Students who engage in active learning learn more -- but feel like they learn less -- than peers in more lecture-oriented classrooms. That's in part because active learning is harder than more passive learning, according to a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Based on their findings, the researchers encourage faculty members to intervene and correct what they call students' "misperception" about how they learn.
On Friday, March 13, the novel coronavirus went from being a mysterious illness that had upended my teaching to something that invaded my home and health.
Two days earlier, I had received a message from the president of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor telling us to cancel classes for a couple of days and to resume teaching the following Monday "remotely, in alternative formats." My recent research and writing concern on sociability — in public places like coffeehouses — and its crucial role in the production of modern culture. Given that I was unlikely to meet face to face with my students or colleagues for the foreseeable future, I was about to experience the importance of sociability firsthand.
Like many faculty members that week, I attended workshops on remote teaching that had been quickly organized by our instructional-technology office. I was trying to learn the pros and cons of various teaching platforms and methods in a desperate attempt to salvage my courses. Meanwhile, my oldest son was traveling back home from his own campus after his spring-break plans collapsed. My wife, a busy caterer in a university town, discovered that all of her events had been suspended until further notice. My youngest son’s public school closed abruptly.
Résumé
Cet article vise à comparer la perception qu’ont les professeurs de Colombie-Britannique, d’Ontario et du Québec des instruments d’action publique fédéraux et provinciaux quant à leur influence sur la production de recherche dans leur province. Les scores moyens, une MANOVA et des analyses post-hoc de Dunnett C réalisées sur les résultats provenant d’un questionnaire distribué à 786 participants révèlent que les instruments fédéraux sont perçus comme ayant une influence plus importante
que les instruments provinciaux, mais aussi qu’il existe une différence significative entre les scores attribués aux instruments provinciaux par les professeurs québécois et par leurs homologues des autres provinces.
Mots-clés : production de recherche universitaire, instruments d’action publique, palier provincial, palier fédéral, fédéralisme,
Colombie-Britannique, Ontario, Québec
Abstract
This article compares how faculty members from British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec perceive the influence of federal and provincial policy instruments on the level of academic research production in their province. Mean scores, and a MANOVA followed by Dunnett C post-hoc tests based on a questionnaire completed by 786 participants reveal that professors perceived federal instruments as being more influential than provincial instruments, but also that there is a significant difference
in the average score given by Quebec professors to provincial instruments, when compared to their counterparts in the other provinces.
Keywords: academic research production, public action instruments, provincial level, federal level, federalism, British Columbia,
Ontario, Quebec
This essay is based on an episode of the University of Technology Sydney podcast series “The New Social Contract”. This audio series examines how the relationship between universities, the state and the public might be reshaped as we live through this global pandemic.
Leesa Wheelahan
Five years ago, two administrators at Southern Utah University worked evenings calling hundreds of students who had dropped out to ask them why. The causes, they learned, weren’t exactly surprising: financial challenges. Family problems. Poor fit. The usual reasons students leave without a degree. But after students repeatedly said they didn’t know where to go or who to talk to about their reasons for leaving, the administrators had a revelation.
“This was Generation Z arriving on campus,” said Jared Tippets, vice president for student affairs. “They’re going to engage and interact with us differently. They’re not going to come and say, ‘I’m struggling. Can you help me?’ We learned through that process that we better start creating authentic relationships with students.”
So here’s an interesting question: How do you effectively connect with students, form relationships, and be present in their lives in an online platform? Community is such a valuable commodity that is often overlooked. Students want to know their facilitator will support them, be active in their course, and create a sense of belonging. “Instructorstudent relationships lie at the heart of humanizing, serving as the connective tissue between students, engagement, and rigor” (Pacansky-Brock, Smedshammer, and Vincent-Layton 2020, 2). We must never underestimate the impact of authentically relating to our online students.
Online learning can feel very isolated and stressful for our learners. Many are raising families or are single parents working full or part time jobs, dealing with aging parents or sick siblings, or working through a major crisis in their life—all while completing their education in a virtual setting.
In preparation for the coming semester, a faculty member recently asked me how to change deadlines on the LMS to midnight on
a given day. After helping the professor, I started thinking about why we might need to reconsider this option, both for our own good and for our students. How did so many of us come to accept the universality of a midnight deadline that casts professors in the fabled role of fairy godmothers, and what exactly turns into a pumpkin when the clock strikes twelve in this scenario?
"Historians value integrity, David; you should too if you truly are one of us." So wrote a senior professor, a named chair at a regional public university on the West Coast, chiding me in an email. My sin: calling myself a "senior academic adviser to the history department at the University of Minnesota" in an opinion essay I wrote recently for CNN.
This professor decided I was falsely claiming to be some kind of senior adviser to the faculty, rather than merely an academic adviser, senior in rank, assigned to work with undergraduates in the history department. By suggesting that history departments need senior advisers, he wrote, "you make us look like incompetent fools." He added: "Good for you that you have this public profile. But please don’t advance it by trivializing what tenured and tenure-track history faculty, including those at your own university, do." As for my job title, he insisted that "no such positions formally exist at universities, those that still have
standards, at least."
Abstract
Several individual differences have been shown to predict academic and psychological outcomes among university students,
however, it is not always clear which are most impactful, in part because many of the constructs overlap. Thus, the purpose
of the present study was to examine the unique contributions of self-esteem, self-compassion, self-efficacy, and mindsets
when predicting outcomes among university students. Undergraduate students (N = 214) completed an online survey
including measures of the predictors as well as the outcomes of self-control, mental health, and both course and term grades.
Correlations confirmed the overlap among the predictors highlighting the importance of examining the unique contributions
of each. Results of multiple regression analyses showed that self-esteem and self-compassion explained unique variance
in depression and anxiety over and above self-efficacy and growth mindsets. In contrast, self-efficacy and growth mindsets
each significantly predicted self-control when controlling for self-esteem and self-compassion. Only self-efficacy predicted
course grades. Given our results, we suggest that self-compassion and one’s beliefs about their abilities are complementary
strengths for students attending university and should be considered when designing interventions to improve outcomes.
Keywords: self-esteem, self-compassion, self-efficacy, mindsets, self-control, mental health, grades
Like many faculty members, I approach my syllabus before a new semester begins with some trepidation: Do I need to add anything new?
Usually the reasons for inserting additional language are quite valid: Perhaps a student identified a loophole last semester that needs to be corrected. Maybe a colleague suggested a new provision that has been neglected on course syllabi, such as contact information for mental-health resources or gender-pronoun policies.
While online learning environments are increasingly common, relatively little is known about issues of equity in these settings. We test for the presence of race and gender biases among postsecondary students and instructors in online classes by measuring student and instructor responses to discussion comments we posted in the discussion forums of 124 different online courses. Each comment was randomly assigned a student name connoting a specific race and gender. We find that instructors are 94% more likely to respond to forum posts by White male students. In contrast, we do not find general evidence of biases in student responses. However, we do find that comments placed by White females are more likely to receive a response from White female peers. We discuss the implications of our findings for our understanding of social identity dynamics in classrooms and the design of equitable online
learning environments.
It’s no surprise that would-be academics find reading a faculty job ad to be a highly confusing experience. For one thing, there is no standard format for the description of faculty positions. Throw in the fact that institutions are creating more and more part-time
positions with never-before-heard titles, and the result is a lot of perplexed young Ph.D.s.
As a new season of academic hiring gets under way, I want to offer a basic primer on how to interpret a faculty job ad, aimed at early-career scholars going on the market this fall.
“Make sure you know which train or bus to catch, at what time(s), and the stop closest to your destination. Check the timetable! Even in large cities, bus services can be few and far between in the evenings. Avoid waiting alone at a bus stop at night, particularly in poorly lit or deserted
areas.”
You might assume that this advice was written by a fearful parent for a nervous teenager embarking on their first solo trip to a distant town. In fact, it is taken from a training leaflet titled “How can I be safe while interviewing people?”, written for its postgraduate students by the Centre for Urban History at the University of Leicester.
This is just one example of the extent to which the modern culture of fear has infiltrated university campuses. The leaflet evokes a vision of urban Britain in which the perils of a bus journey and the dangers posed by visiting people in their homes demand “that someone knows where you are going”.
Terry Wareham of Lancaster University once suggested that an article on ‘change’ in higher education be entitled ‘Quiet Flows the Don?’ While this may raise a wry smile, it is a little unfair. Try changing health or agriculture. Attempts to change higher education are likely to be protracted and uncertain, as these books illustrate.
Most developed countries are struggling with the structure of their higher education systems. England and Wales (but not Scotland), some countries of continental Europe, and Australia have yet to settle the relations between its sectors or tiers, or if they are to have a unified system, how to arrange it. Meanwhile, most of continental Europe and, until recently, England have been struggling to finance their greatly expanded systems. These enduring issues, associated with the transition from elite to mass higher education, have been made more urgent by the ‘intellectual arms race’, in which universities are competing for a place in the ‘knowledge economy’.
The exceptionally sad death of Malcolm Anderson at Cardiff Business School in February should serve as a warning light for universities in both the UK and further afield.
There is a high level of awareness and concern about student suicide, but it is important for every university leader, and perhaps every modern citizen, to realise that in most industrialised nations, including the UK, suicide is predominantly a risk among the middle-aged – and particularly among men in their late forties.
Abstract
This paper focuses on the recent political spars between Canada and Saudi Arabia as well as China and their impact on Canadian universities. It asks three questions: (1) What key issues did Canada’s political strains with Saudi Arabia and China raise for Canadian universities’ international education (IE) initiatives and what issues were absent? (2) What do these key issues suggest about Canada’s approaches to IE in an era of new geopolitics? and (3) What implications can be drawn from these cases about Canadian university-government relations in the context of new geopolitics? Given the powerful role media plays in education policy, a systematic study was conducted across three main media sources to identify 74 articles and news releases between August 2018 and November 2019. Three dominant themes are identified and analyzed, each vividly illustrating the close ties between global politics, government foreign policy and IE within Canadian Universities. On the one hand, the narratives speak to concerns about IE as a risk to national security and, on the other, as a vehicle for Canada’s economic prosperity. However, what the media has not achieved is a broader discussion on how Canada needs to revisit its IE objectives and approaches in light of broader geopolitical shifts. Using the theoretical framework of soft power, the paper speaks to the limitations and short-sightedness of Canada’s approach to IE as soft power in this era of new geopolitics and concludes with three recommendations for Canada.
Keywords: soft power, international education, geopolitics, internationalisation, and international relations
Résumé
Cet article se concentre sur les répercussions sur les universités canadiennes des tensions politiques récentes entre le Canada et la Chine et entre le Canada et l’Arabie saoudite. Il pose trois questions : (1) Quels sont les problèmes causés par ces tensions politiques pour les initiatives d’éducation internationale des universités canadiennes, et quels problèmes sont
exclus? (2) Que suggèrent ces problèmes quant aux approches du Canada en ce qui concerne les initiatives d’éducation internationale à l’époque de la nouvelle géopolitique? (3) Quelles sont les implications sur les relations entre les universités canadiennes et le gouvernement du Canada dans le contexte de la nouvelle géopolitique? Puisque les médias jouent un
rôle puissant dans les politiques éducatives, nous avons mené une étude systématique auprès de trois sources médiatiques et retenu 74 articles de journaux et communiqués de presse entre août 2018 et novembre 2019. Il en ressort trois thèmes principaux qui illustrent les liens étroits entre la politique mondiale, la politique étrangère du gouvernement et les initiatives
d’éducation internationale au sein des universités canadiennes. Il y a deux narratifs concurrents : d’une part, celui selon lequel l’éducation internationale serait une menace pour la sécurité nationale canadienne et d’autre part, celui selon lequel l’éducation internationale contribuerait à la prospérité économique du Canada. Cependant, les médias n’abordent pas la question plus vaste de la manière dont le Canada devrait revoir ses objectifs et ses approches en matière d’éducation internationale à la lumière des grands changements géopolitiques. L’article utilise le cadre théorique du soft power pour discuter des limitations et du manque de vison de l’approche du Canada en ce qui concerne l’éducation internationale comme soft
power à l’époque de la nouvelle géopolitique. La conclusion inclut trois recommandations pour le Canada.
Mots-clés : puissance douce, éducation internationale, géopolitiques, internationalisation et relations internationales
People are often told to find their passion as though passions and interests are pre-formed and must simply be discovered. This idea, however, has hidden motivational implications. Five studies examined implicit theories of interest—the idea that personal interests are relatively fixed
(fixed theory) or developed (growth theory). Whether assessed or experimentally induced, a fixed theory was more likely to dampen interest in areas outside people’s existing interests (Studies 1–3). Those endorsing a fixed theory were also more likely to anticipate boundless
motivation when passions were found, not anticipating possible difficulties (Study 4). Moreover, when engaging in a new interest became difficult, interest flagged significantly more for people induced to hold a fixed than a growth theory of interest (Study 5). Urging people to find their
passion may lead them to put all their eggs in one basket but then to drop that basket when it becomes difficult to carry.
Faculty are crucial for students. They serve as instructors and mentors. They connect students with a network that will help them succeed and get good jobs in the future.
But they can also get in the way.
As the student population shifts away from the traditional 18-year-old heading off to live in a dorm to students who are older and lower income, institutions and their faculty members are struggling to find mutually agreeable ways to support nontraditional students.
So your strategic plan reached the end of its life span. The question is: Did anyone notice — aside from the folks who filed final reports about it for accreditors and trustees?
Too often, the answer is no. An institution or a department begins a strategic plan with great fanfare but the end is usually anticlimactic. Most of the people supposedly affected by the plan are unaware of its actual outcomes — and may not even remember the original goals.
That kind of lackluster finale represents a lost opportunity. The fact that most of us fail to conclude our strategic plans with as much energy as we start them undermines future planning. It also masks the reality that strategic planning is continuous and reciprocal: We are supposed to learn from the process, not just check some boxes and forget about it.
It’s October and the requests are starting to pile up. They’re multiplying so fast they feel like an anvil-weight of duty perpetually hanging over your head. They refuse to dissipate as the semester progresses, no matter how well you schedule your time or keep track of deadlines. And the worst part is: The sheer amount of work required to meet these demands goes hidden, uncredited, and unsupported.
We are referring to the mountain of requests that some faculty members receive to write letters of reference for students.