Blended learning is on track to become the new normal in education. The approach combines the best of in-person and online learning, offering students the information they need in the method they need to receive it. According to a recent report from Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, “blended learning significantly outperforms face-to-face classroom instruction.”
Over the past decade, the Government of Ontario has increased investment in postsecondary education significantly, including increasing operating grants by 80 per cent since 2002–03. These investments helped to improve access to postsecondary education, supported significant enrolment growth at universities and colleges, and drove community and economic development. The tremendous expansion of Ontario’s postsecondary education system was made possible thanks to the commitment of our postsecondary education institutions to access, and their willingness to respond to the demand.
Included in this addendum are the fi ndings for the Noel-Levitz 2014 National Freshman Attitudes Report by race/ethnicity for incoming students. These data show the percentage of students within each group that agreed with each item.
Vision
Canadore is the college of choice for connecting people, education, and employment through leadership and innovation.
Mission
To provide outstanding applied education and training for an ever-changing world.
Americans reaching traditional retirement ages during the past two decades and today face a different retirement environment than did prior cohorts. Mandatory retirement has been eliminated for the vast majority of American workers, and important work disincentives (or retirement incentives) in Social Security and in employer pension plans have been eliminated or reduced. Americans are living longer and healthier lives, fewer have physically arduous jobs, and technology has increased the options about where and when people work. In addition, the age of eligibility for ‘full’ Social Security retirement benefits has been increased from 65 to 66 (and will soon increase to 67), which is equivalent to an across-the-board benefit cut, and fewer firms are offering employer-sponsored post-retirement health insurance. There are concerns about the future of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Some of these changes are good news for older workers and some bad, but they all have altered the relative attractiveness of work and leisure late in life in favor of work.
The subject of Leadership has been studied for hundreds of years and reveals an evolving succession of theories. The earliest theories focus mostly on the character and personality of successful leaders and how they behave. The more recent theories focus on what leaders actually do rather than on them need to have certain innate qualities or traits.
Canadians invest considerable energy, resources, and personal and societal aspiration postsecondary education. It is good public policy to assess how we are doing and outcomes we are achieving with that investment. One of HEQCO’s core mandates evaluate the postsecondary sector and to report the results of that assessment. To this end, in this report, we have assembled data that assess the performance of Canada’s 10 provincial public postsecondary education systems.
Reflecting on what’s at play with the Ontario college faculty strike, as Yogi Berra once noted, it’s “déjà vu all over again.”
I was a college president in 1984 when college faculty voted overwhelmingly for a strike because they felt they were treated as lemmings, victims of top-down management styles that eschewed proper faculty involvement in decisionmaking, especially when it came to instructional delivery and workloads.
This clearly defined the majority of colleges at the time. Faculty was right to strike. Each strike has an idiosyncratic ethos — core factors that vary from obvious to vague. In 1984, the issues were clear.
In 1987, not so. The faculty hit the bricks with only a 51.25 per cent strike vote. It remains unclear to this day, why the union leaders at the time took their brothers and sisters to the picket line with an unprecedented low strike mandate and no apparent issues at stake. Was it runaway megalomania? Was there an unrelated personal agenda? Who knows? But the result was a disaster for faculty who were led down a prickly garden path and dealt a financial blow by an arbitrator.
In their efforts to foster active engagement in the classroom, instructors are increasingly looking to integrate instructional technologies such as online quizzes and clickers into their large courses. While studies of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education have demonstrated that such approaches have the potential not only to enhance the quality of students’ learning experiences generally, but also to help improve their critical thinking skills specifically, much less is known about the effectiveness of instructional technologies in humanities education. This exploratory study seeks to add to our understanding of pedagogical best practices in the humanities by testing the efficacy of engagement strategies in a history course. One main finding of this study is that the adoption of a cluster of engagement strategies similar to those used in physics education did help develop the critical thinking skills of some students in a large first-year history course, but not always to a greater extent than more conventional approaches to instruction.
Graduate studies at OISE occur within Division II of the University’s School of Graduate Studies (SGS). Thus, graduate degrees are granted by the University of Toronto and their requirements derive from University of Toronto policy. As indicated in the OISE Bulletin:
A major requirement for the M.A., M.Ed. (Option III), Ph.D., or Ed.D. degree is the development and presentation of a thesis embodying the results of original investigation, conducted by the student, on an approved topic in her/his major subject. The thesis will constitute a contribution to the knowledge of the field and should be appropriate in scope and significance to the degree which the student is seeking.
This project, to support schools in involving parents in school improvement planning, was initially sponsored by the Education Improvement Commission (EIC) of Ontario. The mandate of the EIC expired in 2001. The Canadian Education Association (CEA) was contracted to conduct a three-year study of the project. Exploring the potential contribution of parent participation to school improvement planning (SIP), results of the study help answer four broad questions:
Objective: Responsible media reporting of youth suicide may reduce the risk of contagion and
increase help-seeking behaviour. Accordingly, we conducted a content analysis of Canadian youth suicide newspaper
articles to assess quality and summarize content (themes, age groups, populations and use of scientific evidence). Method: The Canadian Periodical Index Quarterly (CPI.Q) was searched (2008-2012) for full-text Canadian newspaper articles using the keywords “youth” and “suicide.” The top five most relevant articles as judged by CPI.Q were selected sequentially for each year (n=25). Quality was assessed using World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for responsible media reporting. Content analysis was completed in duplicate by two reviewers. Results: All articles addressed youth suicide generally rather than reporting exclusively on a specific death by suicide. Alignment of articles with individual WHO guideline items ranged from 16 to 60%. The most common content theme was prevention (80%). No article was judged to glamorize suicide. Help seeking was
addressed in 52% of articles, but only 20% provided information on where to obtain help. Statistics were referenced more frequently than scientific research (76% vs. 28%). Conclusions: Our review suggests that Canadian media presents youth suicide as an issue for which hope and help exist. While the majority of reports aim to educate the public about suicide, increased use of scientific evidence about risk factors and prevention is recommended to facilitate the translation of rigorous scientific knowledge into improved mental health and reduced suicide risk among Canadian youth.
Key Words: suicide, youth, responsible media reporting, Canada
Objectif: Les médias responsables qui rendent compte du suicide chez les adolescents peuvent réduire le risque de
contagion et favoriser le comportement de recherche d’aide. Conformément, nous avons mené une analyse de contenu des articles de journaux canadiens sur le suicide d’adolescents pour en évaluer la qualité et résumer le contenu (thèmes, groupes d’âge, populations et utilisation de données probantes scientifiques). Méthode: Nous avons recherché (2008- 2012) dans l’Index de périodiques canadiens trimestriel (IPC.T) le texte intégral des articles de journaux canadiens à l’aide des mots « adolescent » et « suicide ». Les cinq principaux articles les plus pertinents, selon l’IPC.T, ont été choisis séquentiellement pour chaque année (n=25). La qualité a été évaluée à l’aide des directives de l’Organisation mondiale de la santé (OMS) pour une couverture responsable des médias. L’analyse de contenu a été effectuée en double par deux réviseurs. Résultats: Tous les articles abordaient le suicide chez les adolescents généralement plutôt que decouvrir exclusivement un décès spécifique par suicide. L’alignement des articles contenant des éléments individuels des directives de l’OMS allait de 16 à 60%. Le thème le plus commun était la prévention (80%). Aucun article n’a été jugé sensationnaliser le suicide. La recherche d’aide a été mentionnée
dans 52% des articles, mais seulement 20% donnaient de l’information sur l’endroit où obtenir de l’aide. Les références étaient plus fréquemment de l’ordre des statistiques que de la recherche scientifique (76% c. 28%). Conclusions: Notre revue suggère que les médias canadiens présentent le suicide chez les adolescents comme un enjeu pour lequel il existe de l’espoir et de l’aide. Bien que la majorité des articles visent à éduquer le public sur le suicide, le recours accru à des données probantes scientifiques sur les facteurs de risque et la prévention est recommandé pour faciliter la traduction de connaissances scientifiques rigoureuses en une meilleure santé mentale, et des risques de suicide réduits chez les adolescents canadiens.
Mots clés: suicide, adolescent, couverture responsable des médias, Canada
Attainment of a post-secondary education has become a prerequisite to participate in the Canadian workforce. This shift was precipitated by a recession that resulted in the near-collapse of Canada’s manufacturing sector, but it reflects a broader shift that has been happening for the past two decades in Canada and around the world.
Significant pressure on institutions to retain students who have already been recruited
• Support student success: high achieving students who we want to succeed
• Institutional Reputation
• Cost effective – recruitment of students has been highly competitive (especially international students who are a source of much needed funding for institutions); easier to try and keep students you already have than to recruit new students
Objectives:
- Understand the concept of 'the skinny'
- Learn about the high yield factos that me a difference to the change process
- Gain key insights that support fast, quality change
- Be inspired to apply the ideas in your own workplace
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.
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
Since the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) was launched, it has completed and published more than 140 research studies – and funded dozens more that are currently underway – that explore a wide range of trends and issues involving Ontario’s postsecondary system. Drawing mainly from HEQCO’s own research, this @Issue paper:
• Describes how the definition of student success has gradually broadened at
Ontario colleges and universities;
• Summarizes some of the underlying institutional and student population factors that also impact
on most current measures of student success;
• Provides broad observations about some recent findings as they relate to the awareness,
utilization and impact of various student service, course-based and other initiatives designed to
promote student success;
• Recommends what can be measured – as well as how and what outcomes can be expected – when it
comes to initiatives and interventions designed to improve student success.
Immigrants will represent nearly 100 per cent of net labour market growth in Canada by the year 2011.1 More than ever, employers recognize the need to effectively integrate immigrants into the workplace and they seek solutions to leverage the talents and contributions immigrants bring to the Canadian economy.
From January to March 2009, Colleges Ontario and 12 colleges consulted with employers, ethno-cultural business organizations, business associations and unions to find out their views on employing immigrants and how colleges can support the transition of immigrants to the province’s workforce. Input was obtained through a variety of formats including facilitated round-table discussions, one-on-one dialogues, and an online questionnaire. The purpose of these consultations was to obtain advice from employers on how colleges can better address language needs for the workplace and support immigrant integration.
Colleges engaged in discussions with 218 organizations. These organizations represented a wide cross-section of large, medium and small businesses in five industry sectors that included health care, hospitality, science and technology, construction and manufacturing. Many of these organizations were interested in participating because they understand the valuable role of immigrants in helping companies respond to current labour and consumer market realities.
This report presents the findings from these consultations, offering a snapshot of the experiences of the participants, and outlining some suggestions on how colleges can play an even greater role in effectively integrating immigrants into the workplace.
The government of Ontario has signalled the need to expand graduate education to create and sustain a highly skilled workforce in today’s knowledge-based economy. Ontario has grown its PhD capacity deliberately since 2005, beginning with its Reaching Higher initiative, to produce highly qualified personnel to work both inside and outside academia.