Billboards and yard signs throughout Grand Rapids, Mich., tell students to “Strive for Less Than Five Days Absent.” Leader boards inside school buildings display attendance by grade level. Students who miss too many days are contacted by school personnel and offered support. Since the district began a focused campaign three years ago, chronic absenteeism has dropped from 36 percent to 23 percent. “It is something every community looking at their data can dig into. It’s very actionable,” says Mel Atkins II, the executive director of community and student affairs for the Grand Rapids public school system.
Stupid.
This word was spoken triumphantly and repeatedly as self-speak by a talented pre-service, k-12 special education teacher during my course Library Resources for Children. Until I heard her say it several times through the semester, I hadn’t seen how one word can hold an entire teaching philosophy. I hadn’t considered how the power of that word multiplies when it takes
the form of self-speak. I hadn’t realized how much it scared me to think that that word might follow her into a k-12 classroom.
When I learned that my own teaching philosophy existed on the pinhead of a single word whenever I’ve thought it at myself, I needed to send this email to that amazing up-and-coming teacher:
When I first moved from being a contingent faculty member to a staff position in the faculty-development office, a few of my friends who were comfortably positioned in tenure-track jobs not-so-jokingly accused me of “becoming part of the problem” or
“crossing over to the Dark Side” of academe. I was, in their eyes, emblematic of the dreaded administrative bloat that was taking over the university, siphoning money away from the classroom and into the pockets of largely useless (in their eyes) administrative
offices.
The rapid turnover of technology and ever expanding network of data and information which underpin the knowledge economy have led to a reevaluation of the importance of knowledge to the economic process. Economists now conclude that human capital - the ideas, skills, and expertise of people - is a fundamental driver of economic growth. Demand for employees that possess a mix of both “hard” and “soft” skills is rising as companies respond to intensified global economic competition.
Abstract
At one of Ontario’s largest universities, the University of Ottawa, course evaluations involve about 6,000 course sections and over 43,000 students every year. This paper-based format requires over 1,000,000 sheets of paper, 20,000 envelopes, and the support of dozens of administrative staff members. To examine the impact of a shift to an online system for the evaluation of courses, the following study sought to compare participation rates and evaluation scores of an online and paper-based course evaluation system. Results from a pilot group of 10,417 students registered in 318 courses suggest an average decrease in participation rate of 12–15% when using an online system. No significant differences in evaluation scores were observed. Instructors and students alike shared positive reviews about the online system; however, they suggested that an inclass period be maintained for the electronic completion of course evaluations.
The Winter/Spring 2016 issue of Peer Review highlights the powerful impact ‘transparency’ can have on learning for all students. One aspect of transparency is making obvious the intellectual practices involved in completing and evaluating a learning task. But making these processes visible for students is more easily said than done; we are experts in our fields for
the very reasons that our thinking and evaluating are automatic and subconscious. It’s hard to describe exactly what we do intellectually when we synthesize or integrate, critique, or create. Similarly, it’s difficult to articulate the differences between an assignment we score as an A and one to which we give a B. Thus, a challenge in achieving transparency is developing a
deep awareness of our own processes. Only then can we explicitly teach those thinking processes.
This exercise is key to enabling positive mindsets.
We are in a large classroom. There are at least 20 graduate students ranging in disciplines from engineering to health promotion to gender studies. The room is silent – you could hear a pin drop as each student stands at their own table, intently staring at the large flipchart paper covering it, a stack of colored markers adjacent. The graduate students move erratically –
periods of stillness are followed by bursts of furious writing and drawing. Someone peeking into the room might assume an exam is in progress as the room is quiet yet filled with intensity.
But no – this is reflective mapping.
Reflective mapping is a tool used at Simon Fraser University in the APEX workshop series to help graduate students recognize and gain confidence in their skillsets and experience. APEX was developed in 2013 as a partnership between SFU’s graduate studies unit & SFU’s career services unit. We intentionally created a program that infused constructivist notions of career to
help graduate students engage in self-discovery of their careers over time. A foundational piece is the reflective mapping activity where students engage in making sense of their career experiences, their interests, and their future goals.
How should colleges cater to professors nearing retirement? With 10,000 Americans turning 65 each day the population of tenured faculty is growing older—at some prestigious universities, one in three academics are 60 or older.[1] Between 1995 and 2015, the number of post-secondary aged 65 or older tripled, shooting from 4.4 percent to 11.6 percent according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (figures include teachers at trade schools as well as colleges).[2] This demographic shift may allow universities to retain the deep knowledge base of older faculty, but also open up a wealth of questions: about the need for adequate positions for younger faculty;[3] and about planning for this older cohort as they edge towards retirement.[
Two trends in the evolution of quality assurance in Canadian postsecondary education have been the emergence of outcomes-
based quality standards and the demand for balancing accountability and improvement. Using a realist, process-based
approach to impact analysis, this study examined four quality assurance events at two universities and two colleges in Ontario
to identify how system-wide quality assurance policies have impacted the curriculum development process of academic programs
within postsecondary institutions. The study revealed different approaches that postsecondary institutions chose to use in response to quality assurance policies and the mechanisms that may account for different experiences. These mechanisms
include endeavours to balance accountability and continuous improvement, leadership support, and the emerging quality assurance function of teaching and learning centres. These findings will help address the challenges in quality assurance policy
implementation within Canadian postsecondary education and enrich international discussions on the accountability-improvement dichotomy in the context of quality assurance.
Keywords: internal quality assurance, external quality assurance, accountability, continuous improvement, learning outcomes
Exactly two years ago, Liz Morrish had the unenviable task of explaining to a group of undergraduates why their favourite lecturer could no longer teach them.
There was no question of resorting to half-truths. Her absent colleague, who was on sick leave for stress, had briefed Morrish to talk about the relentless pressure on academic staff at universities.
“I told the students that there are research expectations – including things like ‘grant capture’ – with very low probabilities and yet real consequences for scholars who don’t meet them for whatever reason,” she recalls. “That’s not to mention other expectations like teaching load, marking and the rapidity of feedback,” she adds.
The students were “horrified” to learn that the work of lecturers was being judged by what Morrish calls “a totalising and de-contextualised set of metrics”, which made academics feel more like “players in some academic version of The Hunger Games , where capricious gamemakers change the rules all the time”.
As a former university professor, and as a historian of higher education, I’m gratified (mostly) by the vigilant defence of academic freedom proffered by journalists and others in the wake of the Andrew Potter episode at McGill University. Academics who speak or write controversially should be protected, not sanctioned.
Still, there is too little understanding of what academic freedom means. It is not absolute and it is not the simple equivalent of “freedom of speech.” All citizens have, or should have, the latter, but only individuals who have specified educational and professional qualifications are entitled to academic freedom within universities. In the words of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), they are granted the “freedom to teach and discuss; freedom to carry out research and disseminate and publish the results thereof; freedom to produce and perform creative works; freedom to engage in service to the institution and the community; freedom to express one’s opinion about the institution, its administration, and the system in which one works.”
In this study, we explored experiences of Ontario students who engaged in a university-to-college (UTC) transfer. Data was
collected through qualitative interviews with 20 participants who began their post-secondary journey in a university program
but left before completing it and subsequently pursued a college program. We focused on motivations for transfer, the decision-
making process, and participants’ reflections on their decision to transfer. Framing the transfer decision within a model of
educational decision-making that draws on Rational Action Theory (RAT) and Bourdieu’s habitus, we argue that motivations
for leaving university were distinct from, though related to, motivations for pursuing college. Reasons for leaving university
were clustered around three themes: academic struggles, mental/physical health/special education need struggles, and future
prospects. These were highly interconnected and characterized by difficulties, from mild to severe, coping with university.
Motivations for pursuing college were more practical, relating to subject interest, college learning environment, location, and
future prospects. Both decision processes showed evidence of rational cost-benefit analysis characteristic of RAT, but within
a framework of habitus-influenced ideas about success and identity. While most participants reflected positively on their
decision to transfer, there were some negative reflections related to a sense of personal failure and/or the negative reactions
of others, particularly parents. Personal and external negative reflections were tied to cultural and societal expectations about
high achievement and perceptions of university education as superior to college education, again showing the influence of
habitus. We conclude with policy recommendations.
Keywords: post-secondary education, post-secondary transfer, Ontario, education policy
In August, a report by Rand Europe confirmed what many had long suspected: that academics face a greater mental
health risk than the population at large. About two in five scholars have common mental health disorders, such as
depression or stress-related problems. Among the reasons behind this, the report, which was commissioned by the
Royal Society and the Wellcome Trust, identified environmental risk factors such as heavy workloads and lack of job
security and management support. But is there anything that academics themselves could do to boost their wellbeing?
Here, scholars from disciplines ranging from philosophy to neuroscience share their insights into how the
search for happiness should be conducted – if it should be conducted at all
The classroom is a non-stop hub of feedback: test grades, assignment scores, paper comments, peer review, individual conferences, nonverbal cues, and more. Feedback is essential for student learning.
Still, students’ ability to process and use feedback varies widely. We have some students who eagerly accept feedback or carefully apply rough draft comments, while many others dread or dismiss their professors’ notes or reject exam grades as “unfair.” Although feedback is integral to our classrooms and work spaces, we often forget to teach students how to manage it.
“Write an initial post and then reply to two of your classmates.” These are the standard requirements for students participating in online course discussions. Discussions in an online course play a vital role in creating substantive interactions, aiming to capture the spirit of discourse in face-to-face settings. This, however, can look and feel like busy work, making the purpose of online discussions unclear to students.
The standard blueprint is safe but has been exhausted. “Initial posts” can be counterintuitive—in essence, they require students to complete small writing assignments individually before giving other students feedback on their work (Liberman, 2019). How can we think outside of the box of posting and replying when it comes to these discussions? One way is to use online discussions as an opportunity to promote student autonomy and ask students to be active participants not only in how they respond to class discussions, but how they initiate them. Here are five considerations for promoting student autonomy while also
breaking the online discussion mold:
What exactly was the extent of Russian meddling in the 2016 election campaign? How widespread was its infiltration of social media? And how much influence did its propaganda have on public opinion and voter behavior?
Take a recent example: Jonathan Albright, a researcher at Columbia University, looked into a number of Russia-bought pages that Facebook had taken down. He concluded that they had amassed potentially hundreds of millions of views. David Karpf, an associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, wasn’t convinced, arguing that most of the "people" who had liked these pages were very likely Russian bots. (Full disclosure: I commissioned and edited Karpf’s post on The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog.)
Last week, a student named Mary visited me during my office hours and presented me with an interesting dilemma. In one of her classes, a professor had distributed a study guide with a series of questions to help the students prepare for an upcoming exam. Mary, being the millennial student that she is, decided to upload the study guide into Google Docs and invite the rest of the class to contribute to the document. Students answered the study guide questions from each of their individual notes and then refined the answers from their peers.
In Prime Minister Trudeau’s mandate letter to the Ministry of Canadian Heritage, copyright policy received not a single mention. The mandate letter, which sets out the ministry’s main agenda, contains extensive directives to establish programs and artists’ subsidies, but none to the fundamental rights on which the arts rely.
Yet, as demonstrated by the ministerial briefing book (prepared to inform incoming ministers of active issues in their
portfolios), many important copyright issues are outstanding, including implementation of treaties, Internet piracy, the
2017 review of the Copyright Act, extending the term of protection for copyright-protected works, and the efficiency of
copyright collectives. Perhaps most urgent, and instructive, is another issue mentioned in the briefing book:
copyright clearance by educational institutions. In this case, bad law is destroying an entire industry.
As the number of faculty members whose position lies outside the tenure system continues to rise at American universities, college deans, department chairs and program directors must consider how to support the careers of these colleagues. The differences that commonly exist between the opportunities available to tenure-system faculty and those offered to other academics can be a recurring source of friction. That not only erodes unit cohesion and climate, but it may also impede efforts to retain valued long-term employees who are not in the tenure system.
Since the configurations and names of these people and positions vary widely across disciplines and institutions, I will denote them collectively as “academic staff.” At Michigan State University, we have several categories of faculty members who work outside the tenure system -- including outside professionals in business, law, medicine or media who teach an occasional career-oriented course in their specialty; instructors with full teaching loads and short-term contracts; and individuals with a mix of teaching, advising or other duties who have long-term appointments. As a dean, I have seen that as my college hires more faculty members outside the tenure system, identifying ways to support such academic staff professionally is an increasingly common topic of conversation. And as an associate provost, as well, charged with advancing the careers of all MSU faculty and academic staff, I am finding support for academics outside the tenure system to be an area of institutional concern.
he postelection climate has heightened concerns about managing incivility in instructional settings and society as a hole. In October, I wrote an essay for Inside Higher Ed that explored how understanding what constitutes lassroom incivility can help faculty members minimize its dangers while maximizing the teaching and learning pportunities it presents. In this article, I will describe how, in order to deal with the challenges that incivility poses, aculty members must move beyond seeking solutions to every case of incivility they might encounter -- an mpossible task. Instead, we must consider the contexts and larger forces driving civility issues in higher education. uch a macro-level approach can help faculty members understand incivility better and thereby manage it moreeffectively.