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.
Interest in leadership increased during the early part of the twentieth century. Early leadership theories focused on what qualities distinguished between leaders and followers, while subsequent theories looked at other variables such as situational factors and skill level. While many different leadership theories have emerged, most can be classified as one of eight major types:.
SUMMARY
This paper analyses business-driven innovation in education by looking at education-related patents. It first draws a picture of the challenges for innovation in the formal education sector, which suffers from a poor knowledge ecology: science is hardly linked to core teaching and administrative practices. It then turns to a common indicator of innovation: patents. In the case of education, patents typically cover educational tools. An analysis of education-related patents over the past 20 years shows a clear rise in the production of highly innovative educational technologies by businesses, typically building on advances in information and communication technology. While this increase in educational innovations may present new opportunities for the formal education sector, the emerging tool industry currently targets the nonformal education rather than the formal education system. We shortly discuss why business entrepreneurs may be less interested in the market of formal education.
RÉSUMÉ
Cet article porte sur l’innovation entrepreneuriale dans le secteur de l’éducation, à partir d’une analyse des dépôts de brevets dans le secteur éducatif. Premièrement, il propose un tableau des défis de l’innovation dans le secteur de l’éducation formelle, dont l’écologie du savoir est faible : la science y est peu liée avec le cœur des pratiques pédagogiques et administratives. L’étude porte ensuite sur un indicateur courant de l’innovation : les brevets. Dans le cas de l’éducation, les brevets couvrent généralement des « outils » éducatifs. L’analyse des brevets éducatifs durant les vingt dernières années montre une claire croissance de la production de technologies éducatives hautement innovantes par des entreprises privées, qui s’appuient souvent sur les progrès des technologies d’information et de communication. Bien que cette croissance des innovations éducatives puisse donner de nouvelles opportunités au secteur formel de l’éducation, l’industrie émergente d’outils éducatifs cible actuellement les secteurs informels d’éducation. Nous discutons brièvement les raisons pour lesquelles les entrepreneurs privés semblent moins intéressés par le secteur de l’éducation formelle.
ABSTRACT
This paper examines relationships between the resources available to immigrant families and the amount parents are willing and able to save for their children's post-secondary education (PSE). We use data from Statistics Canada's 2002 Survey of Approaches to Educational Planning to compare immigrant and native-born PSE saving. The results indicate that income and asset wealth constrain PSE savings in some immigrant families. However, immigrants share with non-immigrants a set of parenting beliefs and practices that encourage both groups to invest in their children’s educational futures.
RÉSUMÉ
Cet article examine les relations entre les ressources disponibles aux familles immigrantes et le montant que les parents veulent et peuvent épargner pour les études postsecondaires (EPS) de leurs enfants. Afi n de comparer les épargnes pour les EPS des immigrants et des non-immigrants, nous avons eu recours aux données de l’Enquête sur les approches en matière de planifi cation des études, effectuée en 2002 par Statistique Canada. Les résultats révèlent que l’état de l’actif et des revenus freine l’épargne pour les EPS chez certaines familles immigrantes. Toutefois, les immigrants et non-immigrants partagent un ensemble de croyances et de pratiques parentales communes qui encouragent les deux différents groupes à investir dans l’avenir éducationnel de leurs enfants.
The results of the latest MetLife Survey of the American Teacher confirm what many of us are experiencing and seeing in the depressing descent of the teaching profession. In the past two years, the percentage of teachers surveyed who reported being very satisfied in their jobs has declined sharply, from 59 percent to 44 percent. The number who indicated they were thinking of
leaving the profession has jumped from 17 percent to 29 percent. Imagine being a student knowing that every other teacher you encounter is becoming less and less satisfied, and close to one in three would rather be somewhere else.
In his book, The World is Flat, author Thomas L. Friedman argues the barriers that used to separate countries – such as commerce and the movement of people – are gone, leaving the world more integrated, mobile and open to competition from all. Only countries that understand how to embrace this new reality will thrive in the world economy of the future. Creativity is always looking for a better home, as the Canadian Urban Institute and Jane Jacobs have argued.
This paper explores the impact of unionization on salary differentials among Ontario universities by comparing the trends in average salaries between those institutions which have certified bargaining units and those which do not. The principal time period considered is from 1975, when the first Ontario university became certified, to 1983, three years after the most recent faculty association to become certified did so. The age-adjusted average salary increase for the unionized institutions was found to be only about two per cent greater than for the nonunionized group. As well, other data presented led to the conclusion that unionization has not had a significant impact upon relative salary structures in Ontario universities. This conclusion is qualified by noting that certification may not be an effective indicator of unionization, that the presence of unions in some universities may have influenced the salary behaviour of the nonunionized institutions, and that the potential influence of faculty unions was constrained by wage controls and funding limits during the period under investigation.
Cet article explore l' impact de la syndicalisation sur Les differences salariales parmi Les universites ontariennes en comparant Les tendances dans Les salaires moyens entre Les institutions ou Les professeurs sont syndiques et celles ou ifs ne le sont pas. L'etude porte sur la periode de temps allant de 1975, annee ou la premiere universite ontarienne se syndicalisa, a 1983, soit trois ans apres que la derniere universite a se syndicaliser le fit. L' etude montre que la hausse salariale moyenne ( ajustee pour l' age) dans Les institutions syndicalisees n' est superieure que de deux pour cent a celle des groupes non-syndiques. Par ailleurs, d' autres donnees permettent de conclure que la syndicalisation n' a pas eu d' impact significatif sur Les structures salariales relatives dans Les universites ontariennes. On doit cependant nuancer cette conclusion en notant que la syndicalisation ne traduit pas forcement un syndicalisme revendicatif, que la presence de syndicats dans certaines universites a pu influencer le comportement salarial des institutions non-syndiquees, et que l' influence potentielle des syndicats professoraux a ete limitee par Les contra/es de salaire et Les contraintes budgetaires en vigueur pendant la periode a l' etude.
First Nations, Inuit and Métis have long advocated learning that affirms their own ways of knowing, cultural traditions and values. However, they also desire Western education that can equip them with the knowledge and skills they need to participate in
Canadian society. First Nations, Inuit and Métis recognize that “two ways of knowing” will foster the necessary conditions for nurturing healthy, sustainable communities.
If you’re interested in using technology tools to enhance your teaching, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the mountain of information out there. To make matters worse, much of it is either highly technical or simply not very practical for the college classroom.
Teaching with Technology: Tools and Strategies to Improve Student Learning approaches teaching technologies from your perspective — discussing what works, what doesn’t, and how to implement the best ideas in the best ways.
These articles were written by John Orlando, PhD, program director at Norwich University, as part of the Teaching with Technology column on Faculty Focus. You’ll find the articles are loaded with practical information as well as links to valuable resources. Articles in the report include:
• Using VoiceThread to Build Student Engagement
• Wikipedia in the Classroom: Tips for Effective Use
• Blogging to Improve Student Learning: Tips and Tools for Getting Started
• Prezi: A Better Way of Doing Presentations
• Using Polling and Smartphones to Keep Students Engaged
Whether the courses you teach are face-to-face, online, blended, or all of the above, this report
explains effective ways to incorporate technology into your courses to create a rich learning
experience for students, and a rewarding teaching experience for you.
Mary Bart
Editor
Faculty Focus
Partnerships between Ontario colleges and universities have become increasingly important recently for at least two
reasons. Partnerships are encouraged generally in Canada, USA, Europe and elsewhere to transcend organizational boundaries, foster synergies and stimulate change. So universities are enjoined to partner with employers to integrate education and work, with industry to foster innovation and with other universities to avoid duplication.
Shifting from an emphasis on teaching to learning is a complex task for both teachers and students. This paper reports on a qualitative study of teachers in a nurse specialist education programme meeting this shift in a distance education course. The study aimed to gain a better understanding of the teacher-student relationship by addressing research questions in relation to the students' role, the learning process, and the assessment process. A didactical design comprising three phases focusing on distinct learning outcomes for the course was adopted. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with teachers and were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. The results indicate a shift towards a problematising and holistic approach to teaching, learning, and assessment. This shift highlighted a teacher-student relationship with a shared responsibility in the orchestration of the learning experience. The overall picture outlines a distance education experience of process-based assessment characterised by the imposition of teachers’ rules and a lack of creativity due to the limited role of ICT merely as a container of content.
Keywords: Distance education; higher education; e-learning
In Ottawa on March 30, 2010, the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) presented a stock taking to
parliamentarians from all political parties.
Why a stock taking? As in any field of human endeavour, serious intent to improve in learning demands rigorous, regular and honest assessment of advances made and not made over a defined period of time. That is why schools employ report cards.
During its first iteration, corresponding to the federal funding that supported CCL from its inception in 2004 until March, 2010, CCL performed a unique function. As Canada’s only national organization reporting to residents in every corner of the land on progress in all phases of learning across the lifecycle (from early childhood through K-12 education, post-secondary education, workplace training and adult literacy and learning) CCL served as a catalyst towards a national discussion on the social and economic importance of learning. Taking Stock of Canada’s Progress in Lifelong Learning: Progress or Complaceny? builds on our report to parliamentarians. It brings to Canadians in richer detail and context the information and analysis that we shared with the parliamentary bodies which allocated the funding to CCL that the Government of Canada terminated in March. It is universally acknowledged that learning, as defined broadly to encompass much more than school based education, is a main driver of many attributes that societies value: individual opportunity and development, productivity, innovation, prosperity, and social cohesion. That was the reasoning behind the articulation in 2006 by the Government of Canada of a “Knowledge Advantage” that would provide a “leg up” in a fiercely competitive global environment.
But have we made the progress anticipated by government in building a “knowledge advantage?” Are there domains in which we are surpassing other member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)? Where are we falling behind?
CCL emphasizes that past results do not guarantee future success. The fundamental issue is whether Canada is establishing conditions for future international competitiveness in knowledge and learning. Is Canada making the progress in lifelong learning that will differentiate societies that flourish from those that flounder; or have we—at our peril—become complacent?
It appears common in Canadian discourse on issues of education and learning to begin with an assertion to the effect that Canada is doing well; followed by the usual admission that improvement is, of course, desirable and necessary. This report does not dabble in polite niceties because such misleading pleasantries merely mask the current reality that is CCL’s task to set before Canadians. When we stood before parliamentarians in March, 2010, to elucidate our findings, conclusions, and
recommendations, our goal was to provide decision-makers with the information and analysis they need to develop effective approaches to learning. These approaches are the only means of keeping Canada competitive in the global, knowledge-based economy. We gave them some good news, but we were also frank about the bad news. This included the fact that Canada, unlike many OECD countries, possesses no coherent, cohesive or coordinated national approach to education and lifelong learning. Yet, our international competitors either already have one, or they are working diligently to create one.
That means that as we stand still, we are losing ground. We insisted bluntly that Canada put its house in order. We described the consequences of failing to recognize the urgency to act, as well as some attractive alternatives leading to improvement in learning outcomes, that are open to this country.
This Taking Stock report is intended to provide more than a summation of CCL’s research and analysis. It offers an opportunity to translate the rhetoric of lifelong learning into action that can make a difference.
There still remains time for Canada to establish the conditions required for success in the future. Will we
seize that opportunity?
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.
In recent months, there has been much discussion in the media and among academics about the skills acquired by Canadian university graduates. The issues being raised are threefold. The first concerns the question of whether Canada is facing a “skills gap”. While the Conference Board of Canada (2013a) has argued that we definitely are (and that the long-term economic consequences will be severe), reports by economist Don Drummond and TD Bank indicate that the skills gap is largely a
myth (TD Economics, 2013; Goar, 2013). Others have indicated that current discussions about a skills gap often lack an appropriate level of specificity, making it difficult to assess the merit of these arguments or to generate potentially necessary
solutions (Weingarten, 2013)
Last month’s Women’s March, one of the largest demonstrations in American history, drew between three and five million people across 673 U.S. cities and 170 cities internationally, according to a Google Drive effort to capture estimates. Since then, protests have continued in communities nationwide, including a series of major demonstrations in response to President Trump’s executive order barring travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim nations, his order to move ahead with the wall along the Mexican border and the controversial North Dakota pipeline.
Viewed as signaling white nationalism, racism, sexism and xenophobia, the election of Donald Trump has provoked strong and negative responses among students. The turbulent political atmosphere recently engulfed the University of California, Berkeley, where students or -- according to campus officials -- agitators from off the campus violently interrupted what were to be peaceful protests and a speech by Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos. Student protests against Trump’s travel ban have also occurred at Ohio, American, Chapman and Rutgers Universities.
What do these events say, if anything, about activism on college campuses today? Have they sparked a new wave of student engagement? Or is it a momentary outcry?
A few years ago my teaching life had reached what felt like a dead end. Daily, I would see newspaper announcements about the retirement of public school educators who had the same number of years of experience as I had. Subsequently, I found myself longing to be in those photographs or articles. A significant challenge existed in that I was not old enough to touch my retirement funds plus I lacked another viable source of income—a major financial dilemma. At the time it seemed that I was going through the motions of my teaching job, and I had definitely lost a sense of joy.
As the world continues to change at a rapid pace, the future remains bright for university graduates. With a growing need for a skilled and adaptable workforce to contribute to the betterment of our businesses, our communities and our province, university-educated graduates are using the advanced knowledge and skills they learn at university to get well-paying jobs in their fields soon after graduation.
The latest Ontario government survey of graduates from undergraduate programs shows that almost 94 per cent have secured employment two years after graduation. The average salary for university bachelor’s degree graduates in full-time jobs was $49,170 two years after graduation, up from the average salary of $41,839 six months after graduation.
The survey of Ontario university students who graduated in 2013, conducted for the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development, concludes that university graduates get jobs related to their education. By giving graduates the advanced skills they need, Ontario’s universities are helping the province unlock the full potential of Ontario’s future and all who live here.
• Each year, more than 500,000 students and clients are served by ontario’s colleges of applied arts and technology (caats) . of this group, approximately 200,000 are full-time students .
• there were 197,433 distinct applicants for the 2012-13 academic year .
• Fifty-eight per cent of new fall 2013 entrants to ontario post-secondary institutions enrolled in a college .
• Sixteen per cent of surveyed college applicants were not born in canada; 22 per cent of these individuals came to Canada from 2002 to 2006, while another 40 per cent arrived since 2007 .
• more than one-quarter of college applicants reported a household income of less than $30,000
and 55 per cent had incomes of less than $60,000 .
• total funded full-time equivalent (FtE) post-secondary enrollment in the colleges was 220,721 (including funded full-time, part-time and tuition-short programs) .
• more than 23,000 international students enrolled in Ontario colleges in 2013 .
• Fourteen per cent of ontario college students indicated use of special needs/disability services, almost half of whom reported high usage .
• colleges delivered 87 per cent of the apprenticeship in-school training in 2012-13 .
• last year, more than 82,000 students graduated from post-secondary programs, representing a 4 .8 per cent increase over the previous year .
• Eighty-three per cent of 2011-12 graduates in the labour force were working six months after graduation .
• twenty-four per cent of graduates continued their education with full- or part-time studies within six months of graduation .
Technology and the Problem of Change
As Canada’s youth consider their increasingly broad and complex array of post-secondary education (PSE) options, they are faced with potentially costly decisions. Moreover, they often do not have the information they need to make appropriate choices, which can negatively impact their participation and persistence in PSE. For many students, it is a challenge to choose,
design and follow a post-secondary pathway to its conclusion without deviating from their original plan. Students are increasingly taking non-linear pathways through PSE. Some may need to relocate and attend a different institution. Many students may decide to change the focus of their study, while others may wish to change their program entirely. Some may shift their goals from academic to applied forms of study, or vice versa. However, the structures of post-secondary systems in our provinces, and the various mechanisms that bind them, do not always provide clearly apparent and unobstructed pathways for students, particularly for mobile students. These problems are exacerbated by shifting mandates, roles, and labels of institutions across the Canadian PSE sector.