The problem with textbooks is that they’re expensive. They’re sort of a hidden educational fee.
Like a lot of students, James Tait was supposed to buy the online component to his textbook. Buying used to save a bit of money, he didn’t get the online access code that comes with a new book.
“I needed it for my chemistry class, it was called Mastering Chemistry, but I never bought it,” he said.
The online component is an addition to the textbook, for homework, self-tests, and tutorials. Textbook companies include these platforms with the sale of new textbooks as an additional service, but also to reduce used textbook sales. The access code for Mastering Chemistry is about $70.
Work-integrated learning (WIL) has been identified as a key strategy for supporting Canada’s postsecondary education (PSE) system in responding to an increasingly dynamic, globalized, knowledge-based economy. Ontario in particular has been described as a “hot bed” of co-operative education (Ipsos Reid, 2010). However, while there is a common belief that WIL improves employment outcomes (see Gault, Redington & Schlager, 2000; Kramer & Usher, 2010), research on this topic has generally been specific to certain programs and types of WIL (Sattler, 2011).
This annual report from Noel-Levitz goes beyond the usual metrics of standardized test scores and high school transcripts to explore a wide range of non-cognitive attitudes that infl uence student retention and college completion rates for today’s entering college freshmen. Findings are reported separately for fouryear and two-year institutions, private and public, as well as for student subsets such as male vs. females.
The report is based on student survey responses drawn from a sizable national sample of entering
undergraduates in 2013.
Research shared at the recent NAICU meeting shows a “listening gap” between what the public wants from higher
ed — and what higher ed thinks is important. This shouldn’t be big news to any of us. But while private college presidents rightly worry about families’ ability to pay for education, they should also be inspired to focus on the overall reputation of their institution — and of higher education as a whole.
Can we step out of our bubble for a moment? I hope so, because unless we do we will not see that we are losing the battle.
What battle is that? Just the one for the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens, within the nation and without. Just the contest between the forces of rationality and those of darkness and ignorance. Just the eternal struggle to make ideas, and not force, relevant to the plight of those oppressed by ignorance and bad rhetoric. Just that.
If you have not seen the mainstream media lately, if you prefer more filtered sources of experience or retreats into sanity, maybe this is not obvious. However, a glimpse into the abyss of larger public discourse is enough to make the point vivid. Academic research, once celebrated as the vanguard of the best that was thought and expressed, is on the run. Enrolments are down. Public denunciations are routine, running a gamut from casual dismissal (“useless” degrees and the
like) to open hostility (“incubators of social justice warriors,” “ideological fog-machines,” etc. etc.).
College teachers love techniques. If you’re invited to lead a teaching workshop, you can expect to be asked, “Will you share some good techniques?” Suggest them in the workshop and watch lots of smiling participants write them down with great enthusiasm. Why do we love teaching techniques so much? Because many of us come to teaching not having many? Because they work? Because they keep our teaching feeling fresh?
Two former college presidents, both longtime scholars of higher education, discuss their new book on the problems - - real and imagined -- facing academe.
Beliefs about language learning and teaching have intrigued applied linguists since the mid-1980s starting with the pioneering work of Elaine Horwitz (1985) and Anita Wenden (1986). Since then, the interest in this topic in the field of Applied Linguistics has increased, with the publications of books on the theme (Bernat 2009; Borg, 2006; Kalaja & Barcelos, 2003) as well as several thesis, dissertations and journal articles. As a construct, beliefs have eluded researchers since the beginning being labeled as "messy" (Pajares, 1992) and complex. Several terms have been used to refer to beliefs such as folklinguistic theories of learning (Miller & Ginsberg, 1995), representations (Riley, 1994), metacognitive knowledge (Wenden, 1986), learning culture (Riley, 1997), the culture of learning languages (Barcelos, 1995), and culture of learning (Cortazzi & Jin, 1996), teacher cognition (Borg, 2003), and BAK (Beliefs-Assumption-Knowledge) (Woods, 1996). This profusion of terms is not necessarily negative. To quote Freeman (1991), "the issue is not the pluralism of labels, but the recognition of the phenomenon itself"
It’s hard to pick up a publication these days without reading something about blended course design or the flipped classroom. Even mainstream media have begun to cover these new approaches to teaching and learning that put more emphasis on active learning.
But despite their growing popularity, defining blended learning and flipped learning is more difficult than one would expect. Both models have a variety of definitions, and many consider the flipped classroom a form of blended learning. The Sloan Consortium has one of the most precise definitions, defining blended as “instruction that has between 30 and 80 percent of the course content delivered online.” For the sake of this report, we’re using a more broad definition of blended learning as a course that uses a combination of face-to-face and online learning.
According to the Consortium for School Networking's 2015 IT Leadership Survey, 84% of school technology officials expect that at least half of their insructional materials will be digitally based with three years.
Traditional pedagogy is premised on a belief that older generations teach younger generations how to learn. At this point in history, however, through their ubiquitous exposure to media, technology, and communication, younger generations understand contemporary forms of communication better and more tacitly than older generations. Yet schooling lags behind advances in communication and technologies, clinging to a concept that older generations still impart knowledge to prepare younger generations for the future. Jake Telluci (2007), a participant in our research study on marketplace production, articulated this discrepancy well, when he said, “It’s about when technology is in the hands of people, they will often just do things with it.” In this chapter, I argue that unveiling new media and digital technologies production practices exposes a logic and language that better serve as a contemporary model of learning. The process of adopting new media is iterative and cyclical in that meaning-makers pick up new media production practices, remix them, and make them their own. Forging a twenty-first century identity entails reappropriating practices and texts consumed on a daily basis.
at the university of british columbia, Aboriginal students congregate in a First Nations Longhouse. At the University of Manitoba, senior managers now travel to Aboriginal communities to recruit students. The University of Saskatchewan’s College of Engineering runs outreach programs to engage Aboriginal youth well before they are of university age. At Lakehead University, the Native access program assists students in making a successful transition to university.
Canadian universities are increasingly creating resources and programs for Aboriginal students – including courses, outreach and financial assistance, as well as programs and physical spaces where Aboriginal students can find counselling, support and connection to their culture.
For more than 10 years, the Center for Community College Student Engagement has worked with colleges to answer the most important question in higher education: How can we best restructure policy and practice to help the most students succeed?
The Center—along with Achieving the Dream, the Community College Research Center, Completion by Design, and other efforts—has led the field in understanding and using data to improve practice. Now, findings from more than 10 years of CCSSE survey administrations show an unmistakable trend: consistent, continuous improvement in engagement.
I will begin my comments this morning by focussing first on issues of access. Only then will I turn to persistence and policies to promote persistence.
Key Word: Tinto
The goal of the ESI (Essential Skills for Immigrants), Pre-Arrival Pilot Project is to develop and test a model for assessing and developing the essential skills (ES) of trained professionals before they arrive in Canada.
This study examined the assessment literacy of primary/junior teacher candidates in all four years of their concurrent program. Candidates from each year of the program completed a survey pertaining to self‐described level of assessment literacy, main
purposes of assessment, utilization of different assessment methods, need for further training, and suggested methods for promoting assessment literacy in university and practice teaching settings. Levels of self‐efficacy remained relatively low for teacher candidates across each of the four years of this program. Most candidates suggested summative purposes for assessment and only a minority expressed formative purposes. They favoured observational techniques and personal communication.
Key words: classroom assessment; preservice education
Cette étude porte sur la capacité d’évaluation chez les étudiants en pédagogie durant les quatre années de leur programme de formation à l’enseignement au primaire et au premier cycle du secondaire. Des étudiants de chaque année du programme ont
rempli un questionnaire portant sur les sujets suivants : auto‐estimation de leur aptitude à l’évaluation, buts principaux des évaluations, utilisation de diverses méthodes d’évaluation, besoin d’une formation plus poussée et suggestion de
méthodes pouvant aider à perfectionner l’aptitude à l’évaluation à l’université et lors de stages pédagogiques. Les répondants dans chacune des années du programme estimaient que leur capacité d’évaluation était relativement faible. La plupart ont
parlé d’évaluations sommatives et seulement une minorité, d’évaluations formatives. Les répondants favorisaient les techniques d’observation et les communications personnelles.
Mots clés : évaluation des élèves, formation à l’enseignement
The aim of this study was to review the existing literature on game-based digital interventions for depression systematically and examine their effectiveness through a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Database searching was conducted using specific search terms and inclusion criteria. A standard meta-analysis was also conducted of available RCT studies with a random effects model. The standard mean difference (Cohen’s d) was used to calculate the effect size of each study. Nineteen studies were included in the review, and 10 RCTs (eight studies) were included in the meta-analysis. Four types of game interventions—psycho-education and training, virtual reality exposure therapy, exercising, and entertainment—were identified, with various types of support delivered and populations targeted. The meta-analysis revealed a moderate effect size of the game interventions for depression therapy at posttreatment (d= -0.47 [95% CI - 0.69 to - 0.24]). A subgroup analysis
showed that interventions based on psycho-education and training had a smaller effect than those based on the other forms, and that self-help interventions yielded better outcomes than supported interventions. A higher effect was achieved when a waiting list was used as the control. The review and meta-analysis support the effectiveness of game-based digital interventions for depression. More large-scale, high-quality RCT studies with sufficient long-term data for treatment evaluation are needed.
This qualitative case study investigated how adult graduates of online Bachelor's degree programs describe the online aspect of their degree. Online education is promoted as a method for adult students to access the benefits of a college degree. Therefore, it is important for prospective online students, higher education institutions and policy makers to understand how online degrees are valued in society and by online graduates.The primary method of data collection was interviews of 24 graduates. The setting of this study, a well-regarded research university primarily known for its traditional campus-based programs, helped to isolate perceptions of the online delivery modality. All participants in the study held a high opinion of their online degree and of the university. However, the participants also recognized that some people have a negative opinion of online degrees. The participants described two strategies for dealing with encounters with people with negative perceptions of online degrees. Slightly more than half of the participants were forthcoming and open about earning a degree online. However, a large minority of participants were concerned about negative perceptions of online degrees. These participants often did not volunteer information about the online aspect of their degree to other people unless specifically questioned. Additional research is recommended to further explain the extent to which perceptions of online degrees are associated with the online delivery mode rather than other factors and to investigate the effect of delivery mode and institution type on the economic impact of an earning a Bachelor's degree later in life.
President Obama’s goal is for America to lead the world in college graduates by 2020. Although
for-profit institutions have increased their output of graduates at ten times the rate of nonprofits over the past decade,
Congress and the U.S. Department of Education have argued that these institutions exploit the ambitions of
lower-performing students. In response, this study examined how student characteristics predicted graduation odds at a large, regionally accredited for- profit institution campus. A logistic regression predicted graduation for the full population of 2,548 undergraduate students enrolled from 2005 to 2009 with scheduled graduation by June 30, 2011. Sixteen independent predictors were identified from school records and organized in the Bean and Metzner framework. The regression model was more robust than any in the literature, with a Nagelkerke R2 of .663. Only five factors had a significant impact on log odds: (a) grade point average (GPA), where higher values increased odds; (b) half time enrollment, which had lower odds than full time; (c) Blacks, who had higher odds than Whites; (d) credits required, where fewer credits increased odds; and (e) primary
expected family contribution, where higher values increased odds. These findings imply that public policy will not increase college graduates by focusing on institution characteristics.
I come not only to praise Kathleen Wynne, but also to bury her. The auspices for her government are so dire that a eulogy today hardly seems premature. Writing it now lets us imagine what settled opinion in the future, freed from the toxic fog of the current campaign, might make of Wynne and her six-year premiership.
Certainly four years of Premier Doug Ford will be more than enough to clear the air. But even before that, I suspect Wynne will emerge in hindsight as the bold leader of the most capable and effective government Ontario has enjoyed since the heyday of the fabled Big Blue Machine. She will be remembered as the best of her generation, representing Ontario at its
best.