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Amy Kaufman – Let’s hear it for our dedicated workers, and the institutions that trained them

HEQCO CEO David Trick has mused in recent weeks (see here and here) about how Ontario’s postsecondary education sector can look to lessons from the past to help us deal with today’s exceptional circumstances. This idea of finding precedents for the unprecedented is one that we will return to, but this week I’d like to take a moment […]

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Jackie Pichette and Jessica Rizk — Micro mania: Making sense of microcredentials in Ontario

We’ve been seeing the word “micro” a lot lately — microcourses, microdegrees, micromodules. It’s an interesting contrast to the introduction of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, from the beginning of the last decade. But much like the MOOC discourse, it feels as though there’s almost as much uncertainty as there is hype over microcredentials. […]

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David Trick and Jackie Pichette — Strengthening numeracy skills in university and college students: What’s the best way forward?

What can be done to improve numeracy skills among Ontario PSE students? Our workshop participants had some great ideas, like integrating more problem-based learning in university and college programs (and also in high school), designating numeracy faculty leads who can spread knowledge and facilitate communities of practice, creating a repository of numeracy modules and resources that all Ontario institutions can access and incorporate into their programs, and developing and sharing relevant assessments to continuously improve numeracy teaching and learning.

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Harvey P. Weingarten — Skills in postsecondary education: Where to now?

We recently published a series of reports describing the skill levels of entering and graduating postsecondary students. The most telling observation made in those reports is that too few students are graduating with superior literacy and numeracy skills and too many — about one in four — are graduating with literacy and numeracy levels that […]

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Harvey P. Weingarten — Why is the “Q” word in our name?

Why did those who created this agency include the word quality in its name, even though it resulted in one of the clumsiest acronyms — HEQCO — on the face of the earth? I think it’s because they were smart and prescient. They understood that there are a million questions one could ask and research […]

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Jackie Pichette and Lena Patterson — Learning with Lynda(.com)

Educators around the world are being called on to pull up their socks and save the economy: to “bridge,” “plug” or “prevent” the skills gap by equipping students with the technical and transferable skills needed to meet tomorrow’s economic needs. But which technical and transferable skills, exactly? Well, we know that employers are looking to […]

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Harvey P. Weingarten — Quality assurance: A simple concept that we overly complicate

If you were to read all that is out there about quality assurance in higher education, you might be left with the impression that quality assurance is a complicated, nuanced, arduous, complex concept and process that defies rigorous measurement, and that will take a decade or more to get it right. I am fond of […]

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Jackie Pichette — What’s in a badge?

A robot can handle investments, my brother’s phone can recognize his face, and I can earn a digital badge for participating in a webinar … Welcome to the digital economy. As routine, repetitive tasks are taken over by technology, employees in this third industrial revolution are expected to orchestrate product development, innovate and learn on […]

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It’sNotAcademic – The podcast: Episode nine with Val Walker

Welcome to the latest episode of It’sNotAcademic the podcast. It’s an often heard complaint. University and college graduates lack the skills that employers seek. They don’t have what it takes to thrive in today’s rapidly changing workplace. To look at this issue, the Business Council of Canada brought together representatives from some of Canada’s largest […]