Students today come from all walks of life. Traditional students, straight from a high school setting, now represent only a portion of the student population in colleges and universities. This is largely due to students fulfilling needs around work, family, and obligations outside of the traditional educational setting. These students bring with them wonderful personal and professional experiences that not only enhance the classroom experience, but also shape and contribute to their educational goals and aspirations. Many students feel they should be able to utilize their life experiences as part of their educational journey. This document will examine offering credit for life experiences, and how it can be mutually beneficial for students and institutions.
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.
A PhD is a prerequisite for an academic career, but fewer than 20 per cent of Canada’s PhDs are employed as full-time university professors. The majority of PhDs are employed in a wide range of rewarding careers outside academia. This report examines the employment opportunities and outcomes of PhD holders. It characterizes the challenges some PhD graduates face when transitioning to careers beyond academia, as well as the state of demand for PhDs among Canada’s employers. The valuable contributions PhDs make in a wide range of careers are highlighted. The report examines the status of professional skills development for PhD students and presents innovative examples of professional development initiatives in Canada and peer countries.
Leadership and management must go hand in hand. They are not the same thing. But they are necessarily linked, and complementary. Any effort to separate the two is likely to cause more problems than it solves.Still, much ink has been spent delineating the differences. The manager’s job is to plan, organize and coordinate. The leader’s job is to inspire and motivate.
Public colleges are the only academic institutions in Canada that deliver a robust range of career-focused programs and training to all segments of the population.
The colleges’ labour-market programs, such as Second Career, employment counselling, academic upgrading and apprenticeship training serve more than 160,000 students each year.
Ontario’s public college programs are affordable and reach students in all socioeconomic groups – from people who need upgrading in order to qualify for full-time college programs, to university graduates seeking marketable skills.
Graduates of Ontario’s 24 public colleges earn credentials that have met the province’s rigorous standards for post-secondary education and are valued by employers.
College graduates continue to be in high demand.
A survey of faculty participation in paid consulting arrangements in Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology reveals that 34% were involved in at least one project during a specified one-year period. There was significant variation in participation by division of academic appointment and by gender. The authors suggest that further research should be undertaken concerning the nature and role of paid consulting in community colleges. A number of basic questions are raised in an attempt to induce further study on this important topic.
Getting students to take their reading assignments seriously is a constant battle. Even syllabus language just short of death threats, firmly stated admonitions regularly delivered in class, and the unannounced pop quiz slapped on desks when nobody answers questions about the reading don’t necessarily change student behaviours or attitudes. Despite the correlation between reading and course success, many students remain committed to trying to get by without doing the reading, or only doing it very superficially, or only doing it just prior to exam dates. In return, some exasperated instructors fall into the trap of using valuable class time to summarize key points of the readings. It’s not a new problem, and clearly we can’t simply bemoan the fact that students don't read. Furthermore, doing what we’ve been doing — the threats, the endless quizzes, the chapter summaries — has failed to solve the problem. The better solution involves designing courses so that students can’t do well without reading, and creating assignments that require students to do more than just passively read.
Featuring 11 articles from The Teaching Professor, this special report was created to give faculty new ways of attacking an age-old problem. Articles in the report include:
. Enhancing Students’ Readiness to Learn
. What Textbook Reading Teaches Students
. Helping Students Use Their Textbooks More Effectively
. Text Highlighting: Helping Students Understand What They Read
. When Students Don’t Do the Reading
. Pre-Reading Strategies: Connecting Expert Understanding and Novice Learning
Whether your students struggle with the material or simply lack the motivation to read what’s assigned, this report will help ensure your students read and understand their assignments.
Too many students are dropping out of doctoral programs or taking too long to finish, prompting some universities to question what they can do to help them along.
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.
Many readers who followed the Chronicle articles about the precipitous decline and fall of H. Fred Walker, now former president of Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, no doubt did so with a mixture of fascination and horror. They were thinking either,
"There but for the grace of God go I," or "Been there, done that, never want to do that again." There is much, in fact, that
higher-education leaders can learn from Walker’s downfall.
Here are steps to help them avoid some of the problems that led to Walker’s resignation:
Interaction is a critical component of successful online learning and by extension an important component inoverall online program quality. The researcher studied the impact of course design on participation in an online university course. The participants were university students’ (n= 62, male= 33, female= 29). Their responses from online discussions were analyzed using repeated measures factorial ANOVA finding a statistically significant decrease in student participation in weeks when major assignments were due. The impact of assignments was similar for female and male participants. Measures of effect size indicated that course design accounted for more variation in online participation than gender. The key finding of the study was that course design can have a significant impact on level of participation and therefore student success in the online course. Ways to prevent or mitigate the impact of the reduction in student participation are presented.
In B.C.’s Skills for Jobs Blueprint: Re-Engineering Education and Training, we said we would get and use better data to drive decisions. This B.C. Labour Market Outlook (the Outlook) is that data. Presented by the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism, and Skills Training and Responsible for Labour (the Ministry), the Outlook provides labour market demand and supply trends to 2022.
With the anticipated investment and activity related to LNG, the Ministry contracted KPMG to produce labour market forecasts for the LNG sector. The resulting LNG workforce occupation forecasts are added as a supplementary analysis of workforce needs in the Outlook and are aimed at providing a better understanding of the skills needs for this new sector. This Outlook report includes two major parts:
THE FIRST PART provides the labour market outlook based on an economic scenario without LNG; and THE SECOND PART highlights the findings of the LNG workforce occupation forecasts.
The focus of this study was to determine the graduation and employment rates of Indspire’s Building Brighter Futures: Bursaries and Scholarship Awards (BBF) program recipients. Methodologically, the study was structured as a qualitative-quantitative survey. A total of 1,248 Indigenous students who received funding through Indspire’s BBF program between 2000-2001 and 2012-2013 participated in a survey. The report gathers data from a sample of Indigenous students in all provinces and
territories.
A brash tech entrepreneur thinks he can reinvent higher education by stripping it down to its essence, eliminating lectures and tenure along with football games, ivy-covered buildings, and research libraries. What if he's right?
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.
Aboriginal peoples in Canada face multiple and systemic barriers to attaining and succeeding in post-secondary education. A long history of discrimination, including the legacy of residential schools, and chronic government underfunding of Aboriginal
education has contributed to low high school completion rates, a widening gap in post- secondary attainment, and the lowest labour market outcomes of any group in Canada.
We’ve heard the debates about how much postsecondary institutions should focus on training students to enter specific careers. Many argue that the traditional role of these institutions— especially universities—is to equip students with the reflective and critical thinking skills they’ll need for a lifetime of learning. Others argue that institutions should provide students with an education that helps them find good jobs after graduation.
But what if this entire debate is based on a false choice? What if the same skills that encourage reflective, critical thinking are also the bedrock for finding and pursuing a meaningful career?
CAMBRIAN COLLEGE VISION/MANDATE
Vision
Cambrian believes in the strength of community and proudly stands behind its role as an accessible college serving the needs of its constituents. As a community builder, Cambrian attains excellence by infusing creativity, cultural diversity, collaboration, and an understanding of our learners’ needs in all that we do. Cambrian cares.
Mission
• We lead with our commitment to diverse learners.
• We teach and learn through quality education that responds to the needs of the community.
• We balance hands-on experience with the knowledge and skills essential for personal and
professional success.
The Canadian College and University Environmental Network (CCUEN-RCCUE) is an organization established to bring together environmental educators at universities, colleges, CEGEPs, technical institutes, and similar organizations that offer educational programs in any environmental field.
Since the initial meetings of college and university educators in 2002 and 2003 the Canadian College and University Environmental Network (CCUEN) - Réseau Canadien des Collèges et des Universités en Environnement (RCCUE) has aspired to become the primary voice of Canadian college and university environmental educators. One of the core activities is the annual CCUEN1 conference. This conference brings together researchers, employers and educators, students and related associations together to explore a range of issues and challenges for environmental educators.
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).