The expansion of public, postsecondary education and the attendant additional costs associated with that expansion are significant concerns to governments everywhere. Ontario is no exception. Innovation in the delivery of academic programs holds the potential to contain costs, improve quality, and enhance accountability. This project is intended to assist the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HECQO) to better understand how a shift to competency-based education might affect the cost and quality of higher education programs, institutions and systems and to investigate how competency-based education might enhance the productivity and accountability of public higher education systems and institutions.
On-line, blended and other forms of web enhanced learning are becoming increasingly popular as a means of delivering post-secondary education. According to a recent report completed by the Higher Education Strategy Associates, 57% of
Canadian university courses make use of some online component (Rogers, Usher & Kaznowska, 2011).
The decision of Mohawk College to move to blended learning was part of a strategic plan begun in 2008 that focused on “advancing educational outcomes through the strategic integration of learning technologies” (Mohawk College 1). To this end the college formulated a committee composed of faculty, administration and management to examine the various learning platforms current at that time (FirstClass, WebCT) and tasked with deciding which learning management system the college
should adopt. They selected Desire2Learn (D2L) as the learning management system to be adopted, and a further plan was developed to have all courses fully blended within five years of the initial start-up of D2L in 2009. Blended learning is defined as using the web “to deliver substantial course materials accompanied by a strategic reduction in face-to-face contact. Online and
face-to-face learning spaces are thoughtfully integrated, maximizing the unique characteristics of each, in order to enhance the quality of the learning experience” (Mohawk College 2).
The purpose of this report is to present the findings from a comprehensive research study with recommendations on the following question:
“Does Ontario have the appropriate mix of credential options and opportunities in its publicly funded postsecondary system to ensure successful student and labour market outcomes that will contribute to Ontario’s economic productivity and competitiveness?”
The evaluation of the postsecondary education credential mix1 included an in-depth analysis of student outcomes, consultations with a wide range of stakeholders including students, institutions, and quality assurance bodies, as well as a consultation and review of research on employer needs.
The study also considers recent proposals for new postsecondary education credentials in Ontario, as well as global trends in higher education that focus on labour market outcomes of students. This includes a detailed scan of seven jurisdictions to further explore those trends in more detail.
OCUFA’s 2015-16 pre-budget recommendations are directed toward enhancing the quality and affordability of university education in Ontario through increased government investment. We are sensitive to the province’s fiscal circumstances, but believe that investment – at any level – will help build a thriving university sector and a more prosperous Ontario. When the provincial government invests in higher education, the entire province will enjoy the benefits.
Almost 40 Canadian universities in all regions of Canada responded to a detailed data survey aimed at ascertaining the characteristics and flows of students who left postsecondary institutions in one jurisdiction to continue undergraduate studies at a university in another. Two main types of student were considered: the transfer student who receives some transfer credit on admission to the receiving university and the mobile student who also moves between institutions but who does not receive transfer credit for prior studies. Some other studies of this type have not considered the mobile student, as defined here, although they make up about 20 per cent of the total flows.
Programs that allow foreign workers to occupy positions in Canada have existed since the 1960s and were formally introduced in legislation in the 1970s. While they generally focused on skilled workers, they were expanded to lower-skilled occupations in 2002.
While generally considered beneficial from an economic perspective, foreign workers have received significant public attention in recent years. This is the case especially in relation to foreign workers occupying low-skilled positions, considering that most unemployed Canadian workers would meet the minimum requirements to fill these jobs satisfactorily.
This study assesses the economic and financial benefits for individuals and the province of Ontario of implementing a coordinated, province-wide credential and credit recognition and transfer system for Ontario college graduates enrolling in a university undergraduate degree program in the province. The study demonstrates that there are solid economic and financial reasons to develop such a system. It also recognizes that the current patchwork transfer framework results in significant instances of inequity for students and that an enhanced system will encourage more students to pursue the higher education that matches their interests and skills. It will also reduce the number of students who feel compelled to leave Ontario to continue their education. The study recommends a Made-in-Ontario solution to address the fundamental equity and fairness concerns of students, to simplify administration for post-secondary institutions, and to strengthen our economy by providing educational opportunities for the workforce this province will need to compete and prosper in the global economy.
On March 12, 2015, the government announced that Ontario would be moving forward with the transformation of its postsecondary education sector by launching consultations on modernizing the university funding model. The purpose of this consultation paper is to outline an engagement process and position the review within the context of the government’s
overall plan for postsecondary education. Funding universities in a more quality-driven, sustainable and transparent way is part of the government’s economic plan for Ontario.
A confluence of social, technical, economic, and other factors have created the demand for improvement and change in U.S. postsecondary education. Many of the drivers for change are quite prominent, and include access to postsecondary education, cost, and students’ success. At the same time, many innovations are taking place, including numerous new modes of delivery, access, and instruction.
However, education outcomes are influenced at the micro level, where incredible variation among advisors, teachers, students, and methods leads to a process which is systemically difficult to map in detail, and hence to understand and support. In this environment, it is crucial to understand faculty members, both as stakeholders, and as potential creators and drivers of innovation, and as the direct, front-line drivers of student success.
This article presents a case study of a technology-enhanced face-to-face health sciences course in which the principles of Universal Design for Learing (UDL) were applied. Students were offered a variety of means of rep- resentation, engagement, and expression throughout the course, and were surveyed and interviewed at the end of the term to identify how the UDL- inspired course attributes influenced their perceptions of course accessibility. Students responded very positively to the
course design, and felt that the weaving of UDL throughout the course resulted in increased flexibility, social presence, reduced stress, and enhanced success. Overall, students felt more in control of their own learning process and empowered to make personal choices to best support their own learning. This course design also led to in- creased satisfaction from the perspective of the instructor and reduced the need for intervention by the campus disability services department.
While budgets are being cut and positions not being refilled, it is no surprise that universities are also beginning to feel the effects of a weakened economy. Student retention has remained a prominent issue in the literature for several decades now, still with no definite answer on why students fail to persist and graduate (Morrow & Ackerman, 2012). In an effort to gain more
insight into this phenomenon, the purpose of this study is to understand retention by assessing resiliency in students who have experienced adverse childhood events. The goal of this study is to identify if resiliency, as a psychosocial factor, influences student persistence in the first year at a university when the student is identified as at-risk (i.e. the student has dealt with an identified past trauma). An agglomeration of Tinto’s Student Integration Model and the Diathesis Stress Model will be used to understand how resilience and psychopathology can affect persistence decisions in the first year. If services can be implemented for students in their first year, it is possible that more students would persist and graduate.
Educators have long been concerned that fewer women than men pursue STEM
(Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) focused programs at the post-secondary level. Less than
25% of the STEM workforce in Canada is women. Research has indicated that this reality reflects a
trend in high school that sees girls lose interest in STEM studies and careers.
The goals of this study, which focused on junior high school students, was to understand how engaged they were in math and science, their future intention for studying science and math, and the likelihood that they would consider a STEM career down the road. Research also addressed students‟ knowledge of how relevant science and math were across various types of careers. Gender and grade differences, and influencers on science and math study, were also examined.
Instructors of large classes must contend with numerous challenges, among them low student motivation. Research in evolutionary biology, echoed by work in other disciplines, suggests that aspects of the classroom incentive structure – such as grades, extra credit, and instructor and peer acknowledgment – may shape motivations to engage in studies and to collaborate with peers. Specifically, the way that incentives are distributed in relative quantity (the slope of competition; the proportion of benefits earned through performance relative to peers) and space (the scale of competition; the proportion of peers with whom one is competing) may affect strategies to cooperate or to compete with others.
We hypothesized that students would cooperate with one another more when competition was “global” (i.e., dispersed over the entire population of Introductory Psychology students) than when it was “local” (i.e., concentrated amongst a smaller group of students). We further hypothesized that students would be more motivated when competition was “steep” (i.e., benefits were conditional on relative rather than absolute performance) than when it was “shallow” (i.e., benefits were conditional on absolute rather than relative performance). Moreover, these two variables were expected to interact: cooperation among students was hypothesized to be greatest when competition was both global and steep and weakest when competition was both local and steep.
Here, we designed an experimental test of these hypotheses in a very large, university-level class. Over four semesters, students were randomly assigned, via their tutorial groups, to various competition conditions: global (between-tutorial) competition, local (within-tutorial) competition and asocial (individual) competition. Notably, the global and local competition conditions implied steeper competition than did the asocial competition condition. Within each semester, students were
rotated through each condition, so that all students experienced all conditions over distinct testing phases. Students competed over weekly tests for “bonus” credit that could be applied to reweight the course final exam in their favour. We measured their test performance (i.e., scores on the weekly tests) as well as their evaluations of the learning environment (e.g.,
their reliance on peers and their sense of community in the course).
This report aims to summarise the key findings from a research project investigating the styles of and approaches to leadership, and leadership behaviours, which are associated with effectiveness in higher education. The project consisted of two distinct tasks, the first was a systematic search of literature relating to leadership and
effectiveness in higher education studies. The second element was a series of semi-structured interviews with academics who were involved in researching leadership in higher education, or leadership more generally. The key research question directing the investigation was: ‘What styles of or approaches to leadership are associated with effective leadership in higher education?’ In addition to this publication, an extended report has also been written which includes longer sections covering the head of department and institutional level analyses, and more detail
about many of the studies reviewed.
In January, President Barack Obama convened a gathering for a summit on college access. To be invited, attendees were obliged to make formal commitments to improve access for low-income and underrepresented students. For proponents of community colleges, the focus of this summit likely has a familiar ring. Historically, the defining traits of these two-year institutions have been accessibility with low tuition, open admissions, diverse programming with convenient scheduling, and relatively small class sizes.
Abstract
The purpose of the paper is to describe our peer mentorship experiences and explain how these experiences fostered transformational learning during our PhD graduate program in educational administration. As a literature backdrop, we discuss characteristics of traditional forms of mentorship and depict how our experiences of peer mentorship was unique. Through narrative inquiry, we present personal data and apply concepts of transformational learning theory to analyze our experiences. Our key finding was that it was the ambiguous boundaries combined with the formal structure of our graduate program that created an environment where peer mentorship thrived. We conclude that peer mentorship has great capacity to foster human and social capital within graduate programs for both local and international students.
Résumé
Le but de cet article est de décrire nos expériences de mentorat par les pairs et d’expliquer comment ces expériences ont favorisé l’apprentissage transformationnel au cours de notre programme d’études supérieures de doctorat. Avec la littérature comme toile de fond, nous discutons des caractéristiques des formes traditionnelles de mentorat et décrivons comment
notre mentorat par les pairs est unique. Grâce à l’analyse narrative, nous présentons des données personnelles et appliquons les concepts de la théorie de l’apprentissage transformationnel pour analyser nos expériences. L’élément clé de l’étude démontre clairement que les frontières ambiguës, combinées à la structure formelle de notre programme d’études supérieures, créent un environnement favorable au mentorat par les pairs. À la lumière de notre étude, nous concluons que, tant pour les étudiants locaux qu’internationaux, le mentorat par les pairs rehausse le développement humain et social dans les
programmes d’études supérieures.
The initiative to conduct and report on this research was undertaken by the Pan-Canadian Consortium on Admissions and Transfer (PCCAT). The purpose of the consortium is to facilitate the implementation of policies and practices that support student mobility both within and among provinces and territories and granting of transfer credit in order to improve access to postsecondary education in Canada.
This report was funded by the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC), the Colleges and Universities Consortium Council of Ontario (CUCC), the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), and the Association of Registrars of the Universities and Colleges of Canada (ARUCC).
The main players in First Nations’ public finance agree on one thing: The present fiscal regime is
broken, and needs to be fixed. Many of the arrangements that govern aboriginal communities’
revenues, borrowing and spending date back to the 19th century, and remain riddled with
paternalism, uncertainty and inefficiency.
First Nations finances are on a far more fragile footing than other levels of government in
Canada. The provinces and territories obtain a significant portion of their revenues through
federal transfers -- such as the Canada Health Transfer, the Canada Social Transfer and
equalization payments -- based on negotiated and pre-determined formulas. These
jurisdictions, as well as municipalities, also generate substantial tax revenues from a variety of
sources.
Aboriginal learners who have followed their passion and found their voice at Ontario universities are spreading the word to their peers in a series of testimonials about the transformative power of a university education in hopes of inspiring other Aboriginal youth to see the benefit of higher education.
The third stream agenda is a critical strategy in the pursuit of enriched learning, enhancing student employability and much needed revenues. Voices of support of the third stream agenda resonate across political parties, the business community and universities. Academic journals have also reflected a scenario in which the academic community of practice have transformed its rational into ‘can do’ mission statements and strategic policies with a clear focus to source, convert and embed third stream activities. In return, universities seek quarries such as more marketable programmes of studies, committed and commercially
aware academics, improved business interchange and in light of the economic recession and subsequent austere measures, the replenishment of new revenue streams.