No one wants their writing to be the subject of ridicule and disdain, but that’s the lot of many academics, whose turgid, clumsy, lumpy prose is deemed unapproachable by readers outside the halls of academe. What’s the harm in writing for the few? Many good ideas that might be of public benefit are cloistered away. The articles in this collection describe what’s wrong with academic prose and how it could be improved.
This qualitative research study investigates a model of delivering assistive technology training to adult students with a variety of disabilities who are enrolled in academic upgrading classes at a Canadian college. The purpose was to examine whether an academic subject context for assistive technology training delivered by Academic Strategists impacted students’ engagement in
classes, independence, completion of learning outcomes, and adoption of assistive technology. The model of assistive technology training used in this study utilized subject area Academic Strategists to deliver assistive technology training in the context of their regularly scheduled academic strategies sessions.
Recent adult immigrants1 arrive in Canada but some find difficulty obtaining jobs or attaining employment in their fields of expertise. This prompts a substantial number to attend post-secondary education (PSE) to improve their Canadian credentials, where they often face access and completion barriers. This synthetic review is divided into two parts. The first part consists
of two quantitative analyses of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants in Canada (LSIC); the first examines the economic integration of recent immigrants with respect to entry class, and the second provides an analysis of immigrant’s PSE pathways as a means of locating employment that match their qualifications. The second qualitative section, examines the responsiveness of universities and colleges to recent immigrants that enter PSE to receive Canadian credentials and work experience.
Today, students view mobility among, and access to, the different educational experiences as offered by colleges and universities as essential to their success in the workplace; they need to equip themselves with skills in a way that sets them apart from the rest and best speaks to their own interests and aptitude, and move more seamlessly between certificate, diploma, apprenticeship and
degree programs.
Executive Summary
Ontario is Canada’s largest provincial destination for immigrants. Language barriers, lack of recognition for foreign credentials and lack of work experience in Canada prevent many from gaining employment in their field of expertise.
There is an urgent and growing need for occupation-specific language training in Ontario. Immigrants cannot apply their experience, skills and knowledge without the level of language proficiency needed in the workplace, but there are not enough language training opportunities to meet their needs. Shortages of skilled workers in many sectors will increasingly hinder
Ontario’s economic prosperity.
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.
It is either ironic or absolutely unsurprising that while instructors love peer-review sessions for student writing, students mostly do not.
Having undergrads read and respond to each others' drafts is such a promising pedagogical idea: Students receive feedback on their writing, they get to see how others have tackled the same writing project, and the instructor doesn't have to do all the heavy lifting for once.
An in-class peer-review workshop is a part of the process for every major essay I assign. But I've made it a habit to ask my students about their previous experiences with such workshops, and their answers are almost uniformly negative. My students tell me these workshops are never useful and are a waste of time for both reader and writer. Through some combination of trial and error, dumb luck, and doing some reading on the subject, I think I've evolved some ways to ensure that peer-review sessions are helpful to students. I thought I'd share my advice here.
Abstract
This case study examines ongoing work to Indigenize education programs at one Canadian university. The history of the academy in Canada has been dominated by Western epistemologies, which have devalued Indigenous ways of knowing and set the grounds for continued marginalization of Indigenous students, communities, cultures, and histories. We argue that institutions of higher learning need to move away from the myopic lens used to view
education and implement Indigenizing strategies in order to counteract the systemic monopolization of knowledge and communication. Faculties of education are taking a leading role in Canadian universities by hiring Indigenous scholars and incorporating Indigenous ways of knowing into teacher education courses. Inspired by the 25 Indigenous principles outlined by Maōri scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012), four Indigenous faculty members from Western Canada document effective decolonizing practices for classroom experience, interaction, and learning that reflect Indigenous values and orientations within their teaching practices.
Résumé
La présente étude de cas examine le travail actuel de programmes d’éducation d’une université canadienne en matière d’indigénisation. En effet, au Canada, l’enseignement académique a été dominé par les épistémologies occidentales, qui ont dévalué les systèmes de connaissance autochtones et ont jeté les bases d’une marginalisation continue de l’histoire, des étudiants, des communautés et des cultures autochtones. Les institutions d’enseignement supérieur doivent s’éloigner de la vision étroite trop souvent utilisée pour comprendre
l’éducation. Elles ont plutôt besoin de mettre en place des stratégies d’indigénisation afin de contrer la monopolisation systémique des connaissances et des communications. Les facultés d’éducation tiennent le rôle principal en intégrant les systèmes de connaissance autochtones dans leurs programmes et en embauchant des chercheurs autochtones. Ainsi, inspirés par les 25 principes d’indigénisation articulés par la chercheuse maōri Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012), quatre chercheurs autochtones de l’ouest du Canada ont documenté des pratiques de
décolonisation efficaces pour l’enseignement, de même que des interactions et un apprentissage qui reflètent les valeurs et orientations autochtones dans leurs pratiques pédagogiques.
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There is no formal mandate for or tradition of inter-sectoral collaboration between community colleges and universities in Ontario. Following a regulatory change introduced by the College of Nurses of Ontario in 1998, all Registered Nurse educational
preparation was restructured to the baccalaureate degree level through province-wide adoption of a college-university collaborative nursing program model. Despite complex sectoral differences in organizational culture, mandates, and governance structures, this program model was promoted by nursing educators and policy-makers as an innovative approach to utilizing the post-secondary system’s existing nursing education infrastructure and resources. This paper provides an overview of the introduction of Ontario’s collaborative baccalaureate nursing programs and discusses some of challenges associated with implementing and maintaining such programs.
In this study, we compared the effects of a traditional teaching assistant (TA) training program to those of a specialized program, with a substantial intercultural component, for international graduate students. We expected both programs to result in an increase in international graduate students’ teaching self-efficacy, observed teaching effectiveness, and adoption of student-centred approaches to teaching, and we anticipated a greater degree of change for the participants in the specialized program. We found the expected increases for graduate students in both programs, with a larger increase in observed teaching effectiveness for students in the specialized program. We discuss the implications of tailoring TA training programs for international graduate students and of providing time and learning activities for the development of student-centred teaching and reflective practice.
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.
Social networking became the rallying cry for a generation that connects over the Internet as easily as previous generations communicated over the telephone. In fact, many Millennials entering the workforce actually prefer social media to spoken conversations.
What do 6,000 Quebec (Canada) students do with their iPads every day? What benefits does this technology have for education? What are the challenges for students and teachers? To respond to these questions and to shed more light on this new education trend, we decided to carry out one of the largest studies to date on the use of iPads in education in collaboration with 18 elementary and high schools in the province of Quebec, Canada. By the same token, we wanted to help teachers, students, principals, parents, educators, and other education stakeholders use the iPads for learning in more reflective and educational ways. The results show that the benefits outweigh the challenges. It would appear that incorporating the iPad into education constitutes a necessary risk for schools, and that this technological tool has breathtaking cognitive potential. At
the same time, introducing it into the classroom does not necessarily make for a smooth transition. On the contrary, this new technology can pose challenges that teachers may find hard to cope with if they are caught unaware. The key to successful integration of the iPad in education is therefore to provide teachers with proper training.
In July 2016, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) published Understanding the
Sustainability of the Ontario Postsecondary System and its Institutions: A Framework (Weingarten,
Hicks & Moran, 2016). The key messages of the report were:
1. Sustainability is about more than just money. It also relates to the quality of education and the academic experience institutions can offer.
2. The best sustainability regimes are those that look forward and are designed to predict future challenges.
3. Overcoming sustainability challenges requires collaboration between government and institutions.
The tools available are inextricably linked to other policies and practices, such as
enrolment planning, tuition policy, funding formulas, differentiation and institutional autonomy.
Student wellness is an essential component of academic success in higher education and subsequent opportunities in the labor market. The Ohio State University Office of Student Life’s Student Wellness Center uses a model that includes nine key dimensions of wellness: career, creative, emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, physical, social and spiritual.
Once a fourth-grade teacher, I recently began my work as an elementary assistant principal in another district. Based on my research and what I have experienced so far, I'd like to offer five ways for a rookie administrator to successfully navigate his or her new position.
Background: To persistently engage in academic tasks and efficiently process cognitively demanding material in school, successful learners must employ various selfregulatory systems—including the regulation of emotional experiences and expressions—in response to social and taskspecific demands. Furthermore, emotional information helps students derive meaning from and assign causal attributions to events such as academic and social experiences, which influence motivation for action. Thus, it is important to understand the interplay between learners’ emotions and the school environment.
Every developed country is racing to keep up with profound and fundamental changes in the 21st century. The new knowledge economy is creating unprecedented demands for higher levels of expertise and skills, while, at the same time, changing demographics will significantly reduce the numbers of qualified people available in the economy.
The cumulative impact presents great opportunities and great challenges to Ontario.
This quantitative study examined the relationship between the Big 5 personality traits and how they relate to online teacher effectiveness. The primary method of data collection for this study was through the use of surveys primarily building upon the Personality Style Inventory (PSI) (Lounsbury & Gibson, 2010), a work-based personality measure, was the instrument used to assess personality measures. In addition an evaluation instrument was developed by the researchers to evaluate classroom
performance across a 10-point scale. In total 115 instructors from a large predominantly online university were surveyed
through Qualtrics for personality traits and then had their courses evaluated for effectiveness and quality utilizing measures based on the Quality Matters program. Using a Pearson product moment correlation coefficient, it was found that 9 personality traits were significantly correlated with online teaching performance. While the results of this study can only be seen at this point as preliminary, it does open the door to further studies to determine if online teacher training or professional development interventions should take a different approach. Ultimately, the findings of this study demonstrated that personality does play a significant role in the effectiveness of online teaching performance.
Effective Practices to Enhance the Educational Quality of Structured Work Experiences Offered through Colleges and Universities
THIS GUIDE IS INTENDED TO SERVE AS A RESOURCE TO ENHANCE STUDENT LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION THROUGH THE STRUCTURED WORK EXPERIENCE