The idea of “productivity” in higher education is becoming a concern for some policymakers and observers of Ontario’s universities. This interest is fuelled by the province’s challenging deficit situation, which has put a premium on “doing more with less”. Productivity is featured in the Government of Ontario’s recent discussion paper, Strengthening Ontario’s Centres of Creativity, Innovation, and Knowledge, and was a prominent focus of the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities
strategic mandate agreement process.
While conditions vary across First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities, as well as urban and rural contexts, the well-being gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations is significant across most of the country. Population aging and emerging labour shortages in Canada present an opportunity for Aboriginal youth, as the fastest growing demographic, to make a significant contribution to the country’s long-term prosperity. As the Aboriginal population is projected to rise above 1.5 million by 2026, there is an urgency to act now to enable, support, and empower Aboriginal youth to achieve their potential and participate fully in Canada’s social and economic future.
This handbook is intended to serve as a resource for faculty, staff, academic leaders and educational developers engaged in program and course design/review, and the assessment of program-level learning outcomes for program improvement. The assessment of learning outcomes at the program-level can assist in making improvements to curricula, teaching and assessment plans.
In a knowledge economy, it is almost certain that those without a base level of skills will be left behind. We are seeing that now. Martin Prosperity Institute, November 2008 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. The province has an opportunity to implement meaningful and transformational changes that exploit the potential for growth in the new economy and drive Ontario’s prosperity to unprecedented levels.
But the threats to Ontario’s future are just as great. Failing to move forward now with significant measures could leave Ontario unprepared for the challenges ahead, and strand thousands of people as permanently unemployable.
All developed countries face this challenge. And the jurisdictions that are best prepared to meet these challenges recognize the solution is in their people. A highly educated population that can develop new ideas, master new technologies, and continue to innovate will be the nucleus to new growth and greater prosperity for all.
Ontario is fortunate. There is a solid foundation in place and the province is well-served by its large number of universities and colleges. Ontario has one of the highest postsecondary attainment rates in the world.
The province’s postsecondary system was also strengthened by the Ontario government’s Reaching Higher plan, which was announced in 2005 and will end this fiscal year. The investments made through Reaching Higher, along with subsequent investments in capital improvements and expansions, have helped Ontario’s colleges and universities to better serve a greater number of students.
Indeed, enrolment at Ontario’s public colleges continues to increase and the success rates among Ontario’s college graduates continue to improve.
But Ontario cannot rest on its laurels. Other jurisdictions are making significant investments in higher education and present a serious challenge to surpass the achievements made in Ontario.
Developing countries now have 94 million postsecondary students, which represents 70 per cent of the world’s total. In 2007, Bloomberg News reported that India was planning to set up 30 universities and 6,000 model schools, and was considering ways to establish a college in each of its 340 districts.
In China, the number of graduates at all levels of higher education has approximately quadrupled in the last six years. The skilled labour supply in China equals about 40 per cent of all OECD Countries.
The following research reports detail the results of programs or inventions designed to increase the retention of post-secondary students. This bibliography is intended as a sample of the recent literature on this topic, rather than an exhaustive list. For inclusion, articles or reports generally described experimental research studies of PSE retention programs. Preference was given to larger scale projects focused on colleges in jurisdictions outside of Ontario (in several cases, progress reports from ongoing, large-scale initiatives were also included). Where possible, links to the original research are provided.
ABSTRACT
Invasive alien species (IAS) cause major environmental and economic damage worldwide,and also threaten human food security and health. The impacts of IAS are expected to rise with continued globalization, land use modification, and climate change. Developing effective strategies to deal with IAS requires a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach, in which scientists work co-operatively with social scientists and policy-makers. Higher education can contribute to this process by training professionals to balance the ecological, economic, and social dimensions of the IAS problem. We examined the extent of such training in Canada by reviewing undergraduate and graduate university curricula at all 94 member nstitutions of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada for IAS content. We found that degree and diploma programs focusing on IAS issues are lacking at Canadian post-secondary institutions. Furthermore, few courses are devoted solely to IAS, and those that are typically adopt an ecological perspective. We argue that the absence of interdisciplinary university curricula on IAS in Canada negatively aff ects our ability to respond to this growing global challenge. We present several international educational programs on IAS as case studies on how to better integrate training on invasive species into university curricula in Canada.
RÉSUMÉ
Les espèces exotiques envahissantes (EEE) sont à l’origine d’importants dommages écologiques et économiques partout dans le monde, en plus de menacer la sécurité alimentaire et la santé humaine. On s’attend à ce que leurs eff ets prennent de l’ampleur devant la poursuite de la mondialisation, l’évolution de l’utilisation des sols et les changements climatiques.
L’élaboration de stratégies efficaces pour contrer les EEE exige une approche coopérative et interdisciplinaire, par laquelle des scientifiques travaillent en collaboration avec des spécialistes en sciences sociales et des esponsables de l’élaboration de politiques. L’enseignement supérieur peut y contribuer en formant des professionnels à trouver un équilibre entre les dimensions écologiques, économiques et sociales du problème des EEE. Nous avons étudié la portée d’une telle formation au Canada en révisant les programmes d’études universitaires des premier et second cycles de chacun des 94 établissements membres de l’Association des universités et collèges du Canada. Nous en avons conclu que les programmes menant à un grade ou à un diplôme et ciblant les problèmes liés aux EEE font défaut aux établissements postsecondaires canadiens. En outre, peu de cours se concentrent uniquement sur les EEE, et ceux qui le font adoptent habituellement une approche écologique. Nous faisons valoir que le manque de programmes universitaires interdisciplinaires portant sur les EEE au Canada entrave notre capacité à aff ronter ce défi mondial croissant. Nous présentons plusieurs programmes éducatifs internationaux sur les EEE, à titre d’études de cas pour mieux intégrer la formation sur les espèces envahissantes aux programmes universitaires du Canada.
Andrea L. Smith
Dawn R. Bazely
Norman D. Yan
York University
The NSSE National Data Project is an element of ongoing engagement research and implementation practice in Canada. It has two primary objectives. The first is the construction of detailed NSSE reports (items means and frequencies, benchmarks and learning scales) at the academic program- and student subgroup-level for individual institutions rather than for peer groups. The second is the development of statistical (regression) models to measure the relative contribution to engagement variation of student characteristics, program mix and institutional character at both the student record- and institution-level. Both objectives address the broader goals of providing greater focus to engagement improvement efforts, identifying clusters of promising practices and best engagement results, supporting improved interpretation and use of institutional engagement scores, and informing the development of institutional accountability procedures and metrics.
The core of the project is a record-level data file containing the approximately 69,000 2008 or 2009 NSSE responses and additional student records system data representing 44 Canadian universities. Student responses were classified into 10 general academic programs (e.g., Social Sciences) and over 75 specific academic programs (e.g., History, Biology) and over 30 student subgroups (including first generation, First Nations and international).
The detailed NSSE reports indicate a considerable level of variation in student characteristics and program mix across Canadian universities; large differences in engagement item scores and benchmarks across academic program clusters and specific programs within clusters, and across student subgroups; and wide engagement variability across institutions of differing size. A summary of the results from these detailed reports is presented below. The program- and student subgroup-level NSSE reports provide a more focused basis for comparing engagement university by university, and strongly suggest that institution-level engagement comparisons should take account of student, program and size variation and should not be presented without context in ranked format.
The regression models provide a more formal basis for identifying and quantifying the role of student, program and size variation in engagement, and permit a number of conclusions. First, student characteristics, program mix and institutional character all contribute to a comprehensive statistical explanation of engagement variation. Second, the wide variation in institutional engagement scores is reduced considerably when student characteristics, program mix and institutional size are controlled. Third, each engagement benchmark requires a distinct statistical explanation: factors important to one benchmark are often quite different from those important to another. Fourth, Francophone and Anglophone institutions differ with respect to certain key engagement dynamics. And finally, the models suggest several approaches to defining the institutional contribution to engagement and the scope of institutional potential to
modify engagement level.
A body of research has emerged during the past three decades focusing on how students engage in the schooling process and the broader positive developmental outcomes as-sociated with high levels of engagement and lower involvement in high-risk behaviors. This chapter suggests that gratitude might offer a unique contribution for understand-ing how affective engagement and positive relationships could enhance student school bonding and thereby student social-emotional and academic outcomes.
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.
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.
Just as the roles and goals of postsecondary institutions have changed over the past few decades, so have the operations and priorities of their teaching and learning centres. These centres first emerged in Canada during the late 1960s and early 1970s, accompanying the rise of student activism and the demand for higher quality teaching. Through teaching and learning centres, institutions hoped to consolidate, expand, and promote professional development programs for college and university faculty, and increasingly for graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants. Most Ontario universities and colleges now have teaching and learning centres; in fact, during the past year alone, five universities and several colleges joined the growing list of Ontario postsecondary institutions that have launched, enhanced, or reorganized their teaching and learning centres and services (Miles & Polovina-Vukovic, forthcoming).
On March 30, 2011, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) hosted a one day workshop attended by several dozen invited experts from Ontario postsecondary institutions to explore the continuing evolution of – and the challenges and opportunities facing – college and university teaching and learning centres.
This paper is intended for members of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) community, college and university faculty and administrators, government officials, students, and concerned parents, along with other postsecondary stakeholders. The objective is to summarize and expand upon the presentations and discussions that took place at HEQCO’s workshop in order to provide a background and context for the evolving role and impact of teaching and learning centres within Ontario postsecondary institutions, and to suggest options and opportunities for future practice. This report is divided into five sections: following this brief introduction, the first section provides a background portrait of the context for teaching and learning centres and educational development in Ontario’s postsecondary sector. The following three sections reflect the discussions that took place at the HEQCO workshop, and are divided into the same three broad themes that animated the discussions there:
1. Responsibilities, Pressures, and Strategies
2. Assessing Impact
3. New Ideas
The concluding section provides some suggestions and recommendations in regards to what needs to be done “Going Forward” when it comes to Ontario’s expanding network of college and university teaching and learning centres, and the growing emphasis on teaching and learning quality in the province’s postsecondary sector.
@ Issue Paper No. 12 – Teaching and Learning Centres: Their Evolving Role Within Ontario Colleges and Universities
THE ENVIRONICS INSTITUTE FOR SURVEY RESEARCH was established by Michael Adams in 2006 to promote relevant and original public opinion and social research on important issues of public policy and social change. It is through such research that organizations and individuals can better understand Canada today, how it has been changing, and where it may be heading.
The past few years have ushered in more strident calls for accountability across institutions of higher learning. Various internal and external stakeholders are asking questions like "Are students learning what we want them to learn?" and "How do the students' scores from one institution compare to its peers?" As a result, more institutions are looking for new, more far-reaching ways to assess student learning and then use assessment findings to improve students' educational experiences.
However, as Trudy Banta notes in her article An Accountability Program Primer for Administrators, “just as simply weighing a pig will not make it fatter, spending millions simply to test college students is not likely to help them learn more.†(p. 6)
While assessing institutional effectiveness is a noble pursuit, measuring student learning is not always easy, and like so many things we try to quantify, there’s much more to learning than a number in a datasheet. As Roxanne Cullen and Michael Harris note in their article The Dash to Dashboards, “The difficulty we have in higher education in defining and measuring our outcomes lies in the complexity of our business: the business of learning. A widget company or a fast-food chain has clearly defined goals and can usually pinpoint with fine accuracy where and how to address loss in sales or glitches in production or service. Higher education is being called on to be able to perform similar feats, but creating a graduate for the 21st century workforce is a very different kind of operation.†(p. 10) This special report Educational Assessment: Designing a System for Mo re Meaningful Results features articles from Academic Leader, and looks at the assessment issue from a variety of
different angles. Articles in the result include:
.The Faculty and Program-Wide Learning Outcome Assessment
. Assessing the Degree of Learner-Centeredness in a Department or Unit
. Keys to Effective Program-Level Assessment
. Counting Something Leads to Change in an Office or in a Classroom
. An Accountability Program Primer for Administrators
Whether you're looking to completely change your approach to assessment, or simply improve the efficacy of your current assessment processes, we hope this report will help guide your discussions and eventual decisions.
This report was requested and partially funded by the University of Waterloo’s Centre for the Advancement of Co-operative Education (WATCACE), along with funding from the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario. It presents a customized analysis of findings from three surveys, undertaken in spring 2011 and spring 2012, to gather perspectives from graduating college and university students, postsecondary faculty, and Ontario employers on work-integrated learning (WIL) within a postsecondary program of study. The three surveys were funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) and conducted by Academica Group Inc., in partnership with the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU), the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation (MEDI), as well as 14 Ontario postsecondary institutions and a variety of student associations and other stakeholders. The surveys were designed to gain a better understanding of student, faculty, and employer experiences with WIL, including motivations and barriers to participation, and perceptions of challenges and benefits. The results presented in this report provide insights into the attitudes and opinions of students and faculty from the University of Waterloo and the Ontario employers most likely to hire University of Waterloo graduates.
Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.’s (NTI) 2010/11 Annual Report on the State of Inuit Culture and Society focuses on the status of Inuit children and youth in Nunavut, with a focus on ages 2 to 18. In 2008, NTI reported on the overall health of Inuit, with
an emphasis on health service availability and delivery, and in many ways this report complements that document by focusing on the concept of wellness as it applies to Inuit children and youth, and the specific opportunities, challenges and priority areas associated with this rapidly growing demographic. Young people make up a larger proportion of Nunavut’s population than in any other Canadian jurisdiction (see Figure 1).
Children and youth are the most vulnerable people in society, relying on parents, guardians, and extended family members for food, shelter, nurturing, support, and protection. Factors impacting the well-being of Inuit children and youth, such as the availability of nutritious foods and reliable child, youth, and family services, adequate housing, and quality, early childhood and kindergarten to Grade 12 (K-12) education are beyond their influence or control. The high incidence of violent crime, sexual assault, and substance abuse in Nunavut can compound these challenges, making sustained political advocacy for this population all the more urgent.
University leaders are actively addressing the issue of mental health on campuses across Canada. No longer seen as simply a question of crisis management, mental health issues are being approached in more proactive and systematic ways, as universities increasingly appreciate the advantages of prevention over reaction. “We are exploring what we need as a sector to deal with mental health issues in the post-secondary setting,” says Dr. Su-Ting Teo, Director of Student Health and Wellness at Ryerson University. Dr. Teo is co-chair of a working group on mental health for the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services (CACUSS), one of several inter-institutional organizations focusing on the issue. The key is to identify best practices and then put into action strategies and plans that work best for an individual institution
and its specific circumstances.
Undergraduate Peer Helpers score higher on some skill competencies than do other students.
Peer Helpers, or Peers, are students who are trained through the University of Guelph’s Peer Helper Program (PHP) to assume paraprofessional roles focused on helping other students make successful transitions to, through and from the postsecondary learning environment. This study, funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), gathered data over three years, starting in 2009, to compare the skills levels of Peer Helpers to those of two groups of students: those engaged in student government and those not engaged as Peer Helpers or in student government roles. The study used a skills model called The Bases of Competence (Evers, Rush and Berdrow, 1998), which consists of four groupings of skills: ‘Managing Self,’ ‘Communicating,’ ‘Managing People & Tasks,’ and ‘Mobilizing Innovation & Change.’ Peers were found to have significantly higher competency scores on the ‘Mobilizing Innovation & Change’ competency than
students in the other two groups.
The ACHA-NCHA II supports the health of the campus community by fulfilling the academic mission, supporting short- and long term healthy behaviours, and gaining a current profile of health trends within the campus community. Canadian Reference Group Data
This paper examines the rise in student loan delinquency and default drawing on a unique set of administrative data on federal student borrowing, matched to earnings records from de-identified tax records. Most of the increase in default is associated with the rise in the number of borrowers at for-profit schools and, to a lesser extent, 2-year institutions and certain other non-selective institutions, whose students historically composed only a small share of borrowers. These non-traditional borrowers were drawn from lower income families, attended institutions with relatively weak educational outcomes, and experienced poor labor market outcomes after leaving school. In contrast, default rates among borrowers attending most 4-year public and non-profit private institutions and graduate borrowers—borrowers who represent the vast majority of the federal loan portfolio—have remained low, despite the severe recession and their relatively high loan balances. Their higher earnings, low rates of unemployment, and greater family resources appear to have enabled them to avoid adverse loan outcomes even during times of hardship. Decomposition analysis indicates that changes in characteristics of borrowers and the institutions they attended are associated with much of the doubling in default rates between 2000 and 2011. Changes in the type of schools attended, debt burdens, and labor market outcomes of non-traditional borrowers at for-profit and 2-year colleges explain the
largest share.
This guide outlines a framework for addressing student mental health in post-secondary institutions. It is the result of a commitment undertaken by the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services (CACUSS) and the Canadian
Mental Health Association (CMHA) to strengthen student mental health. Another product of that commitment, Mental health and well being in postsecondary education settings: A literature and environmental scan to support planning and action in Canada (MacKean, 2011) outlines the current status of post-secondary student mental health and recommends a more system wide approach that extends the focus from “treating individuals... to promoting positive mental health at a population level...” (page 10). The framework presented in this guide continues this work by outlining a systemic approach that focuses on the creation of campus communities that foster mental well-being and learning.
Mental Health
This 2014 mba.com Prospective Students Survey Report explores the motivations, behaviors, program choices, and intended
career outcomes shared by more than 12,000 individuals who registered on mba.com from October 2012 through September
2013. Survey data collected in 2013 are compared with earlier data collected from more than 71,000 prospective business
school students who have responded to our mba.com registrants’ surveys over the past four years. With survey responses
available for all world regions as well as 15 specific countries, this is the largest data resource of its kind.