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.
Each year the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance releases its Habitats project: a series of case studies on municipal-level issues affecingundergraduate students. These case studies are written by OUSA campus researcher from our member institutions.
The public education system in Canada
consists of ten provincial and three territo- rial systems, including approximately 15,000 public French- and English-lan- guage schools administered by 375 school boards. Canada remains the only federat- ed nation within the membership of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that has no means for direct federal involvement in the direction of elementary and secondary education. Education is exclusively within the jurisdiction of provincial and
territori- al governments and has been since 1867 when Canada’s Constitution Act provided that “[I]n and for each province, the legis- lature may exclusively make laws in rela- tion to Education.
Audience response systems (ARS) are electronic applications in which a receiver captures information entered by students via keypads or hand-held devices. Students’ responses can be displayed instantly, usually in the form of a histogram. Professors typically use ARS to increase student interaction and for formative assessment (to measure students’ understanding of material during a lecture; Micheletto, 2011). In some cases, audience response systems have also been used to pose real research questions and follow an interactive sampling approach (not to be confused with experiment data collection). For example, imagine that a research study concluded that females respond more quickly to red stimuli than do males. An interactive sampling session in the classroom would present students with coloured stimuli, and the instructor would ask students to respond, as quickly as possible and using the ARS, when they see the red stimuli. The instructor would then display the students’ responses and compare the students’ data to results from the published research study. Barnett & Kriesel (2003) propose three criteria that classroom interactive sampling should meet if it is to stimulate discussion among students:
1. Interactive sampling should be conducted to demonstrate class concepts.
2. Students should be providing responses in a controlled setting.
3. Students’ responses should be compared to behavioural hypotheses derived from theory.
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.
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.
One of the many lessons learned from the early years of distance education is the fact that you cannot simply pluck an instructor out of the classroom, plug him into an online course, and expect him to be effective in this new and challenging medium. Some learned this lesson the hard way, while others took a proactive approach to faculty training. All of us continue to refine our approach and discover our own best practices.
This research was funded by TIAA-CREF to provide a deeper understanding of the issues facing academic institutions when age-eligible professors do not retire, and how those issues can best be addressed. In particular, insight was sought on the reasons why financially-ready, age-eligible professors do not retire; as well as, on the kinds of positive strategies colleges and universities have used and could use to encourage such individuals (“reluctant retirees”) to retire that would be both effective and well-received. To provide qualitative insight on these issues, Mathew Greenwald & Associates conducted one-on-one, in-depth interviews with two types of individuals.
In this paper, four qualitative case studies capture the complex interplay be- tween the social and structural relations that shape community - academic partnerships. Collaborations begin as relationships among people. They are sustained by institutional structures that recognize and support these relationships. Productive collaborations centralize reciprocity, flexibility, and
relationship building between individuals and institutions. Our findings also indicate a synergistic interaction between collaborative processes and out- comes: an equitable process supports the development of mutually beneficial outcomes, and the ability to sustain a collaborative process requires substantive progress towards shared change goals.
• Review what is happening & lessons learned
• Establish a common understanding of FG student success
• Collaborate - World Cafe
o Share best practices & lessons learned
o Discuss FG student success
o Look at assessment of FG student success
o Plan for next steps
It’s been said that no one dreams of becoming an academic leader when they grow up. It’s a tough job that’s only gotten more challenging as budgets shrink, public scrutiny rises, and responsibilities continue to grow. It requires a unique skill set – part field general, part mediator, part visionary, and part circus barker – to name just a few. But what does it really take to be an
effective leader?
In their initial study, authors Boston, Ice, and Gibson (2011) explored the relationship between student demographics and interactions, and retention at a large online university. Participants in the preliminary study(n = 20,569) included degree-seeking undergraduate students who completed at least one course at the American Public University System (APUS) in 2007. Two notable findings from the study were (1) the importance of transfer credit, and (2) the consistency of activity in predicting continued enrollment.Interestingly, the latter finding was confirmed upon the analysis of longitudinal data from the current study.Further related to the latter finding-yet unexpected, was the existence of new literature that, although subtle,affirms the importance for online institutions to conduct ongoing research on these topics. Readers of the current study are encouraged to refer to the preliminary study toward a comprehensive understanding of these nuances. Though informative, the researchers wished to validate the original study findings through longitudinal evaluation of retention.
As Canadian businesses look for new ways to empower workplace learning to meet demands to achieve more while having fewer resources available for training and development, interest in delivering programs using different kinds of instructional pproaches (e.g., face-to-face, problem-based learning, coaching) combined with a variety of technologies (e.g. discussion boards, e-content, conference calls) – generally referred to as blended learning – is growing. These blended learning strategies can be designed to provide opportunities for supporting just-in-time (i.e., immediate) access to learning tools and supports anywhere, anytime - especially important when the objective is to improve performance on the job. Generally, research in this area has focused on comparisons of classroom versus online courses versus blended programs indicating blended programs out-deliver either online or classroom when used alone. However, analysis of the impact of different blended learning strategies on personal soft-skills (e.g., coaching, teamwork, critical thinking) development and job performance has not been given much attention. The focus of this research study was to compare the learning impact/outcomes of four different blended learning strategies (offered in parallel in each of four research groups) based on a theoretical model emerging from work reported by Adams (2004). Each level in the model was defined by a different blended learning strategy that moves from a very loose coupling of personal learning with job performance in level 1 (e.g., online learning used as a background resource for self-directed learning), to tighter and tighter couplings of learning with job performance in level 2 (e.g., online materials integrated with a structured classroom course and required as pre-and post work) and level 3 where online learning materials were integrated with personal learning objectives and blended with collaborative discussion forums and peer coaching. Level 4, defined in this model as a very tight coupling of personal learning with job performance in relation to the previous three blended learning strategies mentioned involved using online learning materials to support personal job-based projects where participants worked on the projects as part of their learning (i.e., an action-learning pedagogical approach) where a demonstrable return on learning (ROL) was measured.
Higher education institutions around the world face the growing problem of relevance as they enter the twenty-first century. With the international economy evolving toward a global network organized around the value of knowledge , the capacity of people and organizations to use technological developments wisely, effectively, and efficiently has emerged as a critical societal concern. People and nations are relying on colleges and universities to help shape a positive future. However, to capture the advantage of this more central focus and role, higher education institutions will need to transform their structures, missions, processes, and programs in order to be both more flexible and more responsive to changing societal needs.
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.
Academic governance is a fundamental element of a higher education provider’s all-encompassing governance structure. If it’s not effective, it calls into question the whole academic framework for verifying quality and integrity in teaching, learning and scholarship in that institution.
The principal ‘body’ responsible for advising the corporate and management ‘arms’ of a higher education provider on all matters associated with the academic functioning of the institution is the 'academic board'.
The academic board is the peak body responsible for assuring academic quality and ensuring academic integrity and high standards in teaching, learning, scholarship and research. Underpinning these functions is the role the academic board has in academic policy development and review. It carries ou t functions in affiliation with (but independently of) the institution’s executive management.
Why does the federal government subsidize postsecondary education?
There are numerous positive externalities associated with high-quality postsecondary education. As a result, markets will likely produce less than is socially optimal. Consider that an important goal of postsecondary institutions is to train students and thus create a high-quality workforce. Much of the benefit of this training will be captured by the students themselves through higher earnings over their lifetime. Some of this benefit, however, will spill over to the larger society through improved long-term economic growth, lower unemployment and increased productivity, as well as greater equity and economic mobility.
Since 1977, we’ve been recommending that graduate departments partake in birth control, but no one has been listening,” said Paula Stephan to more than 200 postdocs and PhD students at a symposium in Boston, Massachusetts, in October this year. Stephan is a renowned labour economist at Georgia State University in Atlanta who has spent much of her career trying to understand the relationships between economics and science, particularly biomedical science. And the symposium, ‘Future of Research’, discussed the issue to which Stephan finds so many people deaf: the academic research system is generating progeny at a startling rate. In biomedicine, said Stephan. “We are definitely producing many more PhDs than there is demand for them in research positions.”
Why does art matter? To make art is a liminal act—it creates an active threshold between risk and reward, between waste and resource, between personal trauma and social redemption. Human beings tend to do far more than is needed to main-tain a natural equilibrium between our selves, our relations, and the environments we live in. We are catalysts. For better or worse, we make change, and that change requires something extra from us. Humans generate an excess of energy that must be expended and consumed one way or the other—either for personal or private gain, or toward the profi tless exercise of helping one another become more human (Rolling, 2015). It is risky business to make something from nothing, without the overt goal of adding to personal wealth or prior-itizing one’s national interests. Each aesthetic response, either to one another or to the materials at hand, is fraught with such risk because so much is invested. Who is the artist working for? Is it solely for his or her career? Or, with each intervention undertaken toward the enhancement of our better selves, is much more at stake than the present-day culture acknowledges or values?
Has there ever been a worse time for faculty and university administrators? Faculty and administrators alike are under siege on multiple fronts—huge budget cuts have been made in most states with more expected, collective bargaining has come under attack in some states, and an underlying threat to tenure permeates academe. A historian might simply attribute this to a poor economy and conclude that such conflicts, cyclical in nature, will pass. But it is far from clear that this storm will subside as others have. Higher education is at a critical juncture and many legislators, donors, trustees, and tuition-payers are fed up with academe’s perceived excesses and excuses.