SIX YEARS AGO, Georgia State University (GSU) gathered a decade’s worth of its historical data with the help of a third-party vendor — some 15,000 student records and 2.5 million grades — and applied advanced analytics. Officials hoped to use this information to uncover early-warning signs for students in danger of dropping out of school.
This pilot study examines alternative entrance pathways into York University undergraduate degree programs for students who apply from outside the formal education system. These alternative pathways are designed to facilitate university access for students from under-represented populations (for example, low-income, first-generation, Aboriginal, racialized minorities, differently abled, newcomers to Canada, sole-support caregivers, students with incomplete high school education, or some combination of the preceding).
Academics are collaborating more as their research questions are becoming more complex, often reaching beyond the capacity of any one person. How- ever, in many parts of the campus, teamwork is not a traditional work pat- tern, and team members may not understand the best ways to work together to the benefit of the project. Challenges are particularly possible when there are differences among the disciplines represented on a team and when there are variations in academic control over decision making and research direction setting. Disparities in these two dimensions create potential for miscommunication, conflict, and other negative consequences, which may mean that a collaboration is not successful. This paper explores these dimensions and suggests a space for collaboration; it also describes some benefits and challenges associated within various
positions within the framework. Academ- ic teams can use this tool to determine the place they
would like to occupy within the collaboration space and structure themselves accordingly before
undertaking research.
In 2011, as part of a comprehensive research agenda on learning outcomes development and measurement, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) began supporting eight Ontario institutions to assess the generic skills acquisition of their students. This report summarizes the activities and results of the eight institutions that piloted the Council for Aid to Education’s Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), a written examination designed to assess the critical thinking and problem solving skills of entering and graduating students. It reviews the rationale for the project, the challenges and issues encountered with CLA test administration and implementation, and the institutions’ impressions of the value of the resulting data. While there is significant interest from institutions and programs in measuring the generic skills of students and understanding the amount of learning that can be attributed to the institution, the experiences of the institutions that participated in this project highlight certain administrative and methodological challenges that arise in the move from theory to practice in large scale assessments.
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.
Leadership means different things to different people at different times, depending on the situation. But at its core, leadership really is just one single thing.
Leadership, Style, Theory, Quotes
10 Ways to Distinguish Consent
A GUIDE FOR STUDENTS AND ADVISORS
The Critical Thinking Assessment Rubric was developed as a key deliverable of the ‘Building Capacity to Measure Essential Employability Skills’ project funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO)1. This handbook serves as a resource to teachers in using the Critical Thinking Assessment Rubric.
Critical thinking is one of the six skill categories within the ‘essential employability skills’ (EES) curriculum requirements for Ontario college programs – specifically, EES numbers 4 and 52. Each of these essential employability skills must be addressed (learned, practiced, evaluated) within a program. How and when these are implemented should be based on decisions regarding the program as a whole and by individual teachers.
In 2014, the Government of Ontario signaled its intent to review the formula by which Ontario’s universities are funded. In Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Mandate letter to Reza Moridi, Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities (MTCU), she asked him to:
“[Work] with postsecondary institutions and the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario to improve the consistency and availability of institution-level and system-level outcome measures. These measures will help inform the allocation of graduate spaces, updated program approval processes and the implementation of a reformed funding model for universities.”
The Strategic Mandate Agreement (SMA) exercise was intended to address at least three desired
outcomes:
1. To promote the government’s stated goal1 of increasing the differentiation of the Ontario postsecondary system by asking each Ontario postsecondary institution to articulate an institutional mandate statement identifying its distinctive strengths or aspirations and to identify key objectives aligned with that aspiration.
2. To advance and inform the discussion about how the Ontario system could increase its productivity to deliver a quality education to more students within the financial constraints expected in the public sector.
3. To elicit the best thinking from institutions about innovations and reforms that would support higher quality learning and, in its most ambitious form, transform Ontario’s public postsecondary system.
To assist with the evaluation of the SMAs, the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) “…instructed the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) to establish a peer review panel to evaluate…mandate submissions … for their ability to achieve significant improvements in productivity, quality and affordability through both innovation and differentiation.” The members of the Expert Panel are listed in Appendix 1.
The movement of students between postsecondary institutions is becoming increasingly common and has created a need for greater emphasis on postsecondary education (PSE) pathways. This report outlines the available data on postsecondary student mobility within Ontario, with a focus on mobility between Ontario’s colleges and universities.
Observational skills, honed through experience with the literary and visual arts, bring together in a timely manner many of the goals of the medical humanities, providing thematic cohesion through the act of seeing while aiming to advance clinical skills through a unified practice. In an arts observation pedagogy, nature writing serves as an apt model for precise, clinically relevant linguistic noticing because meticulous attention to the natural world involves scientific precision; additionally, a number of visual metaphors employed in medicine are derived from close observation of the natural world. Close reading reinforces observational skills as part of integrative, multidisciplinary clinical practice. Literary precision provides an educational bridge to recognizing the importance of detail in the clinical realm. In weighing multiple perspectives, observation applied to practice helps learners understand the nuances of the role of witness, activating reflection consonant with the viewer’s professional identity. The realization that seeing is highly filtered through the observer’s values allows the act of observation to come under scrutiny, opening the observer’s gaze to disturbance and challenging the values and precepts of the prevailing medical culture. Application of observational skills can, for example, help observers recognize and address noxious effects of the built environment. As learners describe what they see, they also develop the communication skills needed to articulate both problems and possible improvements within their expanding sphere of influence. The ability to craft
this speech as public narrative can lead to interventions with positive impacts on physicians, their colleagues, and patients.
This guide contains practical steps that will help public sector agencies and departments develop a social media strategy and policy to gain maximum value from social media efforts. It also outlines some smart records retention practices—so you’ll be better prepared to respond to open records requests or other e-discovery needs when they arise.
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?”
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.
This report was commissioned by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) as part of a multi-year effort to improve the quality of education and skills training in Canada while enhancing young people’s ability to succeed in the 21st century job market. Opinions in the paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCCE or its members.
Every generation has a transformative effect on the economy, but the actions of Generation Y, also known as the Millennial Generation, promise to carry special impact. Gen Y, the largest generation in U.S. history, comprises young, educated, ethnically diverse, and economically active individuals. These Gen-Yers, or Millennials, as they are known, are entering the labor force as the “powerhouse of the global economy” and arriving at critical points of financial decision making in their adult lives
(Deloitte, 2009).
The educational benefits of embedding hands-on experience in higher education curriculum are widely recognized (Beard & Wilson, 2013). However, to optimize the learning from these opportunities, they need to be grounded in empirical learning theory. The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of internships in Ontario colleges and universities, and to assess
the congruence between the components of these internships and Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning framework. Information from 44 Ontario universities and colleges, including 369 internship program webpages and 77 internship course outlines, was analyzed. The findings indicated that internship programs overemphasize the practical aspect of the experience at the expense
of linking theory and practice. To optimize experiential education opportunities, recommendations include establishing explicit learning activities consistent with each experiential learning mode, including practice, reflection, connecting coursework and practical experience, and implementing creative ideas in practice.
Raciolinguistics: How Language Shapes Our Ideas About Race brings together work from across several subfields of linguistics and offers a complex, global examination of the connections between race and language. As a whole, this anthology seeks to make sense of our historical moment, a unique time in which “we are constantly orienting to race while at the same time denying the evidence that shows the myriad ways that American society is fundamentally structured by it” (p. 3). This historical moment was concretized in the national consciousness with the election and presidency of Barack Obama. For Smitheran and Alim, Obama’s linguistic choices as he developed a social and racial public identity served as a starting point for their theorizing of race and language, which they began in their first book, Articulate While Being Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the US (2012). In Raciolinguistics, an expanded line of inquiry goes beyond the case of Obama to ask, “what does it mean to speak as a racialized subject?” This question became a topic for several conferences and scholarly movements at UCLA and Stanford, incorporating theoretical threads from race and ethnic studies as well as anthropology. In this text, however, the authors embrace a unique analytical approach, studying race as a sociolinguistic construction on an international scale.
Postsecondary education has reached a critical impasse. Structurally speaking, the Canadian system does not look much different than it did 50 years ago. But the system’s dynamics have changed considerably: reduced government funding and the tough economic climate make efficient financial models a necessity for healthy institutions; student debt loads are increasing; underemployment is a reality for many undergraduate degree-holders; and the student body is increasingly diverse, with
growing numbers of international students, students from historically underrepresented groups, mature students returning to PSE to improve career prospects, and students having to work at least part-time to manage the cost of education. To ensure that our system is accountable, accessible and of the highest quality, we need to define and assess educational outcomes at both the institutional and student levels.