The traditional pathway into postsecondary education (PSE) is to enter college or university directly after graduating from high school. Not all students follow the traditional pathway into PSE. The Ontario government recently set a goal “to raise the postsecondary [attainment] rate to 70 per cent” (Speech from the Throne, 2010). In 2011, 64 per cent of Ontario residents aged between 25 and 64 held a PSE credential.1 One way to help reach the target educational attainment rate of 70 per cent is for Ontario colleges and universities to attract and retain learners who follow non-traditional pathways. Therefore, one of the priorities of the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) is to evaluate the adequacy and efficiency of non-traditional pathways in obtaining a PSE credential. This study mainly examined one non-traditional pathway, delayed
entry into PSE. Graduates who have taken more years than expected to graduate are also included in the discussion. The purpose of this paper is to address the following research questions:
• What is the demographic profile of these non-traditional graduates?
• Are their program choices and pathways through PSE different from those of direct entrants?
• Do their labour market outcomes differ from those of direct entrants?
Seamless Pathways: A Symposium on Improving Transitions from High School to College gathered prominent Ontario educators, policy-makers and government leaders in Toronto on June 6, 2006. The purpose of the symposium was to bring together an expert group of education leaders.
If every worker had the essential skills needed to do their jobs really well, productivity and competitiveness in the West would soar. But many workers do not. Forty per cent of our workforce does not have the essential skills – including language, literacy and numeracy – needed to apply their technical skills and knowledge at globally competitive levels. Investing in upgrading essential skills would provide the West with an opportunity to change the productivity narrative.
This research report represents the first phase of a multi-year collaborative research initiative of the Association of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology of Ontario.1 The initiative is designed to develop a cohesive picture of the pathways from secondary school to college. The major purpose of this phase of the research was to identify secondary school students’ perceptions of Ontario colleges and of college as a possible post-secondary educational destination for them, and to determine the factors that have shaped these perceptions. A second purpose was to identify secondary school student achievement patterns, graduation rates and course enrolments in order to consider their influence on current and future college enrolments.
The main source of data for the study was a survey of 21,385 Grades 11, 12 and Year 5 students enrolled in 73 Ontario secondary schools. The schools were selected to represent Ontario college regions, school size and school type (i.e., Roman Catholic, public, and serving francophone students). In addition to the survey, the schools were asked to provide school calendars or course option sheets and course enrolments in order to assess the availability of college-destination courses and course sequences that lead to college. Sixty-one schools provided information for this analysis. Data from the Double Cohort Study, Phase 3 (2004) and Phase 4 (2005), were also examined in order to conduct a preliminary analysis of the characteristics of college applicants in terms of their secondary school courses taken and marks obtained.
The Student Success Program (SSP) at George Brown College is designed to foster a supportive college environment for first-year students. The College committed to fund the SSP for a five-year period beginning in 2008-2009. As part of the SSP, a range of academic and non-academic activities are offered to first-year students in order to promote collaborative learning and peer interaction. Some of these activities take place in class, while others are offered outside of class. The SSP components are tailored to programs within individual centres or schools, so as to provide the types of activities best suited to assist first-year students in those areas.
A blended learning solution often calls for a platform for capturing in-class and out-of-class activities and content, and delivering it live or on demand to students. In just a few short years, colleges and universities have come to understand the many benefits of blended learning, from pedagogical to administrative. Lecture capture is one method of achieving blended learning.
In many institutions, introducing technology into the classroom presents opportunities – and obstacles to overcome. The introduction of any new technology – no matter how transparent or easy to use – requires changed behaviours. In education, the challenges can be grouped into three key areas: cultural, process, and academic. Any of these can hinder achieving return on investment and the ability to leverage – and scale – blended learning technologies. While the benefits of these technologies are
many, identifying and building on them requires strategy and preparation. This white paper, based on interviews with five universities as well as Wainhouse Research’s observations of best practices, identifies five compelling lessons about how to best drive adoption of lecture capture. The lessons include:
􀁸 Business value
􀁸 Inter-departmental cooperation
􀁸 Academic quality
􀁸 Student satisfaction
􀁸 Champions
The paper examines the five universities in detail, describing how each has found its own unique path to successful adoption of blended learning technologies. The paper also offers ten specific steps to overcome cultural, process, or academic obstacles. These are, in short:
1. Understand adoption cycles
2. Involve the right people
3. Clone your champions
4. Identify benefits to your overall institution & map goals of deployment
5. Plan extensively while remaining flexible and open to revising those plans
6. Create a consistent service model
7. Design sustainable policies
8. Create substantive processes for measurement
9. Encourage peer review
10. Leverage best of breed capture and delivery mechanisms
Blended Learning Technology: Navigating the Challenges of Large-Scale Adoption
Copyright © 2012 Wainhouse Research, LLC Page 4
The paper also offers a number of suggestions for addressing the issue of policy, which is so important in academic settings. Understanding how best to create policy can enable colleges and universities to harness and maximize the return on current or future investments in blending learning technologies.
Getting students to take their reading assignments seriously is a constant battle. Even syllabus language just short of death threats, firmly stated admonitions regularly delivered in class, and the unannounced pop quiz slapped on desks when nobody answers questions about the reading don’t necessarily change student behaviors or attitudes. Despite the correlation between reading and course success, many students remain committed to trying to get by without doing the reading, or only doing it very superficially, or only doing it just prior to exam dates. In return, some exasperated instructors fall into the trap of using
valuable class time to summarize key points of the readings. It’s not a new problem, and clearly we can’t simply bemoan the fact that students don’t read. Furthermore, doing what we’ve been doing — the threats, the endless quizzes, the chapter summaries — has failed to solve the problem. The better solution involves designing courses so that students can’t do well without reading, and creating assignments that require students to do more than just passively read.
Featuring 11 articles from The Teaching Professor, this special report was created to give faculty new ways of attacking an age-old problem. Articles in the report include:
• Enhancing Students’ Readiness to Learn
• What Textbook Reading Teaches Students
• Helping Students Use Their Textbooks More Effectively
• Text Highlighting: Helping Students Understand What They Read
• When Students Don’t Do the Reading
• Pre-Reading Strategies: Connecting Expert Understanding and Novice Learning
Whether your students struggle with the material or simply lack the motivation to read what’s
assigned, this report will help ensure your students read and understand their assignments.
Maryellen Weimer
Editor
The Teaching Professor
This report analyzes the results of a poll conducted for the Canadian Council on Learning.
Pacific Issues Partners was engaged to design a sample and questionnaire appropriate for developing a better understanding of the public’s attitudes, preferences and knowledge on a number of issues related to post-secondary education.
The major topics included:
Overall evaluation of post-secondary education in Canada
Importance of post-secondary education to society and the individual
Access and barriers, in general and for specific groups
Funding and financial barriers to education
Purpose of education and relation to potential employment
Relations with and importance of post-secondary institutions to community
Values and broader goals for education
Priorities for change and the future of education
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.
It is often the case that research questions in education involve units of analysis that can be naturally grouped or placed within hierarchical or multilevel configurations. This type of grouping is referred to as nesting. It results in the exposure of the lowest-level units of analysis to common environments that are likely to impact their behaviors, outcomes, or levels of performance. These lowest-level units are commonly referred to as level-1 units. Typical examples of these units are students nested within classrooms. Classrooms are the nesting structure, constituting a second-level unit or level-2 unit. Following this rationale, researchers could further model level-3 units consisting of classrooms (comprised of students) nested within schools. Notably, this logic can be further expanded to higher order levels. The successful identification of units situated at different levels prompted the development of techniques designed to model this phenomenon. These techniques are known as multilevel modeling.
Quality learning takes place when students connect with information and can internalize it in a way that alters or enriches their thinking. In a world of rich media, instantaneous connectivity and high expectations, educators must deploy techniques that focus student attention while providing meaningful presentations that encourage and engage. This Special Report focuses on those classroom technologies that enable teachers to more effectively capture student interest, develop lifelong learning skills, deliver content relevant for each student and efficiently assess student understanding.
Chalk and filmstrips don’t cut it anymore. Along those same lines, the classroom must be redefined. Today’s classroom is not only that which is contained within four walls of bricks and mortar. A classroom in the 21st century is any location where a convergence of instruction and learning can take place. These new classrooms can include online sessions, collaborative sessions and other virtual sessions in addition to more traditional settings. Regardless of the setting, students and teachers
expect to have access to pertinent resources that support the learning process.
In this report the term classroom refers to all of these locations. To be an effective learning locale, the site must possess appropriate technology along with other vital resources including subject content, instructional modality and assessment tools.
Overview of the Special Report This Special Report’s prime objective is to help policy decision-makers and educational leaders understand what today’s classroom technologies are evolving toward, and, more importantly, why. It is hoped that examining current classroom technologies will spur conversation as to how the practice of teaching is evolving and why that evolution makes sense.
The most difficult challenge in putting this report together was to adequately address all of the key technologies
deployed in classrooms today. Technologies range from tactile objects in Pre-K to hyper-dense 3D modeling programs in graduate-level science classes at research universities. They involve devices, interactive software and assessment tools.
Ultimately we chose to group technologies by function as they would be used in the classroom, regardless of curriculum subject or grade level.
Obtaining a postsecondary education (PSE) is a crucial requirement both for Ontario and for the province's youth. With a cross-section of all demographic and socioeconomic groups in PSE, a dual benefit ensues: the province acquires the human capital needed for Ontario’s economic success (HEQCO, 2010, p. 31), and graduates experience lower rates of unemployment, greater job stability and higher earnings (Berger, Motte, & Parkin, 2009, p. 7-21).
Objective of this Report
This report seeks to establish trends in factors that are impacting PSE decision making among Ontario's youth and to identify features that are strong predictors of PSE participation. The research is a collaborative effort of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) and the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO).
The decision to pursue a postsecondary education is influenced by a number of factors, including parental involvement, career counselling, parental income and education levels, and student location. In this report, student, household and external factors are examined to determine their impact on postsecondary pathways of Ontario youth of both linguistic sectors.
Comparisons between Ontario and the rest of Canada are also explored.
Ask most people who don’t teach online about the likelihood of academic dishonesty in an online class and you will likely hear concerns about the many ways that students could misrepresent themselves online. In fact, this concern about student representation is so prevalent it made its way into the Higher Education Opportunities Act (HEOA). Passed into law in 2008, the act brought a few big changes to online education, including a new requirement to “ensure that the student enrolled in an online class is the student doing the coursework.” Although there’s some disagreement as to whether distance education is more susceptible to academic dishonesty than other forms of instruction, what isn’t up for debate is the fact that for as long as there’s been exams, there’s been cheating on exams. The online environment simply opens up a different set of challenges that aren’t typically seen in traditional face-to-face courses. Promoting Academic Integrity in Online Education was developed to help you understand the latest tools and techniques for mitigating cheating and other unethical behaviors in your online courses. The report features nine articles from Distance Education Report, including:
• Combating Online Dishonesty with Communities of Integrity
• 91 Ways to Maintain Academic Integrity in Online Courses
• The New News about Cheating for Distance Educators
• A Problem of Core Values: Academic Integrity in Distance Learning
• Practical Tips for Preventing Cheating on Online Exams
Online education didn’t invent cheating, but it does present unique challenges. This report provides proactive ways for meeting these challenges head on.
The 2013 Ontario Budget will play an essential part in ensuring the province has the qualified workforce it needs for the years ahead.
The challenges facing Ontario are significant. Young people throughout the province are struggling to find meaningful
work. People who have lost their jobs after years at the same company continue to seek opportunities to train for new
careers.
Meanwhile, there is an increasing skills mismatch in Ontario and throughout the country, as many employers struggle to
find qualified people to hire.
As Seneca College president emeritus Rick Miner predicted in his seminal report, People Without Jobs, Jobs Without
People: Ontario’s Labour Market Future, there is a growing divide between the qualifications sought by employers and
the education and training of much of the workforce. Growing numbers of job seekers simply aren’t qualified to fill a large
number of vacant positions.
Since 1987, the Canadian Association of University Business Officers (CAUBO) has celebrated the administrative achievements of our members through the Quality & Productivity (Q&P) Awards Program. The simple concept of sharing good ideas has grown
into an established best practices program that celebrates the successes of our members and provides a venue for spreading the word.
CAUBO promotes the professional and effective delivery of services and administration of resources in all facets of higher education. This annual awards program is designed to recognize, reward and share achievements of administrators in the introduction of new services, improvement in the quality of services provided, and the management of human, financial, and
physical resources.
Depuis 1987, L’Association canadienne du personnel administratif universitaire (ACPAU) souligne les bons coups de ses membres par l’entremise du programme des prix de la qualité et de la productivité. Le concept de départ, qui consistait à
communiquer de bonnes idées, a germé; aujourd’hui, il s’agit d’un programme bien établi qui réunit des pratiques exemplaires, met en valeur les réussites de nos membres et constitue un moyen de diffuser ce savoir.
L’ACPAU s’occupe de promouvoir la prestation professionnelle de services et l’administration effice de ressources dans toutes les facettes de l’enseignement supérieur. Le programme des prix de la qualité et de la productivité vise à récompenser et à faire connaître chaque année les réalisations des administrateurs universitaires, que ce soit pour l’introduction de nouveaux services, l’amélioration de la qualité des services fournis, ou encore la gestion des ressources humaines, financières
ou physiques.
The school-to-work transition of Ontario postsecondary graduates is a growing concern within Canada’s “knowledge-based” economy, with increasing attention given to the skills possessed by recent graduates. There is some debate about whether the skills developed within postsecondary programs provide a good fit with the requirements of the evolving “knowledge” economy. While some argue that graduates require technical and applied skills for this economy, others assert that generic skills offered by liberal arts programs, such as communication and critical thinking skills, are also in demand by employers. Therefore, although technological skills are required for the creation of new technology in this economy, an alternate perspective identifies a need for a variety of educated workers, including those who can evaluate, interpret, and communicate information in the knowledge economy. The field of study of recent postsecondary graduates is thus a salient aspect of their labour
market outcomes. Previous research indicates that there was little difference in outcomes between graduates of different fields of study in the 1980s and early 1990s; however, information about more recent cohorts is needed. The impact of new information technology and a greater concentration on producing workers for the knowledge economy has influenced changes in human resources needs and business activities. It is therefore important to study a recent cohort of graduates who made their school-to-work transitions during a time of rapid technological change.
The primary purpose of this study is to explore issues relating to the labour market outcomes of recent graduates of various field of study and levels of schooling in Ontario. While stratification based on fields of study is the focus of this research, attention is also given to gender when examining the employment outcomes of recent graduates. Enrolment across trades, college, and university programs remain segregated by gender, leading to gender differences in occupational choice and technical training. Thus, the reproduction of the gendered division of labour may result. This study will provide important information for policy officials involved with allocating government funding to education and may inform decisions about tuition levels for different programs. Results may also be of interest to administrators of college, trades, and university programs who are concerned with admissions strategies and enrolment across different fields of study. The findings from this study will also be of assistance to students.
Encouraging benchmarking in e-learning supported the dissemination of e-learning benchmarks developed by the Australasian Council on Open, Distance and ELearning (ACODE). Dissemination activities, including provision of web-based
information and of training, were required to enhance the accessibility to the sector of the benchmarks and the guidelines for their use.
Social Media Usage Trends Among Higher Education Faculty
The numbers surrounding social media are simply mind boggling.
750 million. The number of active Facebook users, which means if Facebook was a country it would be the third-largest in the world.
90. Pieces of content created each month by the average Facebook user.
175 million. The Twitter accounts opened during Twitter's history.
140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day in February 2011.
460,000. Average number of new Twitter accounts created each day during February 2011.
120 million. LinkedIn members as of August 4, 2011.
More than two per second. The average rate at which professionals are signing up to join LinkedIn as of June 30, 2011.
All of these stats, which come from the respective companies’ own websites, serve as proof points to what we already knew: social media is growing at breakneck speed. Yet the story of social media is still being written as organizations and individuals alike continue to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of social media in the workplace. When that workplace is a college or university, there’s a cacophony of opinions in terms of the most effective uses, if any.
For the past two years, Faculty Focus conducted a survey on Twitter usage in higher education, this year we expanded the survey to include Facebook and LinkedIn, while changing a number of the questions as well. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are considered "the big three" in social media, and we thank those who recommended we take a
broader look at the landscape.
All three platforms have their strengths and weaknesses, and are better used for some things than others. But how are the three being used in higher education today? It’s our hope that these survey results provide at least some of the answers while lending new data to the discussion.
A critical new theme of the 1990’s was how to achieve large scale reform. In the current decade sustainability has been added as a major concern. These twin concepts represent a radical shift from understanding individual school innovation toward establishing system change that generates and supports continuous improvement on a large scale.
In this paper we use literacy and to a certain extent numeracy initiatives as examples of attempts at large scale sustainable reform. We first describe the sources we use from our own and others work — a lively body of multi-year attempts at large scale reform. Second, we offer a tri-level model— school/district/state, along with evidence to demonstrate what is necessary at each of these three levels in the pursuit of system-wide reform. Third, we identify an agenda of unfinished business in order to take us to the next level of sustainable reform.
The Alternative to Academic Suspension Program (AASP) ran as a pilot program in fall 2009 to address the skill development of students facing suspension at Brock University. Initial results of the program indicate positive results with students persisting in their programs. In total, there were 445 students facing academic suspension, and 42 per cent of those students participated in the AASP pilot. Participants in the AASP were required to successfully complete the program,pass all credits taken during the academic year (maximum of three) and achieve an overall session average of at least 60 per cent to be eligible to continue studies. Failure to meet any of the conditions resulted in academic suspension at the end of the academic year. Of the 187 students participating in the AASP pilot, 50 per cent returned to studies in the fall of 2010, compared to only 17 per cent of those students facing suspension who did not to participate. When considering all students facing suspension, AASP participants represented over two-thirds of the returning students in fall 2010. Not only are the participants persisting with studies, but the participants are improving their overall averages as well.
While overall academic averages can be difficult to change, of the 94 AASP participants returning to studies in 2010, 92.5 per cent of them were able to increase their overall average. Considering that AASP participants were limited to a maximum of three credits, it is encouraging that so many of the returning AASP participants were able to achieve this result. The participants are moving from being at risk of not completing their programs to completion with improved overall averages.
The current analysis reflects a positive short-term impact on retention. Continued analysis would examine a long-term assessment of the program and whether students can maintain their initial success as they continue in their studies at Brock. Other key findings from the report include:
• In 2009, students within two years of entry into Brock and facing suspension participated at a higher rate than those students facing suspension who had entered prior to 2007.
• Although 94 AASP participants returned to studies in 2010, there were 116 AASP participants (62 per cent of total AASP enrollment) eligible to continue studies at Brock University in 2010. We are unable to track whether the eligible participants not returning to Brock have gone to other institutions or chosen to end their postsecondary studies.
Surveys and focus groups from eligible AASP participants not returning to studies at Brock would be beneficial to understand what choices these students made and why they made them.
Further study needs to be completed to understand the longer-term impact of the AASP. In addition to driving internal program improvements, further study could also help develop strategies to identify and support at-risk students at other universities.