As Canada’s youth consider their increasingly broad and complex array of post-secondary education (PSE) options, they are faced with potentially costly decisions. Moreover, they often do not have the information they need to make appropriate choices, which can negatively impact their participation and persistence in PSE. For many students, it is a challenge to choose, design and follow a post-secondary pathway to its conclusion without deviating from their original plan. Students are increasingly taking non-linear pathways through PSE. Some may need to relocate and attend a different institution. Many students may decide to change the focus of their study, while others may wish to change their program entirely. Some may shift their goals from academic to applied forms of study, or vice versa. However, the structures of post-secondary systems in our provinces, and the various mechanisms that bind them, do not always provide clearly apparent and unobstructed pathways for students, particularly for mobile students. These problems are exacerbated by shifting mandates, roles, and labels of institutions across the Canadian PSE sector.
Canada does not have a clear framework for understanding the many changes that have occurred within its PSE sector over the past 15 years. This monograph sets out to explain these changes, with a view to clarifying their potential effects on students’ comprehension of, and mobility through, the structures that comprise our current PSE landscape. In the past, Canadian post-secondary education has been described as binary, a term that indicates the presence of two separate institutional sectors: public universities offering academic and professional programming at the degree-level; and public colleges providing diplomas and certificates in programs of a more technical or vocational nature. However, this conceptualization overlooks private post-secondary institutions and, as Marshall (2006) notes, “significant growth in the number and types of degrees offered by a wider variety of Canadian post-secondary institutions” over recent decades.1 As a result, the distinction between the university and college sectors has become increasingly blurred, and the nature of some Canadian post-secondary institutions is no longer made clear by their names. Canada’s PSE sector is now characterized by a broad and complex mix of institutions for which a clear and comprehensive taxonomy has yet to be developed.
Evolutionary and legislative changes in many Canadian jurisdictions challenge the transparency of current Canadian post-secondary education vocabulary. Students’ ideas about which institutions offer which programs, and which programs lead to which opportunities, may not be aligned with these changes. It is arguable that Canadian PSE has become less transparent in recent years, exacerbating the potential that students make PSE decisions inappropriate to their aspirations. Issues of program choice and fit might be better addressed through the provision of a classification framework aimed at making Canadian PSE more transparent to its users.
An important goal of Ontario’s postsecondary education system is to provide the appropriate level of educational attainment to meet the current and future human capital needs of the province (HEQCO, 2009: 19). This purpose reflects the recognition that education and training contribute to the human capital of individuals and make them more productive workers and better informed citizens. Attainment of further education not only provides for individual returns such as higher earnings and
lower levels of unemployment , improved health and longevity, and greater satisfaction with life, but it is also strongly linked to social returns such as safer communities, healthy citizens, greater civic participation, stronger social cohesion and improved
equity and social justice (Riddell, 2006). In order for the province to maintain and enhance its economic standing in the changing global economy, and to provide its citizens with the social benefits that higher education affords, it must ensure that the
human capital needs of its society are met.
Much attention over the past decade has been given by policy makers to the importance of data-driven decision making and evidence-based practices in education (Aguerrebere, 2009; Cilbulka, 2013; CCSSO, 2012; Duncan, 2009, 2010, 2012; Easton, 2009, 2010; National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, 2010). And much has been written about data-driven decision making in recent years. The field has seen special issues of journals (Coburn & Turner, 2012; Turner & Coburn, 2012; Wayman, 2005a, 2005b, 2006), edited books (Herman & Haertel, 2005; Kowalski & Lasley, 2009; Mandinach & Honey, 2008; Moss, 2007), focused books (Boudett, City, & Murnane, 2007; Mandinach & Jackson, 2012; Supovitz, 2006), research syntheses (Hamilton, Halverson, Jackson, Mandinach, Supovitz, & Wayman, 2009), and federally funded landscape studies (Means, Chen, DaBarger, & Padilla, 2011; Means, Padilla, & Gallagher, 2010). Yet the field is still emerging. There is much we know (Hamilton et al., 2009), and there is also much we do not know (Mandinach, 2012; Marsh, 2012; Turner & Coburn, 2012) or that has methodological challenges. Even some of the most rigorously designed studies about impact result in interpretive questions (Carlson, Borman, & Robinson, 2011; Konstantanopoulus, Miller, & van der Ploeg, 2013).
Executive Summary
The main objective of this report is to learn about the state of knowledge regarding the role of
financial literacy as a complex barrier to postsecondary attendance.1 To achieve this goal, the
report contains a literature review of existing studies in the area, as well as an environmental scan of existing programs and initiatives. When possible, the focus of the report is on low-income high school students in the context of making decisions regarding postsecondary education. In this ideal setting, financial literacy will be defined as knowledge of all the costs, benefits, and available aid associated with postsecondary education. In reality, there are few studies and existing programs that fit this ideal profile. However, we have identified several studies that share these characteristics to a large extent. Specifically, we describe and discuss 21 related studies and 34 related programs. Although most studies and programs are Canadian, we also broaden the scope somewhat to include countries with similar postsecondary systems as Canada (e.g. the United States, the
United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand). Our literature review focuses on Canadian and American evidence, and has uncovered several important findings. First, the cost of a postsecondary education is vastly overestimated by the public at large and by low-income youth in particular. In contrast, the economic benefits to attending university are generally underestimated (equally for low- and high-income households). Whether knowing about the costs and benefits matters for pursuing a
postsecondary education is less clear given the lack of convincing evidence in this area.
While awareness of student financial aid is not necessarily an issue, it appears that knowledge of aid is limited. This may be related to the complexity of student financial aid, which is not only costly, but may also represent a barrier to some students.
A non-negligible portion of students are loan averse, which means that they will avoid grant opportunities when they are coupled with an optional student loan. This is the case even though the loans can be refused or invested at zero repayable interest.
Research also demonstrates that helping students complete their financial aid and postsecondary application forms has a large impact on application and admission rates. In contrast, offering information to students (without application assistance) is generally not sufficient to affect behaviour. Finally, once in university, the majority of undergraduates follow a budget and regularly pay off their credit card balance each month. This suggests a certain degree of awareness and control regarding their finances, which may help them repay their loans on time and avoid defaulting.
In the traditional college classroom today, faculty and students arrive with a certain set of expectations, shaped largely by past experiences. And although students may need the occasional (or perhaps frequent) reminder of what’s required of them, there’s usually something very familiar about the experience for both faculty and students alike. In the online classroom, an entirely new set of variables enters the equation. It’s a little like trying to drive in a foreign country. You know how to drive, just like you know how to teach, but it sure is hard to get the hang of driving on the left side of the road, you’re not quite sure how far a kilometer is, and darn it if those road signs aren’t all in Japanese.
This special report explains the “rules of the road” for online teaching and learning and features a series of columns that first appeared in the Distance Education Report’s “Between the Clicks,” a popular column by Dr. Lawrence C. Ragan, Director of Instructional Design and Development for Penn State’s World Campus.
The articles contained in the report will help you establish online instructor best practices and expectations, and include the following principles of effective online teaching:
• Show Up and Teach
• Practice Proactive Course Management Strategies
• Establish Patterns of Course Activities
• Plan for the Unplanned
• Response Requested and Expected
• Think Before You Write
• Help Maintain Forward Progress
• Safe and Secure
• Quality Counts
• (Double) Click a Mile on My Connection
These principles, developed at Penn State’s World Campus, outline the core behaviors of the successful online instructor, and help to define parameters around the investment of time on part of the instructor. In his articles, Ragan identifies potential barriers and limitations to online learning, and specific strategies to assist instructors in achieving the performance
expectations.
Students' relationship with technology is complex. They recognize its value but still need guidance when it comes to better using it for academics. The affinity of undergraduates for multimedia, mobile devices, and multitasking is well documented. What is less well recognized is the circumspect way in which students think about integrating technology into their academic lives, a characteristic of college students that has persisted for many years.
While there is broad consensus that literacy skills are essential for work and life in general,
there is less consensus about numeracy, even though both are defined as essential skills by a number of sources,
including provincial and national governments and international agencies. As a part of HEQCO’s
continuing examination of learning outcomes in Ontario’s postsecondary sector, this report reviews the available data on numeracy skills and revisits the postsecondary sector’s understanding and treatment of numeracy as an
essential skill.
MyLivePD is a completely new model of
PD that focuses on delivering timely,
relevant and actionable coaching for math teachers through live online sessions with no appointments needed. For the first time, math teachers can connect with an experienced coach to ask a specific question about their teaching on their own schedule from any Internet-enabled computer. The service was created to be
completely driven by the teacher. It is also meant to be a continuous process where teachers get help throughout the school year. This level of personalization and privacy does not exist in any other PD model.
MyLivePD was implemented in three
districts and several Teach for America
regions in the fall of 2011. All districts and teachers have been granted access to the service through December 2012. This paper will provide further details on how MyLivePD works, the initial results from the pilot program to date and conclusions on how MyLivePD can be used by schools as part of their PD
programs.
This paper provides one of the first analyses of the benefits to the university student of scholarships and bursaries in Ontario and Canada and has potentially important policy implications. Entry scholarships and bursaries have two main potential benefits: 1) they may attract stronger students to a given university, and 2) they may promote better performance in university. The first type of benefit mainly accrues to the individual school and not to the student or the province as a whole. The second type of benefit, however, may apply to all students who receive entry scholarships and hence leads to improved academic performance throughout
the system.
Over the past decade, the Ontario postsecondary sector has experienced pressure from a number of societal forces (Clark, Moran, Skolnik & Trick, 2009). The demand for increased access to postsecondary education (PSE), which is moving higher education from an elite model to one of near universal participation, has resulted in undergraduate enrolment increases
of close to 50 per cent over the past decade1. These increases are taking place in an environment where demands in other areas are also being made on institutions and faculty.Demands for increased accountability, demonstrated quality assurance and increased research and development responsibilities have placed higher burdens on institutions and faculty, which are intensified by tight budgets and limited resources. Institutions have responded to these pressures in part, by increasing average class sizes. In 2009, about two thirds of Ontario universities reported that 30 per cent or more of first year courses had more than 100 students.
The average number of FTE students per full time faculty has increased from 17 in 1987 to 25 in 2007 (Clark, Moran, Skolnik & Trick, 2009, page 99). The consequences of this and other adjustments on educational quality are unknown. Undoubtedly, these pressures will continue and intensify in coming years given projections of demand for PSE in Ontario, particularly for undergraduate degrees. As a result, there is a need for the higher education sector in Ontario to identify the challenges and opportunities that are unique to large class teaching environments, as well as strategies to approach these issues, in
order to maintain the quality of student learning in the face of rising class sizes.
A major problem in identifying trends with large classes is in defining what constitutes a large class. This will differ according to the discipline, the level and nature of the class (such as introductory or upper year, lecture, tutorial or laboratory), and the perceptions of lecturers and individual students. For the purposes of this study, a large class is defined as one in which a change in traditional teaching methods is deemed appropriate or necessary, so it may include an introductory class of 700 students or an upper year seminar with fifty.
Since 1987, the Canadian Association of University Business Officers (CAUBO) has celebrated the administrative achievements of our members through the Quality & Productivity (Q&P) Awards Program. The simple concept of sharing good ideas has grown
into an established best practices program that celebrates the successes of our members and provides a venue for spreading the word.
CAUBO promotes the professional and effective delivery of services and administration of resources in all facets of higher education. This annual awards program is designed to recognize, reward and share achievements of administrators in the introduction of new services, improvement in the quality of services provided, and the management of human, financial, and
physical resources.
Depuis 1987, L’Association canadienne du personnel administratif universitaire (ACPAU) souligne les bons coups de ses membres par l’entremise du programme des prix de la qualité et de la productivité. Le concept de départ, qui consistait à
communiquer de bonnes idées, a germé; aujourd’hui, il s’agit d’un programme bien établi qui réunit des pratiques exemplaires, met en valeur les réussites de nos membres et constitue un moyen de diffuser ce savoir.
L’ACPAU s’occupe de promouvoir la prestation professionnelle de services et l’administration effice de ressources dans toutes les facettes de l’enseignement supérieur. Le programme des prix de la qualité et de la productivité vise à récompenser et à faire connaître chaque année les réalisations des administrateurs universitaires, que ce soit pour l’introduction de nouveaux services, l’amélioration de la qualité des services fournis, ou encore la gestion des ressources humaines, financières
ou physiques.
In 2008, the OECD launched the AHELO feasibility study, an initiative with the objective to assess whether it is possible to develop international measures of learning outcomes in higher education.
Learning outcomes are indeed key to a meaningful education, and focusing on learning outcomes is essential to inform diagnosis and improve teaching processes and student learning. While there is a long tradition of learning outcomes’ assessment within institutions’ courses and programmes, emphasis on learning outcomes has become more important in
recent years. Interest in developing comparative measures of learning outcomes has increased in response to a range of higher education trends, challenges and paradigm shifts.
When viewed holistically, Canada lacks a clear and common understanding of the future directions and top priorities of its post-secondary education (PSE) sector. Perhaps as a result, Canada has not yet comprehensively addressed a fundamental question: How do we demonstrate quality in PSE? To answer this question requires clarification of many issues, including the roles that various institutions and sectors play. It also requires the development of a shared vision of PSE, of what can and should be achieved. Despite much discussion among leaders of various education sectors in Canada, an agreement on a plan of action has yet to be reached. Indeed, a national dialogue on this critical issue is needed.
As a starting point for a national dialogue, the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) has published three annual reports on the state of post-secondary education in Canada over the last four years. These reports provided an overview of the Canadian PSE landscape while highlighting various issues common among education jurisdictions and institutions. For instance, CCL’s 2006 report, Canadian Post-secondary Education: A Positive Record¯– An Uncertain Future, identified eight goals common among the post-secondary strategies of provinces and territories. One of these common goals was addressing the issue of quality in PSE.
CCL’s new monograph series, Challenges in Canadian Post-secondary Education, focuses on important considerations identified in our previous reports. Here, with the inaugural monograph, “Up to Par: The Challenge of Demonstrating Quality in Canadian Post-secondary Education,” CCL discusses the complex challenges associated with defining and demonstrating quality in PSE. As the monograph asserts, a necessary step toward understanding and demonstrating quality in PSE is clarification of the overarching purposes and objectives of Canada’s collective post-secondary efforts. The common goals identified by CCL suggest convergence among Canadian education jurisdictions upon which a pan-Canadian strategy for PSE could be built. Nevertheless, debate persists on how best to structure institutions and systems—debate which further confuses our understanding of quality in PSE. Acquiring PSE has been linked to a number of individual benefits, such as better health and quality of life, and a greater likelihood of increased lifetime earnings. In turn, countries with higher levels of PSE participation enjoy greater economic prosperity, employment stability, labour flexibility, productivity and civic participation.1 Increased PSE enrolment rates reflect a growing awareness of the economic benefits of a PSE qualification. Following a period of decline in the 1990s, university enrolment has increased markedly. Between 2001 and 2007, total university enrolment in Canada rose by 19.2%, from 886,700 to over 1 million. Over the same period, the level of graduate studies enrolment grew by 25.3% to over 150,000. This increase has not been limited to universities. In fact, the share of the working-age population in Canada with any type of post-
Aboriginal people in Canada have long understood the role building healthy, thriving communities.
Despite significant cultural and historical differences, Canada’s First Nations, Inuit and Métis people share a vision of learning as a holistic, lifelong process.
Increasingly, governments, Aboriginal organizations and communities are making decisions and developing policies that reflect a better understanding and awareness of an Aboriginal perspective on learning. However, the effectiveness of these
decisions still typically rely on conventional measurement approaches that offer a limited—and indeed incomplete—view of the state of Aboriginal learning in Canada. Current measurement approaches typically focus on the discrepancies in educational attainment between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth (in particular, high-school completion rates) and often overlook the many aspects of learning that are integral to an Aboriginal perspective on learning. As a result, conventional measurement approaches rarely reflect the specific needs and aspirations of Aboriginal people.
This situation is not unique to Canada. In a recent report, the United Nations stated “it is of utmost importance that Governments, indigenous peoples, donors and civil society organizations work together to ensure that special [measurement] approaches are devised to coincide with the aspirations of indigenous peoples. Without a comprehensive understanding of Aboriginal people's perspective on learning and a culturally appropriate framework for measuring it, the diverse aspirations and needs of First Nations, Inuit and Métis across Canada will continue to be misinterpreted and misunderstood.
Approaches to higher education have been evolving at an increasingly rapid pace over the past decade, and graduate education is a critical part of that evolution. In Ontario alone, the number of new programs offered at our institutions has increased dramatically since 2004, and between 1999 and 2009, the number of PhD students enrolled in Ontario universities has nearly doubled (Maldonado, Wiggers, & Arnold, 2013). Students are coming to graduate school at different stages of their lives (Wiggers, Lennon, & Frank, 2011) and, in today’s economy, many are leaving graduate schools with increased uncertainty and anxiety about their career prospects (Maldonado et al., 2013; Patton, 2012).
Whereas in the past it was considered the norm for graduate students to move on to careers in academia, recent studies have confirmed what is apparent to most casual observers: the standard path is no longer into academia. For example, a 2010 study estimated that about 50 per cent of US PhD graduates now take positions outside of academia (Wendler, Bridgeman, Cline, Millett, Rock, Bell, & McAllister, 2010), and those who end up in academia are less likely to hold full-time tenure-stream positions. From 1975 to 2009, the proportion of full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty positions decreased as a proportion of the total number of instructional staff at US universities from approximately 45 to 24 per cent (AAUC), with part-time faculty positions comprising the majority of instructional positions (41%) by 2009. Within the Canadian context, current estimates suggest that less than 25 per cent of PhD students will end up in full-time tenure-stream research and teaching positions (Charbonneau, 2011; Tamburri, 2010).
In an effort to improve writing skills, the Writing Centre at Wilfrid Laurier University developed a series of free online resources and tools for students. However, a recent study by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) found that even when integrated into the classroom experience, only a small number of students actually used the tool as they felt it was not relevant to them, and those who did saw no impact on their grades. The authors feel further research is needed into how to best
integrate the service into the classroom, including potentially assigning grades for its use.
Project Description
Wilfrid Laurier University’s online assignment planner (AP) gives students access to timelines, resources and advice for information gathering, citations and effective writing. Writing Instruction Using an Online Assignment Planner examined students in four large first-year classes and one fourth-year seminar class. Students from the large first-year programs were randomly assigned to either a group with explicit integration of the AP into classroom activities, or a control group with no integration. The study tracked the number of times students accessed the AP, writing marks, conducted in-class surveys and professor interviews.
In Canada, 1,172,785 persons identify as Aboriginal, and 698,025 identify as First Nations.
• Aboriginal youth are the fastest growing demographic. The First Nations population grew 3.5 times faster than the on-Aboriginal population in 2006.
• Approximately 30% of the First Nations adult population is less than 30 years of age while 13% are 60 years of age and older.
This study reviewed over 40 programs in Ontario colleges and universities that were designed to increase recruitment, participation and retention of Aboriginal students in postsecondary education (PSE). It involved a literature review, site visits to 6 postsecondary institutions and qualitative interviews with program administrators and coordinators at 28 institutions across the province. Qualitative interviews were also conducted with students at selected institutions. A summary of the research findings is presented below. Overall, researchers found that, relative to only five years ago, colleges and universities in
Ontario have made significant progress in developing support programs for Aboriginal students. In 2004, a pan-Canadian study (Malatest, p. 23) looked at best practices in Aboriginal support programs. At that time, Ontario was in the formative stages of developing programs, particularly when compared with Manitoba and other Western provinces. Virtually all colleges and
universities in Ontario now have some form of support program. Furthermore, many postsecondary institutions have taken a holistic approach and have implemented a number of programs, each targeting different underlying causes of the lower incidence of PSE success among Aboriginal students. Among the programs offered are the following:
• Aboriginal student services programs,
• Aboriginal access programs,
• Aboriginal studies and Aboriginal designated programs,
• health care programs, and
• Aboriginal teacher education programs.
It should be noted that the research compiled in this report is largely qualitative. There is widespread agreement among the stakeholders interviewed that these types of programs are valuable; however, there was a distinct lack of outcome data available to allow the researchers to state that the programs reviewed had a “measurable†and positive impact on Aboriginal students’ postsecondary success. Nevertheless, where student outcomes were measured, the results were promising.
Despite the lack of quantitative evidence to support the impact of the programs, the researchers were able to infer that progress has been made on a number of fronts. In addition to the large number of institutions offering one or more of the above programs, in other institutions, Aboriginal management bodies are in place to help inform the design and implementation of the
programs. Aboriginal Elders are being consulted and are playing a more active role on college and university campuses. The number of courses being offered in the native languages of Ontario’s First Nations Peoples has increased, and the number of Aboriginal teachers available to teach and serve as role models has also increased.
In 2013, the national economy began to recover more earnestly. Some states even increased funding for higher education, although not by much.1 Performance-based funding, greater accountability, student completion rates and gainful employment became the often-heard buzz words of 2013. Not to be out done, most distance education programs are pressured to find ways to close the student achievement gap many online programs still experience as compared to face-to-face courses, or risk
seeing further budget and staff reductions. As the authors of the ITC survey have suggested for the past several years, the Great Recession has forced many states to undergo a paradigm shift in how they will make funding decisions for colleges and
universities in the years to come.
David Cooperrider, the originator of a relatively new approach to organizational or institutional change called Appreciative Inquiry, tells the story of a conversation he had with the father of modern management, Peter Drucker, before his recent death. He asked Drucker, then 93, to distill the essence of what he knew about leadership. Drucker told Cooperrider, “The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths, making our weaknesses irrelevant.” Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a way of helping organizations discover their strengths so they can create an alignment of those strengths, making their weaknesses and problems irrelevant. Since the mid-1980s, thousands of organizations in more than 100 countries – corporations, businesses, nonprofits, churches, educational and governmental organizations – have used this strengths-based approach to
organizational or institutional change and development.