When I recently returned to my department after a decade in administration, I looked forward to reconnecting with former colleagues, getting to know the grad students, going to lectures and colloquia, teaching undergrads, and yes, even serving on departmental committees. But when I moved into my faculty office and began my work schedule, I had only one question as I looked around my department: Where did everybody go?
A 10-year absence presented a fairly stark before-and-after picture of a very real transformation that is happening on our campuses. Many faculty rarely come into their offices anymore.
Entire departments can seem like dead zones, and whole days can pass with only a glimpse of a faculty member as someone comes to campus to meet a student, attend a meeting, or teach a class. The halls are eerily quiet. Students, having figured this out, are also absent. Only the staff are present.
The signatory institutions to this protocol agree to maximize their contribution to a sustainable future and are committed to their role as leaders to their internal and external communities.
In the context of this protocol, sustainability is institutionally defined and may include environmental, economic and social dimensions.
The problem with textbooks is that they’re expensive. They’re sort of a hidden educational fee.
Like a lot of students, James Tait was supposed to buy the online component to his textbook. Buying used to save a bit of money, he didn’t get the online access code that comes with a new book.
“I needed it for my chemistry class, it was called Mastering Chemistry, but I never bought it,” he said.
The online component is an addition to the textbook, for homework, self-tests, and tutorials. Textbook companies include these platforms with the sale of new textbooks as an additional service, but also to reduce used textbook sales. The access code for Mastering Chemistry is about $70.
There is a global trend toward improving programs and student experiences in higher education through curriculum review and mapping of degree programs. This paper describes an action research approach to program improvement for a course-based MEd degree. The driver for continual program improvement came from actions and recommendations that arose from an
institutionally mandated, year-long, faculty led curriculum review of professional graduate programs in education. Study findings reveal instructors’ perceptions about how they enacted the recommendations for program improvement,
including (1) developing a visual conceptualization of the program; (2) improved connections between the courses; (3) articulation of coherence in goals and expectations for students and instructors; (4) an increased focus on action research; (5) increased ethics support and scaffolding for students; and (6) the fostering of communities of practice. Study findings highlight strengths of the current program and course designs, action items, and research needed for continual program improvement.
Ontario’s Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities is currently at-tempting to increase institutional differentiation within that province’s post-secondary education system. We contend that such policies aimed to trigger organizational change are likely to generate unanticipated responses. Using insights from the field of organizational studies, we anticipate four plausible responses from universities to the ministry’s directives: remaining sensitive to their market demand, ceremonial compliance, continued status seeking, and isomorphism. We provide several policy recommendations that might help the ministry overcome these possible barriers to further differentiation.
Le ministère de la Formation et des Collèges et Universités de l’Ontario cherche à accroître la différentiation institutionnelle du système d’éducation postsecondaire ontarien. Nous soutenons que les politiques publiques visant à déclencher ce changement organisationnel vont vraisemblablement engendrer des réactions imprévues. Tirant nos connaissances des champs d’études organisationnelles, nous anticipons quatre réactions potentielles aux directives du ministère par les universités. Ainsi, les universités peuvent : demeurer réceptives aux demandes de leur clientèle, entreprendre une conformité superficielle, s’engager dans une recherche perpétuelle d’un statut supérieur ou favoriser l’isomorphisme. Nous suggérons plusieurs recommandations de politiques publiques qui peuvent aider le ministère à faire progresser la différentiation en surmontant ces éventuels obstacles.
Canadians invest considerable energy, resources, and personal and societal aspiration into postsecondary education. It is good public policy to assess how we are doing and what outcomes we are achieving with that investment. One of HEQCO’s core mandates is to evaluate the postsecondary sector and to report the results of that assessment. To that end, in this report, we have assembled data that assess the performance of Canada’s 10 provincial public postsecondary education systems.
55% OF PROFESSIONAL LEADERS HOLD A SOCIAL SCIENCES OR HUMANITIES DEGREE
ALMOST HALF OF LEADERS HAVE INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE
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.
The first edition of The Challenge of Change was published in 1997. It turned out that this was precisely the year when the field of educational change began a major shift toward deeper action and large-scale reform.
The occasion was Tony Blair’s first term election in England in May, 1997. He came into power with a clear and explicit education platform in which literacy and numeracy were named as the core priorities. Blair and his government committed in advance to targets of 80% proficiency in literacy and 75% in numeracy for 11-year-olds — starting at a base of 62%. This was an enormous undertaking because it involved the entire system of 20,000 schools and a timeline of essentially four years.
The current Canadian landscape of graduate education has pockets of presence of Indigenous faculty, students, and staff. The reality is that all too of- ten, Aboriginal graduate students are either among the few, or is the sole Ab- original person in an entire faculty. They usually do not have mentorship or guidance from an Indigenous faculty member or ally, that is, someone who is
supportive of Indigenous knowledges and Indigenity. While many institutions are working to recruit and retain Aboriginal graduate students, more attention needs to be paid to culturally relevant strategies, policies, and approaches. This paper critically examines the role of a culturally relevant peer and faculty mentoring initiative—SAGE (Supporting Aboriginal Graduate
Enhancement)—which works to better guide institutional change for Indigenous graduate student success. The key findings show that the relationships in SAGE create a sense of belonging and networking opportunities, and it also fosters self-accountability to academic studies for many students because they no longer feel alone in their graduate journey. The paper concludes with a discussion on the implications of a culturally relevant peer-support program for mentoring,
recruiting, and retaining Aboriginal graduate students. It also puts forth a challenge to institutions to better support Aboriginal graduate student recruitment and retention through their policies, programs, and services within the institution.
A general debate swirls about the value of going to university. A more focused anxiety simmers as to whether
it is worth studying the humanities compared to the surely much more lucrative STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math).
On one hand, young Ontarians hear predictions that most jobs of the future will require postsecondary skills and credentials. They are counselled that a university education still offers them the very best job prospects. Those without one will be disadvantaged, and in a punishing youth job market like today’s they will be disproportionately disadvantaged. Those with one – and that includes graduates from the humanities – will possess a set of transferable skills that will allow them to adapt to the unknowable future.
On the other side, young Ontarians are told about increasing tuition costs and high student debt levels; about university graduates unable to land jobs related to their field of study, especially in the humanities; about an erosion in the financial value of a degree, as the earnings advantage for those with one narrows; and about entrepreneurs and innovators who dropped out of university and made a fortune.
This research study was initiated and funded by OPSEU Local 110 at Fanshawe College. The report was presented as part of a panel discussion of the Rae Review featuring Bob Rae, Darryl Bedford, Glen A. Jones and Mary Catharine Lennon in London, Ontario on March 31st, 2015. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and may not reflect the views of OPSEU Local 110 or its members.
We use data for a large sample of Ontario students who are observed over the five years from their initial entry to high school to study the impact of course selections and outcomes in high school on the gender gap in postsecondary enrolment. Among students who start high school "solidly" in terms of taking the standard set of grade 9 courses (e.g., math, language, science, etc.) and performing well in these courses, we find a 10 percentage point gap in the fraction of females versus males
who register for university or college (69% versus 59%). This gap is seen with respect to university registration (43% for females versus 32% for males) but not in college registration. We then show how the gender gap in university registration is related to the gender gaps at two earlier stages: (1) the first year of high school, where students can select either academic or applied track classes in core subjects including math and languages; (2) the final year(s) of high school, where students who intend to enter university must complete a minimum number of university-level classes.
When the Royal Bank of Canada was recently caught up in a maelstrom of bad publicity over its use of temporary foreign workers, it led politicians and pundits to scrutinize and question the growing use by Canadian firms of imported, short-term labour. The Royal Bank was accused of misusing a system designed to help employers who could not find Canadian
workers by using it, instead, to find cheaper foreign labourers to replace higher-cost Canadians. But the incident raises a bigger question than simply how one bank makes use of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP): Whether the program is, in fact, interfering with the natural supply and demand responses of the labour market. And if we want
to make better use of available Canadian labour, the time has come for the federal government to start cutting back on the use of TFWP.
The number of admissions under the TFWP has nearly tripled in 25 years, from 65,000 to 182,000 in 2010. The primary justification for the expansion of the program has been the widespread assumption that Canada is suffering from a growing shortage of labour. Yet, it is hard to find any evidence to support this belief.
Vision
Students succeeding through personalized learning. Innovation and achievement powered by people.
Mission
Fleming champions personal and career success through applied learning. We contribute to community
success and sustainability through programs, services, and applied research.
While the phenomenon of leadership is widely considered to be universal across cultures, the way in which it is operationalized is usually viewed as culturally specific. Conflicting viewpoints exist in the leadership literature concerning the transferability of specific leader behaviors and processes across cultures. This study explored these conflicting views for managers and professional workers by empirically testing specific hypotheses which addressed the generalizability of leadership behaviors and processes across five nations in North America and Asia. Confirmatory factor analyses provided evidence for conceptual and measurement equivalence for all six leader behaviors employed in the study.
The development of outcomes-based educational (OBE) practices represents one important way in which
a learning outcomes approach to teaching and learning can be applied in the postsecondary sector. This study adopts a multiple case study design and profiles seven OBE initiatives being implemented in Ontario’s colleges and universities to better understand the scope of outcomes-based educational practices in the province’s postsecondary sector. ‘OBE initiatives’ are defined as purposeful actions undertaken by postsecondary providers directed at defining, teaching toward and assessing learning outcomes in their educational practice (modified from Jones, Voorhees & Paulson, 2002).
The purpose of this study was to identify how entrepreneurship education is delivered in Ontario colleges and universities. In Ontario, as in the rest of Canada, the increase in the number of entrepreneurship courses at universities and colleges, and the concurrent popularization and maturation of entrepreneurship programming, contribute to fostering entrepreneurial skills and mindsets, and the creation of businesses. The overall aim of this report is to inform debate and decision-making on entrepreneurship education through a mapping and assessment of existing programs in the province.
With so many classroom research studies published daily, you can be forgiven for missing some. The techniques below are super-tactical and, for the most part, unsung strategies that you’ll be excited to try tomorrow.
Instructors have temporary experiences with groups of students each semester. Even so, these brief moments have the power to change lives. As professors, we decide the impact of our semester-long relationships. We decide to what degree we will work towards student engagement and transformation within our courses. If you would like to create a community of engaged learners within your classroom, it takes more than regurgitating the most compelling content, and it goes beyond collaborative pedagogical practices. The secret to inspiring and transforming students rests in the power of building a community of learners.