Student ratings of teaching have been used, studied, and debated for almost a century. This article examines student ratings of teaching from a statistical perspective. The common practice of relying on averages of student teaching evaluation scores as the primary measure of teaching effectiveness for promotion and tenure decisions should be abandoned for substantive
and statistical reasons: There is strong evidence that student responses to questions of “effectiveness” do not measure teaching effectiveness. Response rates and response variability matter. And comparing averages of categorical responses, even if the categories are represented by numbers, makes little sense. Student ratings of teaching are valuable when they ask the right questions, report response rates and score distributions, and are balanced by a variety of other sources and methods
to evaluate teaching.
This is the final evaluation report for the Blended Synchronicity (BlendSync) Project as required by the project reporting requirements of the Office for Learning and Teaching.
The evaluation addresses the broad evaluation question: “To what extent was the BlendSync project successful at meeting its stated outcomes and producing its deliverables?”
On may 16th. 2011, IBM, Baycrest and the Public Policy Forum convened Innovation and the Human Brain. This conference was convened, in part, at the request of the Minister of Research and Innovation in an effort to bring together business, academia and government to tackle one of the main issues which will define Ontario's innovation agenda over the coming decade - brain research.
The debate over how universities and colleges relate to one another has been lively in Ontario for at least two decades.
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the commissioning of a province-wide review of the colleges’ mandate whose report recommended greater opportunities for advanced training – defined as “education that combines the strong applied focus of college career-oriented programs with a strong foundation of theory and analytical skills.” The report envisaged that some advanced training would be undertaken by colleges alone, and some would be offered jointly with universities and would lead to a university degree (Vision 2000 Steering Committee 1990, 16-17). A follow-up report in 1993 found that opportunities for advanced training remained “isolated and not part of an integrated and planned system of advanced training, with equitable student access” (Task Force on Advanced Training 1993, 11-13).
By 1999, Ontario’s colleges and universities entered into a province-wide agreement, the “Port Hope Accord” (CUCC, 1999) to facilitate the transfer of college diploma graduates into university programs. Yet the Honourable Bob Rae’s recent report found that “nowhere near enough progress has been made” (Ontario 2005, 14). Meanwhile, student demand for combined diploma-degree programs appears to be increasing (CUCC, 2007).
America’s community colleges have adaptation and change in our DNA. As the youngest upstarts of the higher education family, we cling to our self-concept as agile responders to the learning needs of our students and communities. Particularly at the student level, our colleges have extraordinary track records as agents of change. The learning we make possible expands our students’ social and economic prospects. It transforms them psychologically, behaviorally, and even physically, modifying the basic anatomy of their brains. The deep changes and growth that students undergo during their time with us are the double helix of our community college genetic code and our inspiration for this work.
In recent years, there has been much discussion and a great deal written about the economic and social well‑being of young people. Are they encountering more problems today than in the past? Are some doing better than others? This article paints their socioeconomic portrait and looks at where they are in the labour market in terms of unemployment and certain work conditions.
An annual report is an opportunity to reflect on what was accomplished in the past year and witness the transformation
taking place. The Canada Foundation for Innovation has the privilege of a front-row seat on the ever-advancing research
landscape in Canada. Each year, our funded institutions open new world-class research facilities, hundreds of talented researchers receive new infrastructure support and Canadian research labs continue to produce significant
breakthroughs and tangible outcomes that benefit Canadians.
And 2013-14 was no exception. Our celebrated moments include the June 2013 ribbon cutting for Dalhousie
University’s Ocean Sciences Building, a 7,000-squaremetre complex that brings several of the institution’s worldleading
ocean experts together in a collaborative space.
When Michael Maccoby wrote this article, which was first published in early 2000, the business world was still under the spell of the Internet and its revolutionary promise. It was a time, Maccoby wrote, that called for larger-than-life leaders who could see the big picture and paint a compelling portrait of a dramatically different future. And that, he argued, was one reason we saw the emergence of the superstar CEOs—the grandiose, actively self-promoting, and genuinely narcissistic leaders who dominated the covers of business magazines at that time. Skilled orators and creative strategists, narcissists have vision and a great ability to attract and inspire followers.
This report analyzes the economic impact of post-secondary education (PSE) in Canada. It is one of three foundational studies by The Conference Board of Canada’s Centre for Skills and Post-Secondary Education. The report considers three kinds of economic impact: spending in the economy (either directly by PSE institutions or indirectly through tourism and other channels), human capital formation, and intellectual capital formation. The report develops a bottom-up approach to understanding impacts, from the PSE institutions to the broader economy.
In this article we describe our experiences with using small-group instruction in college settings for a combined total of 60 years. Since others, including Johnson and Johnson (1989), Kagan (1994, 2009), Sharan (1994), and Aronson (2011), have developed specific forms of group work, such as structured controversy, jigsaw, and group investigation, we will focus on how we have used group work as a core technique and have developed additional procedures that seem to potentiate the power of group work, regardless of the specific procedure and discipline.
Those who struggle with daily overthinking feel the impact in every area of their lives. It impacts their ability to perform at their job, to maintain healthy relationships and to focus on their physical, mental and emotional health.
Social and emotional skills, such as perseverance, sociability and self-esteem, help individuals face the challenges of the 21st century and benefit from the opportunities it brings. Policy makers, teachers and parents can help foster these skills by improving the learning environments in which they develop. This paper reviews international evidence, including those from Japan, to better understand the learning contexts that can be conducive to children’s social and emotional development. It sheds light on features that underlie successful learning programmes including intervention studies. Reviewed evidence suggests that there are important roles for families, schools and communities to play in enhancing children’s social and emotional skills, and that coherence across multiple learning contexts needs be ensured. While most of the evidence comes from the United States and the United Kingdom, the paper suggests that further efforts could be made in Japan in collecting and better exploiting micro-data on a range of social and emotional skills, as well as in evaluating effectiveness of nterventions designed to raise social and emotional skills.
This study examines 143 graduate assignments across 12 faculties or schools in a Canadian university in order to identify types of writing tasks. Based on the descriptions provided by the instructors, we identified nine types of assignments,
with scholarly essay being the most common, followed by summary and response, literature review, project, review, case analysis, proposal, exam, and creative writing. Many assignments are instructor-controlled and have specific content requirements. Some are also process-oriented, providing students with teacher or peer feedback on outlines or initial drafts, suggestions for topic choices, and examples of good writing. With an overview of the types of writing tasks across campus, the study has implications for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) or graduate writing program designers,
material developers, educators working within and across disciplines, and researchers interested in the types of university writing assignments in Canada.
Vision
We will make our society a better place by providing a transformative life experience through empowering those who study with us to think and learn in progressive, innovative ways, including those we have not yet imagined.
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.
When it comes to gender parity in the corner office, Canadian colleges are in front of their university counterparts. In fact, almost a third of college presidents are female, while just one in five top university executives are women. “We are very proud of our numbers,” says Denise Amyot, president of Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan)—the first female to hold this position in the association’s 40-plus years. “We have quite a few women. It’s just amazing.”
Thirty-eight of the 127 member colleges of CICan have a female in charge, compared to just 19 of Universities Canada’s 97 member institutes (30 per cent vs. 20, respectively).
In response to stronger demand for access to degree programs and changing expectations from employers due to labour market needs, the Ministry made a number of decisions about how to increase access to a broader range of degree opportunities in April 2000. One of those decisions was to allow Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATs) to offer degrees in applied areas of study. These degrees differ from research-focused degrees because they have a strong focus on preparation for entry to practice occupations. The first degree programs began development in 2001. As of the evaluation period, thirteen of the twenty four colleges in Ontario were offering college degree programs.
Canada is the steward of a diverse forest landscape unlike any other region of the world. Our forest management practices are watched carefully by Canadians and the rest of the world. This level of public interest demands robust engagement and stringent oversight from private and public sectors. The challenge moving forward sustainably is to continuously improve existing management systems, while avoiding the creation of additional bureaucracy. To enable the forestry sector to develop deeper and more authentic public confidence, a concerted effort is needed among stakeholders to establish a common understanding, respect, and trust.
This paper is about school reform for the purpose of improving student academic achievement. More specifically the paper provides an insight into the concept of ‘School Readiness for Teaching Improvement’ by providing an account of an underpinning theory complete with an examination of an associated process and report format. The paper concludes with a sample of an associated ‘Readiness Report’ and an explanation of its key elements and how such a report is read for key points of reference.
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.