Vision
Prosperous communities and transformed lives.
Mission
Creating new realities by opening endless opportunities.
Post-secondary education is effectively a requirement to succeed in today’s labour market. Unfortunately, while the demand for education has increased, public funding has failed to keep up. Public funding shortfalls have resulted in a significant growth of costs that have been downloaded onto individual students, namely in the form of high tuition fees. From 1990 to 2014, national average tuition fees have seen an inflation-adjusted increase of over 155%. In Ontario, tuition fees have increased over 180%.
For most students—often having spent little time fully active in the workforce—funding their education has become increasingly difficult. Many students must now take on significant levels of debt to pay for their education. Students requiring a Canada Student Loan now graduate with an average debt of over $28,000.
Relying on debt to finance education means the full impact of high tuition fees is delayed until after graduation—when it is then compounded by interest. This impact is now exacerbated by the effects of the Great Recession and the rising trend of precarious, and even unpaid, employment. The broader effects of high levels of student debt on both the individual and the general economy are now becoming obvious:
Chpt. 12 from Prentice Hall
Background
According to a report by the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (2005) , 30 to 40% of all students enrolled in four-year degree programs drop out, and 78-80% of those who do drop out will do so in their first year. Similar levels have been reported in other provinces, such as Québec (25-35%, Montmarquette, Mahseredjian, & Houle, 2001). In a paper for the Commission of Inquiry on Canadian University Education, Gilbert (1991) estimated that after five years the non-completion rate for university undergraduates is approximately 42% across Canada. Of particular concern, research on student retention has demonstrated that some disciplines have higher drop-out rates than others; science, mathematics, and engineering students are more likely to drop out than students in other disciplines (Daempfle, 2004). Moreover, each year approximately 35% of undergraduates fail introductory mathematics and science classes (Useem, 1992). Because of these growing concerns, research is needed that focuses on increasing retention and achievement in undergraduate science. This research addresses these
concerns by implementing a different approach to providing feedback to students that may result in higher achievement and increased retention at the undergraduate level of education.
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).
How much time does it take to teach an online course? Does teaching online take more or less time than teaching face-to-face? Instructors, department chairs, deans, and program administrators have long believed that teaching online is more time-consuming than teaching face-to-face. Many research studies and practitioner articles indicate instructor time commitment as a major inhibitor to developing and teaching online courses. However, while they identify the issue and provide possible
solutions, they do not empirically measure actual time commitments or instructor perceptions when comparing online to face-to-face delivery and when comparing multiple iterations of delivery. The results of this study show distinct differences in developing online courses relative to developing face-to-face courses and distinct differences in teaching online courses relative to teaching face-to-face courses. The data from this study can be used by instructors, administrators, and
instructional designers to create higher quality course development processes, training processes, and overall communication.
Mohawk College promises its students a “college experience that empowers them to transform their lives.” Mohawk recognizes that student success depends on the entire experience students have at college, both inside and outside the classroom.
The Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors (AUCCCD) is the international organization for counseling center directors comprised of universities and colleges from the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia, comprised of 737 members as of this survey period. The mission of AUCCCD is to assist directors in providing effective leadership and management of campus counseling centers. The organization promotes college student mental health awareness through research, dissemination of key campus mental health issues and trends, and related training and education, with special attention to issues of changing demographics including diversity and multiculturalism. In 2006, AUCCCD developed and administered the Annual Survey to its membership as a means to increase the objective understanding of those factors critical to the functioning of college and university counseling centers.
In December, 2014 all college and university counseling center administrators, identified in the Higher Education Directory, were invited to participate in the Annual Survey. The survey was administered to 1708 verified email accounts via a secure internet interface. The reporting period for the 2014 Annual Survey varies among administrators, reflecting variations in organization specific annual reporting periods. All participants had reporting periods ranging from July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014 to September 1, 2013 through August 31, 2014. This monograph serves to provide a summary of data trends reported in the AUCCCD Annual Survey. Participants have access to the online reporting features of the survey including data filtering and export. Additionally, AUCCCD members have access to a separate comparable salary table and items that access ethical dilemmas and legal issues. A total of 499 counseling center administrators completed the 2014 survey, of which 389 were AUCCCD members.
This report provides a systems perspective on the state of skills and higher education in Canada an identifies areas where the sector could improve in producing highly skilled graduates. It is one of the three foudational studies for the Centre for Sills and Post-Secondary Education, that, together, offer the first steps in a diagnosis of the sector and its performance.
Since the turn of the 21st century, universities in Canada have undergone significant changes. Student enrolment has exploded. Between 2000/01 and 2012/13, the number of full-time equivalent students in universities grew from 676,000 to 1,050,000, an
increase of 55%. The number and proportion of international students in universities have doubled during the same period, from 45,800 to 132,000, or from 5% to 10% of total university students. The number of academic staff has also increased, but the growth in full-time positions has not matched the increase in student numbers. Between 2000/01 and 2012/13, the number of full-time permanent university professors increased by 32%.Meanwhile, the number of part-time and temporary academic staff grew by 69% and 49% respectively, and the number of international visiting professors or lecturers increased by 66% since 2004.
These changes took place while the population, aged between 17 and 24 years, which makes up the bulk of post-secondary
students, grew by only 15% since 2000.
Universities and colleges strive to grow and fulfill their mission of educating their communities. Communicating the data around that mission—how many students are graduating? What does the student population look like? Is the University managing its finances?— is an important component of any institution’s daily life. In this era of larger data and disparate data sources, that can be especially challenging. However, institutions that have been able to present important data online have been able to tell their stories better and engage with their communities in a meaningful way.
This paper presents eight ways that higher education is using analytics and data visualization, supported by examples from real institutions. It also addresses common issues such as keeping data up-to-date as well as appropriately private and secure.
Background and Context: The context for this study is the American legislative landscape covering the past 35 years, which witnessed a shift in political philosophies concerning the role of government in ensuring the social welfare of its citizens—from a focus on a “safety net” to a focus on “individual responsibility.” We frame these contrasting political philosophies as
political master narratives; these narratives shape the ways particular groups in society are perceived, help craft social policy, and have a profound impact on “local narratives,” which are more restricted in scope, are more contextually bound, and seek to make sense of lived experience in a particular domain. The specific local narratives we considered in this study are the “student
success stories” told in adult literacy programs, which are dis- tributed to legislators in hopes of influencing policy and funding decisions. We sought to understand the connection between political master narratives and the local narratives of adult literacy education.
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).
Overview
The majority of employers continue to say that possessing both field-specific knowledge and a broad range of knowledge and skills is important for recent college graduates to achieve long-term career success. Very few indicate that acquiring knowledge and skills mainly for a specific field or position is the best path for long- term success. Notably, college students
recognize the importance of having both breadth and depth of skills and knowledge for their workplace success.
Echoing findings from previous Hart Research employer surveys, employers say that when hiring, they place the greatest value on demonstrated proficiency in skills and knowledge that cut across all majors. The learning outcomes they rate as most important include written and oral communication skills, teamwork skills, ethical decision-making, critical thinking, and the ability to apply knowledge in real-world settings. Indeed, most employers say that these cross-cutting skills are more important to an individual’s success at their company than his or her undergraduate
major.
Historic High in the History of the Learning Technology Industry
The investments made to learning technology companies in the first half of 2015 were the highest for a half year period in the history of the learning technology industry and exceeds the total amount for the entire year of 2014. In the six month period between January and June 2015, $2.51 billion was invested in learning technology companies across the globe. This is astonishing considering that the total global investments made to learning technology companies for the entire year of 2014 was $2.42 billion, which set a record in the industry.
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.
Ontario’s colleges share the provincial government’s belief that apprenticeship must play a greater role in addressing skills shortages and contributing to innovative, high-performance workplaces that enhance Ontario’s competitiveness.
Given the severity of the economic downturn, Ontario faces an immediate, serious challenge as apprenticeship workplace training is disrupted. Businesses are less able to take on apprentices and registrations drop as apprentices are often last on a company’s payroll and first off. To help apprentices and their employers, Ontario’s colleges propose that the government:
Online education programs continue to rely on a significant contingent of adjunct faculty to meet the instructional needs of the students. Discourse relating to this situation primarily focuses on the extent to which adjuncts are able to ensure the rigor and quality of instruction as well as the ability of the organization to attract, retain, and support qualified professionals. In response, organizations have created very structured,standardized professional development opportunities, meticulous monitoring of adjunct activities and inflexible policies to guide interactions with learners. This one-size-fits-all strategy limits the organization’s ability to facilitate an adjunct-organizational relationship that supports the adjunct in ways that meet their individual needs. The purpose of this exploratory, quantitative questionnaire study was to examine the difference between the adjuncts’ primary rationale for teaching, and their self-identified professional category. In addition, the study sought to explore the difference between the adjunct’s primary professional needs and their self-identified professional category. The results of the study demonstrated that there was a significant difference between the self-identified professional employment groups in the areas of student focused instruction, personal needs, an interest in online pedagogy, career advancement, and flexible work schedule categories. There was not a significant difference in the self-identified professional employment groups and the category of skill development
The growth of competency-based education in an online environment requires the development and measurement of
quality competency-based courses. While quality measures for online courses have been developed and standardized, they do not directly align with emerging best practices and principles in the design of quality competency-based online courses. The purpose of this paper is to provide background and research for a proposed rubric to measure quality in competency-based online courses.
The problem
The Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) in consultation with the universities
has estimated that 53,000 to 86,000 more university spaces will be needed by 2021 to meet student
demand. There will be special pressures in the GTA. Universities’ enrolment plans will not be
sufficient to meet this demand.
The opportunity
With the government’s support, Ontario’s colleges could provide space for tens of thousands of
students in high-quality, career-oriented baccalaureate programs over the coming decade and beyond.