The Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines, established by the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, maintain that adults should get at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every week in order to maintain their optimal health.1 However, only 15 per cent of Canadian adults meet these guidelines. Of equal concern, Canadians spend 10 of their waking hours each day being sedentary. Even when adults meet the recommended guidelines for physical activity, it is important for them to limit their sedentary time in order to improve or maintain their health.
Today's students increasingly expect ubiquitous lecture capture so they can review lectures to improve their understanding
of the material or catch up on a class they missed. "Lecture capture in general is becoming very quickly an
expectation of students," said Chris Edwards, assistant vice president at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio.
Included in this addendum are the fi ndings for the Noel-Levitz 2014 National Freshman Attitudes Report by race/ethnicity for incoming students. These data show the percentage of students within each group that agreed with each item.
This quantitative study examined the relationship between the Big 5 personality traits and how they relate to online teacher effectiveness. The primary method of data collection for this study was through the use of surveys primarily building upon the Personality Style Inventory (PSI)(Lounsbury & Gibson, 2010), a work-based personality measure, was the instrument used to assess personality measures. In addition an evaluation instrument was developed by the researchers to evaluate classroom performance across a 10-point scale. In total 115 instructors from a large predominantly online university were surveyed through Qualtrics for personality traits and then had their courses evaluated for effectiveness and quality utilizing measures based on the Quality Matters program. Using a Pearson product moment correlation coefficient, it was found that 9 personality traits were significantly correlated with online teaching performance. While the results of this study can only be seen at this point as preliminary, it does open the door to further studies to determine if online teacher training or professional development interventions should take a different approach. Ultimately, the findings of this study demonstrated that personality does play a significant role in the effectiveness of online teaching performance.
Within the past decade, the unprecedented growth in non-tenure/tenure track faculty has led to speculation as to the learning environment and learning outcomes for students. Both nationalmedia and researchers have raised concerns about the growth in short-term contract faculty, yet there is little evidentiary data to support policy development. Our study of sessional faculty
in Ontario’s publicly funded universities provides much needed data and insight into the current pressures, challenges, and adaptations of the rapidly rising number of university instructors who work on short-term contracts, also known as sessional faculty.
"The current economic crisis is a structural one. Emerging industries require that young people possess new knowledge and entrepreneurial skills. Furthermore, tax and regulatory systems often inhibit business formation by young people. Systemic change is needed to help the new generation of young entrepreneurs to succeed in the innovative economy of the 21st century.”
The rise of online and hybrid courses at the higher education level increases the need for distance learning infrastructures to nourish online faculty preparedness and student online learning success. One part of the distance learning infrastructure is incorporating the use of educated and trained instructional designers to assist faculty in developing robust and quality online courses. Developing online courses with an instructional designer is a very laborious process, but the results can outweigh the struggles that faculty encounter when doing it on their own. The authors explain what is involved in an established sixstep
course development model for developing, reviewing, and delivering a quality online course.
Media and policy commentary have focused lately on Canadian employers’ apparent inability to find employees with the desired labour market skills. To explore this issue further, HEQCO reviewed and summarized the current discourse surrounding a “skills gap” in The Great Skills Divide: A Review of the Literature and conducted an analysis of Canadian job advertisements geared toward recent postsecondary graduates in Bridging the Divide, Part I: What Canadian Job Ads Said. In the latter publication, 316 job advertisements for entry-level positions requiring postsecondary education were examined to ascertain the education credentials, work experience and essential skills employers were seeking. To follow-up on Bridging the Divide, Part I, the current report analyzes survey responses from 103 employers that posted job advertisements included in the preceding study. In particular, employers were asked if they had filled the advertised position or, if not, the reasons for being unable to find someone to hire. Those employers that had filled the position were also asked about the successful candidates’ qualifications and performance on the job so far.
The central goal of the Canadian residential school system was to ‘Christianize’ and ‘civilize’ Aboriginal people, a process intended to lead to their cultural assimilation into Euro-Canadian society. This policy goal was directed at all Aboriginal people and all Aboriginal cultures. It failed to take into account the devel-opment of new Aboriginal nations, and the implications of the Indian Act’s definition of who was and was not a “status Indian” and the British North America Act’s division of responsibility for “Indians.” In the government’s vision, there was no place for the Métis Nation that proclaimed itself in the Canadian Northwest in the nineteenth cen-tury. Neither was there any place for the large number of Aboriginal people who, for a variety of reasons, chose not to terminate their Treaty rights, or for those women, and their children, who lost their Indian Act status by marrying a person who did not have such status. These individuals were classed or identified alternately as “non-sta-tus Indians,” “half-breeds,” or “Métis.” In different times or different places, they might also identify themselves by these terms, but often they did not. Instead, they might view themselves to be members of specific First Nations, Inuit, or Euro-Canadian societies. For the sake of clarity, this chapter generally uses the term Métis to describe people of mixed descent who were not able, or chose not, to be registered as Indians under the Indian Act. It should be recognized that not all the people described by this term would have identified themselves as Métis during their lives, and that the histo-ries of these people varied considerably, depending on time and location.
Over the past decade or so, the bachelor’s degree has undergone major changes in much of the world. The most important set of changes was brought on by the adoption, across Europe, of the Bologna Process. This led not only to the introduction of bachelor’s degrees in countries where no such qualification had previously existed, but also to a pan-continental harmonization (more or less) of the length of the degree, at three years. More recently, a number of universities in the United States – where a four-year degree has been sacrosanct for decades – have started experimenting with shorter degrees. At the same time that systems have been altering the length of degrees, there has also been a trend for systems in Europe and elsewhere – including Ontario and other parts of Canada – to open up degree provision to non-university Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This has broken the centuries-long monopoly of universities over the provision of granting degrees. These two major experiments in changing times and changing places are the subject of this report, which was undertaken by Higher Education Strategy Associates for the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO).
Canada's post-secondary institutions are not producing enough graduates with the right skills to drive future economic growth, warns the head of one of the country's largest banks.
CIBC chief executive Victor Dodig told The Canadian Press in an interview Tuesday that much of the country's eventual economic success will be generated by entrepreneurs who commercialize new ideas and technologies.
The college classroom lies at the center of the educational activity structure of institutions of higher education; the educational encounters that occur therein are a major feature of student educational experience. Indeed, for students who commute to college, especially those who have multiple obligations outside the college, the classroom may be the only place where students and faculty meet, where education in the formal sense is experienced. For those students, in particular, the classroom is the crossroads where the social and the academic meet. If academic and social involvement or integration is to occur, it must occur in the classroom.
This report builds on the work of the past decade by the research team of the College Mathematics Project (CMP) and the College Student Achievement Project (CSAP) based at Seneca College, of which the authors were members. In particular, the senior author was a principal author of the final reports of both CMP and CSAP over the past several years. However, the present paper, while drawing heavily from those reports, is the responsibility of its two authors.
In Ontario, the topic of increasing transferability between colleges and universities has recently attracted the attention of
numerous individuals in the fields of higher education, politics and the local media – many of whom have suggested that increasing the availability of college to university transfer programs, also known as articulation agreements, would facilitate pathways to higher education for a greater number of students from diverse backgrounds. However, there are many issues surrounding the transfer of students from colleges to universities in Ontario, most of which are connected to the historical structure of the system of postsecondary education in the province. Any progress towards a system of greater transferability between community Ontario and universities would require a careful analysis of the success of existing college to university transfer programs as well as a radical reconsideration of the provincial system of postsecondary education as a whole.
The ability to reach a variety of audiences in diverse environments has made distance learning a major form of education
and training in the 21st century. Though traditionally encountered in the educational and business communities, distance learning has proven an important resource for a variety of other constituencies. Terrorist groups have exploited the digital domain as a means of recruitment, propaganda and training, and other related activities, including the use of distance learning as a strategic resource and force multiplier. The distance learning strategies and tactics of jihadists are reviewed as we explore the dark side of distance learning.
Abstract
Informal mid-term feedback processes create opportunities for students and academics to have a dialogue about their progress and to make any necessary or reasonable mid-stream corrections. This article reports on an action research project designed to see what impact mid-semester feedback might have on the classroom experience. The underlying motive for the study was to generate institution-specific “proof” which might encourage other academic staff to conduct informal mid-semester informal feedback exercises with their students.
End-of-semester data shows that both students and lecturers found the exercise to be a positive
experience. Students appreciated being able to voice their problems and opinions at a time when
mid-course corrections were possible. Lecturers felt there was an improvement in
the lines of communication, resulting in a friendlier teaching and learning environment.
Academic governance is a fundamental element of a higher education provider’s all-encompassing governance structure. If it’s not effective, it calls into question the whole academic framework for verifying quality and integrity in teaching, learning and scholarship in that institution.
The principal ‘body’ responsible for advising the corporate and management ‘arms’ of a higher education provider on all matters associated with the academic functioning of the institution is the 'academic board'.
The academic board is the peak body responsible for assuring academic quality and ensuring academic integrity and high standards in teaching, learning, scholarship and research. Underpinning these functions is the role the academic board has in academic policy development and review. It carries ou t functions in affiliation with (but independently of) the institution’s executive management.
This report examines some of the key issues surrounding the education of First Nations, Métis and Inuit students and proposes a governance framework that school boards can use to improve student results.
With all of the recent writing on globalization, it is a welcome addition to find a book that deals comprehensively with the relationship between globalization and education at all levels and comparatively in different countries, both developed and developing. This book is a collection of articles that arose from presentations at the 1997 western regional conference of the Comparative and International Education Society and were later augmented. Given that history, it is unusual for such a book to be a cohesive whole, and yet it manages to be that. The quality of the various contributions is quite consistent and authors
acknowledge different contributions and perspectives that appear in other sections of the book.
Jeannine Plamondon is a legal counsel who seeks justice for war crimes. Erin O’Brien is a United Nations worker helping to achieve food security in Africa. And Christopher Charles is a social entrepreneur and the inventor of a tool to combat anemia in Cambodia. These accomplished professionals are a few of the former participants in the Students for Development (SFD) program whose current careers and study paths have been profoundly shaped by their SFD internship experiences.