This article is intended for people who are considering going to graduate school or who are currently in the first year of graduate school. It is primarily focused on the decisions you will make on the path towards a Ph.D., but many of the same issues would certainly arise in a M.S. thesis-based program. The context of most of the discussion is an engineering program at a top research institution, but many of the comments would also apply at different level institutions as well as in science, medicine, and the humanities. This article is equally targeted toward all students in science and engineering, but there are certainly issues of representation, bias, and treatment that apply especially for students coming from underrepresented groups; I have drawn from conversations with students from these groups for these issues, but the issues raised here should
be understood by everyone. Even though this article is intended for students, I hope that some faculty and advisors take the time to refresh their perspective on the “student side” of their relationships.
Though once considered a marginal aspect of education studies, the unique pathways of adult learners have become a research topic of interest in recent years. Existing studies have focused primarily on either adult learning at the postsecondary level or adult education programs for low-skilled immigrants. For the most part, continuing education has been overlooked as a strategy employed by native-born and immigrant adults for updating credentials towards accessing postsecondary education (PSE). Our research addresses this gap in the literature by investigating postsecondary outcomes for Canadian-born and immigrant adults who seek to upgrade their credentials through continuing education at the secondary level or at adult day schools through the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). Due to a dearth of research, it is difficult to assess how many individuals pursue this pathway as a route towards PSE, the factors affecting the PSE plans formulated by adult learners at the secondary level, and whether and how these pathways and outcomes differ for immigrants and non-immigrants. An extensive literature review led the researchers to conclude that adult learners in continuing education likely face multiple barriers in upgrading their skills and credentials when engaged in an effort to attain a postsecondary education. In addition to experiencing difficulties common to adult learners, such as financial and time constraints, immigrant adult students often contend with a secondary set of challenges that include grappling with a new academic culture, single parenthood, and serious language challenges that pose a risk to successful integration into Canadian society and the labour force.
This program has been designed to assist you in your development as an academic leader. More specifically, it has been designed to assist you in acquiring the skills and knowledge needed to perform your academic leadership role more effectively. These roles may have various titles depending on the University within which you work. They may be Program Director or Course Coordinator. Whatever the title, the role is one where you have responsibility to manage the delivery and quality of an academic field of study. For ease of writing, the Academic Coordinator title is used in this book. It is based on the principle that leadership development needs to be tailored to the needs of both the individual and the role, and recognises that you are in an academic leadership role with little or no formal authority or power. This program builds on research on leadership in management as well as research on academic leadership. It utilises critical reflection as a strategy that fosters deep learning. The new understanding will help you to develop your personalised action plans. These will strengthen your professional competence as an academic leader.
According to recent forecasts, in just a few years’ time, almost one in three students in American schools will be
English language learners. Many schools that once had only a handful of students new to this country and to the English language are now facing an influx of students for whom English is a second language. The No Child Left Behind Act officially made English learners a potentially significant subgroup for measuring Adequate Yearly Progress, a key accountability
measure for schools and districts. Rapid mastery of the English language is key for students to succeed in the K-12 education program. Reading, writing, listening and speaking are all core areas of learning a language. Each of these skills, of course, lies at the heart of basic K-12 educational programs and are assumed competencies at the higher education level. Academic success within an educationalprogram ultimately requires mastery of content that is more often than not delivered in English-based materials.
Computer and communication technologies have a central role to play in facilitating that rapid mastery. With guided, self-paced instruction that allows repetition and personalization, English learners in today’s K-20 classroom are strides ahead of their counterparts years ago. Whether teaching students within the classroom or adult learners at home or at work, technology-based materials and media have become the delivery medium of choice. Programs specifically focused on English learners, as well as advances in computer-based translation programs, have opened up virtually all electronic content to the English learner.
The Internet and, in particular, the World Wide Web have had a remarkable impact on education at all levels. In the past, new technologies such as the telephone, radio, television, cassettes, satellites, and computers were all predicted to bring about a revolution in education. However, after the initial hype, these new technologies left a marginal impact on the general practice of education, each finding a niche, but not changing the essential process of a teacher personally interacting with learners.
However, the Internet and, especially, the World Wide Web are different, both in the scale and the nature of their impact on education. Certainly, the web has penetrated teaching and learning much more than any other previous technology, with the important exception of the printed book. Indeed, it is possible to see parallels between the social and educational influence of both mechanically printed books and the Internet on post-secondary education, and these parallels will be explored a little further in this chapter
It’s a new year and a new semester, with new courses and different students—along with perhaps a few favorite
courses and students you get to spend time with all over again, and maybe a couple of each you won’t miss at all. In other words, it’s a new beginning. As we begin again, I thought this characterization of “The Ideal Professor” might be of interest. It’s offered by students who were asked to compare their Ideal professors with their Typical ones. This cohort of juniors and seniors rated professorial characteristics in three areas: personal, course design, and policies and behaviors. The
items were selected for the survey based on research in each of these three areas. Perhaps a bit surprising is the lack of strong distinctions between Ideal and Typical professors. “We found that preferred qualities and behaviors were not wholly absent in the Typical professor—they simply appeared less pronounced than in the Ideal professor.” (p. 182) Despite overall similarities, the research team does describe some of the differences between the two as “striking” and eight of these are listed below. The numbers reflect the percentage of students who endorsed this characteristic for their Ideal professors and the percentage who said they characterized the Typical professor.
The structure of education on reserve
Unlike in our provincial education systems, there are no minimum legislated education standards for on-reserve First Nations students. Canadian taxpayers are funding an education system in First Nations communities that has no legislated mandate for a core curriculum meeting provincial standards, no requirement that educators in First Nations schools have provincial certification, and no requirement for First Nations schools to award a recognized provincial diploma. This has resulted in “situations where First Nation youth graduate from education institutions on reserve but cannot demonstrate a recognizable diploma to a workplace or post secondary institution” (Canada, AANDC, 2014c). This system is clearly failing First Nations children.
Several persistent myths have distorted discussion and analysis of First Nations education on reserve. This paper aims to dispel those myths and highlight the reality.
Student wellness is an essential component of academic success in higher education and subsequent opportunities in the labor market. The Ohio State University Office of Student Life’s Student Wellness Center uses a model that includes nine key dimensions of wellness: career, creative, emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, physical, social and spiritual.
Key Messages
The territories’ Aboriginal populations generally lag behind their non-Aboriginal counterparts on educational attainment and adult skills.
Key contextual factors that help explain territorial education and skills performance include language and culture, family and community support, traditional economic roles, infrastructure, and governance.
Higher educational attainment helps close the skills gaps between the territories’ Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal adult populations.
Data for the territories are scarce for most of the indicators used to benchmark education and skills attainment in the provincial report cards. More work is needed to support skills assessment of K–12 students and adults in the labour force, particularly in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.
The digital age has brought many advances that have connected us globally like never before. Among the advantages to educators are the expansive resources now available to them that can enrich the learning environment, engage and motivate students and offer more convenient modes of communication to everyone. Benefits range from having access to resources such as the YouTube for Schools service, which delivers hundreds of age-appropriate education videos to schools all over the country, to the ability for individual teachers to set up their own classroom blogs or websites, where they have a venue for posting announcements and homework assignments and in general, establishing a forum for communicating with students on and off-campus.
However, social media sites also have a more ominous side. Stories of minor students being exposed to inappropriate material, sexual predators, and bullying and harassment by peers are becoming all too common.
This white paper attempts to explain the issues surrounding social networking among K-12 students and discusses some of the risks schools are facing as they try and contend with the virtually unanimous participation in social media among students. It will examine statistics around student use of social media technology and present some of the risks involved, including cyberbullying. The paper explains the types of cyberbullying that are occurring and how victims can suffer long-term damage as a result. It concludes with a discussion of why experts recommend social networks not be banned in schools and offers practical steps schools can take to manage student online interactions at school and at home. Finally, it offers a solution that gives schools the granular control required to make social media tools safe for students. One that gives schools visibility into and control over social media interactions, to not only help them educate students in the proper use of social media, but to help prevent problems such cyberbullying and other inappropriate activities.
Much has been written about the challenges of teaching an online course. While not discounting
the unique (and sometimes frustrating) aspects of the online learning environment, it could be said that, despite the numerous differences, many of the same course management strategies that are essential to success in a traditional classroom also apply in the online classroom. These strategies include the importance of a strong syllabus, clear directions, well-organized materials, and timely feedback.
Of course, the big challenge for online instructors is that the very nature of online education amplifies the importance of properly addressing these management issues, while throwing a few more additional obstacles into the mix. Choosing the right communication tools and protocols, addressing technology problems, managing student expectations, and building community are just some of issues that can stretch online instructors to the breaking point.
11 Strategies for Managing Your Online Courses was created to help online instructors tackle many of the course management issues that can erode the efficiency and effectiveness of an online course. It features 11 articles pulled from the pages of Online Classroom, including:
• Syllabus Template Development for Online Course Success
• The Online Instructor’s Challenge: Helping ‘Newbies’
• Virtual Sections: A Creative Strategy for Managing Large Online Classes
• Internal or External Email for Online Courses?
• Trial by Fire: Online Teaching Tips That Work
• The Challenge of Teaching Across Generations
It’s important to keep in mind that you’re not the only one who may be a little anxious about going online. Students often have anxiety when taking their first online course. It’s up to you to help them feel more confident and secure, all the while keeping your workload at a manageable level. The course management tips in this report will help.
Student wellness is an essential component of academic success in higher education and subsequent opportunities in the labor market. The Ohio State University Office of Student Life’s Student Wellness Center uses a model that includes nine key dimensions of wellness: career, creative, emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, physical, social and spiritual.
Personal learning environments (PLEs) hold the potential to address the needs of formal and informal learners for multi-sourced content and easily customisable learning environments. This chapter presents an overview of the European project ROLE (Responsive Open Learning Environments), which specialises in the development and evaluation of learning environments that can be personalised by individual learners according to their particular needs, thus enabling them to become self-regulated learners.
This study examines which factors underlie the narrowing of wage differences observed between young bachelor’s degree holders and high school graduates from the 2000-to-2002 period to the 2010-to-2012 period and the widening of differences in full-time paid employment rates between these two groups. The study uncovers three key findings. First, while the oil boom seen during much of the 2000s tended to reduce wage differences across education levels for both young men and young women, the remaining contributing factors differed across gender. Increases in real minimum wages and in the relative supply of bachelor’s degree holders tended to narrow wage differences for young women but not for young men. In contrast, movements in unionization rates and in the relative prevalence of temporary jobs reduced the education wage premium for young men but not for young women. The second finding is that increases in real minimum wages appear to have had a dual impact for young women, narrowing wage differences between young female bachelor’s degree holders and high school graduates but widening differences in full-time paid employment rates between these two groups. The third finding is that the narrowing of wage differences between young bachelor’s degree holders and high school graduates employed in full-time jobs was offset by a widening of differences in full-time paid employment rates between these two education groups. As a result, differences in unconditional average weekly earnings or in average annual wages and salaries between young bachelor’s degree holders and high school graduates displayed no trend during the observation period.
There are two major forces driving education today. The first is the economic reality that forces schools to make the most effective use of dollars to improve student outcomes. The second is the exponential growth in digital tools — and subsequently digital content — that provides the foundation to transform and improve how instructors teach and how students learn.
Let’s address the economic driver fi rst. For far too long the education sector has lagged behind the private sector in adopting efficiencies and capabilities derived from technology. Virtually every other sector in the economy has been computerized, modularized and transformed over the past 30 years. Although there have been leaders for change, as witnessed by the efforts we applaud in this Yearbook, change has been difficult and delayed. The recent recession has only forced this issue to the forefront.
The second driver is technological. Digital content, more sophisticated assessment tools and myriad personal and mobile computing devices are emerging and taking center stage — all aimed at improving student achievement and preparing students to thrive in the careers of a digital economy. These emerging technologies, led by a cadre of educational technologists, are leading us down the right path. This Yearbook aims to help the education community continue on the right path. The fi rst part of the Yearbook takes a look at IT spend, funding opportunities and top trends of the 2010-2011 school year to shed some light on what technologies are top of mind and how to fund them. The second part highlights 50 education innovators that have led the way and provided best-practice models to imitate. This look at what was done, who is doing it and where we are going is intended to provide inspiration and guidance to education leaders on their own innovative quests in education.
Abstract
This article examines the relationship between community colleges and universities in Canada and the United States based on increased involvement of community colleges in offering baccalaureate programs. The article employs a theoretical framework borrowed from the study of jurisdictional conflict between professions. After considering the types of possible and occurring jurisdiction settlement over baccalaureate preparation between universities and community colleges, the author concludes that the older, simplistic criterion—based on credentials awarded—that defined the division of labor between postsecondary sectors should be replaced with newer, more complex and multifaceted criteria that relate to program and client characteristics.
Michael Skolnik
Community Colleges and Universities
What will the landscape of international higher education look like a generation from now? What challenges and opportunities lie ahead for universities, especially “global” research universities? And what can university leaders do to prepare for the major social, economic, and political changes—both foreseen and unforeseen—that may be on the horizon? The nine essays in this collection proceed on the premise that one way to envision “the global university” of the future is to explore how earlier generations of university leaders prepared for “global” change—or at least responded to change—in the past. As the essays in this collection attest, many of the pat-terns associated with contemporary “globalization” or “internationalization” are not new; similar processes have been underway for a long time (some would say for centuries).1 A comparative-historical look at universities’ responses to global change can help today’s higher-education leaders prepare for the future.
Whatever one’s style, every leader, to be effective, must have and work on improving his or her moral purpose. Moral purpose is about both ends and means. Authentic leaders, in other words, display character, and character is the defining characteristic of authentic leadership.
Whether people are driven by egoistic (self-centered) or altruistic (unselfish) motives, the fact is that all effective leaders are driven by both.
Canada’s performance in higher education and skills development has been fairly strong for many years. On key measures we are at or near the top of international rankings and our highly skilled people contribute to economic competitiveness, social
innovation, and political and community well-being. But there are troubling indications that Canada’s skills and education performance is deteriorating, that not enough is being done to address a range of economic and social problems, and that opportunities and benefits have been poorly distributed across regions and groups. In short, there are signs that we are not doing enough to achieve the high levels of skills excellence and equity we need. Action is needed to sustain and enhance the performance of higher education and skills development in Canada.
In the following report, Hanover Research examines programs and initiatives employed at peer institutions to improve retention rates from first year to second year, and second year to third year, as well as graduation rates. The report includes a review of national findings regarding issues and factors essential to student retention, as well as an extensive examination of 18 of the peer institutions of XYZ University.