All Posts Tagged With: "ryerson"

Officials still investigating cause of blaze

Ryerson University reopened Tuesday after closing Monday when a fire broke out at a neighbouring building. The blaze started in the early hours of Monday morning in an abandoned building that was erected in 1888 and had operated as the Empress Hotel. No fewer than 32 firetrucks and 125 firefighters were on the scene and by around 10:40 am, flames could not be seen from the street, but the front wall had collapsed. Several downtown businesses, as well as Ryerson University, closed down for the day, however, by Tuesday morning shops began reopening and Ryerson had resumed a normal class schedule. The university’s bookstore suffered smoke damage. Fire officials are still investigating what caused the fire.

Conference at Ryerson draws large numbers, raises important issues

Some time ago I wrote a series of posts concerning mature students, starting with this one. It became an interesting discussion on the various resources that are available (or not available) for mature students. And it was at least part of the motivation for a mature students’ conference that just occurred at Ryerson University, a year later, and where I recently had the pleasure of speaking along with other very interesting panelists.

Big kudos to the Mature Students’ Association at Ryerson (MSAR) for organizing the first-time event. Hopefully it won’t be the last. Certainly the response would justify a regular conference. Of the 130+ attendees most were from the GTA, but a small contingent came down from Guelph and a single intrepid soul ventured down from Lakehead. Additionally, a group of students skyped in from Mount Allison. Isn’t technology wonderful? In any event, the response was enthusiastic, to say the least.

I won’t attempt to summarize the entire content of the conference but a few impressions seem particularly significant. First, just about everyone who doesn’t come from York was deeply envious of the very significant support that mature and part-time students enjoy at York, through the Atkinson Centre. Clearly York has set the standard to follow — and indeed the ability to reference such a benchmark will likely do a lot of good for mature students at other institutions. Good ideas may be emulated elsewhere. And as mature students are a growing demographic, no institution wants to be left behind on this one.

Of course we talked about future employment and the job market. I believe as much as anyone in learning for the love of it, but mature students have even less margin to ignore the financial realities than other students do. Jeremy O’Krafka from RECSOLU spoke on that topic, which is an area where the needs and concerns of mature students diverge especially from those of “traditional” students. His anecdote about younger students showing up with parents to speak with prospective employers struck a particular chord, but that’s probably a topic for another article.

As for myself, I contributed the observation that however much an institution may support mature students, the vast majority of campus resources and opportunities will still remain general to all students. So finding a way to access those opportunities and networks, while perhaps more difficult for mature students, is nevertheless critical. But as so often occurs, I was partially preaching to the already converted. The students who organized and showed up for this conference clearly know how to access the resources available to them. Some even accessed funding from their unions to attend.

Participants referred, on several occasions, to recent stories about how mature students are “competing” with younger school applicants. I agree that coverage of this sort is symptomatic of an unhelpful attitude that suggests mature students are somehow less legitimate as students. But a better observation on this topic is simply that it’s the new market reality. We keep hearing about how we’ll all have several careers, right? Well, for some, that necessarily suggests retraining. There’s no sense resenting older students for being where a lot of us will be in the future — there’s only a question of how the post-secondary system needs to adapt in response.

As a final observation, I sincerely hope that this growing interest among mature students in their shared identity and experiences forms the basis of a lasting association. The more mature students take an interest in their institutions and their education the happier I’ll be. Not only is it in their obvious self-interest to do so, but I also find that mature students exert a positive and productive influence on every student organization they become involved with. They are deeply motivated to be constructive — even while pursuing their criticisms — and a little more of that attitude would do a world of good for the student cause.

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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.

Ryerson student accused of academic dishonesty on Facebook optimistic he won’t be expelled

A first-year engineering student accused of cheating through an online study group emerged from an expulsion hearing Tuesday optimistic he would be allowed to stay in school in a case that raises new questions about cyberspace and academic honesty.Supporters of Chris Avenir, 18, argue the Facebook study group he ran was no different from any kind of homework help or tutoring circle, but Ryerson University officials accused him of going too far with an exhortation to “input solutions” to assignment problems.

“I feel pretty confident and optimistic about the appeal meeting we just had,” Avenir said moments after the closed-door, 90-minute hearing ended.

“I don’t have any regrets about what happened inside.”

The faculty appeal committee that heard the case Tuesday was expected to decide on a punishment – which could be as harsh as expulsion – within five business days.

Last term, Avenir became administrator of the online group Dungeons/Mastering Chemistry Solutions, which he initially joined to get help with homework. In all, 147 classmates used the group to swap tips on assignments that counted for 10 per cent of their mark.

What appears to have snared Avenir was the group’s main page, which read: “If you request to join, please use the forms to discuss/post solutions to the chemistry assignments. Please input your solutions if they are not already posted.”

A professor, who had stipulated assignments be done independently, discovered the group, gave the B student an F, then charged him with academic misconduct.

The charge ignited a fierce debate that echoed around the wired world about whether the university, which prides itself on cutting-edge, interactive learning, was in fact acting like a Luddite or whether dishonesty was hiding out on the electronic frontier.

Students are “just floored,” said Nora Loreto, president of the Ryerson Students Union.

Avenir’s case sparked a host of support groups – among them www.chrisdidntcheat.com, with offers of “premium” T-shirts and hats for US$19.99 bearing “Chris Didn’t Cheat” as a slogan and proceeds ostensibly going to defray his legal fees.

Bloggers were mostly scathing of Ryerson’s actions.

“Is it our fault that schools are so antiquated they don’t understand that Facebook is like a virtual study hall or dorm room or any other place we would all normally study?” Davin Carey, a student at San Diego State, wrote in one post.

In another post on the Facebook group “Support Chris Avenir,” Ryerson student Matt Boyle called the school’s action an “outrage.”

“How is this any different from a study group in the library or something?” Boyle said. “I don’t see the school policing those.”

Dissenters, although fewer and further between, suggested that posting online answers did in fact constitute cheating, and that arguing that in-person cheating also occurs is no excuse.

What Facebook has changed, said Fred Stutzman, a doctorate student of social networks at the University of North Carolina, is the open record it leaves, making it easier to gather evidence of academic dishonesty.

“Cheating is cheating and collaboration is collaboration. Because there’s a virtual environment, that doesn’t change the definition of any of these constructs that we’ve written into law or society,” Stutzman said from Chapel Hill, N.C.

“The problem here is that this is going to have a serious chilling effect on these very interesting opportunities for learning and collaboration that the virtual environment affords.”

Avenir’s lawyer John Adair, who was not allowed to speak for his client at the hearing, said if the case isn’t dropped, he will “expose the glaring lack of evidence” behind the allegations.

“The problem here is Facebook is a new realm, and it’s one that the university is seeking to seize without any regard for the specific circumstances,” Adair said.

Ryerson officials have said they fully endorse the online world – as long as it is used appropriately.

-with a report from CP