Workforce development issues have come to the forefront of national discussions as the country continues its recovery from the Great Recession. In this shifting economy, one way that job seekers, students and workers may improve their opportunities is by earning credentials. Colleges, states and the federal government have traditionally tracked the attainment of bachelor’s and associate’s degrees, but recent research suggests that there are other types of credentials that matter to employers. One-quarter of adults in the United States had a non-degree credential in fall 2012, and full-time workers with these credentials have higher median earnings than those without, according to a report released in January 2014 by the U.S. Census Bureau.1 The report shows that non-degree credentials are an important part of the labor market.
The present structure of postsecondary education in Ontario was established in the 1960s and has not changed appreciably since then. This is in contrast to several other provinces of Canada and other industrialized countries in which there have been major changes in the organization of postsecondary education during the past decade. These changes have been in response to developments since the 1960s in regard to such factors as the demands of the global knowledge economy, the role of information technology in learning, the demand for higher level conceptual skills in the workplace, the increased importance of credentials, and increased emphasis upon lifelong learning for personal and societal development.
A consortium of six colleges in Eastern Ontario have been working together for the past eight years to support faculty as they work to design, review, and revise curriculum at both the program and course level. Eight cohorts of faculty from the contributing colleges have participated in a two-part program called Aligning and Building Curriculum (ABC). In fall 2008 this group launched an ABC Curriculum Resource Project. Phase 1 of the project focused on developing a website to house a variety of curriculum resources, tools, and web links that are useful to ABC participants as they engage in curriculum work. The resources are organized to support a conceptual framework for curriculum design (Curriculum Road Map) that was developed by this group to frame curriculum work in college programs. More information about the program can be found on the program website at http://innovation.dc-uoit.ca/abc/.
In 2009-10, with the support of the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) funding, the participating colleges were able to build on this work to engage ABC participants in using a knowledge exchange network (ABC-KEN). ABC-KEN allowed them to share knowledge about curriculum and to contribute to the expansion of curriculum resources available to ABC
participants and to others working on curriculum in Ontario’s colleges. Curriculum information, tools, and links to curriculum cases and the ABC-KEN site can be found on the ABC Curriculum Resources website at http://abcresource.loyalistcollege.ca/index.htm.
Given the success of the 2009-10 project, which provided insights into the use of a knowledge exchange network to mobilize, shape, extend, and share knowledge and tools for aligning and building curriculum, the ABC Planning Team was eager to address an additional research question:
How can curriculum resource materials (policies, tools, processes, and practices) used in Ontario’s community colleges be identified, shared, adopted, and extended to build capacity for curriculum development in the college system?
Premier McGuinty appointed the Honourable Bob Rae as Advisor to the Premier and the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities. With the support of a seven-member Advisory Panel, Mr. Rae was asked to advise on strategies to improve higher education by providing recommendations on: • the design of a publicly funded postsecondary system offering services in both
official languages that promotes: – recognized excellence in curricular activities to build the skilled workforce
and promising scholars of the future; – an integrated and articulated system that meets the diverse learning needs
of Ontarians through the most cost-effective design; • funding model(s) that: – link provincial funding to government objectives for postsecondary education, including the objectives of better workers for better jobs in an innovative economy and an accessible, affordable and quality system;
– establish an appropriate sharing of the costs of postsecondary education among the government, students and the private sector;
– identify an effective student assistance program that promotes increased access to postsecondary education.
There is a lot of talk about high levels of youth unemployment and underemployment and the increasing difficulties faced by young Canadians as they seek to make a successful transition from education to work. But talk is cheap, and significant government and employer action has been notably lacking.
This report details some key dimensions of the youth jobs problem. It highlights the Conservative government’s cuts to federal youth employment programs and calls for concrete action now, from both government and large employers to create more and
better jobs for young Canadians.
We are urging the development of a bold Youth Job Guarantee that would ensure those under age 25 have access to a good job, paid internship, or training position within four months of leaving formal education or becoming unemployed.
This research uses the Youth in Transition Survey, Reading Cohort (“YITS-A”) to compare participation in postsecondary education (PSE) in Ontario to other Canadian regions. We begin by presenting access rates by region, which reveals some substantial differences. University participation rates in Ontario are in about the middle of the pack, while college rates are relatively high. We then undertake an econometric analysis, which reveals that the effects of parental income are quite strong in the Atlantic provinces but much weaker elsewhere, including within Ontario. We also find that the relationship between high school grades and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test scores (measures of academic “performance” and ability”) differ by region and are generally strongest in Ontario. From this perspective, Ontario would appear to have a relatively “meritocratic” system, where those who are more qualified are more likely to go to university and where attendance rates are less affected by family income. Interestingly, the effects of parental education, which are generally much stronger than those of family income, are similar across regions. Understanding the reasons underlying these patterns might warrant further investigation.
Despite the tremendous growth of distance education, retention remains its Achilles’ heel.
Estimates of the failed retention rate for distance education undergraduates range from 20 to 50 percent. Distance education administrators believe the failed retention rate for online courses may be 10 to 20 percent higher than for face-to-face courses.
As an increasing number of colleges and universities identify online education as a critical component to their long-term strategy, the issue of retention can no longer be ignored. It is mandatory for everyone who touches the distance learner to understand why these students leave their online courses, and what it will take to keep them there. Featuring a collection of top articles from Distance Education Report, this new Faculty Focus special report provides practical strategies for improving online student retention, engagement and satisfaction. Articles include:
• 11 Tips for Improving Retention of Distance Learning Students
• Understanding the Impact of Attrition on Your School
• Taking a Holistic View of Student Retention
• Eight Suggestions to Help You Get Your Retention Act Together Now
• Online Mentoring Builds Retention
• Nine Truths about Recruitment and Retention
• Finding Helpful Patterns in Student Engagement
With the strategic importance of distance education courses on the rise, this report will help you understand the key variables that impact the retention of your web-based students and adopt proactive strategies proven to mitigate potential retention problems.
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The Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology of Ontario (CAATs) are engaged in a wide range of international activities which have not previously been the subject of any in-depth study. This thesis provides the first comprehensive examination of the international student recruitment and educational export activities of the CAATs. This study, relying on literature reviews, a survey of the colleges and interviews with college administrators, explores the historical evolution of recruitment and export activities, the motivation behind participation in these activities and the financial implications of export and recruitment. The study also reviews some of the linkages between international student recruitment and export and internationalization and globalization.
Teens share a wide range of information about themselves on social media sites;1 indeed the sites themselves are designed to encourage the sharing of information and the expansion of networks. However, few teens embrace a fully public approach to social media. Instead, they take an array of steps to restrict and prune their profiles, and their patterns of reputation management on social media vary greatly according to their gender and network size. These are among the key findings from a new report based on a survey of 802 teens that examines teens’ privacy management on social media sites:
Teens are sharing more information about themselves on social media sites than they did in the
past. For the five different types of personal information that we measured in both 2006 and
2012, each is significantly more likely to be shared by teen social media users in our most recent
survey.
Teen Twitter use has grown significantly: 24% of online teens use Twitter, up from 16% in 2011.
The typical (median) teen Facebook user has 300 friends, while the typical teen Twitter user has
79 followers.
Focus group discussions with teens show that they have waning enthusiasm for Facebook,
disliking the increasing adult presence, people sharing excessively, and stressful “drama,” but
they keep using it because participation is an important part of overall teenage socializing.
60% of teen Facebook users keep their profiles private, and most report high levels of
confidence in their ability to manage their settings.
Teens take other steps to shape their reputation, manage their networks, and mask information
they don’t want others to know; 74% of teen social media users have deleted people from their
network or friends list.
Teen social media users do not express a high level of concern about third-party access to their
data; just 9% say they are “very” concerned.
On Facebook, increasing network size goes hand in hand with network variety, information
sharing, and personal information management.
In broad measures of online experience, teens are considerably more likely to report positive
experiences than negative ones. For instance, 52% of online teens say they have had an
experience online that made them feel good about themselves.
Post-secondary education is a cornerstone of Ontario’s continued prosperity. The Ontario government realizes this and confirmed its commitment to expanding post-secondary education in the 2010, 2011 and 2012 provincial budgets. The government announced funding allocations in all three budgets to support enrolment growth in the post-secondary sector. The 2011 budget committed the province to creating 60,000 more spaces in colleges and universities.
When teachers think the best, most important way to improve their teaching is by developing their content knowledge, they end up with sophisticated levels of knowledge, but they have only simplistic instructional methods to convey that material. To imagine that content matters more than process is to imagine that the car is more important than the road. Both are essential. What we teach and how we teach it are inextricably linked and very much dependent on one another.
This special report features 11 articles pulled from the pages of The Teaching Professor to help you discover new ways to build connections between what you teach and how you teach it. The report offers tips on how to engage students, give feedback, create a climate for learning, and more. It also provides fresh perspectives on how faculty should approach their development as teachers.
It’s been said that few things can enhance student learning more than an instructor’s commitment to ongoing professional development. Here’s a sample of the articles you will find in Effective Strategies for Improving College Teaching and Learning:
. Faculty Self-Disclosures in the College Classroom
. A Tree Falling in the Forest: Helping Students ‘Hear’ and Use Your Comments
. Understanding What You See Happening in Class
. Can Training Make You a Better Teacher?
.Striving for Academic Excellence
Although there is no single best teaching method, approach, or style, this special report will give you a variety of strategies to try. Those that work effectively with your students you should make your own.
The changes in this book were prepared to serve as a resource document for the National Education Association's (NEA, 1997) Keys project. Keys is an acronym for "Keys to Excellence in your Schools". NEA has identified 35 factors essential to effective schools, and has developed a survey instrument designed to gather data on these items, and in turn to feed back the data to
participating schools. The 35 items cluster into five main domains:
• shared understanding and commitment to high goals
• open communication and collaborative problem solving
• continuous assessment for teaching and learning
• personal and professional learning
• resources to support teaching and learning
The goal of this workshop is to establish a change process that successfully accomplishes large-scale reform as measured by teacher and student engagement, and increases in student achievement including raising the bar and closing the learning gap for all students.
While the most traditional metric, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), measures all goods and services produced by a country, it has two critical shortcomings. First, by focusing exclusively on the economy, GDP fails to capture areas of our lives that we care about most like education, health, environmental quality, and the relationships we have with others. Second, it does not identify the costs of economic growth — like pollution.
To create a robust and more revealing measure of our social progress, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW) has been working with experts and everyday Canadians since 1999 to determine how we are really doing in the areas of our lives that matter most. The CIW measures overall wellbeing based on 64 indicators covering eight domains of vital importance to Canadians: Education, Community Vitality, Healthy Populations, Democratic Engagement, Environment, Leisure and Culture, Time Use, and Living Standards. The CIW’s comprehensive index of overall wellbeing tracks progress provincially and nationally and allows comparisons to GDP.
Comparing the CIW and GDP between 1994 and 2010 reveals a chasm between our wellbeing and economic growth both nationally and provincially. Over the 17-year period, GDP has grown almost four times more than our overall wellbeing. The trends clearly show that even when times are good, overall wellbeing does not keep up with economic growth and when times are bad, the impact on our wellbeing is even harsher. We have to ask ourselves, is this good enough?
College prices have increased by 45 percent on average over the past decade, while household income has declined by 7 percent in the same period. According to a Lumina/Gallup survey in 2015, more than three-quarters of American adults do not think education beyond high school is affordable for everyone in the nation who needs it.
Just over 9% of all students attended more than one institution during the 2012-13 academic year.
The postsecondary student mobility rate is the percentage of students, across all levels of study, who enrolled in more than one institution in a single academic year (including summer and concurrent enrollments.) It provides a current indicator of the prevalence of multi-institutional student pathways.
The time for meaningful transformation in Ontario’s postsecondary system is now. To meet the needs of the emerging
economy, reform must focus on innovation and applied learning that vaults our province ahead of its competition in creating the best-educated, best-prepared workforce in the world. Composed of distinct but equally valued and complementary partners, Ontario’s transformed postsecondary system will ensure that all students can reach their full potential through a broad array of theoretical and applied learning opportunities. Colleges will continue to be student focused, specializing in applied learning that leads to good jobs for graduates, addresses labour market needs and affords access to the broadest possible population. Colleges and universities will offer a range of credentials within their systems and collaborate on a multitude of programs that
offer students the best of both. Expanded pathways will give students the opportunity to customize their post-secondary
experience to match their interests. Online and blended learning, married to leading-edge technology, will enable students
to learn anywhere, anytime, and in ways best suited to their learning styles. Students will be better prepared than ever before to meet the demands of the economy, and they will achieve their goals faster and at less cost.
Nova Scotia’s university system has long been an essential contributor to the social, economic, and cultural development of the province. This report describes and assesses the current state of that system in the context of emerging financial and demographic challenges in the province, and in relation to wider trends in post-secondary education (PSE) regionally, nationally, and internationally. The evidence clearly confirms that the environment in which Nova Scotia’s eleven universities now operate is changing significantly. The report calls for expanded collaboration among the universities, and between them and the government, to develop and implement new policy approaches to address emerging challenges.
An important goal of Ontario’s postsecondary education system is to provide the appropriate level of educational attainment to meet the current and future human capital needs of the province (HEQCO, 2009: 19). This purpose reflects the recognition that education and training contribute to the human capital of individuals and make them more productive workers and better informed citizens. Attainment of further education not only provides for individual returns such as higher earnings and lower levels of unemployment , improved health and longevity, and greater satisfaction with life, but it is also strongly linked to social returns such as safer communities, healthy citizens, greater civic participation, stronger social cohesion and improved equity and social justice (Riddell, 2006). In order for the province to maintain and enhance its economic standing in the changing global economy, and to provide its citizens with the social benefits that higher education affords, it must ensure that the human capital needs of its society are met.
In pursuit of this objective, the Ontario government, most recently through its “Open Ontario Plan,” aims to raise the postsecondary attainment rate of those aged 25 to 64 to 70 per cent and to provide a place for every qualified Ontarian who desires to pursue a college or university education (Government of Ontario, 2010). The future “stock” of human capital required to achieve this attainment rate will need to come from three sources: Ontarians entering the labour force for the first time who may already have postsecondary credentials or may be in the process of acquiring them; new interprovincial and international migrants; and finally, through additions to postsecondary credentials by those who have already entered the labour force (HEQCO, 2009: 25). It is this latter population of individuals, often referred to as adult learners, with which this @Issue paper is concerned.
If it is acknowledged that adult learners must be one of the sources of the stock of human capital required for Ontario to achieve an attainment rate of 70 per cent, then an understanding of adult learners, the issues that they face and how those issues can best be addressed is vital. Government targets aside, it is becoming increasingly recognized that in the current knowledge-based economy, with its advancements in technology and rapidly changing skill requirements, learning must take place throughout the lifetime of an individual. The traditional concentration of education in earlier stages of life will no longer necessarily support individuals throughout their working lives. Initial education plays a large part in developing the potential of an
individual, but it is becoming increasingly important for adults to pursue the development of new skills and competencies and the upgrading of existing ones.
This @Issue Paper will attempt to explore the status of adult learners in Ontario’s postsecondary education system through:
• an examination of the demand for adult education in Ontario;
• an overview of how colleges and universities are meeting the demand for adult education;
• an evaluation of factors affecting adult learners in postsecondary accessibility and success; and
• potential policy implications to promote and improve the participation of adult learners in postsecondary education.
Examples of programs and services from Ontario institutions will be used to illustrate the state of the field in adult education, but the paper is not intended to provide a comprehensive inventory of offerings.