High Enrollment Demands, Stretched Resources Higher education institutions are increasingly caught in a bind: Trying to serve growing enrollment demand with budgets based on the lower student counts of previous years. According to the Campus Computing Project’s 2011 Community Colleges and the Economy Survey, “More than two-thirds (69 percent) of the 448 campus presidents and district chancellors participating in the 2011 survey report increased headcount enrollment in winter 2011; concurrently,
three-fifths of the presidents participating in the survey report a reduction in the overall operating budget at their institution; two-fifths (41 percent) report that the budget cut was five percent or more.” This situation can lead to issues such as:
• over enrollments, especially in core courses, which creates a less-than-optimal and frustrating learning
experience for faculty and students;
• delayed graduation for students because of enrollment delays; and
• reduced retention rates as students seek other schools that can offer smaller class sizes and faster
degree completion.
Institutions typically can’t solve this problem by adding more sections to a class. They don’t have the budget to hire new faculty or support staff, and increased tuition revenues from higher enrollments may not cover the funding gap. Larger or overflow classroom space also may not be available, especially in an urban campus. From these factors, the core challenge emerges: How do campuses educate and graduate more students — with the same staff and classroom resources — while maintaining high learning levels and teaching standards?
Using Technology to Scale Classroom Instruction An emerging solution to this challenge is the use of blended learning curriculum design and lecture capture technology. This solution delivers courses through a mix of online and in-class content and participation.
Online lectures serve as the foundation of the blended learning model. The instructor can associate the lecture
video with online content and collaboration tools in order to deliver a complete learning experience to both on-campus and distance students. Availability of a recorded lecture can enable teaching and learning in multiple ways. For example, an inverted
teaching model is possible. Students watch a video lecture before the class, then arrive ready to discuss the lecture’s topic or work on a related activity.
By reviewing statistics on content access, instructors can identify where additional explanation is needed and
improve the content of the lecture or study materials.
Technology also helps instructors better serve students with special learning needs, using tools to create closed captioning of a video lecture and for compatibility with screen readers and other accessibility tools.
For students, the blended model delivers learning that is convenient and fits within their work schedules and
personal lives. They can access the lecture video and other content from a PC, tablet or smartphone, and from anywhere they can connect to the Internet.
How Blended Learning Helps Higher Education Technologies for delivering online access to classroom instruction offers several advantages for students, faculty,and their colleges and universities.
• Students can access the courses they need at the right time, increasing the likelihood they will graduate on
schedule. A clear, certain education path also increases student satisfaction and retention.
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?
Think back to your first few years of teaching. If you’re like most educators, you probably made your share of mistakes. To be sure, we all do things differently now than we did when we were first starting out. Thank goodness for that!
When Faculty Focus put out a call for articles for this special report on teaching mistakes, we really didn’t know what to expect. Would faculty be willing to share their earlier missteps for all to see? Would the articles all talk about the same common mistakes, or would the range of mistakes discussed truly reflect the complexities of teaching today? We were delighted at the response, not only in terms of the number of instructors willing to share their stories with our readers, but by the variety of mistakes in the reflective essays. For example, in “You Like Me, You Really Like Me. When Kindness Becomes a Weakness,” Jolene Cunningham writes of her discovery that doing everything you can for your students is not always the best policy.
In “If I Tell Them, They Will Learn,” Nancy Doiron-Maillet writes about her realization that it’s not enough to provide information to students if they don’t have opportunities to then apply what you are trying to teach them.
Other articles in Teaching Mistakes from the College Classroom include:
• When Expectations Collide
• Things My First Unhappy Student Taught Me
• Understanding My Role as Facilitator
• Don’t Assume a Student’s Previous Knowledge
• What Works in One Culture May Not Work in Another
We thank all the authors who shared their stories and know that the lessons learned will help prevent others from making these same mistakes.
Immigrant families come to Canada with high education levels, with the Greater Toronto Area a primary destination. Despite high education levels, their economic and social integration into Canada is often difficult, due in part to lack of recognition of foreign credentials and work experience, weak official-language skills, and insufficient cultural competencies. For the children in these families, the young immigrants, successful education outcomes set the stage for success in adulthood, both in the workplace and in further education, enabling them to better integrate into Canadian society and contribute to the Canadian economy. This study examined the pathways of immigrant youth, and the role of English-language proficiency and region of origin in these pathways, using a recently created database containing a number of linked data sources from Seneca College, a large multicultural college in Toronto. This longitudinal dataset enables us to track individual students from the beginning of high school through to graduation from college, and their eventual transition into the labour market or to further education.
institutional context, a variety of priorities and issues will be identified by participants and a variety of solutions will be proposed and attempted. It is appropriate then that support for distributed leadership allows for a variety of situations rather than providing a single prescription.
This Resource Portfolio for the P.A.C.E.D Distributed Leadership Model provides support for a range of elements of distributed leadership through the provision of resources that will assist in actioning initiatives. These resources include templates for role identification, reflection, provision of feedback, presentations, posters and websites. The Resource Portfolio provides integrated examples of distributed leadership in action, based on experience in the RMIT Student Feedback and Leadership Project.
The examples reinforce the diversity possible when a single project is actioned through distributed leadership.
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.
SYNTHESIS: WHAT THIS REPORT TELLS US
The 2009–2010 State of Learning in Canada provides the most current information on the Canadian learning landscape, contributing to a comprehensive understanding of how Canadians are faring as lifelong learners. As in previous State of Learning reports, this update reflects CCL’s vision of learning as a lifelong process. Our research affirms time and again that the skills and knowledge that citizens bring to their families, their workplaces and their communities help determine a country’s economic success and overall quality of life. It is this core value that continues to guide our research and our commitment to fostering a learning society, in which all members can develop their full potential as active, engaged learners and contributing members of their community.
This update takes a life course approach, beginning with learning in the early childhood learning and school-based education through to the formal and informal learning of adults. Highlights from the recently released report on the State of Aboriginal Learning in Canada: A Holistic Approach to Measuring Success (2009), which introduced the first application of a comprehensive approach to measuring Aboriginal Learning in Canada, are also included.
While Scott Jeffrey, PhD, was getting his doctorate at the University of Chicago, he investigated which rewards would be the most effective in getting University staff members to improve speed and accuracyiii in the University’s incentive lab. In a controlled study he tested hard cold cash against a variety of non-monetary rewards, such as massages and tangible rewards. He used only a verbal “thank you” for the control group.
The Ontario university sector is already somewhat differentiated. A policy decision to increase the differentiation of the postsecondary system brings the following benefits:
• Higher quality teaching and research programs
• More student choice with easier inter‐institution transfer and mobility
• Greater institutional accountability
• A more globally competitive system
• A more financially sustainable system
Ontario’s postsecondary system can transition seamlessly and incrementally to greater differentiation with the judicious and strategic use of funding strategies already familiar to government. This transition to a more differentiated university sector is guided by principles including:
• Equal value on the teaching and research functions of universities
• Forging a contemporary relationship between Ontario’s colleges and universities
• Linking the differentiation policy to funding decisions
• More effective use of multi‐year accountability agreements and performance
indicators to evaluate whether universities are meeting expected goals and targets.
The reasons why students need to be involved and engaged when they attend college are well established. Engagement can be the difference between completing a degree and dropping out. Research has sought to identify what makes student involvement more likely. Factors like student-faculty interaction, active and collaborative learning experiences, involvement in extracurricular activities, and living on campus have all been shown to make a difference. Not surprisingly, faculty play a critical role in student engagement … from the obvious: facilitating discussions in the classroom; to the often overlooked: maximizing those brief encounters we have with students outside of class. This special report features 15 articles that provide perspectives and advice for keeping students actively engaged in learning activities while fostering more meaningful interactions between students and faculty members, and among the students themselves.
For example, in “Student Engagement: Trade-offs and Payoffs” author E Shelley Reid, associate professor at George Mason University, talks about how to craft engagement-focused questions rather than knowledge questions, and explains her willingness to take chances in ceding some control over students’ learning.
In “The Truly Participatory Seminar” authors Sarah M. Leupen and Edward H. Burtt, Jr., of Ohio Wesleyan University, outline their solution for ensuring all students in their upper division seminar course participate in discussion at some level.
In “Reminders for Improving Classroom Discussion” Roben Torosyan, associate director of the Center for Academic Excellence at Fairfield University, offers very specific advice on balancing student voices, reframing discussions, and probing below the surface of group discussions.
And finally, in “Living for the Light Bulb” authors Aaron J. Nurick and David H. Carhart of Bentley College provide tips on setting the stage for that delightful time in class “when the student’s entire body says ‘Aha! Now I see it!’” Who wouldn’t like to see more light bulbs going on more often? One of the most challenging tasks instructors face is keeping students engaged. Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom will help you meet that challenge while ensuring your classroom is a positive and productive learning environment.
The time for meaningful transformation in Ontario’s postsecondary system is now. To meet the needs of the emerging economy, reform must focus on innovation and applied learning that vaults our province ahead of its competition in creating the best-educated, best-prepared workforce in the world. Composed of distinct but equally valued and complementary partners, Ontario’s transformed postsecondary system will ensure that all students can reach their full potential through a broad array of theoretical and applied learning opportunities. Colleges will continue to be student focused, specializing in applied learning that leads to good jobs for graduates, addresses labour market needs and affords access to the broadest possible population. Colleges and universities will offer a range of credentials within their systems and collaborate on a multitude of programs that offer students the best of both. Expanded pathways will give students the opportunity to customize their post-secondary experience to match their interests. Online and blended learning, married to leading-edge technology, will enable students to learn anywhere, anytime, and in ways best suited to their learning styles. Students will be better prepared than ever before to meet the demands of the economy, and they will achieve their goals faster and at less cost.
In the traditional college classroom today, faculty and students arrive with a certain set of expectations, shaped largely by past experiences. And although students may need the occasional (or perhaps frequent) reminder of what's required of them, there's usually something very familiar about the experience for both faculty and students alike. In the online classroom, an entirely new set of variables enters the equation. It's a little like trying to drive in a foreign country. You know how to drive, just like you know how to teach, but it sure is hard to get the hang of driving on the left side of the road, you're not quite sure
how far a kilometre is, and darn it if those road signs aren't all in Japanese. This special report explains the "rules of the road" for online teaching and learning and features a series of columns that first appeared in the Distance Education Report's "Between the Clicks," a popular column by Dr. Lawrence C. Ragan, Director of Instructional Design and
Development for Penn State's World Campus.
The articles contained in the report will help you establish online instructor best practices and expectations, and include the following principles of effective online teaching:
. Show Up and Teach
. Practice Proactive Course Management Strategies
. Establish Patterns of Course Activities
. Plan for the Unplanned
. Response Requested and Expected
. Think Before You Write
. Help Maintain Forward Progress
. Safe and Secure
. Quality Counts
.(Double) Click a Mile on My Connection
These principles, developed at Penn State's World Campus, outline the core behaviours of the successful online instructor, and help to define parameters around the investment of time on part of the instructor. In his articles, Ragan identifies potential barriers and limitations to online learning, and specific strategies to assist instructors in achieving the performance
Introducing the drivers for whole system reform
‘Whole system reform’ is the name of the game and ‘drivers’ are those policy and strategy levers that have the least and best chance of driving successful reform. A ‘wrong driver’ then is a deliberate policy force that has little chance of achieving the desired result, while a ‘right driver’ is one that ends up achieving better measurable results for students. Whole system reform
is just that – 100 per cent of the system – a whole state, province, region or entire country. This paper examines those drivers typically chosen by leaders to accomplish reform, critiques their inadequacy, and offers an alternative set of drivers that have been proven to be more effective at accomplishing the desired goal, which I express as … the moral imperative of raising the bar (for all students) and closing the gap (for lower performing groups) relative to higher order skills and competencies required to be successful world citizens.
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.
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 to:
• learn about other jurisdictions’ approaches to building meaningful pathways that contribute to higher success rates in secondary school and higher participation in post-secondary education
• discuss what has been learned from current research; the School/College/Work Initiative projects; and the unique role of colleges and apprenticeship pathways in student success
• identify systemic issues and develop policy advice for creating better school-college linkages in order to raise both participation and success rates for post-secondary students.
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.
Ontario faces significant challenges to its global competitiveness. At the same time, demographic trends point to growing skills shortages and to increased competition worldwide for skilled labour. In the face of these challenges, there is an urgent need to ensure the economy has the skills it needs and individuals have access to recognized, credentialed education and training that meets their individual aspirations and supports their transition to long-term employment. The proposals contained in this document also address a key priority of the McGuinty government: addressing poverty. For example, with youth unemployment at nearly 14 per cent, Ontario must ensure that at-risk youth, who have even higher unemployment rates, participate in education and training programs such as the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program, Job Connect and Learning to 18.
There is a need to refocus our employment and training programs and services to respond to identified labour market needs and support long-term labour force attachment.
Ontario’s colleges have a mandate to offer a comprehensive program of career-oriented postsecondary education and training to assist individuals in finding and keeping employment, to meet the needs of employers and the changing work environment, and to support the economic and social development of their local and diverse communities. We represent a significant public investment.
A government-college partnership that capitalizes on the colleges’ mandate and the public investment in colleges represents a prudent approach to meeting the labour market challenges Ontario faces.
The programs and services that individual colleges deliver at the local level vary depending on local needs and circumstances. Within this context, Ontario’s colleges are committed to playing a pivotal role in assisting the province. We represent a stable, accountable, province-wide, publicly funded infrastructure that delivers a comprehensive range of programming in English and in French and provides essential support services to individuals to enhance their potential
for success.
Business, political, and educational leaders are increasingly asking schools to integrate development of skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, and collaboration into the teaching and learning of academic subjects. These skills are often referred to as “21st century skills” or “deeper learning.”
At the request of several foundations, the National Research Council appointed a committee of experts in education, psychology, and economics to more clearly define “deeper learning” and “21st century skills,” consider these skills’ importance for positive outcomes in education, work, and other areas of life, address how to teach them, and examine related
issues.
The purpose of this study was to identify how entrepreneurship education is delivered in Ontario colleges and universities. In Ontario, as in the rest of Canada, the increase in the number of entrepreneurship courses at universities and colleges, and the concurrent popularization and maturation of entrepreneurship programming, contribute to fostering entrepreneurial skills and mindsets, and the creation of businesses. The overall aim of this report is to inform debate and decision-making on entrepreneurship education through a mapping and assessment of existing programs in the province.
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.