In higher education, the concept of good is elusive. Do we know good when we see it? For example, while there is general agreement that community college graduation rates are too low, there is not yet consensus about what would constitute a good, or an outstanding, graduation rate.
At community colleges, benchmarking and benchmarks are about understanding the facts and using them to assess performance, make appropriate comparisons, establish baselines, set goals, and monitor progress — all in the service of improving practice so more students succeed.
As part of this practice, the Center for Community College Student Engagement encourages colleges to use data that can support reasonable comparisons both within and across institutions and to have broad, campuswide conversations to address key follow-up questions: What are our priorities here, in this college? In what areas do we need and wish to excel? And how good is good enough — for our students, our college, our community?
Some scholars have questioned academe’s reliance on letters of recommendation, saying they’re onerous for the professors writing them or speak more about connections to “big-name” scholars than substance, or both.
A recent study explores another concern about letters of recommendation: whether they’re biased against the women they’re supposed to help. The short answer is yes.
In a recent Chronicle Review essay with the clickbait headline (which the authors did not write) "Why the University’s Insatiable Appetite Will Be Its Undoing," Adam Daniel and Chad Wellmon, respectively an administrator and a professor at the University of Virginia, argue that the university should be more focused on what it does best — teaching and research — and less responsive to broad social pressures: "To save itself and to better serve its democratic purpose, the university needs to be not more but less reactive to public demands."
There are serious problems with arguments like this, much in the air right now, that blame universities for everything: overbuilding, high tuition, teaching too many subjects, incurring too much debt. Universities, according to Daniel and Wellmon, are simply doing too much all around.
Cheerful and helpful workers are beloved by their bosses, and just about everyone else, really. Enthusiastic optimists make for great colleagues, rarely cause problems, and can always be counted on.
But they may not necessarily make the best employees, says Adam Grant, the organizational psychologist and Wharton professor.
Speaking in Chicago at the annual conference of the Society for Human Resource Management, Grant said he separates workers along two axes: givers and takers, and agreeable and disagreeable. Givers share of themselves and make their colleagues better, while takers are selfish and focused only on their own interests. The agreeable/disagreeable spectrum is what it sounds like: some workers are friendly, some are grouchy.
For nearly two-thirds of my 30-year career in higher education, I have served as a middle manager of one sort or another: department chair, dean, program director. For the other third, I have been middle-managed.
Of course, even as a low-level administrator, I had plenty of people above me telling me what to do. I also had people below me who, given the chance, gladly told me what to do.
The point is: I know what it’s like to be on both sides of that transaction. Specifically, I know firsthand how department chairs can make faculty lives easier, and I also know what they do (all too often) that makes faculty lives more difficult (dare I say "miserable"?). Accordingly, I’d like to identify — for the benefit of new and future department chairs especially — what I consider the five biggest morale killers for college faculty.
aculty dread the grade appeal; anxiety prevails until the whole process is complete. Much has been written about ow to avoid such instances, but the potentially subjective assessments of written essays or clinical skills can be specially troublesome. One common cause of grade appeals is grading ambiguity in which the student and faculty ember disagree on the interpretation of required content. Another cause is inequity, whereby the student feels thers may have gotten more credit for very similar work or content (Hummel 2010). In the health-care field specially, these disagreements over clinical-skills assessments can actually result in student dismissal from the program and may lead to lawsuits.
I’m a strong believer in the benefits of students studying together, even though students don’t always understand or even experience the benefits. Oftentimes the potential gains of group study sessions are compromised by student behaviors. Students will saunter into study sessions, mostly not on time, sit around, check their phones, and socialize. When they finally start reviewing their notes, the text, or the homework problems, it’s all pretty superficial.
There are very few questions, explanations, or confessions of confusion. The most intense conversation takes place over what they’ve heard from others about the exam and their hopes that it will be easy.
We are a group of undergraduate and graduate students from York University connected with each other through sociology professor Cary Wu’s research methods courses. Led by Dr. Wu, we recently came together as a virtual group to discuss what makes in-person classes unique and different from online-learning. Through this productive discussion, we were able to determine what it is about in-person classes that we long for. Here, we share with you seven main themes that emerged in our conversations.
Movie stars are supposedly nothing like you and me. They're svelte, glamorous, self-possessed. They wear dresses we can't afford and live in houses we can only dream of. Yet it turns out that—in the most painful and personal ways—movie stars are more like you and me than we ever knew.
In 1997, just before Ashley Judd's career took off, she was invited to a meeting with Harvey Weinstein, head of the starmaking studio Miramax, at a Beverly Hills hotel. Astounded and offended by Weinstein's attempt to coerce her into bed, Judd managed to escape. But instead of keeping quiet about the kind of encounter that could easily shame a woman into silence, she began spreading the word.
Asked to offer advice to new hires in his department, a senior professor replied, "There is no way not to have a first year." Her remark seemed odd, and a bit ominous, but it turned out to be an accurate indicator of the harried life of a first-year faculty member.
Résumé
Plusieurs travaux soulignent des difficultés particulières auxquelles certains titulaires d’un doctorat sont confrontés sur le marché du travail en dehors du milieu universitaire. Une des principales raisons de ces difficultés serait la méconnaissance ou l’inadéquation des acquis de la formation doctorale en ce qui concerne les compétences recherchées par les organisations. Or, en dehors de données statistiques, peu de travaux nous renseignent sur les perceptions que les différents acteurs ont de ces compétences. Cet article apporte une contribution dans ce sens. Il est basé sur les résultats d’une recherche mixte à devis séquentiel. La première étape a consisté en une étude qualitative par entretiens semi-directifs réalisés auprès de 85 diplômés du doctorat en emploi et 21 responsables d’organisations. Les résultats de cette étude, dont les données ont été traitées par la méthode Alceste, ont servi à la conception d’une échelle de 45 items sur les compétences des titulaires d’un doctorat. Cette échelle a été mesurée lors de deux enquêtes par questionnaire auxquelles ont répondu 2139 diplômés du doctorat en emploi et 215 responsables d’organisations. Des analyses descriptives de comparaison de moyennes standardisées (d de Cohen) mettent en évidence des points de convergence qui montrent que la formation doctorale pourrait constituer un
atout pour le développement des compétences du futur, notamment celles difficiles à automatiser : la gestion de la complexité, la créativité, l’esprit critique.
Mots-clés : doctorat, transition, compétences, compétences du futur, intentionnalité, employabilité
Abstract
A number of studies point to particular challenges that some PhD graduates face in the labour market outside of academia. One of the main reasons for these difficulties is said to be a lack of knowledge or inadequacy of what doctoral graduates have acquired in terms of the skills sought by employers. However, apart from statistical data, there is little work that tells us about the perceptions that the various groups and individuals involved have of these skills. This article makes a contribution in this direction. It is based on the results of a sequential mixed methods study. The first stage consisted of a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews of 85 employed PhD graduates and 21 organizational leaders. The results of this study, whose data were processed using the Alceste method, were used to design a 45-item scale on the skills of doctoral graduates. This scale was measured in two questionnaire surveys completed by 2,139 employed doctoral graduates and 215 organizational leaders. Descriptive analyses comparing standardized averages (Cohen's d) highlight points of convergence that show that doctoral training could be an asset for the development of future skills, especially those that are difficult to automate: complexity management, creativity, critical thinking.eywords: PhD, transition, skills, future skills, intentionality, employability
How can you make sure your online students take tests without cheating? It’s one of the most-frequent questions asked by new online instructors and even some experienced ones. The short answer: You can’t.
You might be tempted to join the “arms race” in cheating-prevention tools, or to adopt punitive approaches such as proctored online exams and time limits for online tests. But the reality is, students will always find new and creative ways to get around your policing
efforts. So what to do?
One of the reasons I love teaching is that each semester provides a fresh start: empty grade books, eager students. I also cherished this time when I was a student myself: poring over course syllabi, purchasing new textbooks, meeting my professors. Although I reside on eastern South Dakota’s frigid plains, the first day of class consistently brings me a warm feeling.
But once the newness of the semester fades, it’s not long before I casually share with a colleague something a student did or (more commonly) failed to do. This habit started in graduate school. Years ago, student shaming provided a humorous means of connecting with my fellow TAs: in my early 20s, commiserating over student issues felt normal, even cool. Perhaps, too, a case can be made that swapping stories of students’ shortcomings had little effect on our students themselves. They didn’t hear us laugh at their misspelled words or poorly constructed sentences. Yet, 10 years later, I’m haunted by the thought that I might
have spent more time complaining about my students than championing their success.
Research shows when people are curious about something, not only do they learn better, they learn more. It should come as no
surprise, then, that inquiry-based learning is proving to be an effective education model. In fact, one research study found inquiry-based learning produces increases in affective and cognitive outcomes.
Barriers to permanent residency are formidable, but can be overcome
In 2012, Mohawk College solicited the support of the Education Policy Research Initiative (EPRI) to collect and use administrative and other data on students held by Mohawk as part of a broad initiative to improve student success based on the principle of evidence‐based decision making.
The first project involved analyses to better understand student retention at Mohawk using both descriptive and statistical modelling approaches. This work led to the development of a predictive model to identify students at risk of leaving college early.
In 2015, Mohawk and EPRI applied to and became part of the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario’s (HEQCO) Access and Retention Consortium (ARC) to undertake a project that would build on this earlier work. The purpose was to update, refine and extensively test the predictive model, which would then be used to inform and assess a set of alternative advising interventions put in place for students entering Mohawk College in Fall 2015.
Background/Context: Since the 1970s, researchers have attempted to link observational measures of instructional process to
student achievement (and occasionally to other outcomes of schooling). This paper reviews extensively both historical and
contemporary research to identify what is known about effective teaching.
Purpose/Objective: Good, after reviewing what is known about effective teaching, attempts to apply this to current descriptions
of effective teaching and its application value for practice. Good notes that much of the “new” research on effective teaching has simply replicated what has been known since the 1980s. Although this is not unimportant (since it shows that older findings still pertain to contemporary classrooms), it is unfortunate that research has not moved beyond the relationship between general teacher behavior (those that cut across subject areas) and student achievement (as measured by standardized tests). How this information can be applied and the difficulty in using this information is examined in the paper.
Universities must monitor the impact on student stress and staff workload as they shift away from “high-stakes” exams and towards using technology to conduct “continuous” assessment, a report says.
A paper published by Jisc, UK higher education’s main technology body, says digital tools offer “a host of opportunities for students to capture and reflect on evidence of their learning, to use and share formative feedback and to record progress”, adding that it “may be more effective to assess learners continually throughout their course instead of through a final exam”.
Abstract
While Indigenous entrepreneurship is associated with significant economic promise, Indigenous innovation continues to be invisible in Canadian policy contexts. This article examines how Indigenous entrepreneurial activities are framed in government policy, potentially leading to another wave of active exploitation of Indigenous lands, peoples, and knowledges. The
article first discusses the concepts of Indigenous entrepreneurship and innovation through a decolonizing lens, drawing links to education. Then, it provides a set of rationales for why governments need to re-think and prioritize Indigenous entrepreneurship. Next, it maps the current federal government initiatives in this policy sector. Drawing from the Indigenous entrepreneurship ecosystem approach (Dell & Houkamau, 2016; Dell et al., 2017), the article argues that a more comprehensive policy perspective guiding Indigenous entrepreneurship programs should inform Canadian innovation policy. Individual voices from 13 Indigenous entrepreneurs in Manitoba point to three core issues: (a) relationships with the land and the community; (b) the relevance of (higher) education and training; and (c) the importance of cultural survival and self-determination. The article makes an argument for a systemic decolonizing change in how Indigenous innovation is approached in government policy and programs, supported by the work of higher education institutions1.
Keywords: Indigenous entrepreneurship, decolonization, ecosystem, innovation, policy
Résumé
Alors que l’entrepreneuriat autochtone est associé à une promesse économique importante, l’innovation autochtone est toujours invisible dans le contexte des politiques publiques canadiennes. Cet article examine la manière dont les activités entrepreneuriales autochtones sont encadrées dans les politiques publiques, laquelle risque de provoquer une autre vague d’exploitation des terres, des peuples et des connaissances autochtones. Dans un premier temps, l’article discute des concepts d’entrepreneuriat et d’innovation autochtones sous l’angle de la décolonisation et établit des liens avec l’éducation. Ensuite, il fournit un ensemble de justifications expliquant pourquoi les gouvernements doivent repenser et prioriser l’entrepreneuriat autochtone. Enfin, il recense les initiatives actuelles du gouvernement fédéral dans ce secteur. S’inspirant de l’approche écosystémique de l’entrepreneuriat autochtone (Dell et Houkamau, 2016; Dell et al., 2017), cet article soutient qu’une politique publique plus complète pour orienter les programmes d’entrepreneuriat autochtone devrait éclairer la politique d’innovation canadienne. Les voix individuelles de 13 entrepreneurs autochtones du Manitoba permettent de souligner trois enjeux fondamentaux : 1) les relations avec la terre et la communauté; 2) la pertinence de l’enseignement (supérieur) et de la formation; 3) l’importance de la survie culturelle et de l’autodétermination. Cet article plaide en faveur d’un changement décolonisant systémique dans la façon dont l’innovation autochtone devrait être abordée dans les programmes gouvernementaux
et les politiques publiques, avec l’appui des établissements d’enseignement supérieur.
Mots-clés : entrepreneuriat autochtone, décolonisation, écosystème, innovation, politique publique
At most institutions, faculty participate in some sort of annual review. A discussion of student evaluations is usually part of these conversations, and they aren’t always easy interactions. Sometimes the issue is the rating results—they aren’t high enough, maybe they dropped in one course, perhaps they have stayed the same for some time, or maybe there is some question about why they’re so high. Sometimes it’s what the academic leader concludes about the teaching based on a few negative student comments, or it could be the action the department chair recommends. And sometimes, it’s the faculty member who doesn’t know what to say or becomes defensive.