As they begin taking classes, most incoming adult learners express a strong desire to complete a degree, but many also harbor concerns and attitudes that reduce their motivation and put them at risk for attrition. This report explores a wide range of these noncognitive, motivational attributes that influence completion. The study is based on a national sample of 5,000 first-year adult learners who filled out a 74-item, college completion risk survey in 2014 or 2015 at 50 colleges and universities across the United States.
All too often, when we see colleagues who aren’t writing, we look away. If they’re assistant professors, we shrug as their tenure clock ticks — they’ll either make it or they won’t. If the writer’s block comes after tenure, we ignore that, too (except maybe in their annual reviews), until we finally dismiss them as "deadwood."
Writing-stalled faculty members tend to cope with their frustrations in ways that end up being ineffective, or even destructive. Instead of writing, they throw themselves into teaching and service. They get unnecessarily embroiled in departmental politics. Or they create a flurry of research-related projects that won’t meet tenure-and-promotion criteria no matter how creatively framed.
Graduate students have embraced professional development as an integral part of their education, but what about their supervisors and departments? As part of an initiative to reduce completion times the school of graduate studies at the University of Toronto hosted a series of faculty development workshops to optimize supervisory mentorship in graduate student research progress and professional development.
ABSTRACT
In this article we investigate Canadian university and college students’interpersonal confl icts and exposure to abuse and violence during their postsecondary studies and assess the emotional, social, and academic impact of these experiences. Our findings, based on a sample 1174 university and college students in Southwestern Ontario, revealed that although most of the incidents reported were verbal in nature and had relatively little emotional or academic impact, a small proportion of students reported experiencing serious violent incidents including sexual assault or rape, and these incidents have had a significant impact on their lives. Female students living on their own reported greater impact of negative social experiences than those who were living in college or university residences. In addition, students who reported confl icts involving institutional policies or rules, including what they perceived to be unfair workloads or grading practices, indicated that such experiences had a negative impact on their academic performance. We discuss these fi ndings in the context of maintaining safe, healthy climates on university and college campuses.
RÉSUMÉ
Dans cet article, nous étudions les confl its interpersonnels et l’exposition à l’abus et à la violence des étudiantes et étudiants canadiens des niveaux collégial et universitaire au cours de leurs études postsecondaires, ainsi que l’impact émotionnel, social et académique de ces expériences. Les résultats sont basés sur un échantillon de 1174 étudiantes et étudiants du sud-ouest de l’Ontario. Les résultats démontrent que, bien que la plupart des incidents signalés soient des confl its de nature verbale qui ont eu peu d’impact émotionnel ou académique, une petite proportion d’étudiantes et d’étudiants ont quand même signalé des incidents violents, y compris l’agression sexuelle et le viol, et ces expériences ont eu un impact signifi catif sur leur qualité de vie. Les étudiantes vivant seules ont signalé un plus grand impact que celles vivant en résidence au collège ou à l’université. Les étudiantes et étudiants qui ont signalé des expériences reliées aux politiques institutionnelles et aux règles d’évaluation telles que des charges de travail et des évaluations perçues comme inéquitables ont indiqué que ces expériences ont eu un impact négatif sur leur rendement académique. Nous discutons de ces résultats dans le contexte des efforts visant à maintenir un climat sain de sécurité dans les universités et les collèges.
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.
• On April 2, 2014, Council endorsed the City's participation in the Government of Ontario's Major Capacity Expansion Call for Proposals and provided staff w ith authority to pro-actively promote Brampton as a host municipality to interested post-secondary institutions, in alignment with Brampton's Post-Secondary Education Strategy.
• Through the City's promotional efforts, senior and experienced academic leadership,supported by Centennial College (the Proponents), approached the City of Brampton to be a host municipality for a new university.
• For Brampton to serve as host to a new university, Council is being asked to endorse the partnership with the Proponents so they may proceed with submitting a Notice of Intent application, which, if accepted, would lead to submitting a proposalto the Ontario Government's Major Capacity Expansion Call for Proposals.
ABSTRACT
In a context of increasing attention to issues of scientific integrity in university research, it is important to reflect on the governance mechanisms that universities use to shape the behaviour of students, researchers, and faculty. This paper presents the results of a study of 47 Canadian university research ntegrity/misconduct (RIM) policies: 41 institutions (87%) had distinct policies dealing with research misconduct, 37 (90%) of which took the form of research integrity/misconduct policies. For each of these 41 documents, we assessed the stated policy objectives and the existence (or not) of procedures for managing allegations of misconduct, definitions of misconduct, and sanctions. Our analysis revealed that, like their American counterparts, most Canadian universities had policies that contained the key elements relevant to protecting research integrity and managing misconduct. Yet, there was significant variability in the structure and content of these policies, particularly with regard to practical guidance for university personnel and review bodies.
Bryn Williams-Jones
Université de Montréal
This paper explores general issues relating to globalization and higher education; the internationalization of higher education, and particularly the recruitment of international students. This subject is examined through a range of topics around the global
development of the market approach to the recruitment of international students and a focus on the current situation regarding the recruitment of international students in the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology in Ontario (CAATs). As the number of international students seeking educational opportunities grows to 7 million over the next 20 years, the ability of the CAATs, the Canadian educational system, and the governments of Ontario and Canada to market the welcoming and safe multicultural Canadian experience, and the excellence of the educational offerings and opportunities in CAATs to potential international students will, in great measure, determine their success and their survival in an increasingly globalized world.
This report seeks to explain why men of low socio-economic position in their mid-years are excessively vulnerable to death by suicide and provides recommendations to reduce these unnecessary deaths.
The report goes beyond the existing body of suicide research and the statistics, to try and understand life for this group of men, and why they may come to feel without purpose, meaning or value.
The key message from the report is that suicide needs to be addressed as a health and gender inequality – an avoidable difference in health and length of life that results from being poor and disadvantaged; and an issue that affects men more because of the way society expects them to behave. It is time to extend suicide prevention beyond its focus on individual mental health problems, to understand the social and cultural context which contributes to people feeling they wish to die.
Strong culture, strong impact focuses on the role of culture in driving high-impact entrepreneurship in G20 countries. The report provides actionable recommendations for governments and a clear, time-bound path for achieving support for young entrepreneurs. Our report, released alongside this year’s G20 Young Entrepreneurs’ Alliance (YEA) Summit in Turkey, builds on our Avoiding a lost generation reports. It drills down on the one driver that is at once omnipresent, yet difficult to quantify or capture, for an entrepreneurial ecosystem:
entrepreneurial culture.
Phil L. Davison
St. Francis Xavier University
ABSTRACT
This study explores the perspectives and understandings of post-secondary leaders and their contexts as described through the qualitative experiences of 12 Maritime Canadian leaders (presidents and vice-presidents) who work in contemporary, publicly funded, post-secondary institutions. Four themes emerge: balancing daily dissonance, learning experientially to lead,
creating learning spaces, and needing moments of grace. The research reveals that leaders seek deeper understandings of their work and their characterization.
Public colleges are the only academic institutions in Canada that deliver a robust range of career-focused programs and training to all segments of the population.
The colleges’ labour-market programs, such as Second Career, employment counselling, academic upgrading and apprenticeship training serve more than 160,000 students each year.
Ontario’s public college programs are affordable and reach students in all socioeconomic groups – from people who need upgrading in order to qualify for full-time college programs, to university graduates seeking marketable skills.
Graduates of Ontario’s 24 public colleges earn credentials that have met the province’s rigorous standards for post-secondary education and are valued by employers.
College graduates continue to be in high demand.
It has never been more important to strengthen and promote public college education. The province and the country continue to face a serious skills mismatch that is leaving too many people without any hope of finding a good job. That skills gap will widen as new technology and innovations continue to transform the economy and heighten the demand for a more highly skilled workforce.
The country needs a comprehensive strategy to address the skills mismatch. And Ontario’s 24 public colleges will be pivotal to the success of that strategy.
This chapter examines the policy issues and challenges in planning and implementing e-learning in teacher education. The most significant issue is that implementing e-learning requires organizational and attitudinal change; in other words, e-learning requires the understanding and support of a wide range of stakeholders if it is to be successfully implemented. This chapter looks
at why e-learning requires organizational and attitudinal change, and suggests some strategies for bringing about such change.
Over the last decade, there has been a steady increase in online learning enrollments. The proportion of college students taking at least one online course is at an all-time high and 66% of higher education institutions indicate that online learning is critical to their long-term strategy (Allen & Seaman, 2014). Universities are increasingly relying on adjunct faculty to meet this need;
as such, it is important for institutions to understand the unique motivations, characteristics and needs of online adjunct faculty to better support teaching effectiveness. A survey of 603 adjunct faculty teaching online courses provides an overview of characteristics of modern online adjunct faculty and highlights institutional adaptations necessary to accommodate a changing
faculty body.
First Nations in Canada: Vital
Statistics for Atlantic and Western Canada, 2001/2002
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.
The aim of this paper is to develop and extend a social realist critique of competency based training (CBT). Its key argument is that knowledge must be placed at the centre of curriculum, and that because CBT does not do this, it excludes working class students from access to powerful knowledge. Developing this argument reveals that constructivist critiques of CBT not only miss the point, they are part of the problem. The paper argues that this is because the relationship between constructivism and instrumentalism structured the development of CBT in the vocational education and training (VET) sector in Australia, even though they are distinct theoretical approaches to curriculum. Constructivist discourses were appropriated and reworked through the prism of instrumentalism, thereby contributing to the justification and legitimation of CBT, but also to its continuing theorisation and development. The basis for the appropriation of constructivism by CBT is that both emphasise the contextual, situated and problem-oriented nature of knowledge creation and learning and in so doing, sacrifice the complexity and depth of theoretical knowledge in curriculum in favour of ‘authentic’ learning in the workplace. Consequently, in developing its critique of CBT and the instrumentalist learning theories that underpin it, constructivism misses the main point, which is that theoretical knowledge must be placed at the centre of curriculum in all sectors of education, and that access to knowledge is the raison d’être of education (Young 2008).
ABSTRACT
Community college systems were established across North America from the early 1960s through the early 1970s. The new systems had two principal models: in one model, the college combined lower-division, university-level general education with technical education programs; in the other, most or all of the colleges were intended to concentrate on technical education. Ontario was the largest of the provinces and states in North America that opted for the second model. Many of the issues that planners confronted when designing these college systems have either persisted or re-emerged in recent years. This article re-examines the debate on the design of Ontario’s colleges that took place when they were founded and considers its implications for the present.
RÉSUMÉ
Depuis le début des années 1960 et jusqu’au début des années 1970, lorsqu’on créait des réseaux de collèges communautaires partout en Amérique du Nord, deux modèles majeurs étaient proposés pour ces nouveaux réseaux. Dans un des modèles, le collège combinait l’enseignement général universitaire de division inférieure avec les programmes d’enseignement technique ; dans l’autre, la plupart des collèges, sinon tous, se concentraient sur l’enseignement technique. L’Ontario était la plus importante parmi les provinces et les États en Amérique du Nord qui ait opté pour le deuxième modèle. Beaucoup des défi s auxquels les planifi cateurs ont été confrontés lorsqu’ils ont conçu le réseau des collèges sont encore présents ou sont réapparus au cours des dernières années. Cet article réexamine l’ancien débat sur la conception des collèges de l’Ontario et considère ses implications actuelles.
“Without having to miss out on fun, just outsource your test to us, an expert will take it and you will get the awesome grade that you deserve. All at prices you will not believe. How does that sound?”
—Excerpt from one of many results of googling “take my test” This pitch is more than incredibly crass. It is really just outright pimping of hired poseurs to online students willing to “pay for performance.” With the massive growth of online education, such parasitic companies have sprung up like weeds, presenting a serious threat to program integrity.
There are about 420 registered private career colleges (PCCs) in Ontario – the number is in constant flux. 60% of schools are ten years of age or younger. They serve 53,000 full time equivalent (FTE) students, or about 1 in 15 Ontario postsecondary students. Their overall vocational revenues are in the order of $360M annually. They are mostly small; 70% have total revenues under $1M and average enrolment is under 200.
Though they are private businesses operating in a competitive market, they intersect with public interests on several fronts. They must register with government and are subject to consumer protection requirements (including student contracts, tuition refund policies, contribution to a train-out fund that takes care of students in the event of a sudden closure). Their programs of study must be government-approved following an external, third-party quality review. They are subject to sanction (financial penalties, even closure) if they fail to meet these requirements.