One of the primary functions of many Ontario universities and colleges is to provide students with a high quality teaching and learning experience. However, as resources are stretched and postsecondary institutions focus more on research, funding into teaching development and support has been put at risk. A number of additional challenges – including rising
student/faculty ratios and class sizes, an aging faculty population, outdated methods of instruction and curriculum design, and uneven access to teaching development for new instructors – are making it even more difficult to develop and maintain quality teaching. Many student associations, faculty and administrators, the general public, as well as provincial government officials have agreed that the quality of the teaching and learning experience available to students at Ontario’s colleges and universities is increasingly at risk.
its use of temporary foreign workers, it led politicians and pundits to scrutinize and question the growing use by Canadian firms of imported, short-term labour. The Royal Bank was accused of misusing a system designed to help employers who could not find Canadian workers by using it, instead, to find cheaper foreign labourers to replace higher-cost Canadians. But the incident raises a bigger question than simply how one bank makes use of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP): Whether the program is, in fact, interfering with the natural supply and demand responses of the labour market. And if we want
to make better use of available Canadian labour, the time has come for the federal government to start cutting back on the use of TFWP.
The number of admissions under the TFWP has nearly tripled in 25 years, from 65,000 to 182,000 in 2010. The primary justification for the expansion of the program has been the widespread assumption that Canada is suffering from a growing shortage of labour. Yet, it is hard to find any evidence to support this belief.
Postsecondary education systems around the world are rapidly transforming in response to evolving economic, social, and student learning realities. A number of factors are converging to bring about this reconfiguration of higher learning economies and are adjusting to heightened competition and to increased labour market demand for great levers of knowledge and skills; increasingly diverse and mobile learners are expecting ever-increasingly high quality in return for what they pay; and the broader public is looking for concrete results from the investment of scarce public resources.
This paper explores the evolution of digital communication skills development in post-secondary educational institutions around the world. It considers how expectations of and opportunities for effective digital communicators extend well beyond the domain of graphic and visual artists, videographers, and web designers. Today, competencies that have traditionally been expected from art and design professionals are now expected from professionals working in such disciplines as journalism, education, and medicine.
The emergence of new post-secondary fields of study such as informatics, medical imaging, instructional design, and educational technology, featuring digital proficiencies as core components of discipline-specific epistemology, further extends the notion of what it means to be a proficient digital communicator.
The Evolution of Literacy
Today’s focus on building capacity for effectively communicating ideas and information extends beyond the traditional notion of literacy. Historically, literacy was defined as the ability to read and write. In the current era, a literate individual is one who has developed competencies that leverage reading and writing skills toward the goal of effective communication. In today’s world, a proficient communicator needs to be computer literate, visually literate, information literate, media literate, and digitally literate.
To be computer literate, one must know how to use a word-processing program, a spreadsheet program, a slide-presentation program, and how to perform the appropriate maintenance and security to ensure that his or her computer works properly. Visually literate individuals understand the nature of images and multimedia and comprehend how visual representations are created, produced manipulated, and shared.
Being information literate entails knowing how to find, analyze, and share accurate information coming from valid and authoritative sources. A media literate person has a deep understanding of the means by which communications are created and shared. This includes mass media, such as newspapers and online news sources; television; magazines; websites; and “long tail” interactive social media, including RSS, blogs, wikis, and micro-blogging applications for Twitter. The boundaries of digital literacy continues to morph and change as the digital world around us morphs and changes. The 2010 United States Department of Education’s National Technology Plan recently observed that our education system relies on core sets of standards-based concepts and competencies to form the basis of what all students should know and should be able to do. Whether the domain is English language arts, mathematics, sciences, social studies, history, art, or music, states should continue to consider the integration of 21st-century competencies and expertise, such as critical thinking, complex problem solving, collaboration, multimedia communication, and technological competencies demonstrated by professionals in various
disciplines. (http://www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/netp2010.pdf )
To help with the task of bounding expectations, some professional associations are providing guidelines to members that situate definitions and standards for practice under the purview of the association issuing the guidelines. For example, the International Society of Technology in Education’s (ISTE) National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS−S) gives K-12 teachers a framework for guiding skill development in elementary and secondary schools. NETS-S suggests that the digitally literate student knows how to use technologies in socially acceptable ways and has a healthy understanding concerning privacy and safety issues. The digitally literate student can also demonstrate creativity and innovation, create new knowledge collaboratively in a face-to-face environment and at a distance, think critically, and use technology effectively and productively in order to share the results of such efforts.
Reading instruction has been reformed successfully in the primary grades, but with no consequent improvement in adolescent literacy. This commentary asks the question: What changes can the states and federal government make to education policy that will boost adolescent reading achievement?
Academic institutions face countless pressures within a context of ongoing globalization,
societal change, and increased accountability measures. The use of organizational culture assessment can assist organizations to understand their current culture and, consequently, to inform strategies for change management.
This study examined the perceptions held by administrators at four Ontario colleges with above average Student Satisfaction (KPI) about their institution’s current and preferred organizational culture and their own management competencies. A descriptive research method was employed using a modified version of Cameron and Quinn’s (2006) Organizational Culture
Assessment Instrument (OCAI) and Management Skills Assessment Instrument (MSAI).
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.
This document supersedes the sections outlining assessment, evaluation, and reporting policy in The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9 to 12: Program Planning and Assessment, 2000 and in curriculum policy documents for Grades 1 to 8, Grades 9 and 10, and Grades 11 and 12 published before the release of this document, with the following exception: The achievement charts in all current curriculum policy documents remain in effect.
In 2009, a 50-year-old worker could expect to continue working for an average of 16 more years, which means retiring at the age of 66. In the late 1990s, expected working life at age 50 was 13 years. Workers have therefore increasingly been delaying their retirement. These findings from a previous study are analyzed at greater length in this article, as are the unexpected personal and economic factors that push some workers to retire early. When such ‘involuntary’ retirements are taken into account, are workers still more likely to retire later than in the late 1990s?
Motivating students to be enthusiastically receptive is one of the most important aspects of mathematics instruction and a critical aspect of any curriculum. Effective teachers focus attention on the less interested students as well as the motivated ones. Here are nine techniques—based on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation—that can be used to
motivate secondary school students in mathematics.
The New Technologies: New Pedagogies project endeavoured to take an innovative approach not only in the creation of new, authentic pedagogies for mobile devices but also in the action learning approach adopted for the professional development of participants. The project involved 19 people including teachers, IT and PD personnel. It was a large and ambitious project that resulted not only in a range of innovative pedagogies, but in the creation of more knowledgable and confident users of mobile technologies among teachers and students in the faculty of Education at the University of Wollongong.
The term “microaggression” was coined in 1970 to name relatively slight, subtle, and often unintentional offenses that cause harm (Pierce, 1970). Since then, a substantial body of research on microaggressions has demonstrated their prevalence and harmful effects (Boysen, 2012; Solorzan, et. al., 2010; Suárez-Orozco, et. al., 2015; Sue, 2010).
The ability of postsecondary students to write and communicate proficiently is an expectation identified by many, including not only organizations such as the OECD but also other public and employer groups. There is concern, however, that students and thus employees often fail to meet expectations in these areas. To address this concern, it is necessary to understand more about the writing skills that students learn during their postsecondary education. This research project was designed to examine whether and how students are taught to write at university.
The study presented in this report provides a systematic look at how students experienced and approached their learning in Introductory Financial Accounting at four Ontario postsecondary institutions. Most introductory courses serve a number of important purposes: they provide students with an introduction and a common background to a subject area; they recruit students into a discipline; they foster new skills and attitudes; they bring the opportunity to successfully transition to a new learning environment; and so on. Typically some of the largest courses taught on campus and full of novice learners, introductory courses are arguably also some of the most challenging for instructors and students alike. Anecdotal evidence suggests that on many campuses, Introductory Financial Accounting is no different in this respect. Despite its importance as a gateway to virtually all business or commerce programs, instructors report that student preparation and interest can be inconsistent and that many students find the course unduly challenging.
In this two-part consideration of the future of online learning, we look at the patterns and trends which will shape
online learning in the future and how the various components of the post-secondary education system, such as
student population, course design and delivery, assessment, resource bases, teaching and learning models, and
partnerships will be different from what we have now.
The first part, A 2016 Look at the Future of Online Learning: Advancing Technology and Online Learning – An
Ideal Match for the Future, looks at developments in technology and what potential they offer for better learning,
teaching, collaboration, mobility and other key aspects of online learning.
The second part, A 2016 Look at the Future of Online Learning: Transformations in Learners, Programs,
Teaching and Learning, and Policy and Government, is a more in-depth consideration of the inter-related
changes we see taking place across online learning and the implications of this for post-secondary education.
Abstract Although the literature on institutional diversity suggests that quality assurance practices could affect institutional diversity, there has been little empirical research on this relationship. This article seeks to shed some light on the possible connection between quality assurance practices and institutional diversity by examining the arrangements for
quality assurance in higher education systems that include two distinct sectors, one of which having a more academic orientation and the other a more applied orientation. The article explores the ways in which quality assurance structures and standards in selected jurisdictions provide for recognition of the differences in orientation and mission between academic and applied sectors of higher education systems. The research identified some features of quality assurance systems that recognize the characteristics of applied higher education, such as having different statements of expected learning outcomes for applied
and academic programs or requiring different qualifications for faculty who teach in applied programs. It is hoped that the results might be of interest to policy makers and quality assurance practitioners who are concerned about the possible impact of quality
assurance on institutional diversity.
• 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.
Canada progress report for the UNESCO Global Report on Adult Learning and Education (GRALE) and the end of the United Nations Literacy Decade
This report is a summary of research undertaken for Gabriel Dumont Institute Training and Employment, a branch of the Gabriel Dumont Institute, about the Gabriel Dumont Institute’s Aboriginal Apprenticeship Initiative. The initiative was administered by Gabriel Dumont Institute Training and Employment.
The report is divided into five sections. The next section (Section 2) provides a general overview of the labour market in Saskatchewan with particular emphasis on Aboriginal people and the skilled trades. Included in that section is a short-term outlook for employment in the apprenticeable trades. Section 3 describes the Saskatchewan apprenticeship system including statistics about the total number of apprentices and the number of Aboriginal apprentices in Saskatchewan.
A different kind of learning occurs when there is no exam to study for, no essay to write – just the opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills that have been learned to a real life project. From medicine to engineering and fine arts, experiential learning is where curiosity gets tested in the real world.
Applied, or work-integrated, learning is one of the fastest-growing areas for universities in Ontario, a testament to its tremendous value to students and employers. It began with practicums for students in health sciences, expanded later to those studying business and engineering, and today, spans all disciplines and faculties with hundreds of programs on university campuses. Through internships, co-op programs, community service learning and placements, students are working in businesses, sports franchises, community organizations and international development agencies. Students can also acquire experiential learning through programs on campus that encourage them to take on roles such as investment managers, campaign planners and entrepreneurs.