In this white paper, we report on the chronic problem of humanities PhD academic underemployment, develop an argument for the social value of high-level humanities research and teaching, and outline a series of measures for the reform of the PhD in the humanities. We note that most recent thinking about humanities graduate study has focused on the institution of the academy and the academic labour market. While we agree that these are significant focal points, we nevertheless maintain that it is important to develop a wider viewpoint that sees the university as a participant in the political world.
Online learning and digital interaction is pervasive in today’s educational environment.
Where rich multimedia content once was an exception, it's increasingly the rule in K-12 and college classrooms. Blended or hybrid courses that mix elements of traditional classroom learning with online education are the norm in many school districts and universities. And completely online courses — not to mention entirely virtual colleges and school districts —
are emerging with growing frequency. But educational institutions aren’t just delivering learning content differently; they’re interacting digitally with the diverse stakeholders that make up the education community.
For instance, students access grades and transcripts online. Parents monitor student attendance electronically and e-mail teachers with their concerns. Students and teachers collaborate via social networks. School staff members conduct common employee transactions — choosing benefits, booking vacation time, etc. — through district Web portals. And the list goes on.
Yet, the vast potential of online learning and digital interaction comes with significant technology challenges. Broadening learning opportunities through multimedia tools, offering remote access to educational content, and letting users remotely tap into school data and systems demands that schools manage new levels of IT complexity and adopt more sophisticated approaches to IT security. This guidebook is designed to help educational institutions deal with these issues.
We’ll examine significant trends in online learning to gain an understanding of what colleges and school districts need to prepare for. It’s clear that technology is changing teaching models — both inside and outside of the traditional classroom. Funding reductions for public universities are forcing higher education institutions to reconsider the delivery model for college courses. Governors and mayors pressure school districts to improve student performance — especially in critical subjects like science and math. Educators and administrators search for effective and affordable approaches for keeping at-risk students in school and helping special-needs students succeed. Online learning and new forms of digital interaction play a growing and evolving role in all these issues. But if technology is going to answer these challenges, the IT environment must be simplified. Therefore, we’ll present strategies for managing growing technological complexity. Students, parents, teachers and administrators expect 24/7 access to course material, grades, attendance, admissions and more. What's more, they want to access that information from a dizzying array of devices, from traditional desktops and laptops, to smartphones and slick new tablets. Some of those devices may be owned and managed by the educational institution — but a growing number of them are not. How do you respond to all of this without deploying hundreds of conflicting applications and hiring an army of expensive IT professionals to keep it all straight? We’ll show you some solutions through powerful technologies like endpoint virtualization.
My father used to tell a joke, over and over again. It was a classic outback Australian, Slim Dusty joke that – like the best dad jokes – I can’t remember. But I do recall the punchline. “Who called the cook a bastard?” To which the answer was, “Who called the bastard a cook?”
This riposte often comes to mind during discussions about doctoral supervision and candidature management. Discussions go on (and on and on) about quality, rigour, ethics and preparedness. Postgraduates are monitored, measured and ridiculed for their lack of readiness or their slow progress towards completion. But inconsistencies and problems with supervisors and supervision are marginalised. In response, I think of my father’s one-liner: Who called the supervisor a bastard? Who called the bastard a supervisor?
The current Canadian landscape of graduate education has pockets of presence of Indigenous faculty, students, and staff. The reality is that all too often, Aboriginal graduate students are either among the few, or is the sole Aboriginal
person in an entire faculty. They usually do not have mentorship or guidance from an Indigenous faculty member or ally, that is, someone who is supportive of Indigenous knowledges and Indigenity. While many institutions are working to recruit and retain Aboriginal graduate students, more attention needs to be paid to culturally relevant strategies, policies, and approaches.
This paper critically examines the role of a culturally relevant peer and faculty mentoring initiative—SAGE (Supporting Aboriginal Graduate Enhancement)—which works to better guide institutional change for Indigenous graduate student success. The key findings show that the relationships in SAGE create a sense of belonging and networking opportunities, and it also
fosters self-accountability to academic studies for many students because they no longer feel alone in their graduate journey. The paper concludes with a discussion on the implications of a culturally relevant peer-support program for mentoring, recruiting, and retaining Aboriginal graduate students. It also puts forth a challenge to institutions to better support Aboriginal graduate student recruitment and retention through their policies, programs, and services
within the institution.
In this paper, four qualitative case studies capture the complex interplay between the social and structural relations that shape community - academic partnerships. Collaborations begin as relationships among people. They are sustained by institutional structures that recognize and support these relationships.
Productive collaborations centralize reciprocity, flexibility, and relationship building between individuals and institutions. Our findings also indicate a synergistic interaction between collaborative processes and outcomes:
an equitable process supports the development of mutually beneficial outcomes, and the ability to sustain a collaborative process requires substantive progress towards shared change goals.
Recognition of the importance of a high-quality system of postsecondary education (PSE) in meeting the demands of Canada’s knowledge-based economy has focused recent media and policy attention on the role of Ontario’s colleges and universities in facilitating the successful transition of postsecondary graduates to the labour market. In particular, there is growing interest in the expansion of postsecondary work-integrated learning (WIL) programs – which include co-op, clinical placements, internships, and more – as a means of improving students’ employment prospects and labour market outcomes.
These programs are also believed to benefit students in other ways, for example, by enhancing the quality of the postsecondary experience and improving learning outcomes. Yet despite assumptions about the benefits of postsecondary WIL programs, relatively little empirical research has been conducted to assess students’ perspectives on the value of WIL and the learning outcomes associated with WIL participation.
This report examines community colleges from the perspective of the faculty who deliver their public service – high quality post-secondary education and job training. The report is based on conversations with over 600 faculty at all 24 CAATs,
along with historical research and present-day inquiry into the sector’s financing, management, and operations. The report is focused primarily on perceptions by college faculty that there is a crisis of quality within the college system today.
Canada’s long-term prosperity depends on providing Canadians with the education and skills needed to participate fully in our economy, and on enhancing the ability of companies, particularly small-and- medium-sized enterprises, to become more productive and innovative.
The recommendations of the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC) focus on investments in education and skills training, infrastructure improvements and innovation and commercialization.
Executive Summary
Media fragmentation is occurring at light speed in today’s multi-platform environment, which features not only computers, but smartphones, tablets, gaming platforms and a seemingly ever-increasing number of emerging devices.
The strong swelling of mobile audiences, devices and consumption habits have shown us that consumers have become more platform agnostic in their digital media consumption and happily switch devices throughout the day and into the night to stay up to date on email, news, social media etc.
comScore has been preparing for a future scenario where most people will consume content on the go and PCs would no longer be the center of the digital universe. This future is quickly becoming a reality.
The following report examines how the latest trends in web usage, online video, digital advertising, mobile, social media and e-commerce are currently shaping the Canada digital marketplace and what that means for the coming year
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.
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.
This study investigates the relationship between approaches to studying and course completion in two online preparatory university courses in mathematics and computer programming. The students participating in the two courses are alike in age, gender, and approaches to learning. Four hundred and ninety-three students participating in these courses answered the short
version of the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST). Results show that students demonstrating a deep approach to learning in either course are more likely to complete. In the mathematics course, a combination of deep and strategic approaches correlates positively with course completion. In the programming course, students who demonstrate a surface approach are less likely to complete. These results are in line with the intentions of the course designers, but they also suggest ways to improve these courses. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that ASSIST can be used to evaluate course design.
Why this book?
Teachers, instructors and faculty are facing unprecedented change, with often larger classes, more diverse students,
demands from government and employers who want more accountability and the development of graduates who are
workforce ready, and above all, we are all having to cope with ever changing technology. To handle change of this nature,
teachers and instructors need a base of theory and knowledge that will provide a solid foundation for their teaching, no
matter what changes or pressures they face.
The integration of information and communications technologies (ICT) in higher education, especially in North America and Europe, has reached a tipping point, where one is hard-pressed to find a classroom utterly devoid of any digital
technology. in the developing world, distance education models are increasingly being implemented in postsecondary schools, particularly to promote the development of professional skills. This special issue reviews some distance education models and sheds light on how the exponential growth of on- line social interactions via increased adoption of web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis, and purposeful games has impacted student learning and instructional strategies in post-secondary schools from an international perspective. we critique the most common theoretical underpinnings for distance education and report some empirical evidence of how web 2.0 technologies are being em- ployed to improve performance in higher education
classrooms in Canada and abroad.
Ontario's youth are among the best educated, most diverse and digitally connected in the world.
Our investments in education, social development and inno-vation helped them weather the recent economic downturn better than their counterparts in many developed countries.
Yet the unemployment rate for Ontario youth remains unaccept-ably high and more than double that of workers aged 25-64. For young people facing multiple barriers to employment – Aboriginal youth, recent immigrants, visible minorities, and young people with disabilities – the rates are even higher.
Our future prosperity depends on giving young people the right skills, experiences and supports they need to succeed in today’s global economy.
That is why we’ve developed an unprecedented $295 million Youth Jobs Strategy that aims to help young Ontarians develop their career skills, find employment, or be their own boss.
And to help tackle this challenge and ensure success, we’re partnering with employers, educators, industry, labour and not-for-profits.
Many higher education institutions use student satisfaction surveys given at the end of a course to measure course and instructor quality. But is that really a true measure of quality?
All things being equal, an instructor who teaches a rigorous course will likely score much lower than an instructor whose course is a little less demanding. Then there’s the whole timing of the satisfaction surveys. For the most part, students are simply glad the course is over (even if they liked it) and put little thought or time into completing the survey. Unless of course they know they failed, in which case you will get a detailed assessment of how you are boring, inflexible, out of touch, or otherwise unfit to teach.
No wonder surveys get such a bad rap. If end-of-course evaluations are the only surveys you use, there’s a lot more you can, and should, be doing. Done correctly, surveys can delivertremendous insight into what’s working, what’s not, and why. This special report features 10 articles from Online Classroom, including a three-part and a five-part series that provides stepby-
step guidance on how to use surveys and evaluations to improve online courses, programs, and instruction. You’ll learn when to use surveys, how to design effective survey questions, why it’s important to ensure anonymity, and the advantages and disadvantages of Web-based surveys.
Articles in Online Course Quality Assurance: Using Evaluations and Surveys to Improve Online Teaching and Learning include:
• Online Teaching Fundamentals: What to Evaluate, parts 1-3
• Course and Instructor Evaluation: If It’s So Good, Why Does It Feel So Bad?
• Getting Evaluation Data through Surveys: What to Consider before Getting Started
• Using Surveys to Improve Courses, Programs, and Instruction, parts 1-5
If you’re dedicated to continuous improvement, this special report is loaded with practical advice that will help you create more effective surveys before, during, and after your courseends.
While discussions on the value of education often focus on economic gains, the social returns to education are vast and can be reaped at both the individual level (e.g., better health) and societal level (e.g., lower crime rates).
Based on a combination of new and existing analyses, this paper explores the individual benefits and disadvantages associated with education, focusing on civic engagement; health/happiness; crime; and welfare/unemployment. The findings clearly suggest that investing in education has both individual and social benefits. While no causal link can be made between level of education and the returns examined, it is evident that those with some form of postsecondary education (PSE) often fare better than those with no more than a high school education.
Higher education institutions are hubs of research and intellectual activity, employing experienced scholars and
schooling the future workforce. As such, they are also often the instigators of positive changes or shifts in the outside world around them. As climate change and pollution have become a reality and a threat to our nation’s future prosperity, higher education institutions have been proponents of green initiatives, often leading the way in environmental construction, practice and purchases.
In addition to protecting the environment, green practices can go a long way in helping schools operate more efficiently and cost-effectively — measures that are desperately needed during tight fiscal times. This paper will look at some of the green trends happening in higher education today as well as the practices — including strategically purchasing technology
— that colleges and universities can employ to lower costs, become more sustainable and help the environment.
Being Green in Hard Times
The recession and its attendant effects on the budgets of higher education institutions has understandably deterred
initiatives and projects proposed during flush economic times. However, green initiatives continue to be important in higher education — spurred on by backing from the federal government. President Obama has made clear his priorities of addressing climate change — in part by reducing greenhouse gases — and lowering energy consumption.
Colleges and universities are stepping up to the plate. The higher education sector is now the largest purchaser of wind energy in the U.S. and 500 schools have institution-wide sustainability or environmental committees. In addition, 300 campuses have conducted campus sustainability assessments, with hundreds more working to implement assessments.
Higher education leaders are demonstrating their dedication to environmentally sound practices and serving as an example to the private sector and the general public. The American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) is a network of over 650 college leaders who are working to eliminate net greenhouse gas emissions from specified campus operations and to promote research and education efforts of higher education to equip society to re-stabilize the Earth’s climate.
Community colleges are also working to be more sustainable despite difficult financial times. Results from the Center
for Digital Education’s 2010 Digital Community Colleges Survey showed that higher education institutions are continuing myriad efforts to put sustainable practices in place.
According to the survey:
• 54 percent of responding colleges have instruments to
measure energy efficiencies;
• 60 percent use e-waste recycling efforts and Earth-friendly
disposal; and
• 27 percent of responding community colleges are pursuing transparency about their carbon footprint — a 16 percent increase since last year.
A consortium of six colleges in Eastern Ontario have been working together for the past eight years to support faculty as they work to design, review, and revise curriculum at both the program and course level. Eight cohorts of faculty from the contributing colleges have participated in a two-part program called Aligning and Building Curriculum (ABC). In fall 2008 this group launched an ABC Curriculum Resource Project. Phase 1 of the project focused on developing a website to house a variety of curriculum resources, tools, and web links that are useful to ABC participants as they engage in curriculum work. The resources are organized to support a conceptual framework for curriculum design (Curriculum Road Map) that was developed by this group to frame curriculum work in college programs. More information about the program can be found on the program website at http://innovation.dc-uoit.ca/abc/.
In 2009-10, with the support of the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) funding, the participating colleges were able to build on this work to engage ABC participants in using a knowledge exchange network (ABC-KEN). ABC-KEN allowed them to share knowledge about curriculum and to contribute to the expansion of curriculum resources available to ABC
participants and to others working on curriculum in Ontario’s colleges. Curriculum information, tools, and links to curriculum cases and the ABC-KEN site can be found on the ABC Curriculum Resources website at http://abcresource.loyalistcollege.ca/index.htm.
Given the success of the 2009-10 project, which provided insights into the use of a knowledge exchange network to mobilize, shape, extend, and share knowledge and tools for aligning and building curriculum, the ABC Planning Team was eager to address an additional research question:
How can curriculum resource materials (policies, tools, processes, and practices) used in Ontario’s community colleges be identified, shared, adopted, and extended to build capacity for curriculum development in the college system?
Section 2 concerns the ways in which teaching and learning at a distance is being transformed in various international and practical contexts. Arguably, distance education has been characterised by transformation since its earliest correspondence days through to the integration of online media. Tony Bates pursues this latter theme in his opening chapter for the section where the range of new media and their implications and transformative features in distance education and from distance education to mainstream educational practices are discussed.
Distance education, however, is not merely educational which is particularly mediated by communications media; it is also an approach to education in which the educators, designers, support staff and students are engaged differently and often for purposes that have particular social and policy imperatives. As Liz Burge and Jody Polec argue, there are elements of change and consistency for the people involved which can be tracked through the evolution of distance education from its inception. Chère Campbell Gibson explores the ways in which non-formal education in the United States have been transformed by both new technologies and the changing circumstances and needs of the population for non-formal education, especially as lifelong learning.