Teaching tool or distraction? One of the most vexing issues for faculty today is what to do about cell phones in the classroom. According to a study conducted by Dr. Jim Roberts, a marketing professor at Baylor University, college students spend between eight to ten hours daily on their cell phones. Regardless of whatever “no cell phone” policies we attempt to enforce in our classrooms, many of our students are sneakily checking Instagram or texting friends when they’re supposed to be engaged in solving matrices or analyzing Shakespeare.
Last spring semester, I began experimenting with polling as a way to improve student participation in my classroom. Persuaded by the work of Eric Mazur and others, I started polling my students — using multiple-choice or short-
answer questions — to collect a quick overview of their opinions on whatever we were discussing.
Here’s a reality many business leaders confront at some point: corporate cultures can eat innovation strategies for breakfast.
The inertia and siloing that can settle into any workplace can be antithetical to the boldness and flexibility required to drive innovation. So, what realistically can be accomplished?
Large organizations typically try to be more innovative by setting up initiatives outside the “mothership,” with mixed results. (Many large teaching hospitals, for example, have adopted this approach). By spurring innovation outside the organization, companies might be able to create incremental change and innovation, but they could have difficulty leveraging these wins in the larger company culture. General Mills, Nestle and Pepsi recently went through experiments with outside incubators, with mixed results. Despite the uncertain evidence, we’re at a tipping point
where if you’re not linked to an incubator, your business is seen as falling behind.
A widely held belief in Canada, as in many countries, is that expanding access to tertiary education is integral to improving national productivity. It also plays into the Canadian sense of
equality of opportunity and the just society.
In addition, Canada is not alone in beginning to experience a decreasing labour force participation rate as the baby boomer generation enters retirement. Even the country’s large immigration flows are not sufficient to compensate for the labour force shrinkage. This puts additional pressure on productivity; across the 20 largest members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, this would need to increase at an average of 0.4 per cent
per year to offset the loss of gross domestic product per capita.
The other day, a person I like and trust sent me a text: “(So-and-So) is throwing you under the bus
right now.”
“No!” I texted back. “What now?”
Thanks to some fast finger work, I provided the real facts about the current meeting topic and my text partner was able to relay them and defend my honor. The crisis was averted and the benefits of cultivating a guardian-angel network were once again revealed.
But cultivating such a network is hard work. And ensuring that every gathering is populated by at least one person who will have your back is an impossible task. So what are the best ways to manage those people who seem intent
on tearing you down?
Political pollsters like to talk about the distinction between "hard support" and "soft support." Hard supporters will vote for a candidate no matter what. Soft supporters are known by another name: swing voters. They are the people who say they’ll vote for a certain candidate but often change their minds.
The idea of training Ph.D.s for diverse career tracks has hard and soft supporters, too, but some professors may not realize which group they’re in. They may believe they’re behind graduates who search for jobs beyond the professoriate. But the actions of these faculty members — or their inaction — can suggest otherwise.
Zac Wendler needed a new syllabus. An assistant professor of English, literature, and world literatures at Ferris State University, he was tired of the same routine at the beginning of every semester: He would hand out his syllabus — five or so pages of text — and students would glance at it and wait for him to walk them through it. Then for the rest of the semester, they would ask him questions that could be easily answered if they had read the syllabus.
Does that sound familiar? It rang a bell for me. As I listened to Wendler’s presentation at this year's Conference on College Composition and Communication in Portland, Ore., I thought about my own syllabus. It has swelled to 11 pages of single-spaced text, even after I changed the departmental policies section to a nine-point font.
When was the last time you went more than a few hours into your workday without interacting with someone at your company? If you’re like the majority of the workforce, limited interactions are a rarity and collaboration is ongoing.
The way your team communicates greatly impacts the performance of your employees and your organization.
However, less commonly understood is the psychology behind how we collaborate.
The psychology behind workplace collaboration can be tied back to the day-to-day interactions that take place at virtually any organization. How your employees interpret the work they do and the way they collaborate with others ultimately determines their success, investment, and engagement in the company. And when your employees are
engaged, your company wins.
There was a time not too long ago when the person with the most technical knowledge got promoted fastest. But hat’s often no longer the case.
Once someone gets promoted, technical skills become less necessary, and interpersonal ones become more critical in their place. You’ve probably already heard that emotional intelligence is a top factor in companies’ hiring decisions, but it plays a major role in how employers choose to promote their team members, too. This isn’t exactly news; in a 2011 Career Builder survey of more than 2,600 hiring managers and HR professionals, 71% said they valued emotional intelligence over IQ in general, and 75% said they’re typically more likely to promote an employee with high emotional intelligence and a comparatively lower IQ than one where that ratio is
flipped.
Last fallDonald Trump theorized that the computer hacker who stole emails from the Democratic National Committee could have been “someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.” But the stereotypical rogue nerd isn’t the threat that most concerns information-security officers on college campuses.
A philosophy is a set of principles based on one’s values and beliefs that are used to guide one's behavior. Even though your educational philosophy may not be clearly defined, it is the basis for everything you do as a teacher (DeCarvalho, 1991). It guides your decision making, influences how you perceive and understand new information, and determines your goals and beliefs (Gutek, 2004). An educational philosophy outlines what you believe to be the purpose of education,
the role of the student in education, and the role of the teacher.
Educational philosophies address the following kinds of questions: Why do we educate people? How should we educate people? How does education affect society? How does education affect humanity? Who benefits from a particular type of education? What ethical guidelines should be used? What traits should be valued? Why type of thinking is of worth? How should we come to know the world and make decisions? What is the educational ideal? What is the natural of reality? What do we believe to be true in regards to knowledge and truth? How do we come to know? What do you believe to be true in regards to humans and human
learning?
Harvard recently rescinded admission offers for some incoming freshmen who participated in a private Facebook group sharing offensive memes. The incident has sparked a lot of discussion: Was Harvard’s decision justified? What about the First Amendment? Do young people know the dangers of social media?
I’m a business school lecturer, career services counselor and former recruiter, and I’ve seen how social media becomes part of a person’s brand—a brand that can help you or hurt you.
College admissions staff, future employers and even potential dates are more and more likely to check your profile and make decisions or judgments about you.
Here’s what you should know so you don’t end up like those Harvard prospects.
This fall, I will be one of three lecturers teaching my department’s professional development course, where we help new graduate-student instructors learn the ropes, concurrently as they teach rhetoric for the first time. Many of them have never been in front of a college classroom. So I've been thinking a lot this summer about what they’ll be facing and how I might help prepare them.
In fall 2016, overall postsecondary enrollments decreased 1.4 percent from the previous fall. Figure 1 shows the 12-month
percentage change (fall-to-fall and spring-to-spring) for each term over the last three years. Enrollments decreased among four-year for-profit institutions (-14.5 percent), two-year public institutions (-2.6 percent), and four-year private nonprofit institutions
(-0.6 percent). Enrollments increased slightly among four-year public institutions (+0.2 percent). Taken as a whole, public
sector enrollment (2-year and 4-year combined) declined by 1.0 percent this fall.
Current Term Enrollment Estimates, published every December and May by the National Student Clearinghouse Research
Center, include national enrollment estimates by institutional sector, state, enrollment intensity, age group, and gender.
Enrollment estimates are adjusted for Clearinghouse data coverage rates by institutional sector, state, and year. As of fall
2016, postsecondary institutions actively submitting enrollment data to the Clearinghouse account for over 96 percent of
enrollments at U.S. Title IV, degree-granting institutions. Most institutions submit enrollment data to the Clearinghouse several
times per term, resulting in highly current data. Moreover, since the Clearinghouse collects data at the student level, it is
possible to report an unduplicated headcount, which avoids double-counting students who are simultaneously enrolled at
multiple institutions.
The Critical Thinking Assessment Rubric was developed as a key deliverable of the ‘Building Capacity to Measure Essential Employability Skills’ project funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO)1. This handbook serves as a resource to teachers in using the Critical Thinking Assessment Rubric.
Critical thinking is one of the six skill categories within the ‘essential employability skills’ (EES) curriculum requirements for Ontario college programs – specifically, EES numbers 4 and 52. Each of these essential employability skills must be addressed (learned, practiced, evaluated) within a program. How and when these are implemented should be based on decisions regarding the program as a whole and by individual teachers.
Most universities still offer Learning Management Systems (LMS) as the ‘one size fits all’ technology solution for all teachers across all disciplines. Using LMS across diverse campuses has resulted in efficiencies-of-scale for administrators, however LMS integration into teacher practices is minimal (e.g., Conole & Fill, 2005) and teachers’ creative space can be limited for discipline-based innovation. Together, these realities indicate that there are significant barriers to the effective use of LMSs, especially for teaching and learning purposes.
To overcome such barriers, the complex and less visible internal space of teacher beliefs must be understood in relation to teachers’ pedagogical contexts and the affordances they can identify. This paper reports on the findings of six qualitative case studies of teachers at different stages of LMS integration and the extent to which teachers reconciled their beliefs. The results highlight the need for technology environments that better accommodate teacher diversity.
Keywords: teacher beliefs, teacher diversity, affordances, LMS, university teacher education
The number of postdoctoral researchers that burn out at an early stage of their career seems to be increasing, and
mental health has been a hot topic at universities and institutes across the world. The scientist in me always wonders why it is this group that is particularly at risk? Funding struggles, job insecurity and pressure to perform are obvious contributors but do they explain the whole picture? In this post, I dare to suggest that dangerous habits of thinking commonly found amongst the scientific community may also play a role. Do any of the following seem familiar
The purpose of this qualitative grounded theory study was to assess multilingual models of education by investing how and when to incorporate second and third languages into the curriculum to improve language acquisition.
A generation ago, college administrators eager to enhance their institution’s international profile might have set up a handful of study abroad programs and sought to host a few overseas students each year. These limited initiatives were often delegated to international programs offices that were understaffed and under-resourced. Those days are long since past. On campuses large and small, urban and suburban, public and private, university leaders increasingly understand the importance
of raising the international profile of their institutions and preparing all students with the attitudes, skills, and knowledge that will serve them well in a rapidly shrinking world.
Confederation College president Jim Madder delivers his state of the college address on Wednesday; May 24; 2017
(Leith Dunick; tbnewswatch.com)
Thunder Bay school might be celebrating its 50th anniversary, but it's certainly not standing pat says, President Jim
Madder.