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).
The internationally recognized series of Horizon Reports is part of the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project, a comprehensive research venture established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact over the coming five years on a variety of sectorsaround the globe. This volume, the 2011 Horizon Report, examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative inquiry. It is the eighth in the annual series of reports focused on emerging technology in the higher education environment.
Canada is in the midst of unprecedented growth in the postsecondary education (PSE) sector. More students are availing themselves of college and university educational opportunities than at any other time in the nation's history. The students now enrolling bring a diverse set of characteristics rarely seen within the sector previously. They are immigrants, children of immigrants, first in their family to enrol in postsecondary, Aboriginal, visible minorities, and students with disabilities to name just a few.
College and university programs and services have grown to meet the needs of these increasingly diverse learners, and are largely referred to as student affairs and services, (SAS). One of the aims of this study was to develop a greater understanding of the scope of student affairs and services and describe the formal organizational structures of these divisions
within Ontario’s postsecondary sector.
We found no consistent title for the senior student affairs and services officer (SSASO) across the sample; titles ranged from Vice President, Student Services to Associate Vice Principal and Dean of Student Affairs. Despite the inconsistency of title, the reporting line was fairly consistent, with SSASOs reporting to the Provost and Vice President, Academic or directly to the President. In only a few cases, dotted line reporting structures existed between the SSASO and these senior administrators.
The portfolios for SSASOs tended to include new student orientation, student leadership programs and liaison with student government, campus involvement (clubs and organization recognition), community development (service learning and civic engagement initiatives), counselling services, health services, accessibility services (also called services for students
with disabilities), career and employment services (and in some cases, cooperative education), academic skills or learning services, and services for diverse students (such as Aboriginal student services, international student services, women centres, and mature student centres). Portfolios differed in terms of whether the registrar’s office and related enrolment management functions, residence, and athletics were included within the SSASO's portfolio. In general, we found the college SSASO’s portfolios to be more expansive than the portfolios of the university SSASOs.
The second aim of this study was to share the voices of the staff who work in student affairs and services divisions across Ontario. Staff shared their perspectives regarding the organizational structure of their institution and how they perceived these organizational structures as helping or hindering their ability to support student success. Staff depicted and described two types of images that correspond with how they perceived the organizational structure of their institution. Spider webs tended to represent institutions where the staff perceived the organizational culture as one where supporting student success was a shared commitment between staff and faculty; where the SSASO's leadership style was directed toward finding the synergy between divisional areas, open to ideas from all areas within the division, and advocated for the division in senior administrative meetings; and where staff understood the vision and mission of the division as it supported and contributed to the institutional mission. Silos tended to represent institutions 4 – Supporting Student Success: The Role of Student Services within Ontarios Postsecondary Institutions where the staff perceived the organizational culture as one in which people worked in their discrete units and were less committed to a shared focus on supporting student success; where the SSASO's leadership style managed departments within the division more as discrete units, less open to ideas from across the division, and with greater hesitation in advocating for the division in senior administrative meetings; and where staff were less clear about how the vision and mission of the division supported and contributed to the institutional mission.
This imagery was powerful in that it spoke to two different approaches to organizational structure: one was student-focused and the other was institution-focused. Student-focused structures were those that aligned organizational structures (proximal location of departments, sub-unit reporting portfolios, policies and protocols) with the student in mind. Institution-focused
structures were those that focused on the organization of the institution’s business first, and appeared to value it over how students would encounter the institution as they worked through successful completion of their program of study. The spider web and silo imagery and their relation to the student-focused and institutional focused approaches to structure appeared irrespective of the actual organizational structure of the institution. Institutions were typically centralized, decentralized, or federated (a combination of the two former models). A centralized structure tended to have the various units within the division (health and counselling, residence, registrar, and athletics, for example) headed by a director or manager reporting to the SSASO, and providing programs and services for the institution as a whole. Conversely, a decentralized structure was one in which programs and services were managed and provided for within multiple institutional units, typically within the faculties. Finally, the federated structure (or hub and spoke model) was found at institutions in which programs and services existed with some level of centralization, and customized versions of these central services also existed at typically the individual faculty level. A critical finding from this study was that student-focused or institution-focused approaches to organizational
structure could be illustrated by any of the three actual structures (centralized, decentralized, or federated). It is as possible to have a student-focused approach with a federated SAS structure as it is to have an institution-focused approach with a centralized SAS structure.
The workshops explored questions like: What are the attributes of a choice employer? What are Generation Y’s values and expectations when it comes to work and the workplace? What is the impact of these values in an organizational setting? How has
the conception of work evolved? How can employers attract and retain young workers?
Ensuring access to postsecondary education (PSE) for all qualified individuals is key to Ontario’s future competitiveness and equally critical from an equity perspective. This paper provides an empirical analysis of access to PSE among a number of under-represented (and minority) groups in Ontario, including comparisons to other regions. Having parents that did
not attend PSE is the most important factor across the country, and the effects are even greater in Ontario than in some other regions. Being from a low-income household is considerably less important than parental education, and the income effects are even smaller in Ontario than in certain other regions. Aboriginal and disabled youth are also strongly under-represented groups in PSE in Ontario, driven entirely by their lower university participation rates, offset to different degrees by higher college participation rates . Rural students are also significantly under-represented (though to a lesser degree) in university, but again go to college at somewhat higher rates. Furthermore, for these latter groups, Ontario does not compare favourably to other regions. The children of immigrants are much more likely to go to university but somewhat less likely to attend college almost everywhere.
Being from a single parent family has little independent effect on access to PSE, as is also the case for being a Francophone outside of Quebec, the latter effect in some cases actually being positive. Intriguingly, although females generally have significantly higher PSE (especially university) attendance rates than males, females in under-represented groups are generally more disadvantaged than males. This research was funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), which also provided useful feedback throughout the project. This work is based on earlier research carried out for the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation through the MESA project, including a series of papers involving Richard Mueller. The authors gratefully acknowledge the ongoing support provided for the MESA project by the University of Ottawa.
It is often the case that research questions in education involve units of analysis that can be naturally grouped or placed within hierarchical or multilevel configurations. This type of grouping is referred to as nesting. It results in the exposure of the lowest-level units of analysis to common environments that are likely to impact their behaviors, outcomes, or levels of performance. These lowest-level units are commonly referred to as level-1 units. Typical examples of these units are students nested within classrooms. Classrooms are the nesting structure, constituting a second-level unit or level-2 unit. Following this rationale, researchers could further model level-3 units consisting of classrooms (comprised of students) nested within schools. Notably, this logic can be further expanded to higher order levels. The successful identification of units situated at different levels prompted the development of techniques designed to model this phenomenon. These techniques are known as multilevel modeling.
A 2015 survey of American college students examined classroom learning distractions caused by the use of digital devices for non-class pur-poses. The purpose of the study was to learn more about Millennial Generation students’ behaviors and perceptions regarding their class-room uses of digital devices for non-class pur-poses. The survey included 675 respondents in 26 states. Respondents spent an average of 20.9% of class time using a digital device for non-class purposes. The average respondent used a digital device 11.43 times for non-class purposes during a typical school day in 2015 compared to 10.93 times in 2013. A significant feature of the study was its measurement of frequency and duration of students’ classroom digital distractions as well as respondents’ motivations for engaging in the distracting behavior.
Project Background
In 2008, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) issued an open Request for Proposals (RFP) to Ontario colleges and universities that would allow them to evaluate interventions that already existed at those institutions and that were designed to promote student success in various ways. Brock University was involved in a total of four research projects that were approved for funding at that time, including this project. This research project also has the distinction of being the only one in the RFP which involved a re-examination of institutional financial aid policies.
Project Purpose
Institutional financial aid applications ask a wide range of questions dealing with both the personal and financial history of the student and his/her family. This process can take a significant amount of the student’s time, and may even intimidate some. Moreover, the level of financial detail required in the application may be a deterrent to students who might be either embarrassed to disclose family details, or uncomfortable asking their parents about the financial situation of their family.
It is believed that the complex and potentially discouraging application process that exists at many postsecondary institutions (and many government financial aid programs) can be simplified by including fewer fields in the application for funding. This would benefit both student applicants and institutional administrators, and could likely be done without significantly altering
the output that would have been generated using the original full application.
The purpose of this project is to compare two approaches to calculating student financial assessed need for the purposes of determining eligibility for the Brock University Entering Student Bursary. The research question being addressed in this project is whether a simplified approach to calculating assessed need would lead to similar outcomes in terms of identifying
eligibility for the Entering Student Bursary as the original application process that had been in place for years at Brock University.
The conventional pathway model in postsecondary education (PSE) has traditionally been one of simple, linear choices, where enrolment after secondary school in either college or university ultimately leads to the attainment of a credential and entry into the labour force. Today, however, PSE pathways are no longer as direct. Fewer students are entering PSE programs directly from high school (Bayard and Greenlee, 2009: 11) and students are more likely to have previous PSE experience or to attain multiple credentials than students in the past (Boothby and Drewes, 2006: 6; Bayard and Greenlee, 2009: 11; Colleges Ontario (CO), 2009). Students are opting to alternate between part- and full-time studies, switch programs, return to PSE after an
absence or time in the workforce, pursue further credentials, or transfer between postsecondary institutions and even sectors.
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.
Shifting from an emphasis on teaching to learning is a complex task for both teachers and students. This paper reports on a qualitative study of teachers in a nurse specialist education programme meeting this shift in a distance education course. The study aimed to gain a better understanding of the teacher-student relationship by addressing research questions in relation to the students' role, the learning process, and the assessment process. A didactical design comprising three phases focusing on distinct learning outcomes for the course was adopted. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with teachers and were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. The results indicate a shift towards a problematising and holistic approach to teaching, learning, and assessment. This shift highlighted a teacher-student relationship with a shared responsibility in the orchestration of the learning experience. The overall picture outlines a distance education experience of process-based assessment characterised by the imposition of teachers’ rules and a lack of creativity due to the limited role of ICT merely as a container of content.
Keywords: Distance education; higher education; e-learning
It’s 4 a.m. in Alaska — not a time when you expect many people, much less teenagers, to be awake. Yet, about 100 eager sophomore world history students are gathered in three high schools spread across the Kenai Peninsula on Alaska’s southern edge, excitedly looking at video screens mounted on their classroom walls. The teens are here to connect with students from the Arab Minority school in Nazareth, Israel. They are joined by students in schools in Louisiana and South Dakota.
For an hour, a moderator in Manhattan bounces the conversation back and forth, pinging questions from school to school as the students get to know a little more about each other and the different — and similar — worlds in which they live.
”It was so cool,” says Emily Evans, a 16-year-old in Greg Zorbas’ world history class at Kenai Central High School. The students from Israel ”thought so highly of us because we were from America.”
Now, says Evans, when the Middle East is a topic in school, ”it’s a lot more interesting. Before it was just, we’re reading a book on it and it’s not very real to us. But it’s real and you can see them and talk to them and see firsthand how it is. Now I pay more attention in history class.”
The videoconferencing session Evans and the other students experienced is the type of video communication that is becoming more common in education at all levels around the world, as the walls between classrooms disappear. This Center for Digital Education white paper shows how video collaboration is an essential part of the K-20 education environment that enables cost savings, engages students and creates a more productive learning experience. It prepares students with the skills to thrive in a future workforce that will depend on video collaboration technologies. Indeed, today’s video collaboration is rapidly moving from a ”nice to have” classroom enhancement to a ”must have” necessity.
The Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO)’s Third Annual Review and Research Plan provides a comprehensive evaluation of the postsecondary education (PSE) system in Ontario. In doing so, it contributes to a discussion on a new PSE strategy for the province following the completion of Reaching Higher: The McGuinty Government Plan for Postsecondary Education (Reaching Higher) initiated in 2005. This is a critical juncture in PSE; Reaching Higher ends this fiscal year, as do the current tuition framework and the Multi-Year Accountability Agreements (MYAAs) with postsecondary institutions. Successor strategies must address a new set of priorities and a new economic reality. Reaching Higher was generally well received by the PSE sector and by the public, and much progress has been made in realizing the stated objectives in the plan.
The Third Annual Review and Research Plan recommends that a new PSE strategy should build directly on Reaching Higher. To this end, it proposes a reformulation of PSE objectives to give emphasis to meeting human capital needs, improving accessibility
and educational quality, and stimulating research and innovation.
Writing assignments, particularly for first- and second-year college students, are probably one of those items in the syllabus that some professors dread almost as much as their students do. Yet despite the fact that essays, research papers, and other types of writing assignments are time consuming and, at times, frustrating to grade, they also are vital to furthering student learning.
Of course part of the frustration comes when professors believe that students should arrive on campus knowing how to write research papers. Many do not. With as much content as professors have to cover, many feel they simply can’t take time to teach the research skills required to write a quality, college-level term paper. But as teaching professors who support the writing across the curriculum movement would tell you, improving students’ writing skills is everyone’s business, and carries with
it many short- and long-term benefits for teachers and students alike. Further, many instructors are finding ways to add relevance to writing assignments by aligning them with the type of writing required in a specific profession as an alternative to the traditional, semester-long research paper.
This special report was created to provide instructors with fresh perspectives and proven strategies for designing more effective writing assignments. It features 11 articles from The Teaching Professor, including:
• Revising the Freshman Research Assignment
• Writing an Analytical Paper in Chunks
• Designing Assignments to Minimize Cyber-Cheating
• Chapter Essays as a Teaching Tool
• Writing (Even a Little Bit) Facilitates Learning
• How to Conduct a ‘Paper Slam’
While not every approach discussed in this special report will work for every course, every
time, I invite you to identify a few that look appropriate for your courses, and implement
them next semester. You just might be surprised by the results.
Maryellen Weimer
Editor
The Teaching Professor
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.
The exploration of study orchestrations emphasises students’ active participation in learning, describing the ways in which they marshal the resources available to them in response to their learning environment. This study reports the identification of study orchestrations in a group of distance students and identifies the existence of dissonant study orchestrations, which previous research has linked with poor achievement, in approximately one-fifth of the group. Data came from responses by 176 students to the ASSIST questionnaire. The data was subject to factor analysis to ensure commensurability with previous studies, and then cluster analysis was used to identify groups with similar study orchestrations. Four clusters were identified. One of these was clearly dissonant, pointing toward problematic links between learning environments and student approaches to study. The implications of dissonant study orchestrations are explored and further research is suggested, along with implications for the practice of distance educators.
Keywords: Approaches to study; study orchestrations; metacognition; higher education
ABSTRACT
Community college systems were established across North America from the early 1960s through the early 1970s. The new systems had two principal models: in one model, the college combined lower-division, university-level general education with technical education programs; in the other, most or all of the colleges were intended to concentrate on technical education. Ontario was the largest of the provinces and states in North America that opted for the second model. Many of the issues that planners confronted when designing these college systems have either persisted or re-emerged in recent years. This
article re-examines the debate on the design of Ontario’s colleges that took place when they were founded and considers its implications for the present.
RÉSUMÉ
Depuis le début des années 1960 et jusqu’au début des années 1970, lorsqu’on créait des réseaux de collèges communautaires partout en Amérique du Nord, deux modèles majeurs étaient proposés pour ces nouveaux réseaux. Dans un des modèles, le collège combinait l’enseignement général universitaire de division inférieure avec les programmes d’enseignement technique ; dans l’autre, la plupart des collèges, sinon tous, se concentraient sur l’enseignement technique. L’Ontario était la plus importante parmi les provinces et les États en Amérique du Nord qui ait opté pour le deuxième modèle. Beaucoup des défis auxquels les planifi cateurs ont été confrontés lorsqu’ils ont conçu le réseau des collèges sont encore présents ou sont réapparus au cours des dernières années. Cet article réexamine l’ancien débat sur la conception des collèges de l’Ontario et considère ses implications actuelles.
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.
I. Introduction
Entering a (first) postsecondary education (PSE) program represents a critical transition in a person’s life, but it is just the beginning of a whole new set of dynamics that can take many different forms. Some students continue in their programs until graduation, proceeding at faster or slower rates. Others switch to another program at the same institution, at an institution of the same kind (college or university) or at a different level of study. Still others abandon their studies, some to return at a later date.
Those who persist in their initial programs directly through to graduation could be considered cases where the system has successfully helped students realize their PSE aspirations and then move into the labour market, go on to further schooling or pursue other life goals. In short, they could be considered student “success” stories as far as the PSE system is concerned.
Those who obtain a diploma/degree after moving across different programs, institutions or levels of study
– perhaps with a break in their studies along the way – may have taken, to some extent, a wasteful diversion on the path to their preferred postsecondary credential. This may result from an initially flawed program choice or a PSE system that has somehow not served these students as well as it could have.
However, such pathways could also represent the student’s acquisition of necessary learning about different programs and the careers they lead to, or they could reflect developments in the student’s personal life apart from his or her schooling, or they may result from an individual’s change of plans. In at least some of these cases, the postsecondary system and the postsecondary institutions with which the individual was involved may have performed as well as could be expected despite the time required and the circuitous pathway that the student took to complete the program. Finally, although individuals who fail to complete their postsecondary studies may be regarded as being part of a system that is not working as it should, such pathways may again represent necessary learning experiences or be related to personal factors that have little to do with the PSE system. In fact, the system may have performed as well as could be expected, including providing an initial opportunity for the individual to pursue or explore their PSE ambitions.
Underlying many of these dynamics are policy issues relating to ways in which these pathways and outcomes could be improved. Could better information provided in more effective ways help students make more informed and appropriate program choices at an earlier point during their studies? In the case of students who struggle in their PSE studies, could certain interventions help these individuals or targeted groups of students overcome those challenges and complete their programs in a more timely fashion? Are there means of reducing the need for some students to take breaks from their studies or are such pauses a necessary part of the PSE experience for at least some individuals? Answering such questions, and developing the appropriate policy response, could potentially result in more satisfied students, reduced costs for the PSE system and higher graduation rates. Before addressing these issues, however, more information on PSE pathways is needed, including program retention, drop-out and completion rates and student transfers within, between and across programs, institutions and levels of study.
The general objective of this report is to provide new and unique empirical evidence concerning the patterns of “persistence” (or what is sometimes alternatively referred to as “retention,” especially when viewed from the perspective of individual institutions), as well as educational pathways more generally, of PSE students in Ontario. We present an analysis of the frequency of various trajectories and graduation rates and use both descriptive statistics and econometric modelling to show how pathways and outcomes vary by students’ individual characteristics, family background and educational outcomes at the high school and PSE levels.1 Throughout, the focus is on Ontario, but comparisons are made with the rest of Canada.
When viewed holistically, Canada lacks a clear and common understanding of the future directions and top priorities of its post-secondary education (PSE) sector. Perhaps as a result, Canada has not yet comprehensively addressed a fundamental question: How do we demonstrate quality in PSE? To answer this question requires clarification of many issues, including the roles that various institutions and sectors play. It also requires the development of a shared vision of PSE, of what can and should be achieved. Despite much discussion among leaders of various education sectors in Canada, an agreement on a plan of action has yet to be reached. Indeed, a national dialogue on this critical issue is needed.
As a starting point for a national dialogue, the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) has published three annual reports on the state of post-secondary education in Canada over the last four years. These reports provided an overview of the Canadian PSE landscape while highlighting various issues common among education jurisdictions and institutions. For instance, CCL’s 2006 report, Canadian Post-secondary Education: A Positive Record―– An Uncertain Future, identified eight goals common among the post-secondary strategies of provinces and territories. One of these common goals was addressing the issue of quality in PSE.
CCL’s new monograph series, Challenges in Canadian Post-secondary