Overall, people with a college education do better in the labor market than people with no education beyond high school. Higher levels of education correspond, on average, to higher levels of employment and higher wages. Yet, as college prices rise and as examples of graduates struggling to find remunerative employment despite their credentials become more visible, both potential students and the general public are questioning the value of a college education.
The data, however, remain clear: even at current prices, postsecondary education pays off for most people. Promising occupational and personal opportunities are disproportionately available to college graduates. It is increasingly difficult to maintain a middle class lifestyle without a postsecondary credential, and the economic, social, and civic benefits of a more educated population are well documented.
What is on the five-year horizon for higher education institutions? Which trends and technologies will drive educational change? What are the challenges that we consider as solvable or difficult to overcome, and how can we strategize effective solutions? These questions and similar inquiries regarding technology adoption and educational change steered the collaborative research and discussions of a body of 56 experts to produce the NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Edition, in partnership with the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). The NMC Horizon Report series charts the five-year horizon for the impact of emerging technologies in learning communities across the globe. With more than 13 years of research and publications, it can be regarded as the world’s longest-running exploration of emerging technology trends and uptake in education.
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.
During the spring and summer of 2013, 41 Canadian universities conducted a survey of their baccalaureate graduates six or seven years following graduation (i.e. 2006 and 2007 graduates). Over 21,000 graduates provided information about their current employment situation, educational activity following their bachelor's program and their current social and civic involvement; and they assessed various elements of their academic program and university experience overall and the impacts these have in their lives today.
June 2014
The Canadian University Baccalaureate Graduate Outcomes Project
This report is the first in a series that will report the key findings of the survey. Future reports will cover other survey topics, including the relationship between current occupation and academic program, educational activity following baccalaureate graduation, graduates' assessments of the strengths,weaknesses and impacts of their academic program, and discipline-specific analyses (e.g. for the STEM disciplines, Humanities and Liberal Arts, etc.).
Robert R. Blake and Anne Adams McCanse1 refined the Leadership Grid® which identified various types of man- agerial leadership based on concern for production cou- pled with concern for people. While they consider the “team management” style of leadership to be ideal, they recognize that it may be difficult to implement in some work situations. Effective managers have great concern for both people and production. They work to motivate employees to reach their highest levels of accomplish- ment. They are flexible and responsive to change, and they understand the need to change.
Recruitment of participants is a challenging and very important aspect of research on postsecondary education. Many studies founder when students are not interested in participating, when students drop out before finishing a study, or when the students who respond do not represent the diversity of the student population. Recruitment is complex: students must know about the
study, want to participate, be able to participate and, finally, log in or show up.Researchers can improve recruitment by being flexible, explaining how the research is relevant to a diverse student body, devoting extra resources to recruiting students who are less likely to participate, and practicing patience and persistence.
Given the pace of technological change and the strong forces to innovate from the global market place, the need to invest in human capital continues to increase as does the requirement for high return on investment (ROI) in training. One of the obstacles of measuring the ROI of training is that many of the benefits of training may not be immediately visible for measurement and it may be impossible to allocate the improvements exhibited by the firm to a particular training event. The lack of longitudinal studies to measure the ROI of training, particularly with respect to supporting the use of technology and intensity of innovation, is an area that will be addressed in this study.
The pace of innovation and technological change in the global market place make it imperative that companies constantly look at improving the skills of their workforce (Bresnahan, Brynjolsson and Hitt, 1999). The investment in human capital through the use of relevant and targeted training is critical in order to keep a business competitive (Rabemananjara and Parsley, 2006). One of the key components to an organization’s competitive advantage is the development of knowledge workers and increasing the value of their human capital.
This document contains the appendices to CAAT baccalaureates: What has been their impact on students and colleges?
The reasons why students need to be involved and engaged when they attend college are well established. Engagement can be the difference between completing a degree and dropping out. Research has sought to identify what makes student involvement more likely. Factors like student-faculty interaction, active and collaborative learning experiences, involvement in extracurricular
activities, and living on campus have all been shown to make a difference. Not surprisingly, faculty play a critical role in student engagement … from the obvious: facilitating discussions in the classroom; to the often overlooked: maximizing those brief encounters we have with students outside of class. This special report features 15 articles that provide perspectives and advice for keeping students actively engaged in learning activities while fostering more meaningful interactions between students and faculty members, and among the students themselves. For example, in “Student Engagement: Trade-offs and Payoffs” author E Shelley Reid, associate professor at George Mason University, talks about how to craft engagement-focused questions
rather than knowledge questions, and explains her willingness to take chances in ceding some
control over students’ learning.
In “The Truly Participatory Seminar” authors Sarah M. Leupen and Edward H. Burtt, Jr., of Ohio Wesleyan University, outline their solution for ensuring all students in their upperdivision seminar course participate in discussion at some level. In “Reminders for Improving Classroom Discussion” Roben Torosyan, associate director of the Center for Academic Excellence at Fairfield University, offers very specific advice on balancing student voices, reframing discussions, and probing below the surface of group discussions.
And finally, in “Living for the Light Bulb” authors Aaron J. Nurick and David H. Carhart of Bentley College provide tips on setting the stage for that delightful time in class “when the student’s entire body says ‘Aha! Now I see it!’” Who wouldn’t like to see more light bulbs going on more often? One of the most challenging tasks instructors face is keeping students engaged. Building
Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom will help you meet that challenge while ensuring your classroom is a positive and productive learning environment.
Maryellen Weimer
Editor
The Teaching Professor
. Unique value-added in the research “market-placeâ€;
. Experience in applying new knowledge to solve industry problems and achieve industry goals;
. Personnel with expertise and experience across key sectors of the economy;
. The ability to rapidly move innovative ideas through the early stages of development and commercialization;
. State-of-the-art facilities, equipment and space to support the development of new products and applications; and
. A sustained commitment to a culture of innovation.
Systemic barriers that currently limit the degree to which colleges can contribute to the future achievement of Ontario’s productivity and prosperity goals include:
. A permissive but not enabling provincial policy framework for college applied R&D and innovation;
. No operating funding for Ontario colleges supporting applied research activities, resulting in:
. A shortage of funds to strengthen colleges’ institutional capacity to initiate, undertake and manage applied R&D and innovation projects that respond to industry and community needs in a timely way;
. A shortage of funds to support college personnel conducting applied R&D and innovation projects; and
. A shortage of funds to enable college applied R&D personnel to rapidly establish partnerships to address applied R&D challenges and to sustain and foster long-term relationships with key personnel from business, industry and community organizations. To strengthen provincial economic competitiveness and prosperity, Ontario colleges are calling on the government of Ontario to:
. Move beyond merely ermissive policies in relation to applied R&D and innovation activities at Ontario colleges and develop a formal provincial policy and investment framework that recognizes and enables the unique roles colleges can play in support of applied R&D and business and industry innovation activities;
. Explicitly develop Ontario colleges’ applied research, innovation and commercialization
capacity; and
. Enable colleges to increase their capacity for applied R&D and innovation partnerships
with business, industry, federal and provincial governments, and com-
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
College-Level Literacy: An Inventory of Current Practices at Ontario's Colleges instrument for gathering and reporting information. Three categories of college size, based on the Fall 2009 intake of students into postsecondary programs, provided further insight into the distribution of various practices. All 24 Ontario colleges participated in this study.
New research at the University of Warwick demonstrates two shortcomings with the current benchmarking of internationalisation: they are based purely on structural measures and they use a simple bi-polar distinction between home and international students. There are several dangers in relying on these measures: Structural internationalisation ≠ Student satisfaction: Latest research shows that in the UK, the lower the proportion of UK students, the less satisfied students of all backgrounds are. This does not mean that structural internationalisation should be avoided; on the contrary, students appreciate the value of an 'internationalisation' experience, so what we need is an agenda for integration.
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
Executive Summary
While there has been great interest and progress in terms of defining core learning outcomes related to the completion of various postsecondary programs, there has been far less progress in terms of elucidating powerful ways to assess these outcomes. Without clear assessment methods it is difficult to see how one could perform course or program redesign with these learning objectives in mind.
To date, attempts to address this “assessment of learning outcomes” gap have focused mostly on the use of qualitative tools that are given to students as they leave some institution or program, tools like the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) questionnaire or the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) index. But these tools rely on subjective report, are often difficult to administer repeatedly at scale, and typically only provide an “after education” snapshot of learning. This report highlights and validates a different assignment- based approach that has much greater potential to provide quantitative data with much higher resolution.
In 2004, former Ontario Premier Bob Rae was invited to lead the Postsecondary Education Review to provide advice on the seemingly intractable job of reconciling the province’ aspirations for a high quality, highly accessible and affordable postsecondary education system with the level of financial support that governments have felt able to provide for this endeavor. The report was considered extremely successful in providing 28 recommendations that were “sensitive to long- standing patterns of public opinion, articulated new public goals, [and] recognized the important role to be played by each major stakeholder.”(Clark and Trick, 2006, p. 180).
I was taking advantage of some down time, cleaning out some of my old files on my computer, when I ran across a great article I saved that covered student personality types. When I originally read this article, I only had several years of experience working in the distancelearning realm. Now, years later, I have seen all these student types at one time or another, and
throughout the years, noticed several others worthy of mention.
Before moving into some observations, I do need to provide some context for the environment in which I work. Our population consists of postgraduate students working in middle management positions. The classes are small, 18 students to one instructor, and progress through the year as a group. The yearlong curriculum is not self-paced. The college delivers
the content in a mix between asynchronous and synchronous modalities. Blackboard is the asynchronous platform that delivers the lesson material using a combination of computerbased instruction, online exams, and discussion board forums. We use Blackboard Ultra and/or Defense Connect Services for the synchronous portions of the curriculum, which
include delivery of student briefing products. Of course, there are the standard necessities like email, telephone, and administration that accompany facilitation.
Faculty and staff are the heart of an institution. Colleges and universities have hundreds and sometimes thousands of employees who each day deliver on the institution’s brand promise to students and others. But have we truly invested in understanding and articulating our institution’s employer brand, with prospective and current employees in mind?
During my dissertation research on higher education multi-campus brand coherence, I studied a peer institution of my university. The qualitative data collection included one-on-one interviews with more than 20 senior administrators (starting with the president), whose areas of responsibility were closely connected to the university’s brand. Participants often asked who
else I was meeting with and responded with surprise when I mentioned the vice president for human resources. “Oh, that’s interesting. Why would you want to meet with HR?”
The Blended Synchronous Learning Project sought to investigate how rich-media technologies such as web conferencing, desktop video conferencing and virtual worlds could be used to effectively unite remote and face-to-face students in the same live classes. Increasingly university students are opting to learn from off-campus, often due to work, family and social commitments (Gosper, et al., 2008; James, Krause, & Jennings, 2010). Often universities will cater for remote students by providing access to asynchronous resources via Learning Management Systems, meaning that off-campus students miss out on the benefits of synchronous collaborative learning such as rapid teacher feedback, real-time peer discussions, and an enhanced sense of connectedness.
Skills shortages1 have regularly been identified as one of the top 10 barriers to competitiveness in Canada by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, costing the Canadian economy billions in lost GDP annually.2 There is now a rare consensus about skills
needs and challenges in this country, across the demand and supply perspectives.3 An aging population will only
exacerbate the problem in the coming years, especially for the most in-demand professions in the
skilled trades and STEM-based occupations (where STEM refers to science, technology, engineering
and math).
With this report the Canadian Chamber of Commerce focuses on the role of the education-to-employment transition in mitigating or aggravating the skills gaps. Specifically, this report addresses the ways in which all stakeholders, including government, employers, workers, education providers and students, will need to adapt and collaborate to improve the efficiency of
the labour market.
“One of the paradoxes of this time, however, is this: while the global economy lags, innovation continues to surge ahead at a staggering and unprecedented pace.”
2011 Ontario throne speech
“We [in Ontario] have a wide prosperity gap with other large North American jurisdictions. The source of this gap is our inability to be as innovative as we could be in our economic life.
“Our business leaders … must relentlessly pursue improved products, services, and processes.”
Roger Martin, Tenth Annual Report, Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic
Progress, November 2011
Because innovation is an inherently social process – requiring people to make connections, develop ideas, and orchestrate implementation – colleges have built relationships to help their clients increase their scope of innovative practices. Each college is directly involved with many local economic development and innovation networks.
“Centennial’s professors and students have provided a pool of talent that has proven invaluable to the development and validation of our cleantech solutions.”
John Tuerk, Blue Heron Systems
“The [Fanshawe College] students exceeded our expectations and not just from the content point of view, but in their professionalism ... the recommendation to track venture capital was a novel idea the company had not considered. 3M later
adopted a similar approach as a global business strategy.” 3M Canada