Responsible ethics evaluation is the heart of Canada’s research community, but some believe that the evaluation process could be better tailored for the college sector.
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.
Ensuring a good match between skills acquired in education and on the job and those required in the labour market is essential to make the most of investments in human capital and promote strong and inclusive growth. Unfortunately, in the OECD on average, about one in four workers are over-qualified – i.e. they possess higher qualifications than those required by their job – and just over one in five are under- qualified – i.e. they possess lower qualifications than those required by their
job. In addition, some socio- demographic groups are more likely than others to be over-qualified – notably, immigrants and new labour market entrants who take some time to sort themselves into appropriate jobs – or under-qualified – notably,
experienced workers lacking a formal qualification for the skills acquired on the labour market.
As a trusted partner to more than 725 college campuses nationwide, our mission at Barnes & Noble College is to work
closely with our campus partners to enhance the academic and social experience for those we serve – students, faculty,
staff, alumni and communities. Given that student career readiness is a core goal for colleges/universities and their students,
we partnered with Gen Y consulting company Why Millennials Matter to conduct this initial nationwide study. Our goal is to
gather insight, share strategies and build programs to help the students we serve succeed in and out of the classroom, and
to help our campus partners’ achieve their retention, recruitment and career placement outcomes.
If we are serious about accessible online learning, we must talk openly about disability as if it is right here, right now – because it is.
Universities have a major role to play in closing Canada’s Indigenous education gap and supporting the reconciliation process. The Indigenous community in Canada is young, full of potential and growing fast – but still underrepresented at universities across the country. Our shared challenge is to ensure that all First Nations, Métis and Inuit students can achieve their potential through education, which will bring meaningful change to their communities and to Canada as a whole.
In recent years, mental health has become an increasingly prevalent issue on college campuses (Hunt & Eisenberg, 2010; Soet & Sevig, 2006; Zivin, Eisenberg, & Gollust, 2009). Mental health issues may include stress, anxiety, depression, and related aspects such as hopelessness, loneliness, and suicidal thoughts. According to the American Psychological Association (2012),
Millennials,ages 18-33, and Gen Xers, ages 34-47, are the most stressed generations, citing both high levels of stress and difficulty managing it. Data from the 2012 American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment II (ACHA-NCHA II) indicate that 13% of male college students and 17% of female college students across the U.S. had problems functioning because of depression in the last 12 months. In terms of academic performance, 29.0% of students cited stress, 20.2% cited anxiety, and 12.4% cited depression as substantial
obstacles to their success.
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.
The policy debate at Mount St. Mary's University has from the start involved more than President Simon Newman's comparison of at-risk students to bunnies that should be drowned or killed with a Glock. Faculty members and the provost (whom Newman has since demoted) objected to plans to give all freshmen a survey and then to use the survey to identify new students who might -- in their first weeks in college -- be encouraged to quit before Mount St. Mary's would have to report them as having been enrolled and thus dropping out. The theory behind the plan was to increase the university's retention rate.
Training packages are based on the divorce of learning outcomes from processes of learning and curriculum. Policy insists that training packages are not curriculum, and that this ‘frees’ teachers to develop creative and innovative ‘delivery strategies’ that meet the needs of ‘clients’. This paper argues that training packages deny students access to the theoretical knowledge that underpins vocational practice, and that they result in unitary and unproblematic conceptions of work because students are not provided with the means to participate in theoretical debates shaping their field of practice. Tying knowledge to specific workplace tasks and roles means that students are only provided with access to contextually specific applications of theoretical knowledge, and not the disciplinary framework in which it is embedded and which gives it meaning. The paper illustrates this argument by comparing the current Diploma of Community Services (Community Development) with a previous
qualification that preceded training packages in the same field.
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
The following research reports detail the results of programs or inventions designed to increase the retention of post-secondary students. This bibliography is intended as a sample of the recent literature on this topic, rather than an exhaustive list. For inclusion, articles or reports generally described experimental research studies of PSE retention programs. Preference was given to larger scale projects focused on colleges in jurisdictions outside of Ontario (in several cases, progress reports from ongoing, large-scale initiatives were also included). Where possible, links to the original research are provided.
Career colleges and private training institutions, known in some provinces as private vocational or occupational providers, make a significant contribution to education and learning in Canada, with thousands of Canadians graduating each year from hundres of these institutions.
A growing number of education and social science researchers design and conduct online research. In this review, the Internet Research Ethics (IRE) policy gap in Canada is identified along with the range of stakeholders and groups that either have a role or have attempted to play a role in forming bet- ter ethics policy. Ethical issues that current policy and guidelines fail to ad- dress are interrogated and discussed. Complexities around applying the hu- man subject model to internet research are explored, such as issues of privacy, anonymity, and informed consent. The authors call for immediate action on the Canadian ethics policy gap and urge the research community to consider the situational, contextual, and temporal aspects of IRE in the development of flexible and responsive policies that address the complexity and diversity of internet research spaces.
Background: Via the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA), stronger accountability proponents are now knocking on the doors of the colleges of education that prepare teachers and, many argue, prepare teachers ineffectively. This is raising questions about how effective and necessary teacher education programs indeed are. While research continues to evidence that teachers have a large impact on student achievement, the examination of teacher education programs is a rational backward mapping of understanding how teachers impact students. Nonetheless, whether and how evaluations of teacher education programs should be conducted isyet another hotly debated issue in the profession.
When Ontario began to expand its higher education system in the mid-1960s, it made an important choice: to provide public funding to universities on the basis of a formula. Many jurisdictions, in Canada and beyond, do not use such formulae in their higher education systems. But there are clear advantages to such an arrangement. A funding formula supports the distribution of funding in a predictable, equitable way, that can be easily understood by those who study and work within our universities.
Nevertheless, no formula can remain functional forever, especially as the world changes and our expectations of universities shift. For this reason, OCUFA welcomes the University Funding Formula Review, initiated by the Government of Ontario in early 2015. We particularly welcome the opportunity to provide feedback into this process on behalf of the province’s professors and academic librarians.
The university funding formula is deeply important to the success and vitality of Ontario’s universities. It cannot therefore be treated as a laboratory to play with the latest fads in university finance. A measured and responsible approach to reforming the university funding formula should retain its greatest strengths, while correcting its flaws. The Government of Ontario, as the steward of the university sector, has the important task of working with the sector to identify these weaknesses and strengths, and rejecting harmful policy proposals masquerading as innovations.
This submission makes the case that the basic mechanic of the existing formula is sound, but needs to be updated and streamlined. It is also important to consider how the existing formula does not serve some universities – such as those in Northern Ontario – and how changes can be made to address these challenges.
We also argue that performance funding – currently a cause célèbre south of the border, chiefly among those who do not actually work in universities – is not the right approach for Ontario. There is no evidence that performance funding improves student outcomes, but there is growing evidence that it actually has a variety of negative effects. It also violates numerous principles outlined by the University Funding Formula Review team, while cutting against beneficial and collaborative processes for improving quality.
Finally, we suggest that the goals of transparency, accountability, and quality are best served by a new higher education data system. Such a system would be created and run collaboratively by the sector, with the goal of fueling meaningful policy discussions through the provision of timely and useful data.
Once again, OCUFA appreciates the opportunity to provide input into the University Funding Formula Review. We look forward to working with the government to build a university system that promotes quality while protecting the important principles that have allowed our institutions to be so successful.
For Canada to succeed, all Canadians must have the opportunity to develop and use their skills and knowledge to the fullest. So said the government of Prime Minister Paul Martin in the Speech from the Throne that opened the 37th Parliament of Canada in February 2004: “Investing in people will be Canada’s most important economic investment.”
In this working paper, Earl and Timperley argue that evaluative thinking is a necessary component of successful innovation and involves more than measurement and quantification. Combining evaluation with innovation requires discipline in the innovation and flexibility in the evaluation. The knowledge bases for both innovation and evaluation have advanced dramatically in recent years in ways that have allowed synergies to develop between them; the different stakeholders can bring
evaluative thinking into innovation in ways that capitalise on these synergies. Evaluative thinking contributes to new learning by providing evidence to chronicle, map and monitor the progress, successes, failures and roadblocks in the innovation as it unfolds. It involves thinking about what evidence will be useful during the course of the innovation activities, establishing the range of objectives and targets that make sense to determine their progress, and building knowledge and developing practical uses for the new information, throughout the trajectory of the innovation. Having a continuous cycle of generating hypotheses, collecting evidence, and reflecting on progress, allows the stakeholders (e.g., innovation leaders, policymakers, funders, participants in innovation) an opportunity to try things, experiment, make mistakes and consider where they are, what went right and what went wrong, through a fresh and independent review of the course and the effects of the innovation. This paper describes issues and approaches to each phase of the cycle. It concludes by outlining the synergies to be made, building capacity for evaluative thinking, as well as possible tensions to be addressed.
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, lowincome, first-generation, Aboriginal, racialized minorities, differently abled, newcomers to Canada, solesupport caregivers, students with incomplete high school education, or some combination of the preceding).
Medical schools have been engaged in curricular reform for over 20 years, although the 2010 release of the Carnegie Foundation’s Educating Physicians: A Call for Reform of Medical School and Residency1 galvanized the effort across the United States and
Canada. The report’s authors suggested four key elements, which we describe below along with some examples of how they can be implemented.