It’s easy to think of the Millennial generation, those born roughly between 1982 and 2002, as tech-savvy digital natives ��� and in many ways they are. Immersed in consumer technology since birth, today’s youth has mastered the art of the swipe, the
selfie and social media. So it may come as a surprise that Millennials often lack essential digital skills needed to succeed in the workplace — be it a conventional office setting, an auto mechanic’s shop, or in a tractor on a farm.
Graduates themselves are often unsure of where to look for opportunities outside academe.
Valerie Walker admits it wasn’t so long ago that she was “that grad student” wondering what the heck she was going
to do if she didn’t stay in academia. After graduating in 2009 with a PhD in physiology from McGill University, she
said she was “open to options.” She just didn’t know what those options were.
Abstract: This article considers the evolution of e-learning and some of the factors that have shaped its implementation. It draws on research conducted in the UK from 2001 to 2008 by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
(CIPD) focusing on training and learning in corporate organisations rather than courses offered to students enrolled in educational institutions. The article argues that throughout this period there has been insufficient attention given to the way
learning takes place in organisations. It considers the emerging wave of enthusiasm for Web 2.0, concluding that successful current applications of e-learning simply use a more diverse range of tools and approaches.
Keywords: corporate e-learning; learning technology; Web 2.0; social networking; virtual worlds; Webinars; online support; ‘stuff’ and ‘stir’
Background: Much research has sought to investigate emotions and forms of emotion management among teachers worldwide, including the connection between educational change and teacher emotion; the association between the culture of teaching and teachers’ emotional experience within parentteacher interactions; the link between teacher emotion and teacher beliefs; and the
expressions and sources of a wide variety of emotions in teaching.
The wave of upcoming retirements is a myth and PhD numbers have little to do with the academic job
market anyway.
In my last post I took a look at some of the history and context of Canadian universities’ hiring of contract faculty. While I was digging around for information, I couldn’t help noticing the relevance of some of the material to another ongoing debate in higher education: that of the “overproduction” of PhDs. Since “too many PhDs” is a recurring theme in media commentary about
graduate education (e.g. Nature, The Economist), I thought I’d explore the issue in more depth and connect it to some of the research I found. Are we really “producing” too many PhDs, and if so, is this a recent problem?
I'll be the first to admit that I haven't been teaching at my best this semester. Oh, there have been some good classes. And I think I'm finally getting a handle on the one group of students who don't want to speak up in class. But in general it feels like I'm going through the motions a little bit, not fully reaching as many students as I have in the past, talking too much from the front of the room. I have a theory as to why this is happening.
This is my fourth semester at the University of Iowa teaching rhetoric to mostly first-year students. After years of adjuncting, it's great to be able to teach the same course again and again. I'm able to learn from my mistakes and improve semester to semester. Even better, prepping for class takes less and less time each semester. I keep an archive of class activities from previous semesters in Scrivener, and I can quickly arrange a few of them to make up a whole class period. It's great.
This article provides research guidelines for authors intending to submit their manuscripts to TESOL Quarterly. These guidelines include information about the TESOL Quarterly review process, advice on con- verting a dissertation into a research article, broad introductions to a number of research methods, and a section on research ethics. The research methods discussed here are experimental research, survey research, ethnographic research, discourse analysis, and practitioner research. These are, of course, not the only methods that authors draw
on for their submissions to TESOL Quarterly but ones we thought it would be helpful to provide advice on. Each of the sec- tions on research methods includes a broad introduction to the method (or approach), a guide for preparing a manuscript using the particular method or approach, and an analysis of an article pub- lished in TESOL Quarterly using that method or approach. doi: 10.1002/tesq.288
Background/Context: In many countries, there are multiple studies intended to improve initial teacher education. These have generally focused on pieces of teacher education rather than wholes, and have used an underlying linear logic. It may be, however, that what is needed are new research questions and theoretical frameworks that account for wholes, not just parts, and take complex, rather than reductionist perspectives.
This paper reports the results of an analysis of persistence in post-secondary education (PSE) for college students in Ontario based on the extremely rich YITS-B dataset that has been used for other recent studies at the national level. We calculate hazard or transition rates (and cumulative transition rates) with respect to those who i) graduate, ii) switch programs, and iii) leave PSE (perhaps to return later). We also look at the reasons for switching and leaving, subsequent re-entry rates among leavers, and graduation and persistence rates once switchers and re-entrants are taken into account. These patterns are then probed in more detail using hazard (regression) models where switching and leaving are related to a variety of individual characteristics, family background, high school outcomes, and early pse experiences. Student pathways are seen to be varied. Perhaps the single most important finding is that the proportion of students who either obtain a degree or continue to be enrolled somewhere in the PSE system in the years after entering a first program remains close to the 80 percent mark for the five years following entry. Seventy-one percent of students graduate within five years of starting, while another 6 percent are still in the PSE system.
This study provided a comprehensive examination of the full range of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership. Results (based on 626 correlations from 87 sources) revealed an overall validity of .44 for transformational leadership, and this validity generalized over longitudinal and multisource designs. Contingent reward (.39) and laissez-faire (-.37) leadership had the next highest overall relations; management by exception (active and passive) was inconsistently related to the criteria. Surprisingly, there were several criteria for which contingent reward leadership had stronger relations than did transformational leadership.
Furthermore, transformational leadership was strongly correlated with contingent reward (.80) and laissez-faire (-.65) leadership. Transformational and contingent reward leadership generally predicted criteria controlling for the other leadership dimensions, although trans-formational leadership failed to predict leader job performance.
If I were the czar of higher education that is not explicitly vocational, I would require every undergraduate to study philosophy. And if I were both czar and czarina, I would require all students to take two philosophy courses — one in their first year and another just before graduation.
At first blush, that requirement may seem bizarre, especially coming from me. I am a psychologist and, more broadly, a social scientist — not a philosopher or a humanist. Even more deplorably, I have never taken a philosophy course myself.
A study presented Friday at the American Educational Research Association's annual meeting shines some light on the way women are hired for top higher education leadership positions in searches involving third-party executive search firms.
For the study, Harvard Ph.D. student Jeraul C. Mackey obtained access to proprietary data from a search firm that remained anonymous. The data covered almost 500 searches over an eight-year period starting in 2009. Mackey ultimately analyzed a subset of the data covering 250 searches for two- and four-year public and private nonprofit institutions.
He was able to look at how women candidates fared at each stage of the recruitment process for upper-level positions, finding that women fared better as searches progressed. He was also able to examine recruiters’ preferences about women candidates, finding that the gender makeup of a recruitment team had no discernible effect on whether a search ultimately resulted in a woman being hired.
As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Dr. Vannevar Bush has coordinated the activities of some six thousand leading American scientists in the application of science to warfare. In this significant article he holds up an incentive for scientists when the fighting has ceased. He urges that men of science should then turn to the massive task of making more accessible our bewildering store of knowledge. For years inventions have extended man's physical powers rather than the powers of his mind. Trip hammers that multiply the fists, microscopes that sharpen the eye, and engines of destruction and detection are new results, but not the end results, of modern science. Now, says Dr. Bush, instruments are at hand which, if properly developed, will give man access to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages. The perfection of these pacific instruments should be the first objective of our scientists as they emerge from their war work. Like Emerson's famous address of 1837 on "The American Scholar," this paper by Dr. Bush calls for a new relationship between thinking man and
the sum of our knowledge. — THE EDITOR
OCUFA has presented timely and thoughtful policy positions throughout its existence on a broad range of postsecondary and related issues. Of the issues gaining prominence with government and policymakers in the past decade, how Ontario's public postsecondary institutions relate, co-operate, and collaborate to present the best possible pathways for students to their desired postsecondary outcomes has become increasingly important.
Context: The past decade has witnessed a sustained emphasis on information and communication technologies (ICT) in education, coupled with the rise of online social media and increasing pervasiveness of personal media devices.
Research Question: Our research question asked: How has this changing context affected the educational experiences of American high school students?
Setting: The exploratory, qualitative study took place at two high schools in a large metropolitan district in the southeastern United States. One high school was in a downtown area, and the other was in a suburban setting.
Research Design: The researchers used various qualitative research approaches, including interviews, on-site observations, and document analysis. Our interview participants included classroom teachers and support staff as well as students drawn from across each school’s grade levels. We also shadowed 10 of the student interview participants through their entire school days.
“Do you know how much this exam is worth?”
“I can’t find any office hours listed for one of my classes—are there any?.”
“What if I get sick and miss a few classes—will my grade be hurt?”
My answer was the same for all three questions—“I don’t know.” Even though these were my first-year seminar students asking these questions, they were looking at syllabi from their other courses, part of a syllabus review exercise I do each fall with first-time students.
The convenience and flexibility of the online learning environment allows learners to develop new skills and further their education, regardless of where they live. However, for all of its benefits, online learning can sometimes feel isolating for students and faculty. The question is: how do you build a sense of community in your online courses? One approach involves cultivating more interaction—between you and your students and among the students themselves. Here are five practical tips for increasing the human connection in your online classrooms.
According to the Ministry Education-supported Student Transition Project, about 30,000 B.C. high school grads enrol in post-secondary institutions each year.
Of that number, 17 per cent eventually earn a bachelor’s degree and 21 per cent earn certificates or diplomas of one kind or another.
But post-secondary education, especially a university education, doesn’t come cheap and doesn’t always fulfil its promises.
University tuition and other costs, including books and living expenses, for a Canadian four-year university degree can average more than $60,000, according to BMO’s Wealth Institute report.
Mukhopadhyay, Henze, and Moses’ How Real is Race? A Sourcebook on Race, Culture, and Biology is a refreshing read on the significance of understanding race not as biology, but as a sociocultural construct that operates as power. The word “refreshing” is apropos because it achieves what has been challenging for many of us educators: the writers painstakingly explain and show how race has been and continues to be constructed through culture. And they do it in clear language—a true feat considering the complexity of the topic and the fact that this is the first book to take up the project of a “biocultural approach” to explaining the racial construct. With respect to the biocultural approach, the authors argue, “Race is very much culturally and socially real, and has had and continues to have real consequences, both social and biological” (p. xvi). While offering a perspective on race that connects biology and cultural anthropology, they debunk in great detail the enduring myth of race as biological by presenting key research studies in an accessible manner.
Not only are racial, sexual and gender minority groups more likely to be victims of sexual assault, students who consider their colleges inclusive and tolerant are less likely to be victims, two new complementary studies found.
Published recently in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence and Prevention Science, the studies reveal how populations with intersecting minority identities may be at greater risk of sexual assault, emphasizing the need for more sexual assault research and prevention and treatment programs that address specific marginalized groups.
One study, led by a team from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, was based on surveys from over 70,000 undergraduate students attending 120 higher education institutions between 2011 and 2013.
The team found that women were 150 percent more likely than men to be sexually assaulted, but that transgender people were at much greater risk -- 300 percent more likely than cisgender men to be sexually assaulted.