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Career Opportunities and Requests for Proposals

Career Opportunities EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT (24-month contract) Position Description: The Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) is an agency of the Ontario government which brings evidence-based research to the continued improvement of the province’s postsecondary education system. HEQCO is looking for an executive assistant (24-month contract) to provide executive services and support to the president […]

A Practical Guide for Work-integrated Learning

Updated guide offers advice on improving the quality of WIL for all learners Effective and Inclusive Practices to Enhance the Educational Quality of Structured Work Experiences Offered through Colleges and Universities Work-integrated learning (WIL) experiences such as internships, placements, co-ops, field experiences, professional practice and clinical practicums continue to be an integral part of the […]

Quick Stats

How many Ontario students applied to the province’s colleges and universities during the last decade? How many enrolled? How many graduated? Find the answers to these and other good questions in Quick Stats, a compendium of data on Ontario’s postsecondary system. Note: All visualizations begin in 2013 and go up to the most recent year […]

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Donna Kotsopoulos – A radical re-engineering of mathematics education

Guest blogger: Donna Kotsopoulos Recent international and national standardized tests suggest that mathematical ability in Canada is on the decline. There is other evidence, too. Fewer students are completing mathematics degrees. Retention in those degrees is very poor. Many students that endure, struggle in their studies and require lots of additional resources to succeed. Women […]

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Fiona Deller – Need to Read No. 3: Dystopian futures, edtech roundup and the social responsibility of universities

One of the many things we do at HEQCO is read the trades. We try to keep up on the latest research, as well as the media commentary, relevant books and the blogosphere. We read the good, the bad, the controversial and the bland. This year, we thought it might be nice to share with […]

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Harvey P. Weingarten – Managing for Quality: Classifying Learning Outcomes

My previous contributions on “managing for quality” have addressed the challenges of shifting away from our current policy of managing for access and why learning outcomes is a game changer in the higher education world.   To use learning outcomes productively to improve higher education, and to clear up some of the confusion in the current […]

Teaching Scientific Inquiry: Inquiry-based training for biology graduate teaching assistants improves undergraduate learning outcomes

Research Summary: Inquiry-based training improves teaching assistant effectiveness, student outcomes Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) play a growing role in university education, particularly in lab components of STEM courses. A new study from the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) finds that training GTAs in inquiry-based learning techniques in lab settings can improve both teaching […]

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Varun Vig – Pathways: From priority neighbourhood to postsecondary education

Guest blogger: Varun Vig Postsecondary access has long been a research priority for HEQCO. Our current focus is on the participation of students from underrepresented groups. Following is a blog on the experiences and pathways of Torontonian Varun Vig. Is accessing a higher education the same experience for all students, irrespective of socio-economic backgrounds? Considering […]