The time for meaningful transformation in Ontario’s post-secondary system is now. To meet the needs of the emerging economy, reform must focus on innovation and applied learning that vaults our province ahead of its competition
in creating the best-educated, best-prepared workforce in the world. Composed of distinct but equally valued and complementary partners, Ontario’s transformed post- secondary system will ensure that all students can reach their full potential through a broad array of theoretical and applied learning opportunities. Colleges will continue to be student focused, specializing in applied learning that leads to good jobs for graduates, addresses labour market needs and affords access to the broadest possible population. Colleges and universities will offer a range of credentials within their systems and collaborate on a multitude of programs that offer students the best of both. Expanded pathways will give students the opportunity to customize their post-secondary experience to match their interests. Online and blended learn- ing, married to leading-edge
technology, will enable students to learn anywhere, anytime, and in ways best suited to their learning styles. Students will be better prepared than ever before to meet the demands of the economy, and they will achieve their goals faster and at less cost.
In June 2016, the Ontario government launched its five-year Climate Change Action Plan, which builds on a bold strategy to reduce the province’s green-house gas (GHG) emissions by 15 per cent below 1990 levels by the year 2020. Universities are stepping up to the challenge by demonstrating leadership, reinforcing their role in helping meet these targets, and supporting campus-based initiatives to spark broader action.
As academics, we grapple with failure all the time and in a myriad of ways.
One of the best parts of academia is that we are always learning. In our quest to develop a deeper understanding of the world around us, we occupy various positions as expert and novice learners. But, this is also one of the hardest parts of our jobs: in order to learn, we must open ourselves up to the risk of failure, mistakes and missteps.
As academics, we grapple with failure all the time and in a myriad of ways. We are rejected on the job market, we are dejected after an unsuccessful grant application, and we are crestfallen when Reviewer 2 destroys our central argument. Our ideas are challenged during a conference session or during a departmental meeting; we are criticized in the Twittersphere or in book reviews. A class can spectacularly self-implode despite careful preparation or a student might fail to thrive despite our best efforts.
With growing concern for postsecondary degree attainment sweeping public discourse in state and national circles, the traditional emphasis on access and enrollment headcounts is expanding to include a keen interest in student progress
and completion.
In many cases, though, conversations among policy experts are well ahead of conversations on college campuses. Too often, many still think it is enough to provide opportunity to students: What they do with that opportunity is up to them.
Institutions that don’t make the shift — from focusing on access alone to focusing on access and success — aren’t likely to fare well in the new environment of performance-based funding and increasingly hard-edged accountability. More important, neither will their students. In this economy, “some college” won’t get young adults very far; we need to help more of them get the degrees that will.
Background: Via the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA), stronger accountability proponents are now knocking on the doors of the colleges of education that prepare teachers and, many argue, prepare teachers ineffectively. This is raising questions about how effective and necessary teacher education programs indeed are. While research continues to evidence that teachers have a large impact on student achievement, the examination of teacher education programs is a rational backward mapping of understanding how teachers impact students. Nonetheless, whether and how evaluations of teacher education programs should be conducted isyet another hotly debated issue in the profession.
Attraction and retention of apprentices and completion of apprenticeships are issues of concern to all stakeholders involved in training, economic development and workforce planning. The Canadian Apprenticeship Forum (CAF) has forecast that by 2017 there will be a need to train 316,000 workers to replace the retiring workforce in the construction industry alone (CAF, 2011a). In the automotive sector, shortages are expected to reach between 43,700 and 77,150 by 2021. However, shortages are already widespread across the sector, and CAF survey data show that almost half (48.1%) of employers reported that there was a limited number of qualified staff in 2011 (CAF, 2011a). Given this, retention of qualified individuals in apprenticeship training and supporting them through to completion is a serious issue. There is some indication that registration in apprenticeship programs has been increasing steadily over the past few years, but the number of apprentices completing their program has not kept pace (Kallio, 2013; Laporte & Mueller, 2011). Increasing the number of completions would result in a net benefit to both apprentices and employers, minimizing joblessness and skills shortages.
GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) is a research program focusing
on culture and leadership in 61 nations. National cultures are examined in terms of nine dimensions: performance
orientation, future orientation, assertiveness, power distance, humane orientation, institutional collectivism, in-group collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and gender egalitarianism. In a survey of thousands of middle managers in food processing, finance, and telecommunications industries in these countries, GLOBE compares their cultures and attributes of effective leadership. Six global leadership attributes are identified and discussed. ©
n 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.
As laptops become smaller and more ubiquitous, and with the advent of tablets, the idea of taking notes by hand just seems old-fashioned to many students today. Typing your notes is faster — which comes in handy when there's a lot of information to take down. But it turns out there are still advantages to doing things the old-fashioned way.
For one thing, research shows that laptops and tablets have a tendency to be distracting — it's so easy to click over to Facebook in that dull lecture. And a study has shown that the fact that you have to be slower when you take notes by hand is what makes it more useful in the long run.
Success in college and university is more than what you learn in a classroom. It's about navigating the system, asking for help when you need it, finding places were you belong and preparing for your future career and life.
Our goal is to introduce you to the areas called Student Affairs, Student Services, Student Success, Student Life and Campus Life. Whatever it's called, this group of people , programs and services will assist you in registering for classes, staring a student club, working on a difficult class assignment, talking to you when you're stressed or need to see a doctor, and much more.
Older workers’ (aged 50-64) job retention in the paid labour force has come to the fore because of the shortfall in availability of skilled labour now and in Canada’s future and the projection of a ‘greying population.’ Employing mixed methods, the research focused on the unique approaches and challenges experienced by older professionals in informal learning, the everyday experiences in which people learn. In addition, the research focused on the practices of documenting (methods for keeping track of learning), assessing (making judgements about learning), and supporting (methods that facilitate learning) that are helpful for older workers’ informal learning practices. The project focused on Certified Management Accountants (CMAs), knowledge workers whose continuous learning is urgent in Canada’s ‘hot economy’ and whose professional associations have made learning a priority.
Among the things which I have found most fascinating - and often frustrating too - in the study of postsecondary education are the frequent instances where major goals or functions seem to be, or are alleged to be, in conflict with one another.
An example is the purported conflict between teaching and research. The notion that these two functions of the university are inherently in conflict goes back at least a century and a half to John Henry Newman who argued that teaching and research require different temperaments and conditions and are best done in different settings. Newman's view has not prevailed, and in fact, a central tenet of the contemporary university is that teaching and research are complementary. Still, there are many who feel that there is a conflict, if only for scarce resources and attention. They suggest that the university sector could ccommodate more students and do a better job of educating them if only some universities would cut back on research and become predominantly teaching institutions.
The renowned American political sociologist, Seymour Lipset, has been interested in the study of cultural and institutional differences between Canada and the United States ever since he attempted to explain, in his doctoral thesis more than forty years ago, why the first socialist government in North America happened to come to power in Canada. Continental Divide, thus, represents more than forty years of study, reflection, and accumulation of data on differences between Canada and the United States with respect to political values, behaviour, and institutions.
Vision
Enriching lives and fulfilling dreams
Mission
Providing outstanding applied education and training for a changing world
This analysis is about the role of poverty in school reform. Data from a number of sources are used to make five points. First, that poverty in the United States is greater and of longer duration than in other rich nations. Second, that poverty, particularly among urban minorities, is associated with academic performance that is well below international means on a number of different international assessments. Scores of poor students are also considerably below the scores achieved by white middle-class American students. Third, that poverty restricts the expression of genetic talent at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. Among the lowest social classes environmental factors, particularly family and neighborhood influences, not genetics, is strongly associated with academic performance. Among middle-class students it is genetic factors, not family and neighborhood factors, that most influences academic perfor-mance. Fourth, compared to middle-class children, severe medical problems affect impoverished youth. This limits their school achievement as well as their life chances. Data on the negative effect of impoverished neighborhoods on the youth who reside there is also presented. Fifth, and of greatest interest, is that small reductions in family poverty lead to increases in positive school behavior and better academic performance. It is argued that poverty places severe limits on what can be accomplished through school reform efforts, particularly those associated with the federal No Child Left Behind law. The data presented in this study suggest that the most powerful policy for improving our nations’ school achievement is a reduction in family and youth poverty.
Student pathways increasingly rely on transfer between postsecondary institutions as greater numbers of students move between institutions, pursue multiple credentials, or return to postsecondary education. In a 2011 survey of Ontario college students, 41% reported having some post-secondary experience; the same survey also found that 19% of respondents said their main goal in applying for their current program was to “prepare for further university or college study.” Transfer of credit for prior learning is clearly an increasingly mainstream educational activity, and institutions are under increasing pressure to improve the processes by which this occurs.
Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, asserts that education is one of the most effective instruments that society can employ in the effort to adopt sustainable development. This paper is a first effort to explore the degree to which Canadian institutions of higher education, including colleges and universities, have embraced this assertion. It includes the first census
of the existing environment/sustainability policies and/or plans of Canadian postsecondary institutions (n = 220), and an examination of the relationships between the existence of an environment/sustainability policy/plan and the presence of other sustainability initiatives on campus. The focus on policies and plans is timely because in public institutions like colleges and universities, actions and practices are determined by policy. The results reveal a number of patterns and insights, including, for example, the influence of provincial legislation on the uptake of policies.
This paper proposes a new measure of skills mismatch that combines information about skill proficiency, self-reported mismatch and skill use. The theoretical foundations underling this measure allow identifying minimum and maximum skill requirements for each occupation and to classify workers into three groups, the well-matched, the under-skilled and the over-skilled. The availability of skill use data further permit the computation of the degree of under and over- usage of skills in the economy. The empirical analysis is carried out using the first wave of the OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) and the findings are compared across skill domains,labour market status and countries.
This edited book fills a gap in what we know about reforms targeting the internationalization of Canadian higher education. Contributions from scholars across Canada (and a few from international contexts) delivered multi-focal approaches to the study of internationalization processes, involving both empirical and theoretical considerations for readers. The book offered everything from descrip- tive accounts of contemporary policies and practices to historical tracings of past policies and their influences on current initiatives, from position papers arguing for more national coordination to crit- ical positions that question foundations to justify international reforms. The topics and paradigmatic approaches imparted in the chapters represent a collection of contributions from a conference held at York University in 2006. The editors argue that the topics lack attention in current literature but warrant significant consideration from scholars and practitioners alike.
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