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 […]
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 […]
Welcome to the latest episode of It’sNotAcademic the podcast. Two years ago, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued 94 calls to action, or recommendations, urging all levels of government to implement policies to acknowledge and redress the harm caused by residential schools to Indigenous people. Several of the recommendations urged governments, schools and postsecondary institutions […]
Despite the fact that we are a student and a recent graduate of a postsecondary program, we admittedly have difficulty articulating our skills and competencies. And we’re not the exception. While we can confidently state that we have comprehensive reading and writing skills, this only skims the surface. Competencies such as critical thinking, problem solving, […]
Longer ago than I care to remember, I went to a presentation given by Norm Wagner, who was at the time the president of the Corporate Higher Education Forum, after 10 years as president of the University of Calgary. Wagner talked about what employers look for when they interview students who had successfully completed undergraduate […]
I have experienced three phases in the evolution of the learning outcomes concept. Learning outcomes refers to what students should know and be able to do as a result of the education they get in their postsecondary programs. The first phase of the learning outcomes concept was already underway when I started at HEQCO in […]
In my last blog, I argued that the quality of a postsecondary education could be measured by the degree to which it met academic requirements or needs. I also argued that one non-negotiable and essential requirement or need of a postsecondary education is that students receive an education that equips them with the knowledge and […]
When I started working at the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) I asked the obvious question, given the title of the organization: What is quality? I became even more invested in this question when I discovered that the legislation that created HEQCO required us to advise the government on the quality of Ontario’s […]