Educators want nothing more than for our students to feel successful and excited to learn, and to understand the importance of their education. We want our students' attention and respect to match our own. I believe that most if not all of our students desire the same, but walking through our classroom doors are beautifully complex youth who are neurobiologically wired to feel before thinking.
Educators have long been concerned that fewer women than men pursue STEM
(Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) focused programs at the post-secondary level. Less than
25% of the STEM workforce in Canada is women. Research has indicated that this reality reflects a
trend in high school that sees girls lose interest in STEM studies and careers.
The goals of this study, which focused on junior high school students, was to understand how engaged they were in math and science, their future intention for studying science and math, and the likelihood that they would consider a STEM career down the road. Research also addressed students‟ knowledge of how relevant science and math were across various types of careers. Gender and grade differences, and influencers on science and math study, were also examined.
In Ontario, every winter, students in grade 8 must choose between taking applied or academic courses in their core subjects for grade 9. The decisions they make will have a long-term impact.
The choice will affect their options during the rest of their years in high school, and after they graduate. It may also
have an impact on their chances for success.
It is not clear that grade 8 students and their families have all the information they need to make these important decisions.
Perhaps even more important, international evidence suggests that the fact they have to choose at such an early age may contribute to greater achievement gaps, and greater inequality.
A diploma mill, also known as a degree mill, is a phony university that sells college diplomas and transcripts—the actual pieces of paper—rather than the educational experience. Diploma mills are scam colleges that literally crank out fake diplomas to
anyone who pays the requested "tuition."
Diploma mills often promise a fast college degree based on "life experience."
The Get Educated online education team has prepared these Top 10 Signs of an Online College Degree Mill to help students protect themselves from this popular online scam.
In 2008-09, Lakehead University undertook a study to examine the effectiveness of its Gateway program, an academic intervention program offered to a select population of incoming students. The Gateway program at Lakehead is designed for students who exhibit academic potential but who do not meet the traditional entrance requirements of the university at the time of application. The program not only provides access to a university education but also provides support for success. The
intentional and holistic programming provided to students admitted through the Gateway program includes special academic support programming and mandatory academic advising.
A continued need exists for community college administrators to develop and implement strategies to ensure sufficient staffing to meet demand for online courses and promote student success. The problem this study addressed was threefold. First, online instructors in the local setting are overextended and are consequently unable to implement best practices. Because overextended online instructors cannot offer the presence and feedback needed to promote success, online student performance as measured by final course grades suffers. Another problem was that the current institutional system encourages overload teaching assignments. Finally, increased teaching loads can have negative ramifications on online instructor attentiveness, student performance, and academic rigor. The purpose of this descriptive quantitative study was to collect relevant data to examine the relationships among (a) online instructor employment status, (b) online instructor teaching load, and (c) online student performance at a community college. The study used both comparative and correlational research designs to address the research questions using ex post facto data. No statistically significant correlations were found between student success and employment status. However, a negative correlation was discovered between course overload and
student success as measured by final course grades and completion rates. Recommendations for future
research include an examination of seniority and tenure status of faculty and a wider geographic and
institutional type study to ensure generalizability of the results.
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.
Co-operative education was one of the University of Waterloo’s (UW) defining characteristics when it opened in 1957 and it remains a foundational pillar today. With the support of its 4,500 employer partners, UW offers alternating terms of academic and workplace experience to more than 16,500 students from more than 120 different academic programs. These figures make UW the largest postsecondary co-op program in the world.
Maintaining strong employer relationships has been a critical success factor for UW’s co-op program. Both the relevant literature and the feedback received from employers have indicated that employability skills (communication, interpersonal skills, problem solving, etc.) are essential to success in today’s workplace (Hodges & Burchell, 2003; McMurtrey, Downey, Zeltmann & Friedman, 2008; Casner-Lotto & Barrington, 2006). A number of studies also indicate that employers are not satisfied with the employability skills of new graduates (Casner-Lotto & Barrington, 2006; AC Neilsen, 2000; Hart Research Associates, 2010).
The number of students with disability in higher education is increasing. National data reveal differences in the retention and success of these students across Australian higher education institutions but the reasons for this are not clear. The overarching aim of this study was to explore the relationship between supports and university adjustment for students with disability, and their retention and success.
OUSA asked students about their experiences of living in the community where their university is located: from how far they felt their municipality sought to engage students, to their housing situation, and their use of public transit.
Overall, students responded positively regarding many aspects of their experiences. For example students were broadly positive about the range and quality of off-campus housing available, and many of the students who relied on public transit to commute to school felt it was meeting their needs.
The purpose of this research study was to investigate if and how mobile devices could be used to support the required program outcomes in a blended pre-service teacher education degree. All students enrolled in an educational technology course during the fall 2011 semester were provided with ViewSonic tablets. Through faculty interviews, student online
surveys, and a post- course focus group, the study participants indicated that mobile devices could be useful for supporting future professional responsibilities (e.g., career-long learning, collaboration) and facilitating student learning but less effective for planning, assessment, and managing the classroom environment.
Quality post-secondary education (PSE) is an overlooked and often unseen factor in the promotion of the spiritual, emotional and physical well-being of First Nations and Inuit peoples. The numbers back this up; on average, First Nations and Inuit peoples have lower PSE achievement levels, higher rates of unemployment and lower incomes than non-Aboriginal people. In addition to educational and economic advantages, higher educational attainment levels have been shown to be related to improved health and a better standard of living. Therefore, the promotion of increased post-secondary education for First Nations and Inuit peoples is by default promoting an invigorating, fortifying future for Aboriginal people, families and communities.
Future economic growth and social progress in knowledge societies rely increasingly on innovation. Innovators and entrepreneurs require skill sets for innovation such as technical skills, thinking and creativity skills, as well as social and behavioural skills. Higher education plays an important role in providing people with skills for innovation, but a number of important questions remain as to what kind of higher education teaching can be conducive to the strengthening of skills for innovation.
During the economic doldrums that have followed The Great Recession, employees in the education sector (administrators, staff, and teachers or faculty at both the K-12 level and the post-secondary level) are confident about both their retirement savings behavior and their likely retirement outcomes. African American and white American employees in the education sector are more optimistic about their retirement planning and prospects than are U.S. workers overall. Education sector employees—both African Americans (87%) and white Americans (88%)—are more likely than U.S. workers overall (59%) to currently save for retirement. This fact helps justify their greater confidence that they will have enough money to live comfortably throughout retirement. Seven of every ten black American employees and seven of every ten white American employees are confident (‘very’ or ‘somewhat’) of this, while nearly half of all U.S. workers express this level of confidence.
This brief explores students’ beliefs about philanthropy and their participation in philanthropic activities. The results are from the 2015 Student Life Survey, which was administered to a random sample of 5,000 undergraduate students and 1,000 graduate and professional students. A total of 1,039 undergraduate students (20.8% response rate) and 282 graduate/professional students (28.2% response rate) completed the survey. Please note that not all respondents answered each question.
This chapter examines how the three most common types of engagement found among adolescents attending high-performing high schools relate to indicators of mental and physical health.
The 2016 Canadian National Postdoctoral Survey (the 2016 Survey) is an outcome of the collaboration between Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars (CAPS-ACSP) and the Tri-Council granting agencies (Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council). The content of the 2016 survey leverages the results from two earlier National Postdoctoral Surveys1 and a CAPS-ACSP 2014 report2 developed in collaboration with Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), which highlighted the professional development needs of postdocs in the Social Sciences and Humanities.
This paper introduces two new concepts to the debate on job quality: the low-wage gap and low-wage intensity. These two measures provide information on the depth and severity of low wages. Using Labour Force Survey microdata, we discuss trends in these two measures, along with trends in the incidence of low wages over the 1997-2014 period. For example, in 2014, 27.6 per cent of all employees aged 20 to 64 years earned less than two-thirds of median hourly wages for full-time workers aged 20 to 64 years (or $16.01 per hour), our low-wage cutoff. In this same year, the low-wage gap was 21.0 per cent, which means that the average low-wage employee earned approximately 79.0 per cent of the low-wage cutoff (or $12.66 per hour). Consequently, low-wage intensity, defined as the product of the incidence and the gap (scaled by 100) was 5.8. This is down from an intensity of 6.3 in 1997, which was the result of a slightly higher incidence (27.9 per cent) and a higher gap (22.7 per cent). This paper also provides these results by gender, age, educational attainment, industry, occupation, employment status and province. These detailed results help identify which groups face the highest rates, greatest depths, and largest intensities of low-wage employment in Canada. Furthermore, this paper explores the implications of a $15 minimum wage on the low-wage gap in 2014. Finally, to provide a brief sensitivity analysis, we discuss (1) the results for low-wage employment in Canada using a different cutoff (two-thirds mean hourly wages for full-time employees aged 25 to 54 years) and (2) comparisons of our results to those of CIBC’s Employment Quality Index and the OECD’s low-pay data.
This study was a phenomenological study examining the experiences of faculty in an online learning environment in order to identify the factors that could produce job burnout and stress in master’s programs in education. The challenges and related stress-producing factors were also explored to identify best practices for online faculty and attributes most suited for the demands and expectations required in the online teaching environment. The study’s insights and findings are based on perspectives from online faculty who have been teaching in the modality for three or more years. These findings may be useful to stakeholders such as administrators, faculty mentors, faculty trainers, and faculty interested in employment in the modality so that identifiable and realistic criteria may be available upon which to base future hiring standards, employment practices, training, and decisions about teaching online. Insights about procedures and practices have been identified that may be effective in helping to develop initial training programs, faculty mentor supports, administrative decisions, and on-going faculty training. Based upon the findings, institutional leaders have information that could help identify best practices for online faculty and attributes most suited for the demands and expectations required in an online teaching environment. Institutions and administration can seek out and recruit the best possible online faculty who have the necessary skills, abilities, and characteristics required in this modality rather than hiring based merely upon academic credentials that would fail to identify specific attributes necessary for online teaching. Finally, those specific characteristics can then be applied to alleviate job burnout challenges online faculty would experience. The study will help institutional leaders (a) identify faculty earlier who will be better suited to the modality; (b) identify how to offer relevant, on-going faculty supports and training practices; and
(c) prevent online faculty job burnout.
Inside Higher Ed’s eighth annual survey of college and university presidents seeks to understand how these leaders view the opportunities and challenges facing higher education institutions in the U.S.
This study addresses the following questions:
• What effects do presidents perceive the election of Donald Trump had on their campus and on higher education more generally?
• What are presidents’ views of some of the federal policies that affect higher education?
• Are presidents confident in the sustainability of their institution’s financial model over the next 5 and 10 years?
• Do presidents believe the business models used in various sectors of higher education are sustainable?
• Do presidents anticipate that additional colleges will close or merge in the coming year?
• What are presidents’ opinions about tuition resets or tuition freezes?
• What are presidents’ biggest concerns about the size and composition of their student body?
• How do presidents assess race relations at their institution and at colleges nationwide?
• Do college presidents believe that Americans have an accurate view of the purposes of higher education?
• What factors do presidents see as causing declines in public support for higher education?
• How vocal have presidents been about political matters?
• How well prepared do presidents think they were for the various tasks of a college presidency when they first became a president?