Why competency-based education?
Although competency-based education (CBEd) may seem relatively new to postsecondary education, the concept has been widely discussed throughout American education since the 1990s (Jones & Voorhees, 2002; Mulder, Gulikers, Biemans, & Wesselink, 2009). In fact, colleges including Western Governors University, Sinclair Community College, and Kings College were pioneering CBEd initiatives over a decade ago (2002). Several factors have focused current attention on CBEd in higher education in recent years, including the demand for expanded access to education, the need to reduce the cost of postsecondary education, and a shift from traditional models for learning. Online learning technology, for example, which supports the notion of learning anytime, anyplace, anywhere, also requires higher education to adjust and rethink the traditional educational system.
This study examined aspects of approval processes for baccalaureate degree programs in colleges in the following 11 jurisdictions: Alberta, British Columbia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Flanders, Florida, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. More detailed profiles are provided for seven of the jurisdictions. In order to make the data more relevant for the Ontario reader, some comparisons with characteristics of the baccalaureate degree approval process in Ontario are noted.
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.
Social Media Usage Trends Among Higher Education Faculty
The numbers surrounding social media are simply mind boggling.
750 million. The number of active Facebook users, which means if Facebook was a country it would be the third-largest in the world.
90. Pieces of content created each month by the average Facebook user.
175 million. The Twitter accounts opened during Twitter's history.
140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day in February 2011.
460,000. Average number of new Twitter accounts created each day during February 2011.
120 million. LinkedIn members as of August 4, 2011.
More than two per second. The average rate at which professionals are signing up to join LinkedIn as of June 30, 2011.
All of these stats, which come from the respective companies’ own websites, serve as proof points to what we already knew: social media is growing at breakneck speed. Yet the story of social media is still being written as organizations and individuals alike continue to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of social media in the workplace. When that workplace is a college or university, there’s a cacophony of opinions in terms of the most effective uses, if any.
For the past two years, Faculty Focus conducted a survey on Twitter usage in higher education, this year we expanded the survey to include Facebook and LinkedIn, while changing a number of the questions as well. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are considered "the big three" in social media, and we thank those who recommended we take a
broader look at the landscape.
All three platforms have their strengths and weaknesses, and are better used for some things than others. But how are the three being used in higher education today? It’s our hope that these survey results provide at least some of the answers while lending new data to the discussion.
In order to close the growing achievement gap, higher education institutions need to focus on innovation, scale and
diffusion, according to Bridget Burns, executive director for the University Innovation Alliance, a coalition of 11 public research universities committed to improving graduation rates and sharing best practices. And most important, institutions need to communicate about what works and what doesn't. "Otherwise we are sentencing other universities to repeat our mistakes and our failures — and students deserve better," she exhorted.
The Association of Registrars of the Universities and Colleges of Canada (ARUCC) and the Pan-Canadian Consortium on Admissions and Transfer (PCCAT) have collaborated to lead an extensive study to understand current transcript and transfer credit nomenclature practices in Canada. These findings will ultimately inform a comprehensive update and expansion of the 2003 ARUCC National Transcript Guide and potentially result in a searchable database of transcript practices and Canadian transfer credit nomenclature. The ultimate goal is to enhance the clarity, consistency and transparency of the academic transcript and transfer credit resources that support student mobility. The specific deliverable for this phase was to identify and summarize Canadian transcript and transfer credit nomenclature practices, review four international jurisdictions as a means to highlight promising practices related to these two areas and, finally, to provide both an overview of systems and an initial examination of emergent perspectives and themes. The report purposefully avoids suggesting prescriptive solutions or outcomes; however, the findings from this study will provide a solid foundation from which to move forward the standards and terminology discourse in Canada. This report collates the findings from the supporting research conducted from January through to April 2014.
ABSTRACT
Do students know the level of education required to achieve their career objectives? Is this information related to their education pathways? To address these questions, I compare high school students' perceptions of the level of education they will require for the job they intend to hold at age 30, with the level required according to professional job analysts. About three out of four students intending to work in a job requiring a university degree know the level of education that is required to obtain the job. Moreover, students who know that a university degree is required are more likely to attend university. Finally, higher university attendance rates are observed when students learn earlier (rather than later), that a university degree is required for their intended job.
RÉSUMÉ
Les élèves savent-ils quelles études leur permettront d’atteindre leurs objectifs de carrière? Ces renseignements sont-ils associés à leur parcours scolaire? Afi n de répondre à ces questions, je compare, d’une part, la perception qu’ont les élèves du secondaire quant au niveau d’instruction qui leur est requis pour travailler dans la profession qu’ils souhaitent exercer à l’âge de 30 ans avec, d’autre part, le niveau réellement requis selon les analystes du marché professionnel. Ainsi, environ trois étudiants sur quatre ayant l’intention d’exercer une profession qui nécessite un grade universitaire sont conscients du niveau d’instruction requis. Par ailleurs, les élèves qui sont conscients de la nécessité d’un grade universitaire ont plus de chances de fréquenter l’université. Enfi n, on observe un taux de fréquentation universitaire plus élevé chez les élèves qui ont pris conscience, plus tôt dans leur parcours, de la nécessité d’un grade universitaire pour réaliser leur aspiration professionnelle.
This collection of essays reflects that classic sense of exploration, questioning, and discovery. The ten essays contained here, sponsored by the Alliance for Community College Excellence In Practice, were prompted by a challenge prior to the Alliance’s first symposium, held in Traverse City, Michigan, in the summer of 2013. The symposium topic: The Future of Community Colleges. Before the July “Futures” discussion brought 50 people together, the participants – community college leaders, visionaries, teachers, and learners – were invited to explore topics related to present and future opportunities facing higher education. They were asked to consider implications. Raise questions. And posit thoughtful commentary.
The CGS/GRE Survey of Graduate Enrollment and Degrees is jointly sponsored by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) and the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) Board. Conducted annually since 1986, the survey provides information about applications for admission to graduate school, first-time and total graduate student enrollment, and graduate degrees and certificates conferred. The 2013 survey was sent to 793 colleges and universities, and useable responses were received from 655 institutions, for an 83% response rate.
Purpose
This guide is designed as a resource to support the creation of campus communities that are deeply conducive to transformative learning and mental well-being through a systemic approach to student mental health in colleges and universities in Canada. It provides a framework to support campus self-assessment, strategic goal setting, and the identification of options for change that can be used to inform planning and evaluation.
It is recognized that each post-secondary institution has unique strengths, circumstances, and needs. Therefore, while the broad areas for strategy development identified in this guide are relevant for all institutions, more specific strategies within each category need to be developed by each individual institution. This enables each institution to develop strategies that consider its own uniqueness and context. Even though the approach outlined in this guide is targeted at whole institutions, these ideas can also be used by students, staff, and faculty for individual units or departments within institutions.
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.
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.
This paper deals with the problematic nature of the transition between education and the workplace. A smooth transition between education and the workplace requires learners to develop an integrated knowledge base, but this is problematic as most educational programmes offer knowledge and experiences in a fragmented manner, scattered over a variety of subjects, modules and (work) experiences. To overcome this problem, we propose a design approach and shifting the educational focus of attention from individual learners to learning environments. The broader notion of learning environments facilitates transitions by establishing horizontal connections between schools and the workplace. The main argument of this paper is that combining or connecting aspects of school-based settings only is not sufficient to ensure learners will develop an integrated knowledge base. The concept and examples of “hybrid learning environment” show how formal, school-based learning and workplace experiences can be closely connected. The paper offers a framework of four coherent perspectives that can help to understand the complex nature of such environments and to design hybrid learning environments: the “agency perspective”, the “spatial perspective”, the “temporal perspective”, and the “instrumental perspective”. The framework is applied to three cases taken from vocational education in the Netherlands to describe what hybrid learning environments look like in contemporary educational practice.
Background/Context: Literacy has been traditionally posited as a primary educational goal. The concept is now understood in the literature as extending way beyond the mere technicalities of proficiency in reading and writing, encompassing a broad range of skills and practices related to comprehension, communication, and the ability to use texts in multiple settings. Cultural literacy and critical literacy are two conceptual models frequently used to understand the essence of literacy and why it is a worthy educational goal. Each model prescribes different curricular goals and preferred teaching practice in educational settings spanning all disciplines and age groups. In this article, we suggest a third conceptual model, identity literacy, based in developmental psychology’s concept of identity. We define identity literacy as readers’ proficiency and willingness to engage the meaning systems embedded within texts and to consider adopting them as part of their own personal meaning system—that system within which they define themselves and their relation to the world. Setting identity literacy as a goal of teaching
frames the practice of teaching texts differently than the other models.
In a project funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), a team of researchers completed three related studies exploring and assessing innovative practicum models included in a pre- service concurrent teacher education program across two campuses of an Ontario university.
These models are integrated into the field experience component of the Bachelor of Education degree and are intended to provide collaborative and diverse learning opportunities for teacher candidates in various practicum settings. Traditionally, teacher candidates in faculties of education complete their practicum in a school classroom for determined periods of time. In recognizing the need for teacher candidates to become contributing members of varied learning communities (Feiman-Nemser,
2001), the innovative practices studied in this project extend beyond the norm of placing a single teacher candidate with an associate teacher in a publicly funded school to include such models as peer mentorship, alternative service learning and international practicum placements.
This report represents the second annual survey on Twitter usage and trends among college faculty. This year's survey, like that conducted in 2009, sought answers to some of the fundamental questions regarding faculty members' familiarity, perception, and experience with the micro-blogging technology, as well as whether they expect their Twitter use to increase or decrease in the future. We also examined year-to-year comparisons to see how the Twitter landscape has changed during the past 12 months. The 2010 Faculty Focus survey of nearly 1,400 higher education professionals found that more than a third (35.2 percent) of the 1,372 respondents who completed the survey in July-August 2010 use Twitter in some capacity. That's up from 30.7 percent in 2009. Meanwhile, the percentage of educators who never used Twitter decreased from 56.4 percent in 2009 to 47.9 percent in 2010. The remaining 16.9 percentage consists of those who tried Twitter, but stopped using it —an increase from 12.9 percent in 2009.
Of those who currently use Twitter, the most common activities include “to share information with peers†and “as a real-time news source.†Instructional uses, such as “to communicate with students†and “as a learning tool in the classroom†are less popular, although both activities saw increases over the previous year. Meanwhile, a number of non-users expressed concerns that Twitter creates poor writing skills and could be yet another classroom distraction. Many also noted that very few of their students use Twitter. Finally, a new trend that emerged this year centred on the belief that many feel they already have too many places to post messages or check for student questions/comments. As one professor put it, “I have no interest in adding yet another communication tool to my overloaded life. In terms of future use, just over half (56.8 percent) of current Twitter users say they expect to increase their use during the coming academic year. Only 2.5 percent say their Twitter use will likely decrease, and 40.7 percent say it will stay about the same.
This 22-page report gives a breakdown of each survey question, including a sampling of the comments provided by the respondents. The comments allowed faculty to further explain how they are using Twitter, why they stopped, or why they have no interest in using it at all.
We use data for a large sample of Ontario students who are observed over five years from their initial entry into high school to study differences in postsecondary education participation. The students are grouped by average neighbourhood income and birthplace (Canadian or foreign‐born). We find substantial differences in the allocation of students based on their performance in Grade 9 courses and the types of PSE participation within achievement groupings.
We document differences in PSE participation based on the students’ birthplace. Foreign‐born students, conditioning on performance in high school, are more likely to continue onto university and college. Foreignborn students in higher income neighbourhoods are more likely to pursue a university degree than a college credential. Uniformly, Canadian‐born students are less likely to pursue a PSE credential upon the completion of high school.
A college degree has replaced the high school diploma as a mainstay for economic self-sufficiency and responsible citizenship. In addition, earning a bachelor’s degree is linked to long-term cognitive, social, and economic benefits to individuals —benefits that are passed onto future generations, enhancing the quality of life of the families of college-educated persons, the communities in which they live, and the larger society.
The 2015 report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) provided the country with a roadmap for establishing a new, mutually respectful relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Despite the history of Canada's residential school system, the report highlighted the important role of education in the reconciliation process and called upon government and educators to reduce longstanding gaps in education and employment outcomes.
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?