It was in 2007 that I compiled the first Top 100 Tools for Learning from the votes of learning professionals worldwide and have done so every year since then. This year to mark the 10th anniversary I have compiled the TOP 200 TOOLS FOR LEARNING 2016. The full list appears in the left-hand sidebar; follow the links to find out more about each of the tools. The slideset of the Top 200 Tools is embedded at the bottom of this page.
The Canadian Mental Health Commission, launched August 2007, proposed to create a national mental health strategy with the release of the draft document, Toward Well-being and Recovery: A Framework towards a Mental Health Strategy for Canada, January 2009. The Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care released its document; Every Door is the Right Door - Towards a 10-Year Mental Health and Addictions Strategy: A discussion paper in July 2009. While both documents recognize the importance of targeting youth for interventions in order to improve population mental health, the reports overlooked the key role that colleges and universities play in promoting community mental health.
We, as Ontario College Health Association (OCHA), an association for college and university health services, are health educators/ health promoters, nurses, physicians, and medical clinic staff and managers, witness the devastating effects of mental illness on our students. Speaking from our shared experience as some of the front line care givers of students with mental illness, we will highlight in this report, the importance of targeting postsecondary students, the role that colleges and universities play in mental health promotion, and the barriers that prevent proactive and seamless mental health care on campuses.
It comes as news to no one that 8am classes are too early for some students.
A recent study published in Frontiers of Neuroscience, and reported at NPR finds that “the ideal start time would be more like 10 or 11am.” Most traditional-aged college students just aren't wired to be awake and productive at 8am.
Over the last sixteen years, I have taught an 8am class probably about 2/3rds of the semesters.
I like 8am classes. When I taught at Clemson I had a 45 minute commute and four sections crammed into a TTH schedule. Starting at 8am meant I could avoid traffic and finish up the day at a reasonable hour.
I don’t mind getting up early and going to bed before 10pm. I’m basically worthless in terms of higher order thought after 6pm. My natural rhythms sync with 8am classes.
This is not true for many students. I became well-familiar with the research when a team of students in an 8am technical writing class tackled class scheduling for their group project. The genesis of their interest was their loathing of their 8am technical writing class, a section they felt they’d been conscripted into because of curricular requirements combined with a shortage of
sections. For several, the choice was either take it at 8am or don’tgraduate.
In the span of a week, the future of three Alberta colleges was set. On February 22, Minister of Advanced Education Marlin Schmidt announced that Grande Prairie Regional College (GPRC) had been approved for degree-granting status, with a view to becoming a university. On March
1, Premier Rachel Notley appeared at an event to announce that Red Deer College (RDC)
also had been approved to grant its own degrees. That same day, the education minister again
went before the cameras to confirm that the Alberta College of Art + Design (ACAD) had
achieved university status.
Employability Skills Toolkit for the self-managing learner. Graphic presentation.
The paper presents a discussion of faculty development in 22 of Ontario's Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology. We report the findings of a survey which collected information on administrative structure, funding, mandate, faculty development activities, publication, incentives for faculty participation, assessment of faculty needs and evaluation. We conclude by raising a number of questions which faculty developers might address as changes in the social, political and economic environment present new challenges to colleges and universities.
Building on an earlier 2008 summary prepared for OECD by Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter, this paper by Gesa S. E. van den Broek provides a more extensive discussion of approaches described as “research based innovation.” Fostering Communities of Learning is a constructivist approach in which teachers help students discover important curricular concepts. Learning by Design is an inquiry-based science learning programme based on case-based reasoning models. Central Conceptual Structures (CCS) theory describes developmental changes in children’s thinking and what is needed to progress through stages in specific cognitive domains. Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) is an internet-based adaptive learning environment building on the principles of knowledge integration. Cognitive Tutors and ACT-R theory are intelligent adaptive software programmes that provide students with scaffolded instruction and feedback. Direct Instruction aims to accelerate learning through clear scripted direct instruction by the teacher and scaffolded practice aimed at student involvement and error reduction. Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) is for disadvantaged students especially to engage in Socratic dialogues about ideas and strategies to solve computer game-based problems. Knowledge Building is a constructivist teaching approach centred on building knowledge and creating knowledge communities.
RÉSUMÉ
NEW YORK, Jan. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, The Jed Foundation (JED) and the Steve Fund, two leading mental health organizations, announced a joint plan to provide colleges and universities with recommended practices for improving support for the mental health and emotional well-being of America's college students of color. The announcement is accompanied by the release of new data showing the urgency of improving mental health support for this population.
Over the past decade, the Government of Ontario has increased investment in postsecondary education significantly, including increasing operating grants by 80 per cent since 2002–03. These investments helped to improve access to postsecondary education, supported significant enrolment growth at universities and colleges, and drove community and economic development. The tremendous expansion of Ontario’s postsecondary education system was made possible thanks to the commitment of our postsecondary education institutions to access, and their willingness to respond to the demand.
Leadership is to this decade what standards-based reform was to the 1990s. Put another way, if you want to boost achievement scores from poor to good levels, a strong standard-based reform strategy can take you so far; but if the aim is to accomplish deeper, continuous improvement, leadership at many levels of the system is required.
The University of Washington, for the first time ever, has fired a faculty member over findings of sexual harassment.
The termination surprised some not only for the what, but also for the who: Michael Katze, a professor of
microbiology. Well funded and a major player in infectious disease research, Katze appeared to some as exactly the
kind of professor who might have been protected by his (or any) institution in the past.
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 recent years educators and policymakers have set a goal that students graduate from high school ready for college and careers. However, as a nation we are far from achieving this goal, particularly for low-income and minority students. For example, in states where all eleventh-graders take the ACT®, only 27 percent of low-income students in 2010 met the ACT College Readiness Benchmark in reading, with 16 percent meeting the Benchmark in mathematics, and 11 percent meeting the Benchmark in science.
Efforts to improve students’ academic preparation have often been directed at the high-school level, although for many students, gaps in academic preparation begin much earlier. Large numbers of disadvantaged students enter kindergarten behind in early reading and mathematics skills, oral language development, vocabulary, and general knowledge. These gaps are
likely to widen over time because of the “Matthew effects,” whereby those who start out behind are at a relative disadvantage in acquiring new knowledge.
The primary objectives of the Pan-Canadian Education Indicators Program (PCEIP) are to develop and maintain a set of statistics that provide information about education and learning in Canada and to support evidence-based policy making. PCEIP has been doing this since publishing its first set of education indicators for Canada and its jurisdictions in 1996. In September 2009, a set of international indicators was introduced in the first edition of Education Indicators in Canada: An International Perspective. Each year, this PCEIP series presents indicators for Canada and its provinces/territories, placing them in a broader international context. The report has been designed to complement and expand upon the information for Canada that is provided annually to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for publication in its Education at a Glance (EAG) report. The international context provided by the report supports the mission of the Canadian Education Statistics Council (CESC) to “create and commit to comprehensive and long-term strategies, plans, and programs to collect, analyze, and disseminate nationally and internationally policy-relevant and comparable statistical information.”
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.
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 curriculum should pay particular attention to ethnic, gender, and other forms of social difference and inequality. At the same time, it should stress the importance of studying, ideals and experiences of what it means to be a teacher. Courses should be designed to explore these issues in both historical and contemporary settings. Although the concentration needs to be on the content, a good curriculum needs to be designed to foster a community of learning among people and at the same time to offer considerable flexibility and intellectual diversity (J. Yalden, Long, Micheal H., Richards, Jack C. 2001). In this paper we will analyze key aspects of, and changes in, the curriculum, social and economic development in South Eastern Europe in the last twenty years. Major issues covered in this paper will be: the impact of communism on society; political and education reform; the problems of people with special needs; the changing role and status of minority groups and the introduction of a service learning project in the curriculum.
Keywords: Service-learning; education, curriculum, creativity
As academics, we grapple with failure all the time and in a myriad of ways.
One of the best parts of academia is that we are always learning. In our quest to develop a deeper understanding of the world around us, we occupy various positions as expert and novice learners. But, this is also one of the hardest parts of our jobs: in order to learn, we must open ourselves up to the risk of failure, mistakes and missteps.
As academics, we grapple with failure all the time and in a myriad of ways. We are rejected on the job market, we are dejected after an unsuccessful grant application, and we are crestfallen when Reviewer 2 destroys our central argument. Our ideas are challenged during a conference session or during a departmental meeting; we are criticized in the Twittersphere or in book reviews. A class can spectacularly self-implode despite careful preparation or a student might fail to thrive despite our best efforts.
International education is becoming an increasingly competitive sector within the field of postsecondary education. Tomorrow’s leaders will be expected to speak multiple languages, work in foreign countries, and bridge cultural differences to achieve social, economic and political objectives. Governments around the world are responding to this trend by intensifying the internationalization of their higher education systems — both attracting a greater number of international students and ensuring their citizens are able to pursue studies beyond national boundaries. In our globalized world, the demand for international education and experience continues to grow rapidly.
Teacher has a great responsibility on determining the success of learning process of a language classroom as there are many elements that teachers need to take into account in establishing effective learning environment for their students whom may vary in terms of cultures, races, intellect, learning strategies and many more others. Hence, well thought leadins are indeed crucial to be applied in language classroom as it Arrendas (1998) has explained that leadin is a strategy that been used by teachers in the initial part of the lesson which aims at exposing the students to the content of the lesson as well as enabling the students to correlate the idea with their prior knowledge in order to create meaningful learning environment for the students. Prior to this matter, leadins is another important element in pedagogy that should not be taken lightly among the teachers and has to be explored deeper in order to be utilized effectively in their classrooms. As there is not much studies that are focused in this matter, it is hoped that it is the academic gap that the researchers hoped to fill in into the rapid development of academic field.