Formation Continue du Supérieur

26 mai 2013

Universities as economic asset

By Paul David Son. Convocation halls across the country will be full in the coming weeks as new graduates, rightly proud of their achievements, reach out to receive their degrees. While a few steps toward the podium complete a years-long journey for each individual, the scrolled parchment represents a decades-long evolution that has established Canada's position as a global leader in quality postsecondary education.
Among the audience, parents and guests will think back to their own time on campus. Make no mistake: This is not your father's degree. Nor is it your mother's university. In sheer numbers, there is no comparison. In the last dozen years, Canadian universities have made space for a 50% increase in full-time enrolment, bringing the number of students served each year in credit programs to more than 1.2 million. Read more...

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26 mai 2013

Profit push worries campuses

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By Sheila Pratt. Alberta's push for increasing commercialization of university-led research is raising concerns on campus about growing pressure to produce for profit and how to protect academic independence.
Supporters and critics of commercialization agree that without private-sector cash, many breakthroughs and inventions might not make it to market. Many professors are keen to move into a commercial aspect of their research.
But the province needs to keep its eyes wide open as it goes down this road, says Tim Caulfield, an expert in health research ethics at the University of Alberta who has written extensively on the impact of "creeping commercialization" on campuses. Read more...

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26 mai 2013

Episode 17 of Bibliotech: Citation and social media

By Rochelle Mazar. What do Twitter, Tumblr and citations have in common? Welcome to BiblioTech – the podcast about emerging technologies for academics. Your host is Rochelle Mazar, an emerging technologies librarian at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Every month you can listen in as Rochelle talks about what's new in technology and what academics should be paying attention to. It's hard to keep up with all of the new software, tools and gadgets. That's where Rochelle comes in.
Episode 17 - Citation and social media
In this episode Rochelle looks at what social media can teach us about plagiarism and citation. (Running time: 14:18 mins).
Check out the previous BiblioTech episodes:
Episode 16: Virtual worlds and virtual objects
Episode 15: Online pseudonyms
Episode 14: Course readings
Episode 13: Plagiarism
Episode 12: Wikipedia
Episode 11: Audio and video assignments
Episode 10: Much ado about hardware
Episode 9: Course websites
Episode 8: Digital natives
Episode 7: Information overload
Episode 6: Productivity tools
Episode 5: Academe in 2015
Episode 4: Search vs. browsing
Episode 3: Campus courseware
Episode 2: Cloud Storage
Episode 1: Breakfast with Twitter. Read more...

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26 mai 2013

Federal research institutes should host crowdfunding initiatives

By Jonathan Thon. The recent Jumpstart Our Business Act, which U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law in March, allows crowdfunding to be used to sell shares to the public. While there are strict limits to how much “unsophisticated investors” will be allowed to commit to a single company, companies will be able to sell shares to individual investors without having to go through a public offering. Since laboratories in academic research settings such as hospitals and universities represent private companies, why not apply a crowdfunding model to academic science? I have long ventured that the public’s apathy to most of the research taking place on their behalf results not from a lack of interest, but a failure of scientists to properly communicate their goals and findings; and a recent string of successful applications of this model to basic research projects appear to support my view that crowdfunding science works (see here and here). Read more...

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26 mai 2013

What if it’s not about where you are going?

By Jo VanEvery. In my last post, I suggested that you don’t have to figure out what to do with your life. I want to explore that idea a bit more. As Barrie Thorne noted back in 1987, we often look at children as who they are becoming rather than as who they are in a specific time and place. Despite the rise of other modes of studying children, this tendency to think in developmental time still dominates discourses of childhood (scholarly and otherwise). I would argue that it frames most discussions of postsecondary education (undergraduate and graduate) and early career jobs. This is not only infantilizing but, as Thorne noted, diverts attention from the specific historical and personal conditions in which you are “developing”. Read more...

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26 mai 2013

Canada is ‘treading water’ on its S&T performance

By Léo Charbonneau. Buried in the flurry of other news emanating from Ottawa on Tuesday was a damning report by Canada’s Science, Technology and Innovation Council, or STIC. The council concludes in its “State of the Nation” 2012 report that Canada “continues to tread water as a mid-level performer in science, technology and innovation” and says the country needs to “aim higher.” Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells described the report as “devastating” and an indicator of “long-term government failure.” Read more...

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26 mai 2013

Provinces would rather pay students than universities

By Alex Usher. What 2013 provincial budgets mean for the higher education sector. There is a pattern emerging in provincial budgeting for higher education over the past couple of years which deserves more attention than it has been receiving. Though some new net money has been reaching universities and colleges, within the sector as a whole governments seem far more interested in funneling money to students than providing support for institutions themselves. There are three important caveats regarding the budget data presented here need to be made. The first is that what provinces budget for higher education often has only a vague relationship with what actually gets spent. Last year in Quebec, for instance, what eventually got allocated to institutions was a good $120 million less than what was budgeted. Read more...

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26 mai 2013

Entrepreneurs create jobs, so how are we helping?

By Stephen Daze. Canadian universities get a near-failing grade for the way they support campus entrepreneurs. It’s no surprise that global leaders are increasingly looking at entrepreneurship as a way to grow jobs and stimulate economies. In Canada, approximately 68 percent of net new jobs are created by small- and medium-sized enterprises (Statistics Canada), and from 1980 to 2008 all net new job growth in the U.S. came from firms five years or younger (Kauffman Foundation). The reality is that large firms shed jobs and new firms (young firms run by entrepreneurs) drive job growth. Complementing this is the growing interest in entrepreneurship as a career choice. A Kauffman-funded study of youth aged eight to 21 cites 40 percent of respondents interested in entrepreneurship as a career option. The question is: What are we doing to stimulate interest in entrepreneurship and provide support to young entrepreneurs? Some would see this as an opportunity not to be missed. Read more...

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26 mai 2013

B.C. makes free online textbooks available

By Rosanna Tamburri. A government agency is recruiting faculty to review and eventually to write texts for the most popular courses. Postsecondary students in British Columbia may get a bit of a break when it comes time to buy their textbooks this fall. In the first move of its kind in Canada, the B.C. government said it will make available up to 20 free and open online textbooks for some of the most popular first- and second-year university and college courses. There’s no guarantee that faculty will choose to assign the new textbooks, but proponents of the project are hoping that rigorous quality control measures and a little nudging from students will win them over. The textbooks also will be available to institutions, faculty and students across Canada to use at no charge. Read more...

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26 mai 2013

Five Ways for Collegs and Universities to Get Smart About Energy

By David McDougall. Increasing numbers of colleges and universities are making a commitment to foster sustainability on campus. This strategy aligns well with university missions that include public service, thought leadership and pioneering new technologies. But at the end of the day, the most compelling reason is financial. Energy makes up only a small percentage of a university’s operating budget (about 3.5 percent on average), but in terms of raw dollars, America’s colleges and universities spend almost $7 billion in energy and utilities. Cutting energy costs even by 10 percent means $700 million dollars to reinvest in student programs, facility improvements, and other initiatives that benefit the entire campus community. Read more...

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