Last month , I opened up about one of the side effects of doctoral study that I hadn’t anticipated: the Ph.D. identity crisis.
With the date of my dissertation defense looming in four months, I’d begun to realize that I couldn’t answer two rather important questions:
Who am I outside of "Ph.D. Candidate"?
What do I want out of life and this degree?
When students are unable to comply with some aspect of an academic task (e.g. due date, assignment length, quality of work), there is potential for them to communicate reasons as to why they were unable to complete the task to their instructor. At this point the students have a choice, in which case they can either provide legitimate reasons for not being able to complete or to submit their coursework, or they can communicate something which is a deliberate attempt to deceive the instructor. A student may communicate information designed to deceive or construct a fraudulent claim to an instructor in order to avoid the undesirable consequences (e.g. a bad grade that may hurt the student’s overall standing in a class) of not complying with the academic task.
Roig and Caso (2005) found that the frequency of which providing fraudulent claims occurs in an academic environment is approximately equal to, if not greater than, more commonly identified forms of academic dishonesty such as cheating and plagiarism.
Ferrari et al. (1998) indicated that fraudulent claim making was utilized by as many as 70% of American college students. However, this phenomenon has received limited empirical attention in recent time in comparison to other forms of academically
dishonest behavior.
The robots are coming. Future-gazers have been making that prediction at least since Alan Turing speculated in 1950 about the possibility of a machine that could fool an interlocutor into believing that they were talking to another person.
But the imminent arrival on our roads of self-driving cars (see the article “How do we decide what is right? The ethicist’s view”, below) has brought home to many people that the kinds of artificially intelligent machines long imagined by science fiction writers and visionary scientists
are finally being realised.
Every developed country is racing to keep up with profound and fundamental changes in the 21st century. The new knowledge economy is creating unprecedented demands for higher levels of expertise and skills, while, at the same time, changing demographics will significantly reduce the numbers of qualified people available in the economy.
The cumulative impact presents great opportunities and great challenges to Ontario.
A monumental shift is steadily occurring in America’s workforce, as an ever-increasing percentage of jobs require some form of postsecondary education and training. In the Recovery 2020 report, Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce projects that by 2020, 65 percent of all jobs will require some form of postsecondary education. However, this may be a conservative estimate, according to the center, considering that of the 11.6 million jobs created in the 2010 to 2016 recovery, 11.5 million of them, or 99 percent, were filled by workers with postsecondary training.
While higher education has seen a plethora of initiatives designed to increase educational attainment and alternative delivery methods intended to expand educational opportunities, large numbers of students still do not have access to higher education while still in high school. In particular, offering academically advanced high school students the chance to take college courses (dual enrollment) is widely seen as a way to help them make better use of their senior year. And even less advanced students can participate in dual enrollment courses with support, through approaches such as the Early College model.
The interest inventory is a simple tool to help you acquaint yourself with your students. Unlike the many icebreakers, the interest inventory is a paper-based activity and students do not have to give answers aloud in front of class. The interest inventory, therefore, helps you get to know your students privately and allows you to ask different questions than you would during
oral introductions.
What messages do our students receive from their parents, their high school teachers, their older peers, and siblings before they enter college? When I ask my first-year students the answers are, “Now you are on your own,” or “No one will help you when you are in college!” and “You are responsible for your own work.”
Notice something here? All these messages focus on the individual’s sole responsibility to succeed in college without the help of others. You are independent now.
Background/Context: With a growing body of evidence to support the assertion that teacher quality is vital to producing better student outcomes, policymakers continue to seek solutions to attract and retain the best educators. Performance based pay is a reform that has become popular in K–12 education over the last decade. This strategy potentially produces positive impacts on student achievement in two ways: better alignment of financial incentives with desired outcomes and improved the composition of the teacher workforce. While evaluations have primarily focused on the former result, there is little research on whether the
longer term implementation of these polices can attract more effective teachers.
Fifty-three years ago, a Progressive Conservative education minister unleashed what is still the most significant transformation of higher education in Ontario. Bill Davis pushed legislation to create the community college system, which diversified the provision of education and training and laid the foundation for the dramatic expansion of postsecondary access that has
made Ontario a leader in educational attainment internationally.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his cabinet were sworn in on Friday, June 29, and many in the higher education community are wondering what this new government will bring to the sector. Wherever they fall in the political spectrum, however, no one is holding their breath in anticipation of big ideas or transformative change.
Here in Ontario, we’re preparing students to make their mark on the world.
That’s not an exaggeration. Ontario’s colleges and universities produce talented, driven and innovative thinkers. These leaders go on to find success in global health, international trade, cross-border research partnerships and so much more. They then come back to Ontario, creating businesses and investing in the community that gave them their start. That’s the kind of future we want for more people in Ontario, and there’s no reason that a competitive, international edge can’t start earlier in one’s career.
Most graduate students and postdocs know they should give serious thought to their next career steps, but they aren’t sure how to navigate the career exploration process. After all, for those with doctoral training, there are a dizzying array of possible career “destinations” both inside and outside academe. Collecting information about even a few of those options can quickly become overwhelming and hard to sustain along with your current job.
The University of Guelph (U of G) is committed to creating a campus founded on the principles of equity and inclusion. As part of this commitment, the University has undertaken a review of salary equity among the faculty, with a particular focus on gender equity. In addition to gender equity, U of G attempted to identify salaries that were unusually low compared to what could be expected based on various characteristics of faculty members. The review was overseen by the Office of the Provost, with support from the Office of Institutional Analysis and Research, the Office of Faculty and Staff Relations, and the Office of Diversity and
Human Rights.
The “talent economy,” consisting of highly skilled personnel from the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, is the linchpin of a productive society and economy. Maintaining knowledge-sharing in these fields relies on training, retaining and attracting global talent. It also requires encouraging international and inter-sectorial experiences (i.e., within academia, governments, industry and NGOs) for domestic and foreign researchers –otherwise known as “brain circulation” [PDF]. Indeed, international and intersectorial mobility should be a part of career development for scientists to become leaders in
increasingly multi- and interdisciplinary professional environments.
Understanding personal factors that contribute to university student satisfaction with life is important in order to determine how we can better prepare students for the transition to post-secondary education and support them during this transition. This study examined predictors of university student satisfaction with life, academic self-efficacy, and self-reported academic achievement
in their first year of university. First-year students (n = 66) completed selfreport measures of academic achievement, university well-being, satisfaction with life, personality, and mental health. A linear regression analysis approach was applied to the data. Results indicated that academic satisfaction and school connectedness predicted satisfaction with life but that academic
self-efficacy and college gratitude did not, conscientiousness predicted academic self-efficacy, college well-being predicted self-reported achievement, and anxiety predicted achievement but depression did not. This study highlights the importance of understanding the personal factors that influence well-being and achievement during the transition to university.
In the past few years, the business world has increasingly embraced failure. Entrepreneurs, once coy about past losses and missteps, now flaunt their failures like badges of honour. The idea of “failing upward” has become a recurring motif in blog posts, TED Talks, business conferences and self-help books – and this fetishization of failure has started to infiltrate the world of higher education.
Recent media attention has brought to light the levels of sexual harassment faced by undergraduate students, and it appears that such incidents are on the rise for graduate students, too. Most of the cases reported involve faculty members as the perpetrators, yet little attention has been given to harassment among faculty members themselves, and this is a phenomenon that also affects student learning.
“Faculty need to be equal partners in order to meet the challenges facing college education today, and to ensure that the CAATs continue to fulfill their original mandate of access, quality, and service to diverse communities. Being equal partners with college administration and the provincial government means faculty having a strong voice within the classroom, within the governance of each institution, and when setting priorities for the system as a whole.”
Students and graduates alike consider creating good jobs for young people a top priority for government. Right after affordability of post-secondary education, it is the top area they’d like government to prioritize.
The Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) is proud to release the 2018 edition of Habitats: Students in Their Municipalities. This annual publication is comprised of a series of case studies on municipal-level topics and issues affecting undergraduate students. Written by students from OUSA’s member institutions, these submissions aim to highlight both successes and challenges in municipalities across Ontario, providing insight into how students feel about issues within their communities.
This article documents the design, delivery, and evaluation of a first-year experience (FYE) course in media and communication studies. It was decided that CMNS 110: Introduction to Communication Studies would start to include elements to address a perceived and documented sense of disconnectedness among first-year students in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. These elements included coping, learning, and writing workshops facilitated by various services units across campus. We present results from surveys and focus groups conducted with students at the end of the course
and discuss the predicaments that the new realities of an accreditation and audit paradigm—under the cloak of the neoliberal university—produce. On one hand the FYE course may help students transition into a post-secondary institution; on the other hand, too much emphasis on the FYE can result in an instrumental approach to education, jeopardizing the integrity of the course.
We offer some insights into the challenges and opportunities of implementing
FYE curricula within a large classroom setting.