The Government is fulling its promise to balance the budget in 2015. pursuant to its long-standing commitment to responsible fiscal management. Economic Action Plan 2015 will see the budget balanced and Canadians can rest assured that Canada's fiscal house is in order.
Attraction and retention of apprentices and completion of apprenticeships are issues of concern to all stakeholders involved in training, economic development and workforce planning. The Canadian Apprenticeship Forum (CAF) has forecast that by 2017 there will be a need to train 316,000 workers to replace the retiring workforce in the construction industry alone (CAF, 2011a). In the automotive sector, shortages are expected to reach between 43,700 and 77,150 by 2021. However, shortages are already widespread across the sector, and CAF survey data show that almost half (48.1%) of employers reported that there was a limited number of qualified staff in 2011 (CAF, 2011a). Given this, retention of qualified individuals in apprenticeship training and supporting them through to completion is a serious issue. There is some indication that registration in apprenticeship programs has been increasing steadily over the past few years, but the number of apprentices completing their program has not kept pace (Kallio, 2013; Laporte & Mueller, 2011). Increasing the number of completions would result in a net benefit to both apprentices and employers, minimizing joblessness and skills shortages.
University graduates are more likely to be working at a job related to their studies than college. University graduates' earnings are significantly higher than for any other education group, and these earning premiums start early in graduates' careers.
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.
How much time does it take to teach an online course? Does teaching online take more or less time than teaching face-to-face? Instructors, department chairs, deans, and program administrators have long believed that teaching online is more time-consuming than teaching face-to-face. Many research studies and practitioner articles indicate instructor time commitment as a major inhibitor to developing and teaching online courses. However, while they identify the issue and provide possible
solutions, they do not empirically measure actual time commitments or instructor perceptions when comparing online to face-to-face delivery and when comparing multiple iterations of delivery. The results of this study show distinct differences in developing online courses relative to developing face-to-face courses and distinct differences in teaching online courses relative to teaching face-to-face courses. The data from this study can be used by instructors, administrators, and
instructional designers to create higher quality course development processes, training processes, and overall communication.
Step into any college lecture hall and you are likely to find a sea of students typing away at open, glowing laptops as the professor speaks. But you won’t see that when I’m teaching.
Though I make a few exceptions, I generally ban electronics, including laptops, in my classes and research seminars.
That may seem extreme. After all, with laptops, students can, in some ways, absorb more from lectures than they can with just paper and pen. They can download course readings, look up unfamiliar concepts on the fly and create an accurate, well-organized record of the lecture material. All of that is good.
The study of leadership has been an important and central part of the literature on management and organization behavior for several decades. Leadership is a topic of interest, study and debate in almost every professional community worldwide. Organizations are constantly trying to understand how to effectively develop leaders for long term success within their organizations. The systemic problem with this endeavor is that there are many different leadership theories and styles. These options make it virtually impossible for professionals to agree concerning which one theory and or style can best help organizations to develop great leaders. Indeed, “no other role in organizations has received more interest than that of the leader” (Schwandt & Marquardt, 2000,p. 177).
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).
In May 2004 the Adult Education Review was launched at the request of the Minister of Education and the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities. The goal of the review was to propose a policy framework for adult education and recommend actions that would not only support but also improve adult education in Ontario.
Change seems to be the new constant regarding our country’s educational systems – at every level. Major changes in K-12 are, in part, a result of the new Common Core, which is intended to eliminate the need for developmental education. The standards of the new Common Core are excellent and seem to align with and exceed the “college-ready indicators” assessed on current college placement tests. However, developmental education is not going away anytime soon.
This paper argues that competency-based training in vocational education and training in Australia is one mechanism through which the working class is denied access to powerful knowledge represented by the academic disciplines. The paper presents a modified Bernsteinian analysis to argue that VET students need access to disciplinary knowledge using Bernstein’s argument that abstract, conceptual knowledge is the means societies use to think ‘the unthinkable’ and ‘the not-yet-thought’. I supplement Bernstein’s social argument for democratic access to the disciplines, with an epistemic argument that draws on the philosophy of critical realism.
Keywords: competency-based training; academic disciplines; sacred and profane knowledge; vertical and horizontal discourse.
Vision
Rooted in our communities, we will be a globally recognized college delivering innovative learning opportunities and preparing career-ready graduates to be leaders in their fields.
Mission/Mandate
• We are dedicated to student success, academic excellence, and leadership in our communities.
• We meet the learning needs of postsecondary students in Eastern Ontario and support, through
education and training, the economic, social, and cultural needs of the communities we serve. As the primary provider of quality and accessible education in our region, we are our communities’ pathway to educational opportunities. We are committed to our strategic directions:
- Student Experience – Provide outstanding campus communities, support services, and engagement opportunities that enhance the success of our students.
- Contemporary Learners – Foster digital and foundational literacies in our students through academic grounding and real world experience.
- Sustainability – Be accountable for our decisions and actions to ensure our long- term viability, reduce our environmental impact, and foster a healthy and dynamic college.
Student transfer in Ontario - Infograph
What do 6,000 Quebec (Canada) students do with their iPads every day? What benefits does this technology have for education? What are the challenges for students and teachers? To respond to these questions and to shed more light on this new education trend, we decided to carry out one of the largest studies to date on the use of iPads in education in collaboration with 18 elementary and high schools in the province of Quebec, Canada. By the same token, we wanted to help teachers, students, principals, parents, educators, and other education stakeholders use the iPads for learning in more reflective and educational ways. The results show that the benefits outweigh the challenges. It would appear that incorporating the iPad into education constitutes a necessary risk for schools, and that this technological tool has breathtaking cognitive potential. At
the same time, introducing it into the classroom does not necessarily make for a smooth transition. On the contrary, this new technology can pose challenges that teachers may find hard to cope with if they are caught unaware. The key to successful integration of the iPad in education is therefore to provide teachers with proper training.
Using publicly available information, the study has compiled employment data on 88 percent of the university’s PhD graduates from 2000 to 2015.
In a bid to understand where PhD graduates end up after they finish their doctorates, the school of graduate studies at the University of Toronto launched a project to collect publicly available data on the roughly 10,000 U of T students who received their PhDs between 2000 and 2015. Called the 10,000 PhDs Project, it provides a snapshot of where these former students are currently in their careers.
How much of a difference does it make whether a student of a given academic ability enters a more or a less selective four-year college? Some studies claim that attending a more academically selective college markedly improves one’s graduation prospects. Others report the reverse: an advantage from attending an institution where one’s own skills exceed most other students.
Using multilevel models and propensity score matching methods to reduce selection bias, we find that selectivity does not have an independent effect on graduation. Instead, we find relatively small positive effects on graduation from attending a college with higher tuition costs. We also find no evidence that students not attending highly selective colleges suffer
reduced chances of graduation, all else being equal.
If you graduated from a designated learning institution, and want to stay in Canada temporarily while working, you may be eligible to apply for a post-graduation work permit (PGWP).
Not all designated learning institutions make you eligible for a post-graduation work permit.
Check the designated learning institution list to find out which schools offer programs that make you eligible.
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?
A Guide to Academic Accommodations and Managing your Mental Health while on Campus
One in five Canadians will experience a mental health problem this year1 and the onset of the symptoms of mental ill health often occur between the ages of 15 and 24.2 These numbers tell us that many students in postsecondary education will experience mental health problems while they are attending college or university. Ontario post-secondary institutions report a large
increase in the number of students with mental health disabilities registered with their Offices for Students with Disabilities (OSD). Some students come to university or college with a diagnosed mental health condition such as depression or anxiety. Other students develop symptoms of mental ill health gradually while they are at school and may not realize that they need professional help.
The growth of transnational education, or TNE, must go hand in hand with an increase in quality, according to a panel of experts taking part in a webinar on the future of cross-border higher education.
With countries hosting TNE programmes tightening up on regulations, the webinar heard universities in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries providing transnational education were withdrawing from the riskier end, such as franchising and validating, and focusing instead on distance learning, branch campuses and joint or dual degrees where they have greater quality control.