There is currently increasing pressure on universities to demonstrate how they contribute to their host societies. In the 21st century knowledge society, universities are seen as providing the key raw materials for economic growth, creating knowledge through research activities.
A new ideal-type of university has emerged, the 'world-class university' bringing together the best talents, researchers and facilities to drive national economic development. A wide range of countries – from France to China, from Germany to Saudi Arabia – have embraced this model and selectively rewarded universities conforming to that ideal.
But alongside pressure to be 'world class', universities are also under pressure from increasing student numbers unmatched by resource growth. Universities have responded by increasing efficiency of student delivery, reducing drop-out rates, increasing class sizes and standardising teaching activities.
It’s traditional graduation season, so it’s also the time for articles about the supposed gap between what colleges claim baccalaureate graduates know and can do and what the corporate, nonprofit and government sectors claim they need them to know and do. Higher education’s panicked response to those critiques has too often been to chase rabbits. Unfortunately, the rabbits are usually not innovative, creative curricular redesigns but rather a doubling down on increasingly less relevant and arbitrary collections of credits we call “degrees.”
As a result of the new coronavirus epidemic most universities in China have encouraged their professors to apply online teaching instead of in-class teaching and this is likely to continue for the indefinite future. Some professors and students have complained about problems with online teaching and lack confidence in its effectiveness, but many are still new to the whole online experience. Here are some of the problems and some potential solutions.
Many enrollment leaders are considering offering transfer incentives to students enrolled at other colleges, according to a new report.
If you’re already feeling jittery about enrollment trends, please put down that coffee before reading any further. The rules of competition are changing.
Don’t overlook the benefits of working in a non-faculty role at a university.
It was a chilly December morning at work. I was sipping on my first coffee of the day, reading my emails and making my plans for the day, when an email notified me that one of my publications had been referenced. No way! It had been almost eight years to the day since I defended my PhD thesis and I had long stopped adding research publications to my resumé.
Still, it was exciting to find out someone referenced my research.
Last year I wrote about the role of confidentiality in presidential searches. There is an understandable need to protect the privacy of candidates, especially in the early stages of a search. However, once the search committee decides on the list of finalists, the need for transparency should outweigh concerns for secrecy to protect the candidates. Yet, recent events suggest that some governing boards actually are moving in the opposite direction and taking extreme steps to prevent the campus community from learning the names of those being considered as their future president.
The way kids these days dance is, quite frankly, indecent and without any modesty. It’s a reflection of the times, and
how the world and its governing morals are degrading.
The above is not about the year 2017, but rather is paraphrased from The London Times’ description of the
introduction -- and growing popularity of -- the waltz, more than 200 years ago.
“We remarked with pain that the indecent foreign dance called the ‘waltz’ was introduced (we believe for the first
time at the English Court on Friday last),” The Times wrote in its warning about the new, crass dance which involved
“the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs and close compressure of the bodies.”
Among the many things that faculty members worried about in our Covid-19 switch to remote teaching was how to provide course materials when students could no longer walk into a campus library. The distance between our students and every volume, every assigned reading, every computer station seemed to underscore what was different and newly difficult about teaching and learning in a pandemic.
A guided meditation on the word “empathy.” An ambidextrous drawing where a student used both hands to illustrate and write about the word “renaissance.” A video on the word “ingenuity” where the student spoke the entire final paper into Siri without typing. A violin background score with birds flying into the sky to explain the word “unknowable.”
These are examples of student final projects in an M.B.A. class titled Creative Thinking: Designing Sustainable Innovations that I taught in Rome and where we used principles of Leonardo da Vinci to understand the creative process. Many students in this class were specializing in finance, accounting, supply chain and other “hard” disciplines, and some were pursuing joint J.D. degrees. Thus, this was probably the first time in their careers that they had worked on a nontraditional final project.
Several years ago, I read an essay, "Notes From a Career in Teaching," written by Murray Sperber, a retired professor of English and American studies. He shared this advice: Teach according to your personality. Vary your teaching methods. Don’t take attendance.
Take a hard line on late and incomplete work. Give students lots of options for major assignments and exams. Get
out of the way.
I’ve sat on the Curriculum Committee at two different higher education institutions. I’ve also participated in college assessment committees and accreditation committees at both the school level and institutional level. I’ve designed courses and entire programs from scratch and have revised courses and programs to meet either accreditation or institutional needs. One activity all these endeavors has in common is the development or re-development of meaningful and measurable outcomes.
Unfortunately, what I’ve discovered is that most faculty are not well-versed in curriculum design, and therefore unable to have the forethought to consider what they want their learners to know and be able to do upon completion of their course or the program as a whole. Outcomes, when considered, become like the paper tail in the game pin the tail on the donkey. They are an afterthought, and one that is attached blindly to a course or program. When working with faculty on their course or program development, I utilize the practice of backwards design in which you start with the end in mind. Outcomes are the
end we have in mind.
Conventional wisdom suggests that teaching students how to be creative is a task best left to the arts and design. But faculty members from other fields are increasingly seeing the benefits of cultivating in their students the kinds of integrative and lateral thinking that creativity can foster. Two examples from psychology came to us in response to our recent request for your thoughts on this topic.
Imagine constantly feeling pulled in multiple directions while trying to balance life as a college student and a mom. Keeping up with readings, devoting time to studying while also working to pay for childcare and tuition can often result in making choices that puts both roles in question. Whether a student mom is missing a child’s soccer game for a course, or missing class because of a sick kid, these are all common struggles that students who are moms face every day. Student moms have a very challenging role to balance. The guilt of not being present as a mom with the constant student demand of papers, exams, and class expectations can leave student moms exhausted and at risk for dropping out.
Alumni relations is the misunderstood sibling of fund raising. The two have much in common — interacting with people who are no longer studying and working at your campus — and one can lead to the other. But they are different. Good alumni relations has
many nonfinancial benefits, and if it becomes "all about the money," you risk alienating both regular alumni and major donors.
Following an incredible two-decade run of growth, Canada is now home to the third largest population of international students in the world, with over 642,000. That includes a sixfold increase seen since 2000, with a tripling in numbers over the last 10 years alone.
To maintain that momentum amidst the current challenges of COVID-19, it will be crucial for universities to continue to stay on top of their international student admissions.
Educational Credential Evaluators has expanded their services across the border to assist Canadian universities and their applicants with international educational credential assessments.
While new to Canada, ECE has been a trusted name in assessments in the United States for 40 years. In that time ECE has served over 2,000 institutions and completed over 600,000 high-quality reports, with over 35,000 completed in 2019 alone.
Depending on their needs, students seeking to further their education in Canada can choose from three different types of academic assessment report: a General Assessment Report, a General Assessment Report with Grade Average, or a more thorough Course-by-Course Assessment Report.
About two years ago at my university, I designed a minor in the medical humanities. At its core was a class that introduced students to medical topics from the perspectives of the humanities and social sciences. When it came to designing assignments that would show how well they understood such varied concepts, I decided to go out on a pedagogical limb.
If they preferred, students could write a traditional research paper for their final project. Or they could "write" about their topic in a different way — via a 45-minute podcast, a 10-to-15-minute video, a website, or an interactive, digital essay (on a blog or a Word document) that used embedded videos, photos, and audio to help the reader understand their topics.
One of the most basic principles in education is backward curriculum design. This approach involves beginning with the end in mind. Moore (2015) stated that the backward design model “centers on the idea that the design process should begin with identifying the desired outcomes and then work backwards to develop instruction rather than the traditional approach, which is to define what topics need to be covered” (p.34). It can be tempting to utilize the traditional approach of creating learning activities based on the topics selected for a course. However, this does not challenge the educator to think about the concepts in new
and creative ways. Backward curriculum design has numerous benefits that educators should consider, but we must think about this process in new and insightful ways.
The first thing I thought, once I got the good news that I’d received tenure, was how ill-prepared I’d been for the process. Now that I am approaching my one-year "tenure-versary," I realize how equally unprepared I was for being a tenured professor.
For many months, I was so focused on the details of achieving tenure that I didn’t think enough about what the promotion would mean — specifically, how it would change my daily workload, my job expectations, my work-life balancing act.
Educational institutions have a great responsibility of graduating all students with the essential knowledge and skills necessary for success in their chosen field. As faculty, we are responsible to do our best to retain as many of our students as possible. This is key for any institution of higher learning we represent.
While the term student retention may sound a little clinical, and one we may not consider in the midst of setting up, managing, and teaching our online courses, it is one we cannot ignore. Your institution may have a specific expected student retention rate for each instructor, such as 95% or better. The pressure is on to make sure you meet or exceed that expectation to remain as a top performer. Whether you are an experienced instructor or new to online teaching, meeting the faculty expectation may require developing or revising your retention strategies. Here are eight simple strategies that will help you to keep your
students engaged and improve retention:
Scan the vision and mission statements of schools and it is nearly impossible to find a school that doesn’t commit to educating “all” students or meet “each” or “every” student’s need. Yet we know that many schools fall far short of this mark. Too many students don’t experience the same high-quality learning experiences that even their peers across the aisle, hall, or county have access to. This is an equity challenge. Combine the uneven results within and across districts with the fact that the students more likely to be lagging are students of color and students from high-poverty contexts and the equity challenge is compounded.
Among the factors that schools have the power to address, the quality of teaching and the quality of the curriculum materials are two factors that, when integrated and improved with intention, have the potential to answer those equity challenges. When all students experience high-quality teaching, they are more likely to learn. When all classrooms are filled with high-quality instructional materials, students are more likely to learn. Establishing these conditions for all learners will help close achievement gaps.
This report explores the premise that there’s nothing more powerful than great teachers skillfully using great instructional materials to motivate and engage students in their learning. Three real-world examples illustrate how schools and school systems are working to support teachers to skillfully use high-quality, standards-aligned curricula, by providing teachers with the time and expertise to use those curricula well, with a focus on team-based, collaborative learning. The report also provides lessons learned across these sites and action steps to get schools and districts started on the journey.