives (Wiggers, Lennon, & Frank, 2011) and, in today’s economy, many are leaving graduate schools with increased uncertainty and anxiety about their career prospects (Maldonado et al., 2013; Patton, 2012).
Whereas in the past it was considered the norm for graduate students to move on to careers in academia, recent studies have confirmed what is apparent to most casual observers: the standard path is no longer into academia. For example, a 2010 study estimated that about 50 per cent of US PhD graduates now take positions outside of academia (Wendler, Bridgeman, Cline, Millett, Rock, Bell, & McAllister, 2010), and those who end up in academia are less likely to hold full-time tenure-stream positions. From 1975 to 2009, the proportion of full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty positions decreased as a proportion of the total number of instructional staff at US universities from approximately 45 to 24 per cent (AAUC), with part-time faculty positions comprising the majority of instructional positions (41%) by 2009. Within the Canadian context, current estimates suggest that less than 25 per cent of PhD students will end up in full-time tenure-stream research and teaching positions (Charbonneau, 2011; Tamburri, 2010).
Public colleges are the only academic institutions in Canada that deliver a robust range of career-focused programs and training to all segments of the population. The colleges’ labour-market programs, such as Second Career, employment counselling, academic upgrading and apprenticeship training serve more than 160,000 students
each year.
Ontario’s public college programs are affordable and reach students in all socioeconomic groups – from people who need upgrading in order to qualify for full-time college programs, to university graduates seeking marketable skills.
Graduates of Ontario’s 24 public colleges earn credentials that have met the province’s rigorous standards for post-secondary education and are valued by employers. College graduates continue to be in high demand.
As online education moves from the fringes to the mainstream, one question still persists: “How do I know what my online students have learned?” There are no simple answers, just as there aren’t in face-to-face courses, but with a little creativity and flexibility, you soon discover that the online learning environment opens up a host of new student assessment possibilities. And, just as with traditional courses, the trick is finding the right combination that works best for your particular course.
This special report features 12 articles from Online Classroom that will cause you to examine your current methods of online assessment, and perhaps add something new to your assessment toolbox. It even talks about some of the common assessment mistakes you’ll want to avoid.
Take a look at some of the articles you will find in Assessing Online Learning: Strategies, Challenges and Opportunities:
• Authentic Experiences, Assessment Develop Online Students’ Marketable Skills
• Four Typical Online Learning Assessment Mistakes
• Assessing Whether Online Learners Can DO: Aligning Learning Objectives with
Real-world Applications
• Strategies for Creating Better Multiple-Choice Tests
• Assessing Student Learning Online: It’s More Than Multiple Choice
• Using Self-Check Exercises to Assess Online Learning
• Measuring the Effectiveness of an Online Learning Community
• Ongoing Student Evaluation Essential to Course Improvement
Online courses enable a strong student-centered approach to learning and, as a result, assessment. We hope this report helps you design and develop online assessment strategies that take full advantage of the many formal and informal assessment tools now at your fingertips.
Over the past few decades, Canada’s labour requirements have changed drastically—from a need for physical labourers to a need for knowledge workers—as a result of changes in economic and social conditions that have included advances in information and communication technologies, globalization of economic activity and shifting demographics. Consequently, employers and firms are increasingly seeking skilled workers with a more sophisticated array of capabilities. Of recent concern, the current global recession has led to the deterioration of labour-market conditions in Canada and worldwide, profoundly affecting—through increased vulnerability to unemployment—the economic and social well-being of families and communities across Canada. Canada’s economic strength, as in other countries, depends on its ability to develop a skilled and flexible workforce, capable of adapting to continuous change. While Canada’s formal education is of a high standard, it alone cannot provide the conditions needed to secure the development of Canada’s talent—its human infrastructure*—which is a necessary element of our country’s future prosperity. Against this backdrop, Securing Prosperity through Canada’s Human Infrastructure, CCL’s second†report on the state of adult learning and workplace training in Canada, demonstrates that investments in human infrastructure—both in times of economic uncertainty and relative prosperity—are critical to securing a strong economy and greater social equity.
The present system of academic credentials awarded by Ontario’s colleges was established nearly a half century ago. It is thus appropriate to consider how well some of those credential titles fit in the global lexicon of academic credentials as it has evolved over the last half century and whether they are still appropriate today.
Presently the term for the credential that is awarded by colleges in Ontario upon completion of a program of two years’ duration is diploma. In 1995, noted community college scholar John Dennison of the University of British Columbia observed that “there is not a clear appreciation of what a diploma means”, and this “results in an undervaluation of the diploma from a CAAT” (Dennison, 1995, p. 13).
Grade 8 is a critical year for Ontario’s students. It is not only a pivotal point in a young person’s emotional, social, and physical development1, but also a time when students must choose between taking applied and academic courses in high school. These course selections largely determine students’ educational pathways throughout high school and have the poten-
tial to influence their post-secondary options and career opportunities2.
This report examines the gap between Ontario’s stated policy regarding students’ choices in high school and the reality on the ground. It looks at whether grade 8 students should be required to make decisions that have such important short and long term consequences in light of international evidence suggesting that it contributes to lower outcomes.
The Association of Registrars of the Universities and Colleges of Canada (ARUCC) and the Pan-Canadian Consortium on Admissions and Transfer (PCCAT) have collaborated to lead an extensive study to understand current transcript and transfer credit nomenclature practices in Canada. These findings will ultimately inform a comprehensive update and expansion of the 2003 ARUCC National Transcript Guide and potentially result in a searchable database of transcript practices and Canadian transfer credit nomenclature. The ultimate goal is to enhance the clarity, consistency and transparency of the academic transcript and transfer credit resources that support student mobility. The specific deliverable for this phase was to identify and summarize Canadian transcript and transfer credit nomenclature practices, review four international jurisdictions as a means to highlight promising practices related to these two areas and, finally, to provide both an overview of systems and an initial examination of emergent perspectives and themes. The report purposefully avoids suggesting prescriptive solutions or outcomes; however, the findings from this study will provide a solid foundation from which to move forward the standards and terminology discourse in Canada. This report collates the findings from the supporting research conducted from January through to April 2014.
In June 2016, the Ontario government launched its five-year Climate Change Action Plan, which builds on a bold strategy to reduce the province’s green-house gas (GHG) emissions by 15 per cent below 1990 levels by the year 2020. Universities are stepping up to the challenge by demonstrating leadership, reinforcing their role in helping meet these targets, and supporting campus-based initiatives to spark broader action.
ABSTRACT
Invasive alien species (IAS) cause major environmental and economic damage worldwide,and also threaten human food security and health. The impacts of IAS are expected to rise with continued globalization, land use modification, and climate change. Developing effective strategies to deal with IAS requires a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach, in which scientists work co-operatively with social scientists and policy-makers. Higher education can contribute to this process by training professionals to balance the ecological, economic, and social dimensions of the IAS problem. We examined the extent of such training in Canada by reviewing undergraduate and graduate university curricula at all 94 member nstitutions of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada for IAS content. We found that degree and diploma programs focusing on IAS issues are lacking at Canadian post-secondary institutions. Furthermore, few courses are devoted solely to IAS, and those that are typically adopt an ecological perspective. We argue that the absence of interdisciplinary university curricula on IAS in Canada negatively aff ects our ability to respond to this growing global challenge. We present several international educational programs on IAS as case studies on how to better integrate training on invasive species into university curricula in Canada.
RÉSUMÉ
Les espèces exotiques envahissantes (EEE) sont à l’origine d’importants dommages écologiques et économiques partout dans le monde, en plus de menacer la sécurité alimentaire et la santé humaine. On s’attend à ce que leurs eff ets prennent de l’ampleur devant la poursuite de la mondialisation, l’évolution de l’utilisation des sols et les changements climatiques.
L’élaboration de stratégies efficaces pour contrer les EEE exige une approche coopérative et interdisciplinaire, par laquelle des scientifiques travaillent en collaboration avec des spécialistes en sciences sociales et des esponsables de l’élaboration de politiques. L’enseignement supérieur peut y contribuer en formant des professionnels à trouver un équilibre entre les dimensions écologiques, économiques et sociales du problème des EEE. Nous avons étudié la portée d’une telle formation au Canada en révisant les programmes d’études universitaires des premier et second cycles de chacun des 94 établissements membres de l’Association des universités et collèges du Canada. Nous en avons conclu que les programmes menant à un grade ou à un diplôme et ciblant les problèmes liés aux EEE font défaut aux établissements postsecondaires canadiens. En outre, peu de cours se concentrent uniquement sur les EEE, et ceux qui le font adoptent habituellement une approche écologique. Nous faisons valoir que le manque de programmes universitaires interdisciplinaires portant sur les EEE au Canada entrave notre capacité à aff ronter ce défi mondial croissant. Nous présentons plusieurs programmes éducatifs internationaux sur les EEE, à titre d’études de cas pour mieux intégrer la formation sur les espèces envahissantes aux programmes universitaires du Canada.
Andrea L. Smith
Dawn R. Bazely
Norman D. Yan
York University
About Ontario Centres of Excellence Inc.
The Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) not-for-profit program was formally established in 1987 with seven independent centres that evolved and amalgamated into Ontario Centres of Excellence Inc. in 2004.
Twenty-five years ago, the traditional economic foundation for the province, and for Canada, was shifting from a north american focused and commodities-based economy to one that is globally oriented and knowledge-based.
Prior to the creation of OCE, there was limited connection between universities, colleges, research hospitals and industry. Consensus was that these academic and research institutions were producing quality research that was not being utilized to its full potential by industry.
OCE was designed to bridge that gap and create productive working partnerships between university and college
research departments, research hospitals and Ontario industry.
The Canadian labour market suffered a severe blow during the last recession, with more than 430,000 persons losing their jobs and the unemployment rate reaching levels unseen since the latter half of the 1990s.
Subsequently, the labour market has shown great resilience, and there are now 900,000 more Canadians employed since the beginning of the recovery. Important weaknesses remain, however: long-term and youth unemploymentstill stand at obstinately high levels – despite a recent growth in job vacancies.
This E-Brief argues the best way to further support the Canadian labour market would be through policies that enhance labour mobility and emphasize skills training to help ensure unemployed Canadians have the right skill sets to
integrate into the workforce.