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.
In October of 1979, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Barbara Tuchman delivered al ecture at West Point in which she decried the “persistence of unwisdom” among politicians across the ages. Reflecting on how American presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had embroiled the United States more deeply in the Vietnam War, Tuchman bemoaned a perennial “wooden-headedness” -- a tendency for politicians to act wishfully, while not allowing themselves to be “confused by facts.”
Extrinsic incentives and constraints, such as the promise of a reward or the expectation of an evaluation, have long been used by educators to motivate students. Previous research has consistently found that expected reward consistently undermines intrinsic task motivation and creativity of products and performance in students of all ages. For a majority of learners, the promise of a reward made contingent on engagement in an open-ended task frequently serves to undermine intrinsic task motivation and qualitative aspects of performance, including creativity.
Aboriginal learners who have followed their passion and found their voice at Ontario universities are spreading the word to their peers in a series of testimonials about the transformative power of a university education in hopes of inspiring other Aboriginal youth to see the benefit of higher education.
As reported in June 2016, UNHCR estimates that 65.3 million persons were forcibly displaced displaced, 21 million of whom were refugees. Such staggering numbers are unprecedented. Here, we explore the response of Canadian universities and colleges to the crisis in ways that are fulfilling their role as actors for social public good. In addition to offering courses and conducting research that delve into global forced displacement issues across a variety of disciplines, the response of Canadian higher education institutions can be organized broadly into three types of activities. One, they have intensified involvement with refugee sponsorship and scholarships. Two, they have provided advocacy and legal assistance for sponsors and refugees. Three, institutions have organized and participated in forums to share and discuss ideas and engage with other actors to identify needs, effective practices and innovative interventions.
The Blended Synchronous Learning Project sought to investigate how rich-media technologies such as web conferencing, desktop video conferencing and virtual worlds could be used to effectively unite remote and face-to-face students in the same live classes. Increasingly university students are opting to learn from off-campus, often due to work, family and social commitments (Gosper, et al., 2008; James, Krause, & Jennings, 2010). Often universities will cater for remote students by providing access to asynchronous resources via Learning Management Systems, meaning that off-campus students miss out on the benefits of synchronous collaborative learning such as rapid teacher feedback, real-time peer discussions, and an enhanced sense of connectedness.
It's one of the commonly held beliefs about First Nations people in this country: they all get free post-secondary education.
Problem is, it's not true. And the reality is much more complicated.
To help make sense of it, here's a little of what Canadians should know about First Nations people and funding for
post-secondary education.
ecently, I gave a reading at a local independent bookstore for my new book, Trans/Portraits: Voices From Transgender Communities. The book uses an oral history framework to examine the daily lives of 34 transgender and nonbinary individuals
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.
This study analyzes the three different types of institutions—public schools, independent schools, and home schooling—that provided education to stu-dents in Canada over the 2000/01 to 2012/13 period. Specifically, this study quantifies enrolment numbers by type of education institution in order to better understand how Canadian students are being educated.
It is important to understand enrolment numbers within the context of a declining school-aged population. The number of Canadians aged 5 to 17 declined by 6.4 percent between 2000 and 2013. Every province except Alberta recorded a decline in their school-aged population over this period, affecting enrolment rates.
Factors that can be controlled
• Factors that can be influenced
• Factors that cannot be controlled or influenced
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.
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 report evaluates the impact of the University of Windsor Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Mentorship Program (FASSMP) on students, mentors and instructors. The FASSMP was established in 2005 in order to address issues of enrolment and retention by enhancing the first-year experience. The program addressed this challenge by integrating peer mentors into first-year foundation courses as a way to help students transition to university.
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.
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.
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?
Most astronomers teaching undergraduate astronomy aspire to connect their students directly with the night sky. In the same way that a biologist might want her students to actually handle live specimens or a geologist for his students to chip away at real rocks, astronomers want their students to actually see and observe planets, stars and galaxies. Sadly, the combination of urban light pollution, unpredictable weather and daytime teaching schedules make this impractical. This is especially the case for high-enrolment survey courses, which present the additional complication of huge numbers of students to schedule.
An increasingly common strategy is to teach astronomy in digital planetariums: domed rooms on whose ceilings can be projected fantastically detailed representations of the night sky. Planetariums are, in many ways, more useful than the actual sky: they can be used during the day, are not subject to changeable weather, and can be manipulated to show sights not normally visible in the actual sky. Even better, digital planetariums can have control interfaces which are simple enough that almost anyone can use them – ours uses an off-the-shelf video game controller.
• Ontario has the world’s third-highest post-secondary attainment rate for young adults (ages 25 to 34). It produces more degrees per capita than the U.S. and most other countries and up to three times as many career-oriented diplomas and trades certificates. Nonetheless, those with disabilities and aboriginal people have a lower share of degrees.
• While 28 per cent of Americans who attend post-secondary institutions eventually drop out without a credential, the Canadian rate is much lower (seven per cent).
• In 2012, Ontario certified 57 per cent as many trades persons as a share of employment as the rest of Canada.
• Canada’s essential skills ratings for young adults are better than the advanced country average, but behind the Nordic countries, Japan and Korea. However, only 15 per cent at the lowest literacy level are engaged in job-related adult education each year.
Matching skills to jobs
• Ontario’s trades and diploma graduates play a key role in exports (manufacturing, resources and tourism), energy, infrastructure, real estate and health care. Typically, smaller communities rely more heavily on diploma and trades certificate holders – as business owners and employees.
• Ontario’s ability to match skills to job opportunities is above the advanced country average. But it is behind three provinces and 10 countries, notably Switzerland and Germany, which are highly regarded for their ability to match educational programs with employer requirements.
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).