Even as the economy has at last begun to expand at a more rapid pace, growth in wages and benefits for most American workers has continued its decades-long stagnation. Real hourly wages of the median American worker were just 5 percent higher in 2013 than they were
in 1979, while the wages of the bottom decile of earners were 5 percent lower in 2013 than
in 1979.1 Trends since the early 2000s are even more pronounced. Inflation-adjusted wage growth from 2003 to 2013 was either flat or negative for the entire bottom 70 percent of the wage distribution.2 Compounding the problem of stagnating wages is the decline in employer-provided health insurance, with the share of non-elderly Americans receiving insurance from an employer falling from 67 percent in 2003 to 58.4 percent in 2013.
Last week, I described how what some observers might see as a bad approach to teaching -- focusing on our weakest students -- can, in fact, have good results. Continuing with that theme, let us take a look at a second aspect of good teaching -- promoting student learning -- and consider its inverse. In award letters, students regularly talk about how much they learned from award-winning professors and how new worlds were opened to them. It is hard to argue that learning is not fundamental to effective instruction.
It is a fundamental responsibility and obligation of government and of institutional leaders to assure that postsecondary institutions are sustainable and capable of providing a high quality academic experience.
This paper offers a conceptual framework for examining the sustainability of Ontario’s public postsecondary institutions. It discusses the definition of the term “sustainability,” how it can be measured and the various tools and strategies available to both institutions and government to meet sustainability risks when they are identified.
What makes an undergraduate student “traditional” or “nontraditional”? While definitions vary, researchers generally consider nontraditional students to have the following characteristics: being independent for financial aid purposes, having one or more dependents, being a single caregiver, not having a traditional high school diploma, delaying postsecondary en-rollment, attending school part time, and being employed full time (Brock 2010; Choy 2002; Horn 1996; Kim 2002; Taniguchi and Kaufman 2005).
In fall 2009, the Chattanooga State Community College math department faced a problem not uncommon to colleges around the nation: Online course offerings had high failure rates and were not a quality experience for students. After examining the data, the department made a bold decision to put a moratorium on online math courses for two years. This move provided time to improve the quality and success of online courses. Since re-offering online mathematics courses again in fall 2011, the college has seen a significant increase in student learning and success. This article outlines the reasons for the decision, the steps taken to improve the program, and the results since reintroducing the courses.
Student enrolment and instructional accommodation requests are rising in higher education. Universities lack the capacity to meet increasing accommodation needs, thus research in this area is required. In Ontario, new pro- vincial legislation requires that all public institutions, including universities, make their services accessible to persons with disabilities. The objective
of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) is to provide universal access for students with disabilities. The purpose of this case study is to understand the experiences of students regarding the ability of a lecture capture technology to align with the principles of Universal Instructional De- sign (UID). Data were collected using a mixed-method research design:
(a) an online questionnaire, and (b) individual face-to-face interviews. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) literature provides a useful background to explore AODA legislation and universal accessibility vis-à-vis lecture capture technologies. Results indicate that lecture capture can align both with theprinciples of UID and AODA.
Background: The number of non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF), including both full-time (FT) and part-time (PT) positions, has risen to two-thirds of faculty positions across the academy. To date, most of the studies of NTTF have relied on secondary data or large-scale surveys. Few qualitative studies exist that examine the experience, working conditions, and worklife of NTTF. The study is framed by the theory advanced by Berger and Luckmann that reality is socially constructed and the broader sociological tradition of symbolic interactionism described by Blumer, Denzin, and Stryker.
Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) occupy a unique position in teaching and learning in higher education. Typically, individuals arrive at graduate school already socialized into disciplinary ways of knowing. GTA pedagogical professional development offers opportunities for GTAs to engage with current “best practices” and different pedagogical ways of knowing, and to initiate new and innovative practices. Research has demonstrated that as content knowledge and expertise develop, experienced instructors do not always recognize the ways that their expertise (e.g., how they organize materials or knowledge) can interfere with student learning (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010). GTAs are therefore well positioned to scaffold learning for content novices such as undergraduate students. The teaching preparation and pedagogical development of GTAs is not just a resource to support learning; in fact, the teaching and instructional skills that GTAs acquire can be transferred to professional domains outside academia (Osborne, Carpenter, Burnett, Rolheiser, & Korpan, 2014; Rose, 2012). GTA professional development has never been just training to fulfill a particular niche or to achieve a singular goal such as teaching; however, the current post-secondary climate of accountability and quality enhancement does bring the goals and purposes of GTA professional development into view.
Given the ongoing alarm regarding uncontrollable costs of higher education, it would be reasonable to expect not only concern about the impact of MOOCs on educational outcomes, but also systematic efforts to document the resources expended on their development and delivery. However, there is little publicly available information on MOOC costs that is based on rigorous analysis. In this article, we first address what institutional resources are required for the development and delivery of MOOCs, based on interviews conducted with 83 administrators, faculty members, researchers, and other actors in the MOOC space. Subsequently, we use the ingredients method to present cost analyses of MOOC production and delivery at four institutions. We find costs ranging from $38,980 to $325,330 per MOOC, and costs per completer of $74-$272, substantially lower than costs per completer of regular online courses, by merit of scalability. Based on this metric, MOOCs appear more cost-effective than online courses, but we recommend judging MOOCs by impact on learning and caution that they may only be cost-effective for the most self-motivated learners. By demonstrating the methods of cost analysis as applied to MOOCs, we hope that future assessments of the value of MOOCs will combine both cost information and effectiveness data to yield cost-effectiveness ratios that can be compared with the cost-effectiveness of alternative modes of education delivery. Such information will help decision-makers in higher education make rational decisions regarding the most productive use of limited educational resources, to the benefit of both learners and taxpayers.
What happens when a high-school student from a low-income family wants to attend a private college 100 miles away, but has a parent whispering in her ear to look closer to home? The "Survey of Admitted Students: Targeting Yield Strategies," may provide some answers, as well as more questions.
The report, produced by Eduventures, a consulting company, and written by Kim Reid, a principal analyst there, distilled insights from more than 100,000 high-school students nationwide.
As a newly recruited department chair, you have barely moved into your office when several insiders arrive to inform you of urgent personnel problems:
A certain staff member has been failing at his job for years. He is habitually late, and his
work — when he manages to complete it — is full of errors.
An assistant professor is not going to get tenure. Her teaching is consistently rated as
poor, her research record is lackluster, and her service is mediocre.
The director of the department’s graduate program "retired on the job" years ago. All the
metrics of the grad program are getting worse, and morale among the students is low.
Your informants look at you expectantly. What are you going to do about this "problem" person?
This report presents the findings of a research project undertaken at OCAD University (OCAD U) from 2013 to 2014 examining the implementation of a cross-disciplinary collaborative course design process. While there is some research that investigates collaborative course design, especially in the development of courses for online and hybrid delivery, there is little research to date that investigates cross-disciplinary collaborative course design, in which faculty members from different disciplines come together to combine their expertise to create more robust resources for student learning. The research was undertaken in the development of professional practice courses offered in the Winter 2014 term to students enrolled in the Faculty of Design. Online learning modules were developed by faculty members from across multiple disciplines for delivery on the Canvas learning management system (LMS) in studio-based courses. Collaboration between faculty members was led and facilitated by an instructional support team with expertise in hybrid and fully online learning from OCAD U’s Faculty & Curriculum Development Centre.
Welcome to the Workshop!
9-11:00 Module I-The Leader in You 11-11:30
11:30-1:00 Module II-Professional Cultures Module III-Leading Professional Capital
2:00-3:15 Module III-Leading Professional Capital (cont’d) Module IV -The Leader and Technology
Module V-Closing
As a new faculty member, late work was the cause of many headaches.
I wanted a policy that would recognize there may be valid reasons why a student might not submit an assignment on time, but I did not like the idea of then having to judge the merit of excuses that might be provided or attempt to decide if they were truthful.
I wanted a policy that would acknowledge the merit of a completed assignment, so I did not want to deduct a letter grade or certain percentage of points just because it did not meet a deadline; a value I took to heart after reading O’Connor (2011).
I wanted a policy that would put the responsibility for completing late work entirely on the student, so I did not want to use class time or send reminders out of what was missing and when it was due.
I wanted a policy that would offer the opportunity for a student to submit work after it was due, but I did not want the hassle of keeping track of any new, individual deadlines and individual point deductions (Vatterott, 2009) for assignments that would
occur if I allowed late assignments.
We need to work more with students on seeing exams as something more than just grade generating experiences. Exams can be powerful encounters through which students learn course content and learn about learning. However, given the importance placed on grades, I’m not terribly optimistic about a lot of students discovering on their own what can be learned from an exam experience. We need to frame exams with a stronger focus on learning, and here’s a great example.
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.
This paper is an enquiry into the unpredictability of the liberally educated mind. We are all familiar with the value placed on the word critical when it figures prominently in justifications for liberal arts pedagogy, as in “a liberal arts education should foster the capacity for critical thinking.” However, de- pending on the milieu in which “critical thinking” is habituated, the mean- ing of the term may degrade into a theoretical conformity and passive assent to established routines which are inevitably expressions of disapproval. This trajectory is described as disenchantment. Its origins are traced to representations of the intellectual as a
distinctly secular creature and, in contemporary philosophical developments, associated with political liberalism—both of which, it is argued, are dominated by fear. Drawing on the recent Catholic “Communio” theology of David Schindler as a way to unveil the repressed theologies and hidden ontologies of liberal neutrality, the paper concludes with a brief examination of liberal arts scholarship that is increasingly open to various models of enchantment.
This study seeks to identify common factors that leaders in online instruction consider most critical to successful teaching and learning at a distance. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the teaching philosophy narratives of the nominees for the University System of Georgia Regents’ Teaching Excellence Award for Online Teaching was conducted. The total number of times a concept was mentioned and the percentage of nominees who cited each concept were computed. The results indicate the relative importance of each concept to these leading practitioners in the field. Rapport, design, engagement, feedback, research, and course improvement emerged as some of the most commonly cited themes, and these correspond with the literature review of best practices for online instruction. However, these instructors also emphasized course content as a significant element, even though this concept is less prevalent in the literature. The emphasis on content by these nominees underscores the importance of this theme and suggests that content is a factor that should be carefully considered in online instruction.
It would be a shame if the lesson learned is simply to remove the controversial bits from your course.
The issues of freedom of speech and transgender rights, highlighted by recent events involving a teaching assistant at Wilfrid Laurier University, remind me of my first year as a university instructor in the late 1990s, when I taught a communications course on advertising at York University. (Yes, I understand that the status of a TA is different than that of an instructor, but I think for the purposes of this anecdote, the principles are similar.)
While teaching the course, I saw an ad for Sauza tequila in the campus newspaper. It featured a photo of an attractive, swimsuit-wearing woman, with the phrase, “She’s a He,” written across her chest. The ad’s tag line read: “Life is Harsh, Your Tequila Shouldn’t Be.” (The ad didn’t identify the model, who in fact was Caroline Cossey, a transgender model.)
If a student wants to earn an A in a class, the best way to do that might not involve concentrating on the grade at all.
Instead, students should set their goals on the shorter-term, more tangible parts of a class -- committing to doing homework, showing up to a certain number of classes or dedicating a set time for exam preparation -- according to a working paper (abstract available here) from the National Bureau of Economic Research.