Seamless Pathways: A Symposium on Improving
Transitions from High School to College gathered prominent Ontario educators, policy-makers and government leaders in Toronto on June 6, 2006. The purpose of the symposium was to bring together an expert group of education leaders to:
learn about other jurisdictions approaches to building meaningful pathways that contribute to higher success rates in secondary school and higher participation in post-secondary education discuss what has been learned from current research; the School/College/Work Initiative projects; and the unique role of colleges and apprenticeship pathways in student success
• identify systemic issues and develop policy advice for creating better school-college linkages in order to raise both participation and success rates for post-secondary students.
There was a clear need for a high-level strategic discussion on the future of transitions in order to: follow up on the recommendations in Ontario: A Leader in Learning (the Rae report on postsecondary education) respond to the Ontario government's Learning to 18 and Student Success strategies, such as dual credits and high-skills majors.
One of the primary functions of many Ontario universities and colleges is to provide students with a high quality teaching and learning experience. However, as resources are stretched and postsecondary institutions focus more on research, funding into teaching development and support has been put at risk. A number of additional challenges – including rising
student/faculty ratios and class sizes, an aging faculty population, outdated methods of instruction and curriculum design, and uneven access to teaching development for new instructors – are making it even more difficult to develop and maintain quality teaching. Many student associations, faculty and administrators, the general public, as well as provincial government officials have agreed that the quality of the teaching and learning experience available to students at Ontario’s colleges and universities is increasingly at risk.
In February 2013, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce released a report that identified the growing skills crisis as the greatest impediment to the success of Canadian business. In his 2012 discussion paper, the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, Glen Murray, put forward a platform outlining the need to lower rates of spending growth for publicly-funded universities within the context of an increased labour market demand for greater levels of knowledge and skills, combined with burgeoning enrolment rates.
Sometimes great opportunities come from insoluble problems. The review of the Private Career Colleges Act presents such an opportunity. Career Colleges are an essential component of the solution. Estimated to save Ontario taxpayers over $1 billion annually* through the provision of state-of-the-art skills training and upgrading to over 67,000 students each year, the Career College sector and the people of Ontario deserve an Act that provides a strategic framework for the future and that enables innovative, creative growth to propel this province’s postsecondary education (PSE) system, and that of Canada, towards global competitiveness.
The recommendations in this Report are written on the premise that the government of Ontario strives for excellence in education and the economic growth that it can bring; and further, that it recognizes the value, strength and potential of the Career College sector to help realize those goals.
Private Colleges
Seamless Pathways: A Symposium on Improving Transitions from High School to College gathered prominent Ontario educators, policy-makers and government leaders in Toronto on June 6, 2006. The purpose of the symposium was to bring together an expert group of education leaders to:
• learn about other jurisdictions’ approaches to building meaningful pathways that contribute to higher success rates in secondary school and higher participation in post-secondary education
• discuss what has been learned from current research; the School/College/Work Initiative projects; and the unique role of colleges and apprenticeship pathways in student success
• identify systemic issues and develop policy advice for creating better school-college linkages in order to raise both participation and success rates for post-secondary students.
The Ontario university sector is already somewhat differentiated. A policy decision to increase the differentiation of the postsecondary system brings the following benefits:
• Higher quality teaching and research programs
• More student choice with easier inter‐institution transfer and mobility
• Greater institutional accountability
• A more globally competitive system
• A more financially sustainable system
Ontario’s postsecondary system can transition seamlessly and incrementally to greater differentiation with the judicious and strategic use of funding strategies already familiar to government. This transition to a more differentiated university sector is guided by principles including:
• Equal value on the teaching and research functions of universities
• Forging a contemporary relationship between Ontario’s colleges and universities
• Linking the differentiation policy to funding decisions
• More effective use of multi‐year accountability agreements and performance
indicators to evaluate whether universities are meeting expected goals and targets.
The 2013 Ontario Budget will play an essential part in ensuring the province has the qualified workforce it needs for the years ahead.
The challenges facing Ontario are significant. Young people throughout the province are struggling to find meaningful
work. People who have lost their jobs after years at the same company continue to seek opportunities to train for new
careers.
Meanwhile, there is an increasing skills mismatch in Ontario and throughout the country, as many employers struggle to
find qualified people to hire.
As Seneca College president emeritus Rick Miner predicted in his seminal report, People Without Jobs, Jobs Without
People: Ontario’s Labour Market Future, there is a growing divide between the qualifications sought by employers and
the education and training of much of the workforce. Growing numbers of job seekers simply aren’t qualified to fill a large
number of vacant positions.
Summary of findings
Questions have been raised about the social impact of widespread use of social networking sites (SNS) like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter. Do these technologies isolate people and truncate their relationships? Or are there benefits associated with being connected to others in this way? The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project decided to examine SNS in a survey that explored people’s overall social networks and how use of these technologies is related to trust, tolerance, social support, and community and political engagement. The findings presented here paint a rich and complex picture of the role that digital technology plays in people’s social worlds. Wherever possible, we seek to disentangle whether people’s varying social behaviors and attitudes are related to the different ways they use social networking sites, or to other relevant demographic characteristics, such as age, gender and social class.
The number of those using social networking sites has nearly doubled since 2008 and the population of SNS users has gotten older. In this Pew Internet sample, 79% of American adults said they used the internet and nearly half of adults (47%), or 59% of internet users, say they use at least one of SNS. This is close to double the 26% of adults (34% of internet users) who used a SNS in 2008. Among other things, this means the average age of adult-SNS users has shifted from 33 in 2008 to 38 in 2010. Over half of all adult SNS users are now over the age of 35. Some 56% of SNS users now are female.
Facebook dominates the SNS space in this survey: 92% of SNS users are on Facebook; 29% use MySpace, 18% used LinkedIn and 13% use Twitter. There is considerable variance in the way people use various social networking sites: 52% of Facebook users and 33% of Twitter users engage with the platform daily, while only 7% of MySpace and 6% of LinkedIn users do the same.
On Facebook on an average day:
- 15% of Facebook users update their own status.
- 22% comment on another’s post or status.
- 20% comment on another user’s photos.
- 26% “Like†another user’s content.
- 10% send another user a private message
Academic dishonesty is a persistent problem in institutions of higher education, with numerous short- and long-term implications. This study examines undergraduate students’ self-reported engagement in acts of academic dishonesty using data from a sample of 321 participants attending a public university in a western Canadian city during the fall of 2007. Various factors were assessed for their influence on students’ extent of academic dishonesty. More than one-half of respondents engaged in at least one of three types of dishonest behaviours surveyed during their tenure in university. Faculty of enrolment, strategies for learning, perceptions of peers’ cheating and their requests for help, and perceptions and evaluations of academic dishonesty made unique contributions to the prediction of academic dishonesty. High self-efficacy acted as a protective factor that interacted with instrumental motives to study to reduce students’ propensity to engage in dishonest academic behaviours. Implications of these findings for institutional interventions are briefly discussed.
RÉSUMÉ
Le comportement académique malhonnête persiste dans les institutions d’enseignement supérieur, et ses implications à court et à long terme sont nombreuses. La présente étude examine l’adoption d’un comportement académique malhonnête par des étudiants de premier cycle, grâce aux données d’un échantillon de 321 participants qui fréquentaient une université publique dans une ville de l’ouest canadien à l’automne 2007. Différents facteurs ont été évalués en fonction de leur influence sur l’étendue du comportement académique malhonnête des étudiants. Plus de la moitié des étudiants échantillonnés ont adopté au moins l’un des trois types de comportements malhonnêtes au cours de leur passage à l’université. La faculté à s’inscrire, les stratégies d’apprentissage, la perception quant au comportement tricheur des pairs et quant à leurs demandes d’aide, et les perceptions et évaluations de la malhonnêteté académique constituent des indices uniques pour ce qui est de prédire le comportement académique malhonnête. Un degré élevé d’auto-efficacité, de même que certains motifs essentiels, avaient un effet protecteur dans la réduction de la propension des étudiants à s’engager dans des comportements académiques malhonnêtes. L’article aborde brièvement les conséquences de ces résultats au cours d’interventions en institution d’enseignement.
Ontario firms and organizations are being challenged to increase productivity through innovation in order to compete on the fiercely competitive world stage and improve the quality of life of Ontarians. Yet, Ontario suffers from innovation gaps
that place its productivity and prosperity goals at risk.
Ontario’s 24 Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology have long been recognized for their contributions to career-oriented education and training programs that have strengthened the Ontario economy throughout the latter part of the 20th century.
Poised on the threshold of the 21st century, college-based applied research and development (R&D) and business and industry innovation activities are of ever increasing importance to the achievement of Ontario’s productivity and prosperity
goals.
Because innovation is an inherently social process – requiring people to make connections, develop ideas, and orchestrate implementation – colleges have built relationships to help their clients increase their scope of innovative practices. Each college is directly involved with many local economic development and innovation networks.
ABSTRACT
In this article we investigate Canadian university and college students’interpersonal confl icts and exposure to abuse and violence during their postsecondary studies and assess the emotional, social, and academic impact of these experiences. Our findings, based on a sample 1174 university and college students in Southwestern Ontario, revealed that although most of the incidents reported were verbal in nature and had relatively little emotional or academic impact, a small proportion of students reported experiencing serious violent incidents including sexual assault or rape, and these incidents have had a significant impact on their lives. Female students living on their own reported greater impact of negative social experiences than those who were living in college or university residences. In addition, students who reported confl icts involving institutional policies or rules, including what they perceived to be unfair workloads or grading practices, indicated that such experiences had a negative impact on their academic performance. We discuss these fi ndings in the context of maintaining safe, healthy climates on university and college campuses.
RÉSUMÉ
Dans cet article, nous étudions les confl its interpersonnels et l’exposition à l’abus et à la violence des étudiantes et étudiants canadiens des niveaux collégial et universitaire au cours de leurs études postsecondaires, ainsi que l’impact émotionnel, social et académique de ces expériences. Les résultats sont basés sur un échantillon de 1174 étudiantes et étudiants du sud-ouest de l’Ontario. Les résultats démontrent que, bien que la plupart des incidents signalés soient des confl its de nature verbale qui ont eu peu d’impact émotionnel ou académique, une petite proportion d’étudiantes et d’étudiants ont quand même signalé des incidents violents, y compris l’agression sexuelle et le viol, et ces expériences ont eu un impact signifi catif sur leur qualité de vie. Les étudiantes vivant seules ont signalé un plus grand impact que celles vivant en résidence au collège ou à l’université. Les étudiantes et étudiants qui ont signalé des expériences reliées aux politiques institutionnelles et aux règles d’évaluation telles que des charges de travail et des évaluations perçues comme inéquitables ont indiqué que ces expériences ont eu un impact négatif sur leur rendement académique. Nous discutons de ces résultats dans le contexte des efforts visant à maintenir un climat sain de sécurité dans les universités et les collèges.
Post-secondary education is the great equalizer. It gives us all a chance to reach higher no matter where we come from or whatever our background. Both of my parents came from very modest upbringings and saw a university degree as a ticket to a good job and an entry to Ontario’s middle class. They, in turn, placed a high importance on post-secondary education and encouraged my sister and I to follow in their footsteps.
There is a lot about Ontario’s colleges and universities that we can be proud of, but we need to ensure our students are getting the best value for their tuition. In Ontario today, we see far too many students graduate with degrees and deep debts who can’t find a job.
We are spending a lot more money as a province, but we aren’t seeing the results. Government funding has
increased by 84% since 2003, yet Ontario universities are slipping in international rankings, tuition keeps rising, new graduates keep heading out West and there are many jobs in the skilled trades that can’t be filled.
This has got to change. We need to make the necessary changes to ensure our schools are the best in the world at preparing students for a career. The key will be incenting excellence, harnessing market forces, encouraging specialization and being honest.
Many higher education institutions use student satisfaction surveys given at the end of a course to measure course and instructor quality. But is that really a true measure of quality? All things being equal, an instructor who teaches a rigorous course will likely score much lower than an instructor whose course is a little less demanding. Then there’s the whole timing of the satisfaction surveys. For the most part, students are simply glad the course is over (even if they liked it) and put little thought or time into completing the survey. Unless of course they know they failed, in which case you will get a detailed assessment of how you are boring, inflexible, out of touch, or otherwise unfit to teach.
No wonder surveys get such a bad rap. If end-of-course evaluations are the only surveys you use, there’s a lot more you can, and should, be doing. Done correctly, surveys can deliver tremendous insight into what’s working, what’s not, and why. This special report features 10articles from Online Classroom, including a three-part and a five-part series that provides stepby-
step guidance on how to use surveys and evaluations to improve online courses, programs, and instruction. You’ll learn when to use surveys, how to design effective survey questions, why it’s important to ensure anonymity, and the advantages and disadvantages of Web-based surveys.
Articles in Online Course Quality Assurance: Using Evaluations and Surveys to Improve Online Teaching and Learning include:
• Online Teaching Fundamentals: What to Evaluate, parts 1-3
• Course and Instructor Evaluation: If It’s So Good, Why Does It Feel So Bad?
• Getting Evaluation Data through Surveys: What to Consider before Getting Started
• Using Surveys to Improve Courses, Programs, and Instruction, parts 1-5
If you’re dedicated to continuous improvement, this special report is loaded with practical advice that will help you create more effective surveys before, during, and after your course ends.
In the emerging knowledge-based economy, employers are requiring new levels of skill from labour market entrants. As employers’ expectations of postsecondary graduates increase, Ontario’s publicly funded colleges and universities are working to provide students with much of the knowledge, skills, and training needed for success in the community and in the changing workplace. As a result, there has been a movement within the postsecondary education (PSE) sector to provide a closer integration of learning and work as a strategy for workforce skills development (Fisher, Rubenson, Jones, & Shanahan, 2009).
In particular, work-integrated learning (WIL) programs such as co-operative education, internship, and apprenticeship are frequently endorsed as educational modes of delivery to support such integration.
Offering work-integrated learning experiences for students requires a significant investment of human and financial resources to be effective. Faculty in particular play an important role in designing, supporting, and implementing WIL opportunities for students. Despite a growing recognition of the essential role played by faculty, very little is known about their perceptions of and experiences with WIL. To shed light on this issue, this report provides the results of the WIL Faculty Survey conducted by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) in partnership with 13 Ontario postsecondary institutions.
The report is part of a broader multi-phase project being undertaken by HEQCO on WIL in Ontario’s PSE
sector.
The WIL Faculty Survey was designed to better understand faculty experiences with and perceptions of WIL as an element of postsecondary curriculum. Guided by a Working Group comprised of representatives from the 13 participating postsecondary institutions, the study sought to address four primary research questions:
1) How do faculty perceive the value and benefits of WIL to students, faculty members, and
postsecondary institutions?
2) Do faculty views about WIL differ by employment status, program, gender, years of teaching, previous employment experience, or their own past WIL experience?
3) How do faculty integrate students’ work experiences into the classroom?
4) What concerns do faculty have about introducing or expanding WIL opportunities in postsecondary institutions?
The survey instrument was developed in consultation with the Working Group and was pre-tested with 25 faculty members. The survey was administered online from March to May, 2011, with e-mail invitations to participate sent to 18,232 faculty from the 13 partner institutions (6,257 college faculty and 11,975 university faculty). In total, 1,707 college faculty and 1,917 university faculty completed the survey to an acceptable cut-off point, for an overall response rate of 19.9%.
Close to two-thirds of college faculty and roughly half of university faculty respondents reported having experience teaching in a program in which students participate in a co-op or apprenticeship. Fewer faculty had experience personally teaching a course with a WIL component, with 47.5% of college faculty and 28.9% of university faculty currently or previously having taught a course involving WIL. Among those who had taught a course with a WIL component, field placements were the most common type of WIL among college faculty, followed by mandatory professional practice (student placements required for licensure or professional designation). For university respondents, mandatory professional practice was the most common type of WIL taught, followed by applied research projects.
The Alternative to Academic Suspension Program (AASP) ran as a pilot program in fall 2009 to address the skill development of students facing suspension at Brock University. Initial results of the program indicate positive results with students persisting in their programs. In total, there were 445 students facing academic suspension, and 42 per cent of those students participated in the AASP pilot. Participants in the AASP were required to successfully complete the program,pass all credits taken during the academic year (maximum of three) and achieve an overall session average of at least 60 per cent to be eligible to continue studies. Failure to meet any of the conditions resulted in academic suspension at the end of the academic year. Of the 187 students participating in the AASP pilot, 50 per cent returned to studies in the fall of 2010, compared to only 17 per cent of those students facing suspension who did not to participate. When considering all students facing suspension, AASP participants represented over two-thirds of the returning students in fall 2010. Not only are the participants persisting with studies, but the participants are improving their overall averages as well.
While overall academic averages can be difficult to change, of the 94 AASP participants returning to studies in 2010, 92.5 per cent of them were able to increase their overall average. Considering that AASP participants were limited to a maximum of three credits, it is encouraging that so many of the returning AASP participants were able to achieve this result. The participants are moving from being at risk of not completing their programs to completion with improved overall averages.
The current analysis reflects a positive short-term impact on retention. Continued analysis would examine a long-term assessment of the program and whether students can maintain their initial success as they continue in their studies at Brock. Other key findings from the report include:
• In 2009, students within two years of entry into Brock and facing suspension participated at a higher rate than those students facing suspension who had entered prior to 2007.
• Although 94 AASP participants returned to studies in 2010, there were 116 AASP participants (62 per cent of total AASP enrollment) eligible to continue studies at Brock University in 2010. We are unable to track whether the eligible participants not returning to Brock have gone to other institutions or chosen to end their postsecondary studies.
Surveys and focus groups from eligible AASP participants not returning to studies at Brock would be beneficial to understand what choices these students made and why they made them.
Further study needs to be completed to understand the longer-term impact of the AASP. In addition to driving internal program improvements, further study could also help develop strategies to identify and support at-risk students at other universities.
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.
Ensuring a nation’s capacity to compete in today’s knowledge based economy (KBE) has placed increased attention on each nation’s higher education systems. In order to maintain or develop a highly skilled and qualified workforce, governments must ensure that students have access to higher education. Those responsible in postsecondary education institutions must
ensure that the curricula offered in varied programs of study provide students with opportunities to strengthen and further develop the knowledge, skills, and competencies essential for success in current and future labour markets. Considering the globalization of labour markets, Governments must also ensure that, through assessment of the knowledge, skills and
competencies of their students, they can provide accurate reports and appropriate recognition in documents that describe in commonly accepted terms the graduates’ competencies. It is the identification, measurement, and designation of qualifications that inures transparency of the credential to the benefit of the students/graduates and their institutions, as well as to future
national and international employers.
If every worker had the essential skills needed to do their jobs really well, productivity and competitiveness in the West would soar. But many workers do not. Forty per cent of our workforce does not have the essential skills – including language, literacy and numeracy – needed to apply their technical skills and knowledge at globally competitive levels. Investing in upgrading essential skills would provide the West with an opportunity to change the productivity narrative.
In 2007 one of the key conclusions from the synthesis report 'Sharing eLearning Content'1 (SELC)was that, while evidence may exist in support of it, the business case for an institution to share learning materials has not been sufficiently well articulated in the UK. In fact, the issue highlighted is rather broader. There is evidence that would support a range of business cases, such as those for:
. lecturers sharing learning materials;
. lecturers using and attributing others’ materials;
. institutions putting in place policies whereby learning materials are well managed, so that they can be shared appropriately and reused over time;
. the UK tertiary education sector as a whole putting in place arrangements in support of sharing learning materials.
This report aims to articulate the advantages and imperatives for sharing learning resources using evidence from the UK and elsewhere. This JISC funded study has also identified a number of compelling business cases and has developed a set of variations as a result of studying a range of business models. It highlights some interesting trends as many of the existing business models have reached a level of maturity and are currently under review.
Much has been written about the challenges of teaching an online course. While not discounting the unique (and sometimes frustrating) aspects of the online learning environment, it could be said that, despite the numerous differences, many of the same course management strategies that are essential to success in a traditional classroom also apply in the online classroom. These strategies include the importance of a strong syllabus, clear directions, well-organized materials, and timely feedback.
Of course, the big challenge for online instructors is that the very nature of online education amplifies the importance of properly addressing these management issues, while throwing a few more additional obstacles into the mix. Choosing the right communication tools and protocols, addressing technology problems, managing student expectations, and building community are just some of issues that can stretch online instructors to the breaking point.
11 Strategies for Managing Your Online Courses was created to help online instructors
tackle many of the course management issues that can erode the efficiency and effectiveness
of an online course. It features 11 articles pulled from the pages of Online Classroom,
including:
• Syllabus Template Development for Online Course Success
• The Online Instructor’s Challenge: Helping ‘Newbies’
• Virtual Sections: A Creative Strategy for Managing Large Online Classes
• Internal or External Email for Online Courses?
• Trial by Fire: Online Teaching Tips That Work
• The Challenge of Teaching Across Generations
It’s important to keep in mind that you’re not the only one who may be a little anxious
about going online. Students often have anxiety when taking their first online course. It’s
up to you to help them feel more confident and secure, all the while keeping your
workload at a manageable level. The course management tips in this report will help.
Rob Kelly
Editor
Online Classroom