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.
Students from a number of groups remain underrepresented in Ontario’s universities and colleges, including low-income students, Aboriginal students, first generation students whose parents did not attend a post-secondary institution, rural and northern students, and students with dependants. Improving access to higher education for these and other underrepresented groups is widely acknowledged as essential to building a more equitable society and to competing in the increasingly knowledge-based economy. Indeed, Premier McGuinty has stated his desire to see 70 per cent of Ontarians complete post-secondary education, and achieving this target will require a concerted effort to reduce participation gaps.
The major assertion of this article is that the present curriculum-development approaches to education are limited in the types of tasks they can address and the level of proficiency they can expect from students. Such approaches may be useful as management tools, allowing the systematic management of instructional activities. However, the approaches may interfere with the quality of the educational process. It seems obvious that one of the goals of teaching reading and mathematics is to facilitate the development of proficiency in these skills. We can contrast mediocre competence with proficient performance of a task. A novice who is trained to achieve mediocre competence can follow rules and procedures with satisfactory levels of speed and accuracy, but has difficulty in applying skills to new situations and in acquiring greater expertise. In contrast, the
attainment of proficient performance implies that a person can perform a skill so well and so efficiently that it can be a building block for the acquisition of additional skills, and is easily extended to unfamiliar tasks. The contrast is between young adults who can read 150-200 words per minute, and get most questions right on comprehension tests, and students who read for enjoyment and view libraries as tools for answering questions. The contrast is between students who can generally follow the steps of a mathematical procedure to get an answer right and students who can recognize which type of mathematical
procedure is needed in order to attack a given problem. Someone who has reached mediocre competence must still concentrate on performing the task correctly. Someone who has achieved proficiency at a task can focus attention on achieving personal and vocational goals.
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.
There was a clear need for a high-level strategic discussion on the future of transitions in order to: follow up on the recommendations in Ontario: A Leader in Learning (the Rae report on postsecondary education) respond to the Ontario government's Learning to 18 and Student Success strategies, such as dual credits and high-skills majors.
The exploration of study orchestrations emphasises students’ active participation in learning, describing the ways in which they marshal the resources available to them in response to their learning environment. This study reports the identification of study orchestrations in a group of distance students and identifies the existence of dissonant study orchestrations, which previous research has linked with poor achievement, in approximately one-fifth of the group. Data came from responses by 176 students to the ASSIST questionnaire. The data was subject to factor analysis to ensure commensurability with previous studies, and then cluster analysis was used to identify groups with similar study orchestrations. Four clusters were identified. One of these was clearly dissonant, pointing toward problematic links between learning environments and student approaches to study. The implications of dissonant study orchestrations are explored and further research is suggested, along with implications for the practice of distance educators.
Keywords: Approaches to study; study orchestrations; metacognition; higher education
What’s working in adult learner recruitment and marketing and which practices are most widely used? To find out, Ruffalo Noel Levitz conducted a 72-item, web-based poll in April 2015 as part of the firm’s continuing series of benchmark polls for higher education. Because undergraduate and graduate programs often employ similar practices to attract adult learners, this report combines its findings across undergraduate and graduate levels. For a profile of the poll respondents, please refer to the Appendix, page 41. Note that all respondents in this study had at least one adult-focused degree program.
The digital revolution is transforming our work, our organisations and our daily lives. Driverless cars are now legal in three American states. One third of payments in Kenya are made via mobile phones. Wearable computing will soon mean that your jacket will monitor your heart rate (should you want it to). I have seen a violin - played beautifully - that was 3-D printed.
This revolution is already in homes across the developed world and increasingly in the developing world too. And there, it is transforming the way children and young people play, access information, communicate with each other and learn. But, so far, this revolution has not transformed most schools or most teaching and learning in classrooms.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This article describes the major findings from a longitudinal study of the impact of learning communities on the success of academically under-prepared, low-income students in 13 community colleges across the country. In this study, we employed both quantitative longitudinal survey and qualitative case study and interview methods. We utilized the former in order to
ascertain to what degree participation in a learning community enhanced student success and the latter to understand why and how it is that such communities do so. The findings strongly support adapting the learning community model to basic skills instruction to improve learning and persistence for this population.
The National Student Financial Wellness Study (NSFWS) is a survey of college students examining the financial attitudes, practices, and knowledge of students from institutions of higher education across the United States. The purpose of the 2014 NSFWS is to gain a more thorough and accurate picture of the financial wellness of college students. The NSFWS was developed and administered by The Ohio State University in collaboration with co-investigators from Cuyahoga Community College, DePaul University, Iowa State University, Oberlin College, Ohio University, and Santa Fe College. The survey was administered online during autumn 2014 or winter 2015 to random samples of students from 52 participating institutions. Please see the following page for a complete list of the institutions that participated in the study. More information on the study is available at go.osu.edu/nsfws or by emailing the NSFWS team at nsfws@osu.edu.
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.
Abstract
The demand for quantitative assessment by external agencies and internal administrators can leave post-secondary instructors confused about the nature and purpose of learning outcomes and fearful that the demand is simply part of the increasing corporatization of the university system. This need not be the case. Developing learning outcomes has a number
of benefits for course design that go beyond program assessment. This article clarifies some key aspects of the push toward using learning outcomes and introduces a tripartite nomenclature for distinguishing among course outcomes, outputs, and objectives. It then outlines a process for instructors to use these three categories to develop and design courses
that meet institutional assessment demands while also improving overall teaching effectiveness.
Résumé
L’évaluation quantitative que demandent les agences externes et les administrateurs internes peut confondre les instructeurs de niveau postsecondaires quant à la nature et à l’objectif des « résultats d’apprentissage », et leur faire craindre que cette demande ne fasse simplement partie de la privatisation croissante du système universitaire. Ce n’est pas forcément le cas. La création de résultats d’apprentissage présente de nombreux avantages sur le plan de la conception de cours, avantages qui vont au-delà de l’évaluation de programme. L’article clarifie quelques aspects principaux de la poussée vers l’utilisation de « résultats d’apprentissage » et présente
une nomenclature tripartite pour faire la distinction entre les résultats de cours, le rendement et les objectifs. Il décrit ensuite un processus pour que les instructeurs emploient ces trois catégories afin de concevoir des cours qui répondent aux exigences en évaluation de l’institution, tout en améliorant l’efficacité de l’enseignement dans son ensemble.
When teachers think the best, most important way to improve their teaching is by devel-oping 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.
She has been contributing to the field of counseling and sociology since the early 1950’s.
Bachelors of Arts in Sociology in 1951 from Barnard College in 1951.
Ed.D in Counseling in 1961 from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Served on the faculties of Wayne State University, Howard University and Pratt University and at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Currently she is a professor emeritus in the Department of Counseling and Personnel Services, College of Education, and Director of Counseling of the Center of Human Services Department, University of Maryland, College Park
(Schlossberg et al., 1995).
When viewed holistically, Canada lacks a clear and common understanding of the future directions and top priorities of its post-secondary education (PSE) sector. Perhaps as a result, Canada has not yet comprehensively addressed a fundamental question: How do we demonstrate quality in PSE? To answer this question requires clarification of many issues, including the roles that various institutions and sectors play. It also requires the development of a shared vision of PSE, of what can and should be achieved. Despite much discussion among leaders of various education sectors in Canada, an agreement on
a plan of action has yet to be reached. Indeed, a national dialogue on this critical issue is needed.
Over the past decade there has been an upsurge of interest in the quality of postsecondary education, with a particular focus on learning, engagement, and other student outcomes. Instructors, administrators, and other staff across the postsecondary sector have been investigating innovative approaches and services, while many institutions, faculties, departments, and professional associations have established teaching and learning centres or offices to help enhance student success. Governments and governmental organizations have provided support for new approaches and for research projects evaluating them.
This guide, co-sponsored by the McMaster Centre for Leadership in Learning (CLL) and the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), and endorsed by the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) and the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services (CACUSS), is intended to assist researchers and evaluators of postsecondary educational outcomes. The intended audiences for this document include, but are by no means restricted to, the following:
• faculty members and educational developers investigating innovative approaches or technologies designed to enhance learning in postsecondary contexts;
• faculty members and administrators leading initiatives for students enrolled in programs or courses that are considered particularly challenging;
• anyone involved in professional development initiatives for faculty, graduate students, and others intended to enhance teaching and learning effectiveness;
• student service providers at postsecondary institutions; and
• students and student associations focusing on effective teaching, learning and student success.
Ontario has launched a review of its university funding model. The “funding model” is the rule set by
which the province’s operating grant, managed by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities
(MTCU), is distributed to the province’s 20 publicly assisted universities to support their teaching,
research and service missions.
The government’s recently released University Funding Model Reform Consultation Paper defines the scope of the review as:
“The annual operating grants to universities provided through the university funding
model. This represents about $3.5 billion of government investment.” (MTCU)
The review encompasses the entire amount of annual (and, in recent years, annually increasing) MTCU direct operating support to universities. It includes the variously named “basic operating,” “general purpose” or “enrolment driven” grant universities may expend on their general operations. It includes all of the “special purpose” grants MTCU provides to drive identified policy or programmatic priorities.