There is a growing body of research demonstrating that there have been major changes in the work and working conditions of university teachers in many countries over the last few decades. In some cases this has led to the increasing employment of non-full-time university instructors, and questions have been raised, especially in the United States, concerning the working conditions of part-time faculty and the implications of these changes on educational quality. The number of full-time faculty at Ontario universities has not increased at the same pace as the massive growth in student enrolment, raising questions about whether universities have employed non-full-time faculty in larger numbers and whether the balance between full-time and non-full-time instructors is changing. However, very little empirical research has been conducted on non-full-time instructors in Ontario. This study offers a preliminary exploration of the issue by addressing four key questions:
a) What categories of non-full-time instructors are employed by Ontario universities?
b) What are the conditions of employment for non-full-time instructors?
c) Has the number of non-full-time instructors employed by Ontario universities changed over time?
d) Has the ratio of full-time to non-full-time instructors employed by Ontario universities changed over time?
The research method focused on the collection and analysis of publicly available information through a detailed review of collective agreements and related documentation, and the analysis of institutional data on employment. Most institutions do not report data on non-full-time instructor appointments.
During the spring and summer of 2013, 41 Canadian universities conducted a survey of their baccalaureate graduates six or seven years following graduation (i.e. 2006 and 2007 graduates). Over 21,000 graduates provided information about their current employment situation, educational activity following their bachelor's program and their current social and civic involvement; and they assessed various elements of their academic program and university experience overall and the impacts these have in their lives today.
June 2014
The Canadian University Baccalaureate Graduate Outcomes Project
This report is the first in a series that will report the key findings of the survey. Future reports will cover other survey topics, including the relationship between current occupation and academic program, educational activity following baccalaureate graduation, graduates' assessments of the strengths,weaknesses and impacts of their academic program, and discipline-specific analyses (e.g. for the STEM disciplines, Humanities and Liberal Arts, etc.).
When Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence MOOC made headline news in 2011, one of the early predictions was that quality education at mass scale and at low cost was around the corner. Given our research center’s interest in the productivity of educational interventions, we have been watching for evidence that MOOCs are cost-effective in producing desirable educational outcomes compared to face-to-face experiences or other online interventions. While the MOOC phenomenon is not mature enough to afford conclusions on the question of long-term cost-effectiveness, this study serves as an exploration of the goals of institutions creating or adopting MOOCs and how these institutions define effectiveness of their MOOC initiatives. We assess the current evidence regarding whether and how these goals are being achieved and at what cost, and we review expectations regarding the role of MOOCs in education over the next five years.
GRADUATES WITH RELEVANT WORK EXPERIENCE ARE AHEAD OF THEIR PEERS.
THE NATIONAL GRADUATES SURVEY SHOWS BACHELOR’S LEVEL GRADUATES WITH CO-OP EXPERIENCE EARN MORE THAN THEIR PEERS, HAVE HIGHER EMPLOYMENT AND FULL-TIME EMPLOYMENT RATES, AND ARE MORE LIKELY TO HAVE PAID OFF DEBT TWO YEARS AFTER GRADUATION.
ACT has been measuring college readiness trends for several years. The Condition of College & Career Readiness
is ACT’s annual report on the progress of the graduating class relative to college readiness. This year, 54.3% of the graduating class took the ACT® college readiness assessment. The increased number of test takers enhances the breadth and depth of the data pool, providing a comprehensive picture of the current graduating class in the context of readiness levels as well as offering a glimpse of the emerging educational pipeline.
Based on recent public opinion polling commissioned by the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA), an
overwhelming majority of Ontarians (79 per cent) agreed that students and their families have to borrow too much money
to pay for their education. When asked to rank (on a scale of to 5) how important a university degree was to finding a good
job, 53 per cent of those surveyed selected 4 or 5, indicating that a degree was ‘important’ or ‘very important’. Only 11 per
cent of the respondents ranked a degree as ‘unimportant’ or ‘very unimportant’ to securing a good job. Finally, nearly half
of Ontarians indicated that they would be willing to pay more taxes to decrease student costs and increase student financial
assistance.
This report compares eligibility for student financial aid by examining the amount of funds (both repayable and non-repayable) that a student would be eligible to receive in each province, based on their income group (low-, middle- and high-income). Provincial administration of part (or all) of financial aid has resulted in great variability in the type, quantity, and availability of resources offered to students. Individual provinces have demonstrated priorities such as debt reduction strategies, universal grants, and student independence from parental support, to name a few.
Key findings include that:
• The combination of federal, provincial and joint administered student financial aid programs are inherently complex, lack transparency, and thus, remain removed from public scrutiny and discussion.
• Appalling inequities exist in the amount of resources offered to students, based on their province of residence.
• Enormous differences in tuition between provinces are the greatest factor in determining the cost of education and therefore have a great impact on the amount of debt a student may accumulate.
• Provincial grant programs, whether needs-based or universal, are the largest contributor to debt reduction.
What do 6,000 Quebec (Canada) students do with their iPads every day? What benefits does this technology have for education? What are the challenges for students and teachers? To respond to these questions and to shed more light on this new education trend, we decided to carry out one of the largest studies to date on the use of iPads in education in collaboration with 18 elementary and high schools in the province of Quebec, Canada. By the same token, we wanted to help teachers, students, principals, parents, educators, and other education stakeholders use the iPads for learning in more reflective and educational ways. The results show that the benefits outweigh the challenges. It would appear that incorporating the iPad into education constitutes a necessary risk for schools, and that this technological tool has breathtaking cognitive potential. At
the same time, introducing it into the classroom does not necessarily make for a smooth transition. On the contrary, this new technology can pose challenges that teachers may find hard to cope with if they are caught unaware. The key to successful integration of the iPad in education is therefore to provide teachers with proper training.
Abstract
A growing number of education and social science researchers design and conduct online research. In this review, the Internet Research Ethics (IRE) policy gap in Canada is identified along with the range of stakeholders and groups that either have a role or have attempted to play a role in forming better ethics policy. Ethical issues that current policy and guidelines fail to address
are interrogated and discussed. Complexities around applying the human subject model to internet research are explored, such as issues of privacy, anonymity, and informed consent. The authors call for immediate action on the Canadian ethics policy gap and urge the research community to consider the situational, contextual, and temporal aspects of IRE in the development
of flexible and responsive policies that address the complexity and diversity of internet research spaces.
RÉSUMÉ
Un nombre croissant de recherchistes en enseignement et en sciences sociales conçoivent et dirigent des recherches en ligne. La présente revue identifie les lacunes en matière de politique d’éthique en recherche Internet (Internet Research Ethics - IRE) au Canada, et reconnaît l’éventail d’intervenants et de groupes qui ont soit joué un rôle, soit tenté d’en jouer un, dans la
création d’une meilleure politique d’éthique. On y aborde les enjeux éthiques auxquels les politiques et lignes directrices actuelles ne répondent pas et on s’interroge à ce sujet. On y explore les complexités relatives à l’application du
modèle humain à la recherche dans Internet, comme les enjeux portant sur l’anonymat, le consentement éclairé et le respect de la vie privée. Les auteurs invitent à passer immédiatement à l’action en ce qui a trait aux lacunes en matière de politique d’éthique au Canada, et pressent le milieu de la recherche afin qu’il prenne en considération les aspects situationnels,
contextuels et temporels de l’éthique en recherche Internet dans la création de politiques souples et judicieuses qui abordent la complexité et la diversité des espaces de recherche Internet.
As our nation strives to have all students graduate from high school ready for college and other postsecondary learning opportunities, we have to confront the reality that we are far from achieving this goal. The problem is most severe with
economically disadvantaged students. For example, in states where all eleventh graders take the ACT® college readiness assessment, only 45% of low-income students in 2012 met the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks in English, 30% in reading,
21% in mathematics, and 13% in science. For many students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, learning gaps
appear in early childhood.2 Large numbers of disadvantaged students enter kindergarten behind in early reading and mathematics skills, oral language development, vocabulary, and general knowledge. This situation poses a challenge for
intervention models that presume that 15% or so of students need short-term additional help, 5% or so need long-term intervention, and the regular academic program will take care of the rest. In cases where the great majority of students are
academically behind and need major assistance, the regular academic program must be upgraded to deliver a richer curriculum to all students. Such a curriculum is highly beneficial for all students, but is especially critical for disadvantaged students, who often arrive from home with limited knowledge and vocabulary. School districts must develop a system of practices that enable such a curriculum to be taught effectively.
Previous research on blended course offerings focuses on the addition of asynchronous online content to an existing course. While some explore synchronous communication, few control for differences between treatment groups.
This study investigates the impact of teaching a blended course, using a virtual, interactive, real-time, instructor-led (VIRI) classroom, on student engagement, performance, and satisfaction. We use an experimental design with
both a control group and a treatment group. Up to 90 students in a large urban university are randomly assigned by the registrar into two sections of an introductory marketing course. Using a pre- and post-semester questionnaire, the study measures student engagement, performance, and satisfaction. There are no statistical differences in student performance between the control and treatment groups. The only student engagement factor with a statistically significant difference between groups is student interest in their courses. Compared with the control group, the treatment group appears to be more interested (+10%) in their courses at the end of the semester. Finally, fewer than 2 in 10 students express dissatisfaction with their participation in a VIRI course. Blended course offerings are increasing in importance in marketing and business
education. The study provides guidance for fine-tuning the features of those course offerings by demonstrating how a VIRI classroom leverages the capabilities of technology without compromising learning outcomes.
Résumé
Des recherches antérieures portant sur l’offre de cours mixtes ciblent l’ajout de contenu en ligne asynchrone à un cours préexistant. Alors que certains explorent la communication synchrone, d’aucuns effectuent un contrôle des différences entre les groupes de traitement. Cette étude examine l’impact de l’enseignement d’un cours mixte, sur l’engagement, la performance, et la satisfaction des étudiants, en utilisant une classe Virtuelle, Interactive, en temps réel (Real Time), dirigé par un Instructeur ou une Instructrice (VIRI). Nous utilisons un modèle expérimental avec un groupe, à la fois, de contrôle et de traitement. Un nombre d’étudiants qui peu atteindre 90, dans une grande université urbaine, sont aléatoirement répartis par le registraire
en deux sections d’un cours introductoire de marketing. L’étude mesure l’engagement, la performance, et la satisfaction des étudiants en utilisant un questionnaire pré- et post-semestriel. Il n’existe pas de différences statistiques de performance des étudiants entre le groupe de contrôle et celui de traitement. Le seul facteur d’engagement des étudiants ayant une
différence statistiquement significative entre les groupes est l’intérêt des étudiants à leurs cours. Comparé aux étudiants du groupe de contrôle, ceux et celles du groupe de traitement semble être plus intéressés (+10%) à leurs cours à la fin du semestre. En définitive, moins que 2 étudiants sur 10 éprouvent une insatisfaction à l’égard de leur participation à un cours VIRI.
Les cours mixtes gagnent en importance, notamment dans les domaines de l’éducation du marketing et des affaires. L’étude fournit des directives pour affiner les caractéristiques de ces offres de cours en démontrant comment une classe VIRI optimise les capacités de la technologie sans compromettre les résultats d’apprentissage.
While the most traditional metric, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), measures all goods and services produced by a country, it has two critical shortcomings. First, by focusing exclusively on the economy, GDP fails to capture areas of our lives that we care about most like education, health, environmental quality, and the relationships we have with others. Second, it does not identify the costs of economic growth — like pollution.
To create a robust and more revealing measure of our social progress, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW) has been working with experts and everyday Canadians since 1999 to determine how we are really doing in the areas of our lives that matter most. The CIW measures overall wellbeing based on 64 indicators covering eight domains of vital importance to Canadians: Education, Community Vitality, Healthy Populations, Democratic Engagement, Environment, Leisure and Culture, Time Use, and Living Standards. The CIW’s comprehensive index of overall wellbeing tracks progress provincially and nationally and allows comparisons to GDP.
Comparing the CIW and GDP between 1994 and 2010 reveals a chasm between our wellbeing and economic growth both nationally and provincially. Over the 17-year period, GDP has grown almost four times more than our overall wellbeing. The trends clearly show that even when times are good, overall wellbeing does not keep up with economic growth and when times are bad, the impact on our wellbeing is even harsher. We have to ask ourselves, is this good enough?
The purpose of this study was to identify how entrepreneurship education is delivered in Ontario colleges and universities. In Ontario, as in the rest of Canada, the increase in the number of entrepreneurship courses at universities and colleges, and the concurrent popularization and maturation of entrepreneurship programming, contribute to fostering entrepreneurial skills and mindsets, and the creation of businesses. The overall aim of this report is to inform debate and decision-making on entrepreneurship education through a mapping and assessment of existing programs in the province.
The highly volatile monthly job creation figures and an unemployment rate that sometimes masks more than it reveals get all the attention. But the real tale of the Canadian labour market is written far away from the spotlights, closer to where the details reside. And there, the emerging picture is of a job market that is fundamentally changing. Canadian employment dances
increasingly to the tune of structural forces and less to reversible cyclical dynamics. And it’s not only about demographics. Job market mismatches, sticky long-term unemployment, diverging bargaining power, rising entry barriers and increased job tenure and job stability for those who clear the bar, all suggest that monetary policy aimed at the cyclical component of employment slack is aiming at a shrinking target.
Teaching preparation is enriched by opportunities for teacher candidates to participate in practicum experiences where they integrate classroom theory into practice. Typically, such practicum placements take place in classroom settings where teacher candidates facilitate the learning of school-aged children by teaching the established curriculum of the jurisdiction. However, some teacher education institutions are offering teacher candidates alternative practicum experiences that may take different forms. One of those forms is a service learning practicum. However, the advantages and challenges to a teacher candidate’s professional growth resulting from involvement in this alternative form of community-based practicum are not yet fully understood. This study examines the experiences of two groups of teacher candidates who engaged in 120 hours of pre-service community-based service learning placements in different models, and reports on teacher candidates’ perceptions of their learning. The major difference between the two placement models was the configuration of time allowed for service learning in the programs. On one campus, teacher candidates engaged in service learning for four consecutive weeks in the final term of their five-year program. On the other campus, teacher candidates could configure 120 hours of service learning over an extended time period during their fourth year of the program. The perceptions of each group of participants allow for comparisons of the benefits of each model and provide an overview of the associated learning outcomes of the entire group.
In a project funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), a team of researchers completed three related studies exploring and assessing innovative practicum models included in a pre- service concurrent teacher education program across two campuses of an Ontario university.
These models are integrated into the field experience component of the Bachelor of Education degree and are intended to provide collaborative and diverse learning opportunities for teacher candidates in various practicum settings. Traditionally, teacher candidates in faculties of education complete their practicum in a school classroom for determined periods of time. In recognizing the need for teacher candidates to become contributing members of varied learning communities (Feiman-Nemser,
2001), the innovative practices studied in this project extend beyond the norm of placing a single teacher candidate with an associate teacher in a publicly funded school to include such models as peer mentorship, alternative service learning and international practicum placements.
This three-year study explored the perceptions of pre-service candidates in a five-year concurrent teacher education program who participated in a peer mentorship practicum model. In this practicum model teacher candidates were placed as a dyad, with each novice first-year candidate paired with a second- or third-year candidate who acted as a peer mentor. Ideally, the pair was then placed in the same classroom under the supervision of the same hosting associate teacher. However, each year
constraints presented by candidates requesting different geographic areas for their placements and/or a lack of associate teachers in some locations who were willing to host two candidates (i.e., a novice and a mentor) necessitated placing between 5 and 8% of candidates in another classroom in the same school as their mentorship partner or in another school in close geographic proximity. The objective of the peer mentorship model was to foster collaborative practice between novice and mentor candidates, which was perceived to hold the potential to provide additional support for both candidates.
This paper exploits longitudinal tax-filer data to provide new empirical evidence for Ontario on i)
overall PSE participation rates on an annual basis over the last decade, ii) how access is related to a number of important individual and family characteristics, including sex, family income, area size of residence and family type, andiii) how these relationships have changed over time. This is done for Ontario as a whole, in comparison to the rest of Canada, and then broken down by region within Ontario. The findings are informative, in some cases surprising, and highly relevant to public policy regarding access to postsecondary education.
The findings are many, and there is room to mention only a few of the most important ones here. Our focus here was on access to university – although we do present results for college attendance as well. We do this for two main reasons. The first is that the PSE-related tax credit information available in the Longitudinal Administrative Databank (LAD) dataset which we employ to identify participation in PSE do not do as good a job of finding college students, simply because the credits available are not generally worth as much to college students as they are to university students. Secondly, the effects of individual and family background characteristics on PSE ttendance – a principal focus of our study – tend to come out much more strongly in
(net) effects on college attendance are more unambiguous and are almost always found to be much smaller from an empirical perspective.
In recent months, there has been much discussion in the media and among academics about the skills acquired by Canadian university graduates. The issues being raised are threefold. The first concerns the question of whether Canada is facing a “skills gap”. While the Conference Board of Canada (2013a) has argued that we definitely are (and that the long-term economic consequences will be severe), reports by economist Don Drummond and TD Bank indicate that the skills gap is largely a
myth (TD Economics, 2013; Goar, 2013). Others have indicated that current discussions about a skills gap often lack an appropriate level of specificity, making it difficult to assess the merit of these arguments or to generate potentially necessary
solutions (Weingarten, 2013)
The Dual Credit and School Within a College (SWAC) programs are both dual enrolment/dual credit programs that address access by creating new pathways to postsecondary education for non-traditional students. The programs allow students who are still in grade 11 and grade 12 to take one or more courses at a local college and earn both a high school credit toward their high school diploma as well as a college credit from the college offering the course. Though these programs have been
offered internationally for over three decades, there is still little research and little conclusive evidence that demonstrate their effectiveness.