A recent surge in the number of students applying to colleges and universities is creating heavy administrative
burden and increasing competition to attract top applicants. The National Center for Education found that enrollment at academic institutions has grown from 25% in 1970 to 40% in 2014 for adults between the ages of 18 and 24. Even this year, universities across the country like UCLA, Princeton, and Williams College in Massachusetts reported up to a 25% increase in applications. This increase is leading many institutions to modernize their digital infrastructure – converting from a decades-old paper system that has become inefficient in the modern age to streamlining communication between students,
faculty, and staff electronically. Laserfiche is leading this change and institutions are seeing transformative results.
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
High expectations are an essential condition for student success. Simply put, no one rises to low expectations. But establishing high expectations is no simple matter. It requires more than just words, more than telling students that the community college holds high expectations for them. It also requires the establishment of policies and practices — and in turn, patterns of faculty, staff, and
student actions — that reinforce those words in everyday practice. High expectations have to be experienced, not simply heard.
In this study, the authors’ determined the individual learner characteristics of educators enrolled in online courses that influenced social presence (affective social communication). Findings reveal that the number of online courses taken, followed
by computer‐mediated communication proficiency, are significant predictors of social presence. Recommendations for the effective use of online learning recognize that instructors must deliberately structure interaction patterns to overcome the potential lack of social presence of the medium. Similarly, quality instructional design and course development strategies need be incorporated with supportive pre‐course instructional activities provided to acquaint novice learners with online learning
expectations.
Key words: online learning, social presence, learner characteristics, computermediated
communication
Background: The number of non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF), including both full-time (FT) and part-time (PT) positions, has risen to two-thirds of faculty positions across the academy. To date, most of the studies of NTTF have relied on secondary data or large-scale surveys. Few qualitative studies exist that examine the experience, working conditions, and worklife of NTTF. The study is framed by the theory advanced by Berger and Luckmann that reality is socially constructed and the broader sociological tradition of symbolic interactionism described by Blumer, Denzin, and Stryker.
The leadership of Higher Education institutions has been placed under increasing scrutiny since the 1980s with the expansion of student numbers, changes in funding for student places, increased marketization and student choice, and continuing globalisation of the sector. In this climate of change Higher Education institutions have been required to consider how to develop their leaders and what might be appropriate leadership behaviour to enable adaptation to these new circumstances. When the various paradigms of leadership encountered in the Higher Education sector are compared with established leadership theory and practice it is possible to identify further intricacies in the development of Higher Education leaders. Further consideration of practicalities within Higher Education identifies whether competence frameworks might assist in leadership development. An examination of a recently-developed comprehensive framework of leadership capabilities applied in an alternative sector leads to an evaluation as to whether the same constructs apply to the demands placed upon leaders in Higher Education. Analysis demonstrates that, with minor changes in terminology, the constructs remain appropriate and valid. The definitions Higher Education leaders could be developed and therefore form a potential framework of leadership capabilities for Higher Education.
This article examines the elusive concept of safety in liberal arts classrooms which are often contoured by a plurality of social, cultural, political, psychological, historical, and discursive forces and performances. Using select principles from adult education and social work with groups as an organizing metaphor, the article discusses the classroom as a large group, the changing student body, and, especially, the impact of diversity and inclusivity in liberal arts settings. Because the aim of liberal arts education is usually to promote independent and critical thinking, open-mindedness, and greater communi cation and decision-making skills, its goals foster, to a great degree, citizen engagement that empowers persons to participate in
collective actions toward greater equality and justice in communities both locally and globally. Class- room safety is essential to these aims because it increases opportunity for free, critical, and independent thought necessary for progressive, egalitarian, and justice pursuits. The article explores safety, including dialogic practices and reflection on relations of power within the classroom, for its significant role in fulfilling liberal arts aspirations.
Mergers have been a frequent phenomenon in higher education in the last quarter century. The conventional wisdom is that mergers are undertaken mainly for economic reasons, either to expand markets or to reduce costs. About four out of five college or university mergers survive. In the for-profit sector the comparable rate is closer to two out of five. From this one might conclude that the future for mergers among colleges and universities is robust. If, however, the principal purpose of mergers is economic efficiency, there logically ought to be a point beyond which the efficacy of merger will begin to decline. There is, however, another motive for merger, which is unrelated to economic efficiency. Mergers can produce greater diversity of programs and services, both among individual colleges and universities and within systems of postsecondary education.
Problem statement: Graffiti is about self-expression. When youth cannot find people to listen to them, they may express their strongly felt, internal experiences and emotions safely by writing on public property. Thus, graffiti can be handled as a counseling issue. When this self-expression of a thought, wish, or attitude comes from prospective teachers, the difficult
work of sorting these issues out may help us develop better teacher-education programs and produce better teachers. Thus, this work takes the issue of graffiti by prospective teachers as an interdisciplinary issue, bridging counseling and teacher training.
Building prosperity through university research.
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.
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
KSU redefined the MOOC value proposition through collaboration of university leadership and faculty. The new proposition shifts measures of success beyond just course completion to include measures that benefit students, faculty, and the institution. Students benefitted through access to open educational resources, the acquisition of professional learning units at no cost, and the potential of college credit at a greatly reduced cost. Academic units benefited through a mechanism to attract students and future revenue while the university benefited through digital impressions, branding, institutionally leveraged scalable learning environments, streamlined credit evaluation processes and expanded digital education.
Should copyright law lock down music and literature to protect the financial interests of rights-holders? Or should it promote broad access to, and use of, intellectual goods? These questions are at the core of the growing public debate over the need for fair and balanced copyright law, a debate that college and university students have a critical stake in. As creators and owners of copyright material (essays, articles, theses and multi-media productions), students need to protect their work from unjust appropriation. But to study, research, write and create new knowledge, students also need ready access, at a reasonable cost, to the copyrighted works of others. This tri-part perspective—of use, creation and ownership of copyright—gives students special credibility in the struggle for fair and balanced copyright law.
Student pathways increasingly rely on transfer between postsecondary institutions as greater numbers of students move between institutions, pursue multiple credentials, or return to postsecondary education. In a 2011 survey of Ontario college students, 41% reported having some post-secondary experience; the same survey also found that 19% of respondents said their main goal in applying for their current program was to “prepare for further university or college study.” Transfer of credit for prior learning is clearly an increasingly mainstream educational activity, and institutions are under increasing pressure to improve the processes by which this occurs.
Even as the economy has at last begun to expand at a more rapid pace, growth in wages and benefits for most American workers has continued its decades-long stagnation. Real hourly wages of the median American worker were just 5 percent higher in 2013 than they were
in 1979, while the wages of the bottom decile of earners were 5 percent lower in 2013 than
in 1979.1 Trends since the early 2000s are even more pronounced. Inflation-adjusted wage growth from 2003 to 2013 was either flat or negative for the entire bottom 70 percent of the wage distribution.2 Compounding the problem of stagnating wages is the decline in employer-provided health insurance, with the share of non-elderly Americans receiving insurance from an employer falling from 67 percent in 2003 to 58.4 percent in 2013.
The increases in tuition and fee prices in 2015-16 were, like the increases in the two preceding years, relatively small by historical standards. However, the very low rate of general inflation makes this year’s increases in college prices larger in real terms than those of 2014-15 and 2013-14. Significantly, and perhaps counter to public impressions, price increases are not accelerating over time. However, the average published tuition and fee price of a full-time year at a public four-year institution is 40% higher, after adjusting for inflation, in 2015-16 than it was in 2005-06.The average published price is 29%
higher in the public two-year sector and 26% higher in the private nonprofit four-year sector than a decade ago.
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.
This study was motivated by the premise that no nation grows further than the quality of its educational leaders.
The purpose of this theoretical debate is to examine the wider context of leadership and its effectiveness towards improving school management. This academic evaluation examines recent theoretical developments in the study of educational leadership in school management. It begins with a concise overview of the meaning and concept of leadership in terms of research, theory, and practice. This is followed by an examination of the theories of leadership, principles and styles of leadership. Each section ends with an identification of contemporary issues and possible means of amelioration. This article concludes that success is certain if the application of the leadership styles, principles and methods is properly and fully applied in school management
because quality educational leadership tradition offers great opportunity to further refine educational leadership and management policies and practices by accepting and utilizing the basic principles and styles of educational leadership.
Following the design of a similar study in 2000, the authors conducted a study of university senates (academic councils) to assess the current state of academic governance in Canada’s universities. An earlier paper presented and analyzed the data that were gathered about senate size, composition, structure, legislative authority, and work, and about structural and governance
changes to senates in the intervening decade. The current paper focuses on themes arising from responses to the 2012 survey’s open-ended questions, highlighting key findings. Significant findings relate to a sizeable discrepancy between senate members’ perceptions of the importance of effective academic oversight and their success at achieving this. Suggested reforms include: reviewing and improving senate performance; fostering a culture of trust and respect among and within governing bodies; clarifying spheres of authority and accountability; and promoting the importance of collegial governance and oversight within the institution.