Understanding sexual assault.
In July 2016, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) published Understanding the
Sustainability of the Ontario Postsecondary System and its Institutions: A Framework (Weingarten,
Hicks & Moran, 2016). The key messages of the report were:
1. Sustainability is about more than just money. It also relates to the quality of education and the academic experience institutions can offer.
2. The best sustainability regimes are those that look forward and are designed to predict future challenges.
3. Overcoming sustainability challenges requires collaboration between government and institutions.
The tools available are inextricably linked to other policies and practices, such as
enrolment planning, tuition policy, funding formulas, differentiation and institutional autonomy.
The Yekooche First Nation is a community of approximately 120 people, located about 85 km northwest of Fort St. James in British Columbia and approximately 990 kilometres from Vancouver. The community is remote, accessible only by logging road and since the mid 1990’s has been working progressively towards Final Agreement in treaty negotiation.1 In the fall of 2005, Yekooche First Nation asked Royal Roads University (RRU)2 and the B.C. Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation to assist them in developing an approach to community-based training that would enable members to assume self-government responsibilities once their treaty was ratified. During this same time, a Community Skills Inventory was conducted that identified a critical need for capacity-building in governance, focusing on a wide array of skills related to information and communication technologies (ICTs), administration, health, civil infrastructure, as well as basic job skills. The inventory identified these areas as priorities in preparing community members for carrying out the new governance-related activities.
Globalisation and Higher Education
APA referrences
Dan Lang
Can all the universities that claim to be “world-class” actually live up to the claim? If they could be, would that be desirable public policy? It could be that there are so many different meanings of “world-class” that the term in practical effect is an oxymoron: the definition of “world” is determined locally when conceptually it should be defined internationally.
This paper discusses different kinds of institutional quality, how quality is formed and how it can be measured, particularly by comparison. It also discusses the subtle but fundamental differences between quality and reputation. The paper concludes with the suggestion that world-class comparisons of research quality and productivity are possible, but that any broader application to the “world-class” quality of universities will be at best futile and at worst misleading.
On the surface America’s public commitment to provide access to any individual who seeks entry to postsecondary education seems to be working. Our higher education system enjoys one of the highest participation rates in the world. More than 16 million students currently enroll in public and private two and four-year colleges and universities in the United States. In the past 20 years, enrollments have grown over 25 percent; the proportion of high school graduates entering college immediately after high school has increased from 49 percent in 1980 to over 68 percent today. More importantly, the gap in access between high and low-income youth has shrunk as greater numbers of economically disadvantaged students have enrolled in college; the number entering college immediately after high school having increased by over 60 percent since 1970. By any count, access to higher education for low-income students is greater today than ever.
Educators tasked with finding instructional materials for their districts and classrooms face a dizzying array of options these days. Classroom resources are available in print, digital textbook formats, and online. They can be paid for, subscribed to, or downloaded for free. They’re available as comprehensive, yearlong curricula; individual thematic units; and single activities and games.
Several forces have collided to bring the market to this confusing, yet ultimately academically promising point: The majority of states are now using the Common Core State Standards, meaning there are more opportunities to share materials across state lines. States are increasingly letting districts choose their own instructional materials, rather than forcing them to select from an approved list. There’s been a recent push, including from the federal government, to make online instructional materials free and open to the public—known as open educational resources
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.
Two former college presidents, both longtime scholars of higher education, discuss their new book on the problems - - real and imagined -- facing academe.
Evelyn Christner has a job — actually, four jobs — with low pay, negligible sick time, no vacation or health insurance, no retirement plan, no guarantee of work and zero long-term job security. Christner doesn't serve french fries or run the cash register at a convenience store; she teaches anthropology and sociology to college students.
Part-time adjuncts like her, who freelance without the benefits of tenure or even regular employment, make up the majority of college instructors in the U.S. Tight budgets are pushing colleges and universities to rely increasingly on adjuncts (sometimes called associate or contingent faculty members), but their lives often are a far cry from the ivory-tower image of traditional academe.
This paper explores the potential of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), to provide new insights into community service-learning (CSL) in higher education. While CSL literature acknowledges the influences of John Dewey and Paolo Freire, discussion of the potential contribution of cultural-historical activity theory, rooted in the work of Russian psychologist
Lev Vygotsky, is noticeably absent. This paper addresses this gap by examining four assumptions
associated with activity theory: the rejection of a theory/practice divide, the development of
knowledge as a social collaborative activity, the focus on contradictions in and across activity
systems, and the interventionist approach
aimed at transformation.
The advent of online learning has created the medium for cyber-bullying in the virtual classroom and also by e-mail. Bullying is usually expected in the workplace and between students in the classroom. Most recently, however, faculty members have
become surprising targets of online bullying. For many, there are no established policies nor is training provided on how to react. The current research defines the problem, reviews the findings of a cyber-bullying survey, and explores recommendations for addressing cyber-bullying through policies, training, and professional development.
Pendant que presque tous les pays du monde s’occupent, de façon tout à fait justifiée, de la récession actuelle, une crise démographiquetouchant le marché du travail menace d’ébranler les fondements mêmes de notre société et denotre économie.
This paper presents the findings of a mixed-method case study conducted at the University of Guelph on the relationship between practice lecturing and graduate student self-efficacy. Building on the work of Boman (2013), and using surveys and individual interviews, we measured and characterized the perceived changes in graduate students’ self-efficacy in learner-centred lecturing. Our research question was: In what ways, if any, does microteaching contribute to participants’ perceived self-efficacy in learner-centred lecturing? Our results and discussion reveal that practice increases self-efficacy with respect to the design, facilitation, and assessment of learner-centred lectures, and is a vital component to graduate student teaching development programming
This report presents the findings of a one-year study of the creation and implementation of a new Français course at the University of Ottawa, offered as a pilot project in 2012-2013. The course was created at the request of francophone first-year students from regions of Canada where the French language is in a minority context. These students reported experiencing difficulty in bridging the gap between the literacy skills they acquired in secondary school and the academic literacy skills
required of them to succeed in the mandatory foundational French courses (FRA courses) and other courses taught in French (Lamoureux et al., 2013).
With the rise in online and hybrid courses at the post-secondary level, many institutions are offering various online learning readiness assessments to students who are considering these instructional formats. Following a discussion of the characteristics often attributed to successful online learners, as well as a review of a sample of the publicly available online readiness surveys, an application of one representative tool is described. Specifically, the Distance Education Aptitude and Readiness Scale was administered in both hybrid and face-to-face sections of beginning post-secondary French across a two-year span. Differences in scores between groups, as well as the relationship between scores and grades are examined.
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.
Previous research has shown that fathers taking some time off work around childbirth, especially periods of leave of 2 or more weeks, are more likely to be involved in childcare related activities than fathers who do not do so. Furthermore, evidence suggests that children with fathers who are ‘more involved’ perform better during the early years than their peers with less involved fathers. This paper analyses data of four OECD countries — Australia; Denmark; United Kingdom; United States — to describe how leave policies may influence father’s behaviours when children are young and whether their involvement translates into positive child cognitive and behavioural outcomes. This analysis shows that fathers’ leave, father’s involvement and child development are related. Fathers who take leave, especially those taking two weeks or more, are more likely to carry out childcare related activities when children are young. This study finds some evidence that children with highly involved fathers tend to perform better in terms of cognitive test scores. Evidence on the association between fathers’ involvement and behavioural outcomes was however weak. When data on different types of childcare activities was available, results suggest that the kind of involvement matters. These results suggest that what matters is the quality and not the quantity of father-child interactions.
U of T responds to a rise in mental health needs on campus.
Education has lost its soul. The idealism of the 70s was crushed upon the rocks of the back-to-the-basics movement of the 80s. In today’s hyper-testing environment, there is little room for real learning, creativity, innovation, passion, and curiosity. Today, education today is more about what we do to students than what students do. Adopting a humanistic approach to education is one way to find our way back.