Archive for January, 2010
Planning on writing the MCAT?
Cheaters beware: grad-school tests are ramping up security
According to an article from the Star, entrance tests for many professional programs now require a digital print of students’ fingers, thumbs or palms.
Most Canadian med schools require applicants to write the Medical College Admission Test. With an extremely limited number of seats, a high MCAT score is crucial for med school hopefuls.
The solution for some students? Pay someone else to write it.
“It’s unfortunate some people want to cheat to get the higher scores you need for better-known programs,” said Rick Powers, executive director of the University of Toronto’s MBA program, in an interview with The Star.
The Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) for a MBA program, which is written by 8,000 students every year in Canada, requires an infrared scan of the blood vessels in your palm. Although palm scans are weeding out cheaters, some students aren’t happy with the new security measures. After having to give a palm scan for the GMAT, Toronto student Ajanthy Arasaratnam asked the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to investigate it as an invasion of privacy. According to the article, the use of digital fingerprints by the MCAT is also being investigated by the privacy commissioner’s office.
The good news for med school hopefuls who want to avoid the MCAT, cheating isn’t the only option. Some med schools don’t require applicants to write the test, including the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Medicine and the Northern Ontario school of Medicine.
-photo courtesy of Jermaine Justice
Canada Student Grants delayed in Québec
Concordia Students’ Union accuses feds of mismanagement
The Concordia Students’ Union (CSU) is criticizing the federal government for withholding the Québec portion of the Canada Student Grants Program (CSGP).
The union is accusing Ottawa of “mismanagement” on the grounds that not a single student in Québec has received financial assistance from the $350 million that replaced the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation, officially dissolved last week, in the 2008 budget. CSGP’s budget will grow to $430 million by 2012-2013.
The non-repayable grants distributed through the CSGP are applied for automatically when a student applies for a national student loan. Out of the $350 million, students in Québec have not received any of the funding that would have been used to assist students with disabilities, dependents or students from low-income families. Grant money began flowing in the rest of the country last fall.
According to CSU president, Amine Dabchy, the money is currently caught up in negotiations between the federal and provincial governments, leaving students in Québec out of potential grants. “Because there has been no agreement reached between the two parties, the victims are us, the students of Québec,” he said.
The CSU says Québec is entitled to more than $100 million. According to Dabchy, the provincial government is not confirming that they will give the entire amount to students, while he accuses the federal government of attempting to reach an agreement on terms that wouldn’t include the full amount.
Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), the government department responsible for CSGP, says one of the main reasons students in Québec have not received funding from the new CSGP is because the province has been opting out of the Canada Students Loan Program (CSLP) since 1964.
HRSDC said in an email that as an alternative to the CSLP, “the federal government makes a payment to the government of Québec for student financial assistance. Québec then uses this funding to support student financial assistance programs across the province.”
HRSDC explained that traditionally these alternative payments occur six months after the end of the loan year, so payments to Québec students for the 2009-2010 loan year would usually be made in January 2011.
When asked about the accusations made by the CSU about mismanagement of the CSGP, the HRSDC explained, “It’s not true, the Government of Canada will be making a payment to the Government of Québec to compensate for actual costs incurred in the preceding loan year (August to July).”
Despite the fact that students in Québec are upset with the current situation, the HRSDC said, “The Government of Canada has been working with the Government of Québec and we expect a positive outcome.”
HRSDC estimates that 245,000 students will be eligible for Canada Student Grants.
McGuinty urges against strike
College faculty hold strike vote Wednesday
Premier Dalton McGuinty is encouraging both sides to work together to avoid a strike at Ontario’s two dozen community colleges that would affect at least 500,000 students. College instructors will vote Wednesday on whether to give their union a strike mandate. The premier said Tuesday he is encouraging both sides to do whatever they can to come together to work out their differences in a way that doesn’t involve any disruption of learning.
Ted Montgomery, chairman of the union bargaining team for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union which represents 9,000 faculty members, says if they do vote in favour of a strike, a walkout wouldn’t happen for at least a month. He says talks with the colleges broke down Dec. 15 and the key issues are workload, academic freedom and management’s decision in November to impose its offer on the teachers without letting them vote on it.
The union is seeking a 2.5 per cent pay increase in each year of a three-year contract while the colleges are offering 1.75 per cent in each of the first two years and two per cent in the last two years of a four-year deal.
The Canadian Press
For Maclean’s On Campus’ coverage of the looming strike, please click here
Back to school for Ignatieff
A videoblog on the Liberal leader’s campus tour
This week, Iggy’s headed to campus. If you’re fortunate enough to go to one of the 11 chosen schools, you should definitely take a moment to check out his worldview. Here’s why.
Google mentor gives $2 million to UBC
Carl Wieman gets funding boost for science education
The Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative, at the University of British Columbia, has received a donation of $2 million from Stanford computer science professor, David Cheriton. According to a university press release, Cheriton is “widely credited for mentoring Google’s founders and helping establish the company.” A UBC alumnus, he graduated in 1973 with a bachelor of science in Mathematics, and later earned a doctorate from the University of Waterloo. He then returned to UBC as an assistant professor from 1979 to 1982, before taking a position at Stanford. The University of Waterloo computer science department bears his name in recognition of $25 million he donated in 2005.
The Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative is led by Nobel Laureate physicist Carl Wieman. The initiative aims to improve science education at UBC:
Since 2007, the CWSEI has helped UBC Faculty of Science departments undergo curriculum and course improvements, including the establishment of learning goals, adoption of new and proven teaching techniques and scientifically evaluating and documenting student achievements. More than 18,000 students will benefit from CWSEI activities this year.
To read Erin Millar’s profile of Wieman, please click here.
Ontario students to “walk out” Tuesday
College students plan to meet in protest of collective strike
At noon Tuesday, Ontario college students have confirmed they will “walk out” of class, the day before Ontario Public Service Employees Union employees are set to vote on a strike mandate.
The “All-Ontario Walkout” is organized by Humber College student Graeme McNaughton, creator of the accompanying Facebook group “Ontario College Students Against A Strike.”
According to the event page, the plan is for participating students to walk out of their respective classrooms and meet at a designated location where copies of a petition protesting the potential strike will be available for them to sign.
These petitions will then be brought to bargaining parties, both the union and school administrations.
Twelve schools already have designated meeting places, some with locations at more than one of their campuses. So far 277 have confirmed their attendance via Facebook, which has more than doubled from last week’s “Attending” count of less than 100.
The strike would affect 500,000 students (350,000 full time students and 150,000 part time students) from 24 Ontario colleges.
The OPSEU represents roughly 9,000 full-time professors, counselors and librarians. Both faculty and student alliances have opposed a potential strike, arguing time away from school would have a negative impact on the quality of education.
The last time Ontario colleges went on strike was in 2006, where a 21-day strike at the tail-end of the second term left students scrambling to catch up on schoolwork in order to graduate, and maintain summer employment or other workplace opportunities. The OPSEU has argued that voting ‘yes’ to a strike mandate does not necessarily mean a strike, but would provide the leverage the union needs at the bargaining table to achieve the settlement they seek.
- photo by churl
For all of On Campus’s coverage of the looming strike please click here
Students competing fiercely with the laid off
As mature students flood unis, schools say they will not give priority to Grade 12 applicants
Ontario’s graduating high school students are facing stiffer competition for high-demand, high-employment college and university programs as workers who lost their jobs in the recession head back to school and claim the country’s coveted post-secondary education spots.
Colleges and universities will not give special priority to the Grade 12 candidates, administrators say, despite the fact they could be thrown out into a tough, recessionary job market with little or no work experience, and only a high school education if they’re not accepted. The deadline for Grade 12 students to apply to Ontario’s universities for next September is Wednesday; for colleges it is Feb. 1.
College applications overall were up by 10 per cent over the last several years, with those in areas with a high jobless rate experiencing increases of up to 50 per cent. The recession’s ravaging of the job market is pushing laid-off workers back to school and a wildly popular Ontario government program has provided many unemployed mature students with the financial means to do so.
In northern Ontario, for example, where the forestry industry’s collapse was followed by one in mining, Northern College saw applications for its four campuses jump 47 per cent last year. And that’s even before Extrada’s planned layoff of 700 people this May. In Windsor, where auto sector layoffs have battered the city, applications to St. Clair College were up by 20 per cent in 2009.
“When the economy is strong, students tend to put off going to school, going to college particularly, in favour of entering the workforce and earning some money,” said Northern College president Fred Gibbons. “When the economy turns soft as it has in 2009, students will then return to school or elect to leave high school and enter college . . . College enrolment tends to vary inversely with jobs in the economy.”
The Ontario government’s Second Career program, which provides laid off workers with up to $28,000 a year to go back to school to train for high-demand jobs, has been a huge incentive for mature students. Second Career was announced in 2008 as a $355-million, three-year program. However, it was so popular that the money was scooped up in 18 months as laid off workers headed back to school and the province pumped another $78 million into the program last October.
Ten signs you have a lousy class
A good class isn’t just about who teaches it.
Recently our friends over at US News and World Report posted a list of the Ten Warning Signs of A Bad Professor. So in the spirit of turnabout and fair play and all that, I offer the following modest addendum.
Ten Warning Signs of a Bad Class
1. They don’t read. Now, I must confess that when I was an undergraduate, I did not read every single thing that was assigned. But I read most of it, and I always made sure I read enough to know what I was talking about on the exam and to make an informed comment once in a while in class. But first-year students, especially, really seem to hate reading. Once, on the first day of class, a first-year student of mine looked at the syllabus and noticed that they would have to read a novel for the third week of the semester. “But,” she cried aghast, “I can’t read a whole book!”
2. They don’t ask questions. I don’t think I’m a particularly scary fellow: I don’t yell at students; I make jokes now and again. But for some reasons, many students hate to ask questions. Whenever I talk about citation style, for instance, I always stop to see if there are questions — because it can be tricky (plus, it gets me out of the bad books of US News and World Report). No one asks questions. But they must have questions because when it comes time to use the citation styles in their papers, they don’t do it. If they didn’t get it when I explained it (and put it on the web), why didn’t they ask?
3. They try to hide the fact that they are texting in class behind a big book or clip board. My university does not permit the use of electronic devices in class unless specifically okayed by the instructor. Still, students try to get away with it. On the other hand, maybe I’m being too tough about this. Maybe the texts are things like, “OMG this prf is soooooo ahsum. Shake –> is cul. Malvolio and Olivia? Epic fail!” Yeah. That must be it.
4. They don’t hand anything in. I’ve often wondered why students enroll in a course and then hand in no assignments at all. Or do only the first one and ignore the others. Maybe they get overwhelmed by all the work of university and sort of shut down. I can see that. But then, why not drop the course?
5. They are studying for another class in your class. Admittedly, there is something admirable about a student who is working so hard she doesn’t have time to study one thing at a time. But how can she be getting anything out of my class when she is studying her psychology notes? And how the hell does she have psych notes anyway? Isn’t she reading for English during that class?
6. They don’t take notes. Then of course, there are students who don’t take notes at all. Why not? Maybe the thought that they could ever forget anything I said just doesn’t occur to them. Yeah. That’s probably it.
7. They don’t bring their books to class. It’s English. You need to have the book in front of you. Is it too heavy? No. You’re eighteen. The whole Oxford English Dictionary is not too heavy. Look beside you. See the sixty-five year old retiree sitting next to you? He has his book.
8. At review time, they show no signs of having been in the class at all. The strangest experience I ever had in class was during a review period. I gave them a quotation from Donne’s “Valediction Forbidding Mourning” and asked the class to identify it. No one could. Well, okay, fair enough. Donne is tricky. But then I told them it was by Donne (we only did one poem by Donne). Blank looks all around. So I told them the name of the poem and they looked at me like I had two heads. “We did this poem,” I said. “Most of you were here. I remember. It was, like, five weeks ago.” Nothing. Didn’t even ring a big metaphysical bell.
9. They ask if you’re a hard marker. I can understand why students ask this question, but I never know how to answer it. Once, I half-jokingly replied that I was the second-hardest marker in the university. Then about half the class dropped the course. At least they didn’t stay in and not turn in any assignments. Maybe the book was too heavy.
10. They ask, “What do I have to do to pass this course? By the time a student is at the point where they have to ask this question, it’s probably too late. It’s also the question where I really have to bite my tongue.
Student says: What do I have to do to pass this course?
What I say is: Well, at this stage it’s going to be tough. Let’s look at the spreadsheet.
What I would like to say is: Have you by any chance invented a time machine?
Now before the two or three of you who read this get all upset by what a heartless instructor I am, please let me be clear: I’m not saying all students are like this. Or even most. And certainly, one bad student does not spoil the whole class. But there is a critical balance in any class and once you reach that point at which the no-book-no-assignment-no-memory students outweigh the others, the whole room gets dragged down.
So the next time you are in a bad class, consider this: what are you doing to make it better?
CCL loses funding
Tories axe grant for education research
The capacity for research into Canada’s education sector has been constrained once again. It was announced today that funding for the Canadian Council on Learning will not be continued. The CCL was created by the Liberals in 2004 with a five-year grant of $85 million. Funding was extended for a year. Federal money accounts for 95 per cent of CCL’s budget.
The CCL has released several annual reports analyzing higher education, the state of learning beyond formal schooling, and adult literacy. It exists, according to the organization’s website, “to provide Canadians with the most current information about effective approaches to learning for learners, educators, employers and policy-makers.”
Paul Cappon, the group’s CEO, told the Globe and Mail, “What Canada would lose without CCL would be like being a student without a report card of any kind. And we’d be prevented from knowing how far behind the competition we’re slipping.” Although, the Conference Board of Canada, released a thorough comparative analysis of Canada’s education system earlier this week.
Cappon says that the CCL will continue in a reduced capacity and seek alternative sources of funding.
The Council is just the latest in a series of research organizations to be clipped from the federal budget. The Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation officially dissolved this past Monday, and due to a lack of funding, the Canadian Policy Research Networks shut down over the holiday.
Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff says the funding cut is “incredible” and that removing funding for education during a recession is the “worst possible time.” Ryan Sparrow, a government spokesman, told the Globe that the CCL was unable to provide the type of research that the government would like to see, and, so the Tories will be working with the provinces to find an alternative approach.
Most of the remaining organizations, aside from Statistics Canada and the Conference Board, that have the capacity to research education on a national scale come from the higher education sector itself. These include the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, and the Canadian Federation of Students.
The Council’s funding will end in March.
Facebook your way to a PhD
Facebook announces $30,000 fellowships for doctoral students
Facebook will be awarding $30,000 fellowships to PhD students in “Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, System Architecture,” and “related fields.” In addition to the stipend students will receive $5,000 for attending conferences and $5,000 to purchase a computer. The fellowships are limited to students attending American universities, but foreign studenst may apply. So far, Facebook is only funding the fellowships for the 2010-2011 academic term,but may extend that.
Facebook says it is “interested in a range of academic topics” but has highlighted the following fields:
- Internet Economics: auction theory and algorithmic game theory relevant to online advertising auctions.
- Cloud Computing: storage, databases, and optimization for computing in a massively distributed environment.
- Social Computing: models, algorithms and systems around social networks, social media, social search and collaborative environments.
- Data Mining and Machine Learning: learning algorithms, feature generation, and evaluation methods to produce effective online and offline models of behavioral signals.
- Systems: Hardware, operating system, runtime, and language support for fast, scalable, efficient data centers.
- Information Retrieval: search algorithms, information extraction, question answering, cross-lingual retrieval and multimedia retrieval
Hitting the road
Getting overseas experience can strengthen your resume, enhance your education and be a lot of fun
When Kali Penney needed to strengthen her med school application, she had a choice between taking more classes and getting some volunteer experience. She chose to spend three months volunteering in Calcutta, followed by a month traveling around India. Her volunteer work looks good on her application, but the experience ended up meaning much more than that to her. “I would recommend going overseas. You’ll do so many things you’d never get to do here and meet people you’d never get to meet.”
There’s no better way to educate yourself about the world than to go out and see it. Travelling can be a great way to broaden your perspective, and doing it while you’re in school and you’re young can be great. Those old people in their fancy tour buses and their five-star hotels are probably enjoying themselves too, but that’s nothing compared to the freedom and the adventure you can have when you’re three decades younger and have a tenth as much money.
There are loads of ways to go abroad while you’re in university. If you do your research, you can find ways to go overseas without blowing a lot of money or adding semesters to the time it takes you to get your degree. You can even find ways to make your trip enhance your education and improve your future job prospects by building your resume — which is also a great way to justify a trip to your parents.
Studying Abroad
Going to school and living in a foreign country will give you a much deeper understanding of a place than just breezing through as a tourist. You’ll have the opportunity to learn the local language and to make friends with locals and other international students. Plus, you won’t miss any semesters and you’ll remain on track for graduation.
For some areas of study, going abroad can greatly improve your education. Overseas universities will offer courses not available at home, and the country you study in can offer opportunities you’d never have in Canada — for example, studying Spanish in Madrid, or Archaeology in Cairo. Most universities have exchange agreements with a number of foreign universities so that you pay the same tuition you would at your home university, rather than expensive foreign student fees.
The easiest way to be sure that the courses you take overseas will be credited through your degree is to go through an exchange program. Check your uni’s website for information, (for example, here is USask’s) but hurry; exchange application deadlines are usually early in the winter semester — meaning right about now.
Volunteering
Volunteering in a developing country can be one of the most rewarding (and challenging) experiences you’ll have in your life. Your experience will look great on a resume, particularly if it is related to your field of study, such as medicine, engineering, teaching or social work. It can be difficult, however, to find a volunteer posting that won’t cost you a lot of money.
Two decades in residence
B.C. Supreme Court sides with Uvic in eviction of on campus tenant who has not taken a course since 1997
A man who’s lived on campus at the University of Victoria since 1991, even though he hasn’t completed a course for credit since 1997, is on his way out after losing a court battle.
Alkis Gerd’son challenged a university eviction notice by arguing he was persecuted because of an unspecified disability. But B.C. Supreme Court Justice John Truscott didn’t agree, ruling this week that an updated tenancy agreement signed by the two parties in 2007 gave the university the right to quit renewing Gerd’son’s lease.
The university argued it needs Gerd’son’s room because there are not enough on-campus units for disabled students. Kim Hart Wensley, the university’s associate vice-president of faculty relations and academic administration, said Thursday that Gerd’son’s tenancy is being terminated but university officials are trying their best to help him find housing.
Hart Wensley didn’t know exactly when Gerd’son will vacate the student housing he’s called home for nearly two decades. She also couldn’t also say how he’s been able to stay for quite so long. “I can tell you that the university has over the years made various efforts to work with Mr. Gerd’son on a co-operative basis to try to assist him and have offered to provide him with support to transition to community services and to off-campus housing,” she said.
“Those offers and attempts have been resisted. I think the university has attempted to be as compassionate and supportive and patient as it could be in a difficult situation.” Gerd’son, who has enrolled in a diploma program in business administration, told the court he was under the impression his lease would continue to be renewed every year as long as he did nothing wrong.
He could not immediately be reached for comment. Gerd’son’s lawyer is on vacation until the end of the month. Gerd’son, who completed his bachelor of arts degree in 1993 and followed that up with a bachelor of education in 1997, has also filed a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.
The Canadian Press
College students prep for strike
Students, faculty urge ‘no’ vote to strike
With next week’s strike vote deadline approaching for Ontario college faculty, hundreds of thousands of the province’s college students prepare for what could be an unwelcome extended holiday.
Full-time professors, counselors and librarians, roughly 9,000, represented by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, will vote Jan. 13 on giving their bargaining team a strike mandate if a deal cannot be reached.
The results of a strike for 500,000 college students (350,000 full time students and 150,000 part time students) would mean canceled classes, and could mean the extension of classes into summer, or a canceled term if the strike continues well into the four-month semester.
As most students pack their bags to go back to class next week, many are left holding their breath, while some plan demonstrations of their own.
Graeme McNaughton is the creator of the Facebook group ‘Ontario College Students Against A Strike,’ which has over 18,000 members. The petition linked to the group has been signed by more than 3,000 students.
McNaughton started an event called the ‘All-Ontario Student Walkout‘ set for Jan. 12, the day before the strike vote, and student groups have begun to sign-up to participate.
The last major academic strike happened at York University in Toronto where the union for the school’s contract faculty, teaching, graduate and research assistants participated in a 12-week standoff, affecting 50,000 students.
Metro Ottawa spoke to a professor at Algonquin College, one of 24 colleges involved in the collective bargaining, about the possibility of a college-wide strike.
“It doesn’t mean there will be a strike, but it does mean that one is possible,” Rod Bain told Metro. “Unfortunately, it is something that we pretty much need to do in order to move management toward a settlement.”
In a document on why professors should vote ‘yes’ to a strike mandate next Wednesday, the OPSEU said in 15 rounds of bargaining since 1972, there have been 12 strike votes but only three strikes — in 1984, 1989 and 2006.
In 2006 the strike fell just a month before the end of the second term and lasted 21 days, leaving those slated to graduate or to start jobs or work placements scrambling to catch up.
The OPSEU said that in the past when faculty have given the union a strike mandate and subsequently gone on strike, results of bargaining were “significant.”
They also said in another note that students benefit from the union’s conditions, which have included “changing learning environment of students, as well as looking for ways to deal with the increasing number of students attending college.”
Bain told Metro, this time around, professors are asking for a 20 per cent increase in paid time to prepare for classes or to meet with students outside of class time.
However, not all college faculty are on board for a strike. A website authored by William Tenant, a business professor at St. Lawrence College, has cropped up, dedicated to encouraging faculty to vote ‘no’ to a strike mandate next Wednesday.
The College Student Alliance, which represents over 70 per cent of Ontario college students wrote an open letter entitled ‘College students are NOT bargaining chips.’ In it CSA president Justin Fox said: “Students are concerned with the fact that, yet again, there is a threat of a province-wide faculty strike looming over their education.”
- photo by Gamma-Ray Productions
Phony prof. might be Uvic’s own fault
University to review hiring policy for adjuncts
Allegations that a former adjunct professor faked his credentials is leading the University of Victoria to review its hiring practices. It was reported yesterday that Jason Walker, who also had an administrative role with a Victoria area health clinic, was charged with “fraud, forgery and swearing a false affidavit for allegedly faking his credentials.” Walker has claimed he holds two doctoral degrees.
In 2006, Walker taught three undergraduate courses, and one graduate course at the University of Victoria. Although a PhD is a prerequisite for teaching graduate level classes, the university says there is no clear policy for hiring adjuncts. As the Times Colonist reports:
University policy requires professors to have a doctorate if they’re teaching a graduate course, [university spokeswoman] Patti Pitts said. But the requirements for part-time adjunct professors vary widely from one faculty to the next.
“Quite often, the appointment is based on the reputation of the individual, recommendations from other researchers, and the person’s ongoing affiliations with other institutions or organizations,” Pitts said.
A similarly laissez-faire attitude was taking by the health clinic Walker worked for, which says it saw no reason to verify his credentials because he was working in an administrative role:
Before hiring Walker, VIHA checked his employment references, but not his academic credentials, Marshall said.
“Credentials of potential employees in non-clinical and some mid-manager positions are not routinely verified,” she said. “Mr. Walker’s credentials were not verified as his responsibilities were of an administrative nature, and there was no indication that they needed to be verified.”
By contrast, physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other clinicians must provide proof that they’re licensed and registered with one of the professional colleges.
If adjunct hiring is as spotty as suggested by this story, that is a pretty obvious policy change. Why wouldn’t universities have a formalized procedure for hiring casual faculty? They are taken to be experts in their fields, just like regular faculty, and they are responsible for using that expertise to transfer knowledge to students.
It is unnecessary to subject adjuncts to the sort of grueling hiring process tenure-track candidates go through, but a simple phone call to the institution where a prof. says he earned his doctorate would suffice. Relying on faculty recommendations alone is just lazy.
If you’re an aural learner, read this aloud to yourself
The actual “scientific” literature on learning styles is virtually nonexistent
A new study in the APS journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest [PDF] inquires into the scientific basis for one of the most influential fashions in current pedagogy: the idea that different students have different kinds of optimal “learning styles.” The number of “learning style” taxonomies being peddled by various authors and theorists is in the dozens. It’s a lucrative business, as Pashler et al. point out, and it has gotten a firm toehold in the public schools and education textbooks (and, he might have added, in homeschooling literature). One of the most popular theories is the “VARK” schema, which sorts the human species into visual, aural, “read/write”, and kinesthetic learners.
If you’re like me, you may have encountered this notion in the guise of somebody’s excuse for doing poorly, or for somebody else doing poorly, on a course or a test. I suspect that the younger you are, the more likely you are to have heard it. And I sometimes suspect, heaven forgive me, that the function of much educational research is to keep parents supplied with such excuses—to provide middle-class children with prefabricated “sick roles,” in the argot of sociology. But I digress.
It is obvious and empirically demonstrable that many students do possess specifiable permanent preferences for learning by means of one sensory mode or another. In practice, this is how most “learning styles” handbooks and articles recommend sorting students into style types: by asking ‘em what type they are. No teacher really has time to do the sorting by means of a validated test. With younger students, who have not yet learned their own preferred “modalities” through trial-and-error and introspection and (perhaps) plenty of frustration and difficulty, the educator may be left to use intuition and guesswork. Some feel confident in their judgment; some don’t.
The question Harold Pashler and his group set out to answer was whether there is any strong scientific evidence for “learning styles” at all. It’s not enough, they argue, to show that people have preferences. The relevant version of the “learning styles” hypothesis is that students will actually benefit from receiving instruction that matches their preferences—what the authors call the “meshing hypothesis”.
Confirming that hypothesis to a scientific standard, they suggest, would not be particularly difficult. It is child’s play to design a randomized, controlled experiment to test it: take two groups of learners sorted into “style” groups by whatever method you like, select a common learning task, have a randomly-chosen half of each group work on the task by their preferred/optimal means and the other half learn the “wrong way”, and test everybody. Bam. If you find a significant “crossover interaction”—instructional mode Q works best for the Q group, but X works best for the X group—the “meshing hypothesis” wins.
Prof crusades against strike
Says strikes are “disruptive to our students”
With a strike vote just a week away, divisions among college faculty are beginning to surface. William Tenant, a business professor at St. Lawrence College, is calling on his colleagues to vote against a work stoppage.
Negotiations between the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, and the colleges broke down last month, after initially breaking down in November. If faculty vote to strike on Jan 13, the earliest they could walk is Jan 18. The OPSEU represents 9,000 faculty at 24 colleges. A strike would leave the semester in limbo for 500, 000 students.
Responding via email, Tennant says he is urging college professors to vote no because strikes are “disruptive to our students” which is “our reason for being.”
He points to what he says is the failure of previous strikes in 1984, 1989 and 2006. At his website, stopthestrike.net, Tennant summarizes each work stoppage as following a similar trajectory:
College teachers gave weak support to the negotiating team for a strike; Management didn’t budge; Teachers went on strike; Management didn’t budge; Provincial Government passed legislation ordering teachers back to work followed by Binding Arbitration.
There has been little discussion between the union and the colleges since December. Today, the OPSEU released a number of documents outlining why faculty should vote to strike.
Near the top of the union’s concerns is that the colleges in November unilaterally imposed terms and conditions of employment, a power granted by the province in 2008. The union says that under the terms imposed by the colleges, workloads will increase, and that in three years, “College faculty salaries will fall below high school teacher levels.”
According to OPSEU, previous strikes were successful at ensuring workload limits, and, as such were ultimately beneficial to students. One union document says, “Faculty’s working conditions are students’ learning conditions.”
Tennant says that unlike in 2006 when faculty were on strike for three weeks, this year it could last for much longer, suggesting that the province might be reluctant to legislate faculty back to work. “The Ontario Government is $25 billion in deficit. A number of colleges are in deficit. A strike would help their finances.”
In his campaign to stop his colleagues from giving the union a mandate to strike, Tennant still has a long way to go. So far only between 20 and 30 college professors have given him explicit support.
Related: Another year, another strike
UNB to offer degree in First Nations governance
New Brunswick puts $1million towards aboriginal education
New Brunswick education minister Donald Arseneault announced today that the province plans to put more than $1 million towards recruiting Aboriginals into post-secondary education. According to a government release, the money will go towards implementing various Aboriginal-focused programs in the province’s higher education institutions.
The government says the University of New Brunswick:
- Will hire an Aboriginal recruiting officer to recruit and provide support to Aboriginal students.
- Will appoint an Aboriginal elder-in-residence to work with the UNB Mi’kmaq Maliseet Institute. Funding will be used to develop specialized curricula to include a First Nations perspective; to develop math, literacy, science and social science courses for pre-service teacher education programs; and to develop community literacy and math outreach programs.
- Will establish a bachelor’s degree in First Nations governance and management as an extension of the existing certificate program. It will be the first undergraduate degree of its kind in Canada.
While UNB will be home to the most comprehensive list of programs, initiatives tasked with bringing an aboriginal perspective to higher education will be implemented at the Université de Moncton, Saint Thomas University, and New Brunswick Community College. The government release also says the education department will be developing a “provincial strategy and action plan to increase participation of Aboriginal persons in post-secondary education in New Brunswick.”
Propaganda alert
Campus conspiracy theories — not just for nutjobs anymore
In this piece, I’m about to break a cardinal rule of the Internet (twice!) and lend traffic and promotion to sites I consider inherently ridiculous. I allow myself this exception to the rule because the two sites are at opposite ideological extremes. I figure the net effect should be about even.
For some time now, Campus Conservative Watch has been a bit of an inside joke. This site alleges a vast and organized attempt by conservative forces to subvert the student movement and to infiltrate campuses across Canada. Particularly funny is this bit, where they call out the media. Macleans On Campus is one of the targets. And while there are sometimes opinions on this site that I don’t agree with either, I can absolutely promise that I wasn’t subjected to ideological screening before I was recruited to write here. If I had been, I can’t imagine I would have passed muster by any conservative standard.
That is the problem with Campus Conservative Watch, after all, and why some think it’s just a really elaborate joke. We all dislike people coming from different political perspectives, at times, but when you lump them all into a group and allege conspiracy among them it’s just a little too convenient. Anyone who disagrees with you — and in particular with your paranoid theories — becomes a part of the opposition and therefore a part of the conspiracy! It’s very neat and self-proving. This site uses the term “conservative” in the way McCarthy used the term “communist.” It’s a bogeyman word intended to encompass everything disagreeable and threatening. And needless to say, any term that removes discussion from the substance of what’s actually going on and turns the opposition into a faceless “them” is self-defeating at best and dangerous at worst.
And then, I ran across The Undercurrent. I’m still a little stunned this “campus newspaper” actually exists. I don’t even have words — you’ll just have to read it.
By “the country” they mean the United States. But they don’t seem to have any issues with distributing the paper in Canada too. And you know, it does look like a campus newspaper! Initially, I was fooled into thinking it was a local product of some sort. It’s especially tricky at U of T Scarborough because our local paper is The Underground. It’s very plausible that some clever person figured they’d riff off that with The Undercurrent. But no such luck.
The very notion of producing an ideological propaganda piece of this nature and calling it a “campus newspaper” is highly suspect. In what sense is it “campus?” It only tangentially relates to education issues. It is written mainly by students, yes, but certainly not from U of T. By that same definition I could credibly describe the local Starbucks as a “campus initiative” because the employees are mostly students of one sort or another. But we all know that isn’t what we mean in the ordinary sense of the word when we describe something as belonging to the campus. We mean our campus. This isn’t a campus newspaper. It’s propaganda aimed at a valuable demographic that the right-wing fringe is seeking to influence. I can’t possibly describe it as anything else. It isn’t even a national conspiracy — it’s an international one!
I almost feel as though I owe an apology to Campus Conservative Watch. They were right all along! Or I’d owe them an apology, at least, if they actually noticed this rag and said something about it. Instead, I suppose, they were focused on the “conservative conspiracy” among students who happen to not like the CFS. But I’ll give them points for effort, at least. When I finally realized what I was looking at, in The Undercurrent, I thought immediately of the paranoid little blog that almost-could. Wow they missed a chance to be relevant!
And here I’m left with a depressing thought. In spite of my desire to believe otherwise, post-secondary campuses are, in fact, a ripe target for ideologues. Conspiracy theories all sound nutty, on first glance, but that doesn’t mean they are all wrong. The student movement has been subverted before and may be again. And the culprits, lest I be misunderstood, come from every portion of the political spectrum. The fringe left, as it were, is no more above dirty pool than the fringe right.
All I can suggest is that students remain alert for bullshit of this sort on campus, and call it out when you see it. Extremes from one side inevitably breed extremes on the other. Those who are most inclined to cry “foul!” on the opposition are often the last to accept criticism or scrutiny themselves. So be especially skeptical of anyone who alleges someone else is lying and then demands you accept their own claims uncritically. What could be less consistent than that? Be critical of my claims as well. Review the material for yourself. It’s certainly a trip, if nothing else.
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Questions are welcome at jeff.rybak@utoronto.ca. Even the ones I don’t post will still receive answers, and where I do use them here I’ll remove identifying information.
‘A’ for education, ‘D’ for doctorate
Conference Board ranks Canada 2nd in education, but dead last in PhDs
Canada has earned top marks for its education and skills performance, according to a Conference Board of Canada ranking. Canada remains second to Finland in overall education and skills outcomes, but closed the gap by improving on two key indicators.
The Board says between 2006 and 2007, working-age Canadians who graduated from high-school increased by a full percentage point to 86.6 per cent. The top performer in this indicator, the United States, only increased its proportion by 0.1 percentage point, to 87.9 per cent.
In addition, says the Board, Canada’s proportion of graduates from science, math, computer science and engineering disciplines significantly improved. While it still earns only a ‘C’ grade on this indicator, it is an improvement from last year’s ‘D.’
Canada gets a ‘D’ grade when it comes to Ph.D. graduates — three and a half times below Sweden, the leading country on this indicator. In fact out of the 17 countries ranked Canada ranked last on this indicator.
The Canadian Press
Read the full report here
Head of B.C. health clinic accused of faking credentials
Charges against 31-year-old Jason Walker involve his claims to a doctorate in forensic and behavioural sciences
The head of a Victoria-area health clinic has been charged with fraud, forgery and swearing a false affidavit for allegedly faking his credentials.
The charges against 31-year-old Jason Walker involve his claims to a doctorate in forensic and behavioural sciences and a similar degree in medical epidemiology. Sgt. Julie Fast of the Saanich police department says police began investigating Walker last fall and are still trying to determine how many degrees he claims and which ones are legitimate.
Walker was the CEO of a Saanich, B.C., clinic called Health Point Consulting, which offers everything from laser treatments to weight management counselling and career and financial planning.
Fast says suspicions arose during an investigation of an alleged child abuse case in which Walker’s evidence helped lead to a court order prohibiting the child’s father from having access to the boy.
Walker is well known within the Victoria area police community as a volunteer, consultant and reserve constable, and was a volunteer board member with the Greater Victoria Police Victim Services until he was charged.
The Canadian Press
