This paper presents the findings of a research study on a complete course re-design of a large first-year class, which changed the learning environment and reduced boundaries to allow for more meaningful student engagement and improved student learning. The specific purpose of this study was to determine if a blended course design can increase student engagement and influence students’ approach to learning in a large first- year course.
During the fall semester of 2010, GPHY 101: Human Geography was taught at Queen’s University as a traditional large lecture course of 438 students, with three lectures of 50 minutes per week (Model 1) for 12 weeks. In the following winter semester of 2011, the students in GPHY 101 were offered an intensive blended course (Model 2). In this new offering to 157 students, the lectures that were captured during the fall semester were made available for students to view online. Instead of attending actual large lectures, students were required to view the three weekly lectures on their own time prior to attending an interactive class of approximately 50 students for 90 minutes, once per week. In this weekly class with the professor, students were actively engaged in small-group problem solving, discussion, debate and other forms of cooperative learning activities.
As knowledge-intensive economies with aging workforces, Canada and the EU are facing similar labour market challenges amind deepening economic ties. Although labour shortages require long-term strategies, facilitating the temporary movement of skilled individuals could serve to strengthen economic relations; however, qualifications recognition is one of the key barriers to labour mobility between Canada and the EU due largely to the diverse range of practices and regulatory authorities across jurisdictions.
Vision
Success for all through learning and partnerships.
Mission
To ensure quality, accessible education through innovative programs, services and partnerships for the benefit of our Northern communities.
Charter schools, Teach For America, and the Knowledge Is Power Program may have their merits, but they are not whole-system reform. The latter is about improving every classroom, every school, and every district in the state, province, or country, not just some schools. The moral and political purpose of whole-system reform is ensuring that everyone will be affected for the better, starting on day one of implementing the strategy. The entire system should show positive, measurable results within two or three years. We have done this in Ontario, Canada, where we have had the opportunity since 2003 to implement new policies and practices across the system—all 4,000 elementary schools, 900 secondary schools, and the 72 districts that serve 2 million students. Following five years of stagnation and low morale, from 1998 to 2003, the impact of the new strategies has been dramatic: Higher-order literacy and numeracy have increased by 10 percentage points across the system; the high school graduation rate has risen 9 percentage points, from 68 percent to 77 percent; the morale o teachers and principals has improved; and the public’s confidence in the system is up.
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.
On the basis of national surveys conducted in 1998, 2004 and 2010, about half of Canadian adults were found to participate in further education courses annually. The vast majority of adults were participating in informal learning related to paid employment, housework and general interests. About 20 percent express unmet demand for further education. Older and working class people may have somewhat lower rates of participation in further education courses but not in informal learning. There are also suggestions of a trend toward increasing underutilization of educational qualifications and continuing underuse of computer skills in paid workplaces.
PhDs can feel boxed into a limited range of job options, particularly just after graduate school or a postdoc. But doctoral degree holders work in a wide range of roles. I myself work as a life coach and entrepreneur, hardly what I expected I’d do after a history PhD! Career exploration was crucial in my case: I felt lukewarm about all the choices I thought I had; I needed to look elsewhere.
“Don’t be afraid to explore options that are outside your comfort zone,” says Jessica Hartshorn, a forest health specialist for the Minnesota department of natural resources. She encourages new grads to try different things. “People get tunnel vision in the job market and often forget that it’s okay to try things and move on. No matter what you do you will learn a lot about your field, and about yourself, and nothing is permanent.” Dr. Hartshorn echoes what my conference co-host Maren Wood tells PhDs: “Your first job is not your last job.”
Are books a condition of our labour? Do we need libraries with stacks and physical collections? Recent discussions within libraries across the country have highlighted faculty anxiety and displeasure with the fate of university libraries, as cuts are made to purchasing and operating budgets, collections culled, and the very nature of acquisitions transformed by changes in the
methods of conducting and disseminating our research. Are libraries not an intrinsic part of our working conditions? How can we teach a student about the history of slavery, for example, if they do not have access to a wide range of interpretive sources that reflect changes in the writing of history over time? How can we encourage students to seek out many different kinds of evidence and to ask new and innovative questions, if libraries do not offer a variety of materials from a variety of different time periods? How can we encourage students to be venturesome and curious if they can no longer browse shelves? Those of us at smaller institutions long ago gave up the idea of having a ‘research’ library, but we do need very basic book collections, as well as collections of government documents and other sources that have not been digitized and, in fact, may never be. Without these, our teaching will be impoverished and our students’ learning will too.
This article explores the development of culturally relevant teaching practices of non-Native teachers in First Nations communities. The findings were gathered from a qualitative study that asked First Nations and non-Native educators what they believed non-Native teachers needed to know about cultivating student success for First Nations students. Based on participants’ personal stories, suggestions, and advice, this article encourages non-Native teachers to enrich their teaching practices through self-reflection, communication and community engagement, and the right kind of attitude. Participants
suggest that these activities can help non-Native teachers create a learning environment that is meaningful to the students they teach.
Keywords: culturally relevant teaching, First Nations education, teacher development
Résumé
Cet article explore les méthodes pédagogiques adaptées aux différences culturelles que développent des enseignants non autochtones au sein de communautés des Premières Nations. Les résultats présentés proviennent d’une étude qualitative dans le cadre de laquelle des enseignants autochtones et non autochtones se sont vu demander ce que, à leur avis, des enseignants non autochtones ont besoin de savoir afin de promouvoir la réussite scolaire de leurs élèves autochtones. Basé sur les témoignages, les suggestions et les conseils des participants, cet article encourage les enseignants non autochtones à
enrichir leurs méthodes pédagogiques par la réflexion personnelle, la communication et l’engagement communautaire, et l’adoption d’une bonne attitude. Les participants croient que cela peut aider les enseignants non autochtones à créer un milieu d’apprentissage qui est pertinent pour leurs élèves.
Mots-clés : enseignement adapté aux réalités culturelles, éducation des autochtones, perfectionnement
des enseignants
Here in Ontario, we’re preparing students to make their mark on the world.
That’s not an exaggeration. Ontario’s colleges and universities produce talented, driven and innovative thinkers. These leaders go on to find success in global health, international trade, cross-border research partnerships and so much more. They then come back to Ontario, creating businesses and investing in the community that gave them their start. That’s the kind of future we want for more people in Ontario, and there’s no reason that a competitive, international edge can’t start earlier in one’s career.
This paper presents the findings of a research study on a complete course re-design of a large first-year class, which changed the learning environment and reduced boundaries to allow for more meaningful student engagement and improved student learning. The specific purpose of this study was to determine if a blended course design can increase student engagement and influence students’ approach to learning in a large first-year course.
One of the commitments emerging from the What’s Standing in the Way of Change in Education? workshop in Calgary in October 2013 was to convene a series of Regional Workshops designed to expand the conversation about change in Canada’s
education systems. To this end, in the Spring of 2014, similar workshops were held in New Brunswick, Manitoba, Ontario and British Columbia with a final session held in Quebec in August, 2014.
The energy around identifying the types of barriers that have complicated and, at times, confounded change efforts in schools across the country was inspired by two previous CEA research initiatives: What Did You Do In School Today? and Teaching the Way We Aspire to Teach. Both initiatives focused on different aspects of engagement in our school systems – the former an attempt to raise the voices of Canadian students and the latter focusing on the lives of educators and their stories of when they were teaching at their best. The strong visions for schools and discovery of such powerful teaching moments kept largely ‘under the radar’ that emerged from Teaching the Way We Aspire to Teach inspired CEA to explore what was really standing in the way of scaling these practices throughout school districts to benefit more students and educators.
Slides dealing with social media basic categories.
This project was designed to evaluate how an online social learning environment implemented within the disciplinarily-defined context of a university department might enhance academic engagement, research collaboration and the achievement of learning outcomes among undergraduate students. In developing this research, we were guided by the following research questions:
• How can social networking and progress-tracking technologies enhance academic engagement and student experience in a discipline-bounded environment?
• How can networked academic profiles create a more cohesive academic experience for students?
• Can use of networked academic profiles strengthen students’ academic orientation to new media and information literacy?
As Canada’s youth consider their increasingly broad and complex array of post-secondary education (PSE) options, they are faced with potentially costly decisions. Moreover, they often do not have the information they need to make appropriate choices, which can negatively impact their participation and persistence in PSE. For many students, it is a challenge to choose, design and follow a post-secondary pathway to its conclusion without deviating from their original plan. Students are increasingly taking non-linear pathways through PSE. Some may need to relocate and attend a different institution. Many students may decide to change the focus of their study, while others may wish to change their program entirely. Some may shift their goals from academic to applied forms of study, or vice versa. However, the structures of post-secondary systems in our provinces, and the various mechanisms that bind them, do not always provide clearly apparent and unobstructed pathways for students, particularly for mobile students. These problems are exacerbated by shifting mandates, roles, and labels of institutions across the Canadian PSE sector.
There are tens of thousands of options right now with the types of digital “things” of learning – Apps, websites, immersive-environment digital courseware, eBooks, eTextbooks, assessments, projectware, loose content pieces in PDFs or word documents, games, and more are arriving in schools. What’s going on inside the things of digital content and curriculum
has not been defined, and so we’ve set out to do that here in this Special Report. We expect that we’ll hear arguments, some exclamations of delight, confusions, and to have missed some important items.
It’s something many graduate students have heard: “You must be very intelligent.” It’s also the title of a new novel about academic life that asks if going to grad school really is a smart choice -- or even a sane one.
Author Karin Bodewits, co-founder of NaturalScience.Careers, an advice website, started writing You Must Be Very Intelligent: The Ph.D. Delusion (Springer), between the submission and defense of her doctoral thesis (biochemistry and microbiology) in 2011, while backpacking around South America. The first scribbles of it remain in the back of her travel guidebook. While people who read the first chapters encouraged her to continue, she said, she was scared of the potential consequences. Why? Take the prologue, to start.
Every professor has had one: the incredible disappearing student. Mine was "James," a talented and innovative thinker who had great things to say in class until he vanished, about halfway through the semester. He didn’t submit his paper. He didn’t show up in office hours. He didn’t respond to my emails. He was just gone. Poof.
Students like James are increasingly common at colleges and universities. Report after report has shown that undergraduates today experience more anxiety and stress than ever before. In extreme cases, the "pressure of perfection" can have tragic consequences. Nationally, suicide rates for 15- to 24-year-olds have risen, and suicide remains the second-leading cause of death for college students.
In 2004, the Instructional Technology Council’s (ITC) board of directors created a survey instrument for a report that would annually document the distance education trends, issues and challenges that many distance learning administrators face—regardless of their institution’s geographic location, budget, number of students, level of staff support, and position as an
independent entity or participant within a district or statewide system. The goal of the survey and its accompanying report is to:
• Provide annual longitudinal data that is specifically relevant to distance education
practitioners.
• Use the data to determine significant national trends in distance education.
• Use the data so community colleges can more effectively plan and strategize for the future.
• Focus on obtaining results from community colleges that lead efforts to adopt and expand
online course offerings, degree programs, and best practices to help online student succeed.
All of us have had major classroom disruptions that try our patience and push our limits. These incidents can threaten our sense of control and generate fear of looking weak to other students. We fear that other students might do the same thing if we don't take a strong stance. Couple these feelings with the possibility of taking the disruption personally, and we have a recipe for disaster. It's important that we divide our response into two parts:
1. Immediate stabilization
2. Intervention to resolve these issues