Nearly every college and university in America has refocused its attention on “student success.” Like many institutions, Cleveland State University, where I work, has erected an entire enterprise devoted to this endeavor. We have reorganized ourselves administratively, invested in new staff, updated technology and taken a deep dive into institutional data to ensure we are best positioned to make sure all our students have a high potential to graduate. We have improved as a result.
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.
Ontario firms and organizations are being challenged to increase productivity through innovation in order to compete on the fiercely competitive world stage and improve the quality of life of Ontarians. Yet, Ontario suffers from innovation gaps
that place its productivity and prosperity goals at risk.
Ontario’s 24 Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology have long been recognized for their contributions to career-oriented education and training programs that have strengthened the Ontario economy throughout the latter part of the 20th century.
Poised on the threshold of the 21st century, college-based applied research and development (R&D) and business and industry innovation activities are of ever increasing importance to the achievement of Ontario’s productivity and prosperity
goals.
Drawing mainly from HEQCO’s own research, this @Issue paper:
• Describes how the definition of student success has gradually broadened at Ontario colleges and universities;
• Summarizes some of the underlying institutional and student population factors that also impact on most current measures of student success;
• Provides broad observations about some recent findings as they relate to the awareness, utilization and impact of various student service, course-based and other initiatives designed to promote student success;
• Recommends what can be measured – as well as how and what outcomes can be expected – when it comes to initiatives and interventions designed to improve student success.
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.
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.
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.
While conditions vary across First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities, as well as urban and rural contexts, the well-being gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations is significant across most of the country. Population aging and emerging labour shortages in Canada present an opportunity for Aboriginal youth, as the fastest growing demographic, to make a significant contribution to the country’s long-term prosperity. As the Aboriginal population is projected to rise above 1.5 million by 2026, there is an urgency to act now to enable, support, and empower Aboriginal youth to achieve their potential and participate fully in Canada’s social and economic future.
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.
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.
Leadership Development:
An Annotated Bibliography
About Ontario Centres of Excellence Inc.
The Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) not-for-profit program was formally established in 1987 with seven independent centres that evolved and amalgamated into Ontario Centres of Excellence Inc. in 2004.
Twenty-five years ago, the traditional economic foundation for the province, and for Canada, was shifting from a north american focused and commodities-based economy to one that is globally oriented and knowledge-based.
Prior to the creation of OCE, there was limited connection between universities, colleges, research hospitals and industry. Consensus was that these academic and research institutions were producing quality research that was not being utilized to its full potential by industry.
OCE was designed to bridge that gap and create productive working partnerships between university and college
research departments, research hospitals and Ontario industry.
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.
When teachers think the best, most important way to improve their teaching is by developing their content knowledge, they end up with sophisticated levels of knowledge, but they have only simplistic instructional methods to convey that material. To imagine that content matters more than process is to imagine that the car is more important than the road. Both are essential. What we teach and how we teach it are inextricably linked and very much dependent on one another.
This special report features 11 articles pulled from the pages of The Teaching Professor to help you discover new ways to build connections between what you teach and how you teach it. The report offers tips on how to engage students, give feedback, create a climate for learning, and more. It also provides fresh perspectives on how faculty should approach
their development as teachers.
It’s been said that few things can enhance student learning more than an instructor’s commitment to ongoing professional development. Here’s a sample of the articles you will find in Effective Strategies for Improving College Teaching and Learning:
• Faculty Self-Disclosures in the College Classroom
• A Tree Falling in the Forest: Helping Students ‘Hear’ and Use Your Comments
• Understanding What You See Happening in Class
• Can Training Make You a Better Teacher?
• Striving for Academic Excellence
Although there is no single best teaching method, approach, or style, this special report
will give you a variety of strategies to try. Those that work effectively with your students
you should make your own.
Maryellen Weimer
Editor
The Teaching Professor
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.
Most of the faculty on American college and university campuses are contingent employees, working in conditions very different from the image of academic professional life that informs contemporary discussions of higher education policy. This report describes the findings of a recent survey of contingent faculty in the United States, focusing on the working conditions
imposed upon contingent faculty and the ways those conditions impact students and the quality of the education they receive.
While competency-based education is growing, standardized tools for evaluating the unique characteristics of course design in this domain are still under development. This preliminary research study evaluated the effectiveness of a rubric developed for assessing course design of competency-based courses in an undergraduate Information Technology and Administrative Management program. The rubric, which consisted of twenty-six individual measures, was used to evaluate twelve new courses. Additionally, the final assessment scores of nine students who completed nine courses in the program were evaluated to
determine if a correlation exists between student success and specific indicators of quality in the course design. The results indicate a correlation exists between measures that rated high and low on the evaluation rubric and final assessment scores of students completing courses in the program. Recommendations from this study suggest that quality competency-based courses need to evaluate the importance and relevance of resources for active student learning, provide increased support and
ongoing feedback from mentors, and offer opportunities for students to practice what they have learned.
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.
The following Guidelines are intended for use in planning, implementing, and/or judging the benefits and contributions of campus-based assessment efforts. The Guidelines were developed through conversations with institutional researchers, faculty, practitioners, and assessment scholars that focused on which aspects of the assessment process were most important in optimizing the utility ofassessment efforts on college campuses. Additionally, the authors of the Guidelines reviewed the major publications focused on assessment utilization and drew from their collective experience of over 50 years working in the area of higher education assessment.