This report, representing the views of Ontario’s 24 colleges, highlights a systemic dearth of applied research and innovation funding opportunities for colleges at the federal level. Applied research and innovation at Ontario colleges are undertaken in collaboration with private and public sector partners. College applied research and innovation regularly lead to innovations and the commercialization of knowledge that result in new products and services benefiting the Canadian economy.
When Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence MOOC made headline news in 2011, one of the early predictions was that quality education at mass scale and at low cost was around the corner. Given our research center’s interest in the productivity of educational interventions, we have been watching for evidence that MOOCs are cost-effective in producing desirable educational outcomes compared to face-to-face experiences or other online interventions. While the MOOC phenomenon is not mature enough to afford conclusions on the question of long-term cost-effectiveness, this study serves as an exploration of the goals of institutions creating or adopting MOOCs and how these institutions define effectiveness of their MOOC initiatives. We assess the current evidence regarding whether and how these goals are being achieved and at what cost, and we review expectations regarding the role of MOOCs in education over the next five years.
There is national and international recognition of the importance of innovation, technology transfer, and entrepreneurship for sustained economic revival. With the decline of industrial research laboratories in the United States, research universities are being asked to play a central role in our knowledge-centered economy by the technology transfer of their discoveries, innovations, and inventions. In response to this challenge, innovation ecologies at and around universities are starting to change. However, the change has been slow and limited. The authors believe this can be attributed partially to a lack of change in incentives for the central stakeholder, the faculty member. The authors have taken the position that universities should
expand their criteria to treat patents, licensing, and commercialization activity by faculty as an important consideration for merit, tenure, and career advancement, along with publishing, teaching, and service.This position is placed in a historical context with a look at the history of tenure in the United States, patents, and licensing at universities, the current status of university tenure and career advancement processes, and models for the future.
Remember how you felt during your first semester of teaching? Excited? Nervous? A little over-whelmed? At times you even might have wondered how the school could give you a job with so much responsibility and so little training. Now you’re a seasoned educator making the move from faculty to administration. And guess what? You’re excited, nervous, and a little overwhelmed. And, once again, you wonder how the school could give you a job with so much responsibility and so little training.
Inadequate preparation, unrealistic expectations, and increased workload can create undue stress on faculty members making the transition to department chair or other levels of administration. This special report features 14 articles from Academic Leader newsletter that address many of the challenges faced by new leaders, from establishing a leadership
style to redefining relationships with former peers. Here are some of the articles you will find in Academic Leadership Development:
How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator:
• Look Before You Leap: Transitions from Faculty to Administration
• Translating Teaching Skills to Leadership Roles
• The First 1,000 Steps: Walking the Road from Academic to Administrator
• Why New Department Chairs Need Coaching
• 10 Recommendations toward Effective Leadership
This report will help new administrators navigate the potential minefields and find their voice when it comes to leading effectively. It also may remind experienced leaders what it was like that first year in hopes that they might reach out to help make someone else's transition a little easier.
The Principal: Three Keys to Maximizing Impact
This article examines the relationship between community colleges and universities in Canada and the United States based on increased involvement of community colleges in offering baccalaureate programs. The article employs a theoretical framework borrowed from the study of jurisdictional conflict between professions. After considering the types of possible and occurring jurisdiction settlement over baccalaureate preparation between universities and community colleges, the author concludes that the older, simplistic criterion—based on credentials awarded—that defined the division of labor between postsecondary sectors should be replaced with newer, more complex and multifaceted criteria that relate to program and client characteristics.
In the 1990s, in both the United States and Canada, small but increasing numbers of community colleges began to award the baccalaureate (Floyd, Skolnik, & Walker, 2005). As of October, 2010, according to Russell (2010), 54 community colleges in
18 states had received approval to offer a total of 465 four-year degree programs; up from 21 institutions in 11 states offering 128 programs just six years earlier. Community colleges in four of Canada’s five largest provinces, accounting for two thirds of the population, are now eligible to award the baccalaureate, and 32 colleges are offering 135 baccalaureate programs.1 The surge in community college baccalaureate activity allegedly occurred in response to two related pressures. One is a general increase in the demand for improved opportunities for people to attain a baccalaureate both for their own benefit and for the benefit of society (Clark, Moran, Skolnik, & Trick, 2009; Lumina Foundation for Education, 2009; National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, 2006). The other is the increased demand for a particular
type of baccalaureate, what has been called the applied, or workforce-focused, baccalaureate (Floyd & Walker, 2009; Skolnik, 2005; Townsend, Bragg, & Ruud, 2009; Walker & Floyd, 2005). Underlying the increase in demand for the baccalaureate and the growth of the community college baccalaureate in particular are economic pressures
associated with global competition (Levin, 2004).
Attempts by community colleges to obtain the authority to award the baccalaureate have in nearly all cases been opposed by universities and have injected a significant new competitive element into the relationship between community colleges and universities. For example, in Florida, the community college baccalaureate generated “significant concerns” about competition with universities (Russell, 2010, p. 5), and in Michigan, the attempt by community colleges to get authorization to award bachelor’s degrees has “stirred tensions between community colleges and universities” (French, 2010, p. 4A). In Ontario, there has been open conflict over territory between the universities and community colleges since the colleges obtained the authority to award baccalaureate degrees (Urquhart, 2004), and in British Columbia, the baccalaureate in nursing has become contested territory between community colleges and universities (Chapman & Kirby, 2008). To date, there have not been any in-depth studies of the impact that awarding baccalaureate degrees by community colleges has had on their relationship with universities or on the perceptions of stakeholders from both sectors about the magnitude of any resulting problems. Still, the examples just cited suggest that this might be a fruitful area for investigation. These examples suggest also that the impact on the relationship between community colleges and universities should be an
important consideration in state and provincial policy making regarding the community college baccalaureate.
Keywords
community college baccalaureate, interinstitutional relationships, professional jurisdiction,
universities
KPI 2015
The traditional pathway into postsecondary education (PSE) is to enter college or university directly after graduating from high school. Not all students follow the traditional pathway into PSE. The Ontario government recently set a goal “to raise the postsecondary [attainment] rate to 70 per cent” (Speech from the Throne, 2010). In 2011, 64 per cent of Ontario residents aged between 25 and 64 held a PSE credential.1 One way to help reach the target educational attainment rate of 70 per cent is for Ontario colleges and universities to attract and retain learners who follow non-traditional pathways. Therefore, one of the priorities of the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) is to evaluate the adequacy and efficiency of non-traditional pathways in obtaining a PSE credential. This study mainly examined one non-traditional pathway, delayed entry into PSE. Graduates who have taken more years than expected to graduate are also included in the discussion. The purpose of this paper is to address the following research questions:
• What is the demographic profile of these non-traditional graduates?
• Are their program choices and pathways through PSE different from those of direct entrants?
• Do their labour market outcomes differ from those of direct entrants?
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).
Typically universities will cater for remote students by providing access to asynchronous resources via Learning Management Systems, meaning that off‐campus students miss out hronous Le
on the benefits of synchronous collaborative learning such as rapid teacher feedback, realtime
peer discussions, and an enhanced sense of connectedness.
In 2008, the OECD launched the AHELO feasibility study, an initiative with the objective to assess whether it is possible to develop international measures of learning outcomes in higher education.
Learning outcomes are indeed key to a meaningful education, and focusing on learning outcomes is essential to inform diagnosis and improve teaching processes and student learning. While there is a long tradition of learning outcomes’ assessment within institutions’ courses and programmes, emphasis on learning outcomes has become more important in
recent years. Interest in developing comparative measures of learning outcomes has increased in response to a range of higher education trends, challenges and paradigm shifts.
Too many university supervisors and administrators criticize the absence of lesson closure, a dubious assessment practice likely caused by the improper use of Madeline Hunter’s lesson plan model (PDF) as a de facto checklist of eight mandatory teaching practices -- anticipatory set, objective and purpose, input, modeling, checking for understanding, guided practice, independent practice, and closure -- a custom that Hunter decried in 1985 (PDF). Although it offers multiple benefits, please don't view closure as a professional must-do.
Students' relationship with technology is complex. They recognize its value but still need guidance when it comes to better using it for academics. The affinity of undergraduates for multimedia, mobile devices, and multitasking is well documented. What is less well recognized is the circumspect way in which students think about integrating technology into their academic lives, a characteristic of college students that has persisted for many years.
Approaches to higher education have been evolving at an increasingly rapid pace over the past decade, and graduate education is a critical part of that evolution. In Ontario alone, the number of new programs offered at our institutions has increased dramatically since 2004, and between 1999 and 2009, the number of PhD students enrolled in Ontario universities has nearly doubled (Maldonado, Wiggers, & Arnold, 2013). Students are coming to graduate school at different stages of their lives (Wiggers, Lennon, & Frank, 2011) and, in today’s economy, many are leaving graduate schools with increased uncertainty and anxiety about their career prospects (Maldonado et al., 2013; Patton, 2012).
Whereas in the past it was considered the norm for graduate students to move on to careers in academia, recent studies have confirmed what is apparent to most casual observers: the standard path is no longer into academia. For example, a 2010 study estimated that about 50 per cent of US PhD graduates now take positions outside of academia (Wendler, Bridgeman, Cline, Millett, Rock, Bell, & McAllister, 2010), and those who end up in academia are less likely to hold full-time tenure-stream positions. From 1975 to 2009, the proportion of full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty positions decreased as a proportion of the total number of instructional staff at US universities from approximately 45 to 24 per cent (AAUC), with part-time faculty positions comprising the majority of instructional positions (41%) by 2009. Within the Canadian context, current estimates suggest that less than 25 per cent of PhD students will end up in full-time tenure-stream research and teaching positions (Charbonneau, 2011; Tamburri, 2010).
Executive Summary
Ontarians want excellent public services from their government. The Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services understands and supports this desire. We see no reason why Ontario cannot have the best public services in the world — with the proviso that they must come at a cost Ontarians can afford. With such a goal, we face three overarching tasks.
First, we must understand Ontario’s economic challenges and address them directly. Second, we must firmly establish a balanced fiscal position that can be sustained over the long term. And third, we must sharpen the efficiency of literally everything the government does so Ontarians get the greatest value for money from the taxes they pay. This report addresses
these issues and offers a road map to a day when Ontarians can count on public services that are both excellent and affordable — the public services Ontarians want and deserve.
The Need for Strong Fiscal Action
Ontario faces more severe economic and fiscal challenges than most Ontarians realize. We can no longer assume a resumption of Ontario’s traditional strong economic growth and the continued prosperity on which the province has built its public services. Nor can we count on steady, dependable revenue growth to finance government programs. Unless policy-makers act swiftly and boldly to prevent such an outcome, Ontario faces a series of deficits that would undermine the province’s economic and social future. Much of this task can be accomplished through reforms to the delivery of public services that not only contribute to deficit elimination, but are also desirable in their own right. Affordability and excellence are not incompatible; they can be reconciled by greater efficiency, which serves both the fiscal imperative and Ontarians’ desire for better-run programs. Balancing the budget, however, will also require tough decisions that will entail reduced benefits for some. Given that many of these benefit programs are not sustainable in their current form, the government will need to decide how best to target benefits to those who need them most. The treatment may bedifficult, but it is worth the effort.
Ontario’s $14 billion deficit in 2010–11 was equivalent to 2.3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), the largest deficit relative to GDP of any province. Net debt came to $214.5 billion, 35 per cent of GDP. The 2011 Ontario Budget set 2017–18 as the target year to balance the books — at least three years behind any other province. The government asked this Commission to help meet and, if possible, accelerate the deficit-elimination plan.
In an effort to improve writing skills, the Writing Centre at Wilfrid Laurier University developed a series of free online resources and tools for students. However, a recent study by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) found that even when integrated into the classroom experience, only a small number of students actually used the tool as they felt it was not relevant to them, and those who did saw no impact on their grades. The authors feel further research is needed into how to best
integrate the service into the classroom, including potentially assigning grades for its use.
Project Description
Wilfrid Laurier University’s online assignment planner (AP) gives students access to timelines, resources and advice for information gathering, citations and effective writing. Writing Instruction Using an Online Assignment Planner examined students in four large first-year classes and one fourth-year seminar class. Students from the large first-year programs were randomly assigned to either a group with explicit integration of the AP into classroom activities, or a control group with no integration. The study tracked the number of times students accessed the AP, writing marks, conducted in-class surveys and professor interviews.
Over the past decade, the Ontario postsecondary sector has experienced pressure from a number of societal forces (Clark, Moran, Skolnik & Trick, 2009). The demand for increased access to postsecondary education (PSE), which is moving higher education from an elite model to one of near universal participation, has resulted in undergraduate enrolment increases
of close to 50 per cent over the past decade1. These increases are taking place in an environment where demands in other areas are also being made on institutions and faculty.Demands for increased accountability, demonstrated quality assurance and increased research and development responsibilities have placed higher burdens on institutions and faculty, which are intensified by tight budgets and limited resources. Institutions have responded to these pressures in part, by increasing average class sizes. In 2009, about two thirds of Ontario universities reported that 30 per cent or more of first year courses had more than 100 students.
The average number of FTE students per full time faculty has increased from 17 in 1987 to 25 in 2007 (Clark, Moran, Skolnik & Trick, 2009, page 99). The consequences of this and other adjustments on educational quality are unknown. Undoubtedly, these pressures will continue and intensify in coming years given projections of demand for PSE in Ontario, particularly for undergraduate degrees. As a result, there is a need for the higher education sector in Ontario to identify the challenges and opportunities that are unique to large class teaching environments, as well as strategies to approach these issues, in
order to maintain the quality of student learning in the face of rising class sizes.
A major problem in identifying trends with large classes is in defining what constitutes a large class. This will differ according to the discipline, the level and nature of the class (such as introductory or upper year, lecture, tutorial or laboratory), and the perceptions of lecturers and individual students. For the purposes of this study, a large class is defined as one in which a change in traditional teaching methods is deemed appropriate or necessary, so it may include an introductory class of 700 students or an upper year seminar with fifty.
Remember how you felt during your first semester of teaching? Excited? Nervous? A little over-whelmed? At times you even might have wondered how the school could give you a job with so much responsibility and so little training.
Now you’re a seasoned educator making the move from faculty to administration. And guess what? You’re excited, nervous, and a little overwhelmed. And, once again, you wonder how the school could give you a job with so much responsibility and so little training. Inadequate preparation, unrealistic expectations, and increased workload can create undue stress on faculty members making the transition to department chair or other levels of administration. This special report features 14 articles from Academic Leader newsletter that address many of the challenges faced by new leaders, from establishing a leadership
style to redefining relationships with former peers.
Here are some of the articles you will find in Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator:
• Look Before You Leap: Transitions from Faculty to Administration
• Translating Teaching Skills to Leadership Roles
• The First 1,000 Steps: Walking the Road from Academic to Administrator
• Why New Department Chairs Need Coaching
• 10 Recommendations toward Effective Leadership
This report will help new administrators navigate the potential minefields and find their
voice when it comes to leading effectively. It also may remind experienced leaders what it
was like that first year in hopes that they might reach out to help make someone else’s
transition a little easier.
Rob Kelly
Editor
Academic Leader
This paper reviews the use of online learning in higher education in Canada and internationally. The paper focuses on the following questions:
• What are the cost implications of a shift to online learning? Specifically, does a greater use of online instruction save institutions or systems money and, if so, under what circumstances?
• What do we know about the relationship between online learning and important variables
that are often considered when discussing the “quality” of an institution or of a system?
The methodology combines a review of published literature and an environmental scan of recent developments, recognizing the rapidly evolving nature of the subject matter.
The evidence reviewed suggests that, for a range of students and learning outcomes, fully online instruction produces learning that is on par with face-to-face instruction. The students most likely to benefit are those who are academically well prepared and highly motivated to learn independently.
Students who are not well prepared to learn at the postsecondary level or do not devote the necessary time to learning are less likely to benefit from online learning and may in fact do better in a face-to-face setting.
Behind every unmotivated employee is a leadership problem waiting to be solved. Yet many leaders see motivation as a game of rewards and punishment. Forget the cash. Forget the threats. To engage today’s workforce, a leader is well advised to seek the heart of what moves people: their three basic psychological needs.
While there is broad consensus that literacy skills are essential for work and life in general,
there is less consensus about numeracy, even though both are defined as essential skills by a number of sources,
including provincial and national governments and international agencies. As a part of HEQCO’s
continuing examination of learning outcomes in Ontario’s postsecondary sector, this report reviews the available data on numeracy skills and revisits the postsecondary sector’s understanding and treatment of numeracy as an
essential skill.