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22 episodes with eduvation
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A new week of Breaking Banks Europe, this time with a discussion around the facilitation of knowledge through the usage of technology - commonly known as EdTech. Paolo Sironi leads this 3-part interview with 3 different initiatives that are bringing education to new standards, by using the digital space as a way for new literacy and inclusion methods.We welcome Aape Pohjavirta - Founder and President of Funzi, that brings us his innovative way of transforming "how the world learns", with their unique platform for bringing optimized courses to users globally; Matthew Jones (VP Content Acquisition & Strategy) tells us the story and mission of Perlego (dubbed "Spotify for textbooks") - a subscription-based digital online library focusing on the delivery of academic, professional and non-fiction eBooks; and Jessica White (Senior Consultant) from EDUvation, a consultant focused on supporting the implementation of ideas and the development and expansion of EdTech start-ups. More about our speakers:Matthew Jones: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewjones21/Perlego: https://www.perlego.com/ Aape Pohjavirta: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaape/Funzi: https://www.funzi.fi/ Jessica White:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-kennedy-white-0767635/Eduvation: https://eduvation.de/en/
Colleges and universities are facing big challenges amid the COVID-19 pandemic. We talk to higher ed consultant Ken Steele of Eduvation and Rick Huijbregts, George Brown College's VP of Strategy & Innovation, about how institutions are responding. A transcript of this episode is available at www.georgebrown.ca/about/work-shift-podcast.
Post-secondary institutions across the country have closed their campuses and thus curbed much of campus life which is dissuading a lot of students from enrolling this year. What kind of impact could this have on universities, colleges and how hard it'll be to get accepted? Guest: Ken Steele, Chief Futurist, Eduvation & education expert - Smoking has come to define unhealthy habits but there are some studies that suggest it may a helpful aspect in the fight against COVID-19. Scott checks in with Dr. Ahmad Firas Khalid to find out if there's any credibility to this and more. Guest: Dr. Ahmad Firas Khalid, Health Policy PhD graduate and Queen Elizabeth Scholar in Strengthening Health Systems - The CFL has asked for a bailout from the federal government for up to $150 million. What do the people of Western Canada think of all this? Should the CFL get any help from the government? Guest: Rod Pedersen, former play-by-play announcer, Saskatchewan Roughriders & Host, The Rod Pedersen Show Kevin Waugh, MP for Saskatoon-Grasswood
On this episode of Marketing Jam, Darian Kovacs talks to Ken Steele, President & Chief Futurist at Eduvation. Ken chats with us about the unique challenges posed by marketing in the education industry. He shares some best practices and ways that the current climate could change the face of educational marketing. You can find and subscribe to Marketing Jam on iTunes, and Stitcher. Follow Jelly Marketing: Twitter - twitter.com/jellymarketing Facebook - facebook.com/jellymarketing LinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/jelly-marketing Instagram - instagram.com/jellymarketing Website - jellymarketing.com Follow Darian Kovacs: Website - jellymarketing.com/darian LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/dariankovacs Facebook - facebook.com/dariankovacspage Instagram - instagram.com/dariankovacs Twitter - twitter.com/dariankovacs Follow Ken Steele: Website - eduvation.ca Facebook - facebook.com/ksteele Twitter - twitter.com/kensteele LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/kensteele
This week, Ken Steele completes his countdown of the ten biggest trends impacting North American higher education in 2015, with the top 4: from political correctness and personal safety to major demographic shifts. If you missed part 1, check it out first: https://youtu.be/bziLQbNEXcI 4) Indigenous Content: Even before the recommendations of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, institutions began announcing new mandatory indigenous content in their curricula. Students at the University of Winnipeg proposed mandatory courses in indigenous history or culture. Lakehead University announced that it would introduce indigenous perspectives into courses across all faculties. UBC’s Sauder School of Business and the UBC Okanagan School of Nursing both announced that they would be integrating Aboriginal content. The new president at the University of Saskatchewan declared that he would make indigenization his top priority. And the Law Faculties at UBC and Lakehead had both established mandatory courses in Aboriginal Law and intercultural training. 3) Zero Tolerance: Last year we saw significant mainstream attention being paid to microaggressions on campus, and ongoing debate about trigger warnings for the curriculum. Faculty, most of whom are Baby Boomers or Gen Xers, are alarmed by the rising tide of political correctness and its potential to undermine academic freedom and free speech on campus. Generation Y students, on the other hand, take free speech for granted, but in a social media era have learned to retaliate against even the subtlest prejudice with a firestorm of outrage. Last year, several top comedians declared that they would no longer perform on campuses because students just couldn’t take a joke. A controversial prof at Laurentian asked his students to sign a waiver acknowledging coarse language in his lectures. Universities introduced microaggression training in their faculty orientations, collective agreements, and more. The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms ranked Canadian universities and gave 15 universities and 26 student unions grades of “F”. 2) Sex Assault Protocols: Although long-term trends in the incidences of sex assault on campus are debated, we saw an immense public spotlight focused on the issue last year. First there was the fallout of a discredited campus rape story published (and then retracted) by Rolling Stone magazine. The release of The Hunting Ground, a full-length documentary about Ivy League schools covering up rape to protect their brands. A Columbia student carrying a mattress with her everywhere on campus, including to her graduation. Task force recommendations at the University of Ottawa, in the wake of a sex assault that resulted in the suspension of its men’s hockey team. Rape allegations at Royal Military College. And then there was the CBC’s ranking of colleges and universities based on sex assaults reported in the previous 5 years. Across the country, presidents announced task forces and new policies and protocols, student unions and mental health services launched awareness campaigns and bystander intervention programs. There are even smartphone apps designed to secure affirmative sexual consent in the heat of the moment. Full official trailer for The Hunting Ground: https://youtu.be/GBNHGi36nlM Full ad for Alberta’s #IBelieveYou: https://youtu.be/VruBjg_dc2Q 1) Peak Campus: Most significant of all, last year there was just no denying that enrolment was plateauing or declining at many campuses across North America. In the US, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported that college enrolment declined in 2015 for the third straight year, particularly at 2-year community colleges and for-profit institutions. The University of Phoenix had lost half of its students between 2010 and 2015, a whopping 250,000! The Council of Ontario Universities reported declines of about 5% in applicants province-wide over 2 years – and more remote institutions like the University of Windsor or Lakehead saw drops of up to 19%. The Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission reported a 1% decline in enrolment after 4 consecutive years of growth, and smaller campuses in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were particularly hard hit. Check out Ken’s white paper, Peak Campus, for more detail: http://eduvation.ca/2013/09/peak-campus/ Next time we’ll round up the top higher ed headaches of 2015. For exclusive preview access, a week early, to future episodes of "Ten with Ken", be sure to subscribe to Eduvation's "in the loop" email newsletter, at http://www.eduvation.ca/subscribe/
Canada's most trusted higher ed monitor, Ken Steele, counts down the ten biggest trends impacting North American higher education in 2015, from equity and politics to new technologies and new business models. Intro: 2015 was a rough year, from terrorist attacks in France and extreme weather in Texas and California, to the Volkswagen emissions scandal and the surprising rise of Donald Trump. But we also saw the launch of the Apple Watch, the Lexus hoverboard, and Nike self-lacing shoes. And there was a profound leftward shift in Canadian politics, from Rachel Notley's NDP in Alberta to Dwight Ball's Liberals in Newfoundland, and of course the second prime minister Trudeau. But there was also no shortage of developments directly affecting higher education. Some we have covered in previous episodes of this podcast, and others will deserve more attention soon. Here are Ken’s picks for the top ten. 10) Gender Equity: From pay equity settlements and campaigns to encourage female enrolment in Engineering, to sexism in social media, and in nominations for the Science and Engineering Hall of Fame, gender can't be ignored when we look back at 2015. Dedicated episode at https://youtu.be/-mm5gjGZEUU Full OUSA “Bachelorette Degree” video at https://youtu.be/NtIGkB9R32Y 9) Open Textbooks: Electronic textbooks are being explored, particularly at Olds and Algonquin colleges, but last year we saw real momentum building for open texts – free, online, peer-reviewed textbooks. California, BC, and Manitoba have committed funding to so-called “Textbook Zero” programs, which can reduce student attrition by 10%. And the US Congress is again considering the Affordable College Textbook Act, to encourage the development and adoption of open text alternatives. Dedicated episode at https://youtu.be/FNLaLr94ppg 8) Contingent Faculty: Last year the “new faculty majority,” untenured part-time sessional instructors, joined fast-food workers on the picket line in the US to fight for a $15 minimum wage. While the situation in Canada is somewhat better, striking sessionals at York University still made national headlines. Dedicated episode at https://youtu.be/Kyld_inHp1Y 7) Drones: Consumer drones hit the mainstream last year, about 4.3 million of them worldwide. They’re being used to patrol college entrance exams in China, and have entered the curriculum for programs in journalism, video, agriculture and firefighting, among others. But drones really took over last year in PSE marketing departments, with everybody featuring aerial footage in their videos. MIT Drone Admissions video at https://youtu.be/zjw9-E3_GbM 6) Academic Journals: A study published last year found that as much as 70% of scholarly output in some disciplines is in the hands of just 5 multinational publishing companies, and since publication determines tenure, promotion, research grants and university rankings, these corporations are the de facto “power brokers” of higher ed. They are posting better profit margins than Apple, and institutions from McGill to Harvard are finding they can no longer afford to subscribe to scholarly journals. Last year we saw editors and editorial boards quit in protest over pay-to-play peer review, extortionate subscription rates, and extensive peer review fraud. 5) Double-Dipping: Last year there was also a groundswell of protest against generous executive pensions and administrative leave, allowing university presidents in particular to “double-dip” and get paid double their salary, or their salary in addition to pension in retirement. Western University president Amit Chakma took the brunt of the outrage, but other cases included Michael Goldbloom at Bishop’s, Arvind Gupta at UBC, Heather Munroe-Blum at McGill, Tom Traves at Dalhousie, and Sean Riley at StFX. When a scarcity mentality sets in, people start looking for scapegoats, and presidents are tempting targets. Next time, we’ll finish this countdown with the 4 biggest trends affecting higher ed last year, from political correctness to major demographic shifts. For exclusive preview access, a week early, to future episodes of "Ten with Ken", be sure to subscribe to Eduvation's "in the loop" email newsletter, at http://www.eduvation.ca/subscribe/
This week, Ken Steele looks back at some of the biggest PR headaches afflicting Canadian colleges and universities in the past year, looking for common causes and some lessons we can learn about crisis communications. Academia may well be the most challenging environment in which to manage messaging, with opinionated faculty, unrestrained students, and concerned parents, alumni, and taxpayers in the community. Without a doubt, many PR headaches are caused by the students, intentionally or not. In previous episodes we’ve looked at sexist behavior in social media and during orientation, but Dalhousie’s School of Dentistry struggled with the biggest PR headache of 2015, when 13 male students posted sexist, misogynistic remarks to a supposedly private Facebook group. Protests, suspensions, a task force – in all, it cost the school about $650,000. And the underlying culture of sexism should have been addressed years earlier. CBC’s “This Hour Has 22 Minutes” parody commercial – https://youtu.be/RtffrcWeMf0 Last year the University of Toronto had to ramp up campus security in the wake of a series of online threats posted by an anonymous user named “Kill Feminists.” The University of Ottawa coped with the fallout of the alleged sex assault by male hockey players, and a $6 million class action lawsuit. Several universities tore down posters for “White Students Unions.” 2 Montréal CÉGEPs had to cope with more than a dozen students leaving Canada to join Jihad. But of course, students aren’t the only creative, intelligent and outspoken people on your campus. Last year we saw plenty of PR headaches caused by faculty members, too. In the UK there was Nobel-prize-winning biochemist Tim Hunt, and his ill-advised attempt at humour about the distraction of women scientists in the lab. (His botched apology made things far worse, and cost him his job.) In Ontario it was St Lawrence College business professor Rick Coupland, who was fired for violent homophobic comments last summer. At Carleton University, biology professor Root Gorelick has caused a stir with his blog, commenting on his experiences as a member of the university board of governors. He sees himself as elected by faculty, with an obligation to his constituents, but the rest of the board and the administration are concerned about the ways in which his blogs do not always agree with the official minutes. He is accused of attacking the personal integrity of fellow board members. Carleton has put in place a new code of conduct for board members, making it clear that governors must not criticize decisions once they have been made. Several campus groups are concerned that Gorelick may be removed for his refusal to sign this “gag order.” It seems pretty clear that when students or faculty behave badly, the institution needs to condemn their actions swiftly and unambiguously, suspend the perpetrators, start a thorough investigation, and possibly a restorative justice process. The institution may have to address the problem, through enhanced campus security, harassment policies, or codes of conduct. Sometimes swift action will lead to accusations of overreaction, such as at Ottawa and Dalhousie, where potentially innocent students are considered guilty by association. But these responses seemed to be the most popular approach in 2015. Next time we’ll look at some of the most serious higher ed headaches of all. And as the metaphor might suggest, they often start at the top, with presidents and board chairs. Meanwhile you might like to check out our review of the biggest higher ed headaches of 2014 - https://youtu.be/TJaZsXv68s4 Ken Steele is available to facilitate workshops or present at conferences and on campuses about PR headaches and how to manage media relations in a crisis. More information at http://eduvation.ca/pr-headaches-how-to-treat-them/ #ICYMI, check out ASAP Science’s a capella parody of Taylor Swift’s hit song, which they called “Science Style” - https://youtu.be/sWwd5vks9n8 For exclusive preview access, a week early, to future episodes of "Ten with Ken", be sure to subscribe to Eduvation's "in the loop" email newsletter, at http://www.eduvation.ca/subscribe/
Last week, Ken Steele looked back at some major PR headaches sparked by students and faculty, from white student unions to a blogging board member. https://youtu.be/qn0ylCsR9Jw But some of the biggest media relations migraines of all start at the top, with board chairs and presidents. At Western University, president Amit Chakma’s double pay made headlines in 2015, but he had done nothing wrong in accepting a contract with administrative leave. The bigger issue was that the board committee normally responsible for negotiating such contracts was bypassed, and the board chair, Chirag Shah, seemed responsible. A task force made 22 recommendations for governance reform at Western, and Shah stepped off the board at the end of his term last November. The year’s biggest PR headache, though, was the abrupt resignation of UBC president Arvind Gupta, only a year into his term. The board hired a passionate reformer with a bold agenda. Gupta didn’t have the usual university administration experience, but instead had founded Mitacs, a fairly small nonprofit. From the beginning, Gupta made it clear he wanted to make UBC more relevant to the needs of society, and he knew that driving change would make some people uneasy. The abrupt departure of a president, after significant executive changes and barely concealed friction with the board chair, would have been bad enough for the media relations people tasked with managing the situation. But then, business professor Jennifer Berdahl wrote a blog suggesting that Gupta lost a “masculinity contest.” The blog itself might have gone unnoticed amid a storm of speculation, if not that board chair Montalbano took exception. He felt “hurt” that accusations of racism and sexism were being hurled by a professor he knew personally. And so, one fateful day, he called her to discuss the blog directly. Montalbano claimed he was extraordinarily careful, throughout the call, to confirm that Berdahl felt comfortable discussing the blog, and that she did not feel her academic freedom was being threatened or compromised. But a few days later, Berdahl either changed her mind or found her voice, and a new blog railed against Montalbano’s attempt to intimidate her and suppress her right to academic free speech. She went to the media, and claimed he threatened to discuss the “trouble she was causing” with her dean. Ultimately a fact-finding investigation agreed with Berdahl, and Montalbano stepped down from the UBC board in August. Global News interview with Arvind Gupta: http://globalnews.ca/news/2484938/watch-one-on-one-with-former-ubc-president-arvind-gupta/ Global News interview with John Montalbano: http://globalnews.ca/video/2173090/extended-ubc-board-chair-john-montalbano CBC interview with Jennifer Berdahl: http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2673915157 Some of the biggest dysfunctions on college and university campuses occur when outsiders attempt to push an agenda without truly appreciating the subtleties of academic politics. It’s vitally important to recognize that universities aren’t so much hierarchies, as loose democracies. Even after someone is fired, the media migraine can continue. Last year, former president Ralph Weeks sued Medicine Hat College for wrongful dismissal in 2013, and Ilene Busch-Vishniac sued the University of Saskatchewan too. Scandals and controversies can explode in the media like a reputational bomb. There’s no point attempting to bury an inconvenient truth on campus, because it will always surface, and when it comes to light the damage will be even worse. It’s always preferable to identify potentially explosive issues early, be proactive in treating them, and transparent in reporting them to the campus community. Best to find the bomb and defuse it, than have it go off unexpectedly and take everyone by surprise. BTW, Ken Steele is available to facilitate workshops or present at conferences and on campuses about PR headaches and how to manage media relations in a crisis. More information at http://eduvation.ca/pr-headaches-how-to-treat-them/ #ICYMI, this week we feature an excerpt from UNB Fredericton’s “dog’s eye view of campus” featuring Lucy. https://youtu.be/aaxJwxOKrQk For exclusive preview access, a week early, to future episodes of "Ten with Ken", be sure to subscribe to Eduvation's "in the loop" email newsletter, at http://www.eduvation.ca/subscribe/
Increasingly careerist students, at colleges and universities alike, are attracted to work-integrated learning opportunities. This week, Ken continues his series on innovations in teaching and learning with a closer look at Experiential Learning. Colleges like Sault College have been promoting hands-on learning opportunities for years, like their Field Camp for outdoor recreation students. https://youtu.be/gCfa_LFTRHQ Calgary’s SAIT Polytechnic emphasizes the value of real-world, career-focused education in their “Get Real” commercials. https://youtu.be/9cOUKB6nfic Algonquin College nicely shows how a daycare, flight deck, kichen, and construction site are all “my classroom.” https://youtu.be/AXnbZhIoU64 Universities Canada reports than more than 50% of undergrad students at Canadian universities now get some form of experiential learning opportunity – although this could be as simple as a few labs, or as intense as a co-op work term or study abroad experience. The so-called “Maker movement” is taking hold on hundreds of campuses across North America. At the University of Southern California, the Iovine & Young Academy (named for the two Beats Electronics co-founders) offers space for problem-based learning, 3D printing, rapid prototyping and more. Even smaller institutions, like BC’s Douglas College, have opened MakerSpaces, sometimes in prominent public locations. New YouTube CreatorSpaces are opening around the world, recently at Ryerson University. Workshops are open to creators with at least 1,000 channel subscribers. (We could really use your help getting to 1,000 – have you subscribed to this channel yet?) It’s telling that a recent survey of graduating college and university students found that the 3 most important “academic activities,” in their opinion, were internships, co-ops, and work experiences. Colleges have been experimenting with creating on-campus work opportunities like the student-managed farm at Lakeland College in Vermilion Alberta, the oldest and largest in the world. Or the campus hotel and conference centre at Olds College. Or the “Learning Enterprises” established at Niagara College, which give hundreds of students work experience and often generate a million-dollar surplus for the college to boot! At St Lawrence College, the on-campus ad agency “Spark” gives marketing students experience, and also creates videos, video games, and other digital resources for college instructors. But we may just be streaming kids into career-directed education too young. Since 1935, Raisbeck Aviation High School, just outside Seattle, has focused students on careers in aviation from grade 9 onward. NAIT and the Edmonton School Boards have announced a new “Collegiate for Science, Technology & Trades” high school to open adjacent to the NAIT campus. Calgary’s West Island College, an independent high school, offers several “Institute” programs focused on careers in Business, Health, and Engineering. It’s no wonder, either, that as students place more and more emphasis on work experiences, many are opting to take a “gap year” off from school to pursue employment instead. Uncollege.org is capitalizing on this movement, offering students a self-directed gap year complete with travel, mentors, and internship for just $16,000. It’s like university, but without the classes or the grades. Finally, just #ICYMI, we highlight a “Strive” video from Nova Scotia Community College that focuses on one student’s experiential learning journey in the Therapeutic Recreation program. https://youtu.be/ilcPb8CzuzE Next time, we’ll take a look at one specific form of experiential learning that seems to be in ascendance: campus incubators and accelerators. To get exclusive early access to upcoming episodes, subscribe to our free email newsletter at www.Eduvation.ca/subscribe
For more than a thousand years, students have been gathering in lecture halls to listen to the "sage on the stage." But shorter attention spans, new technologies, and empirical testing of learning outcomes have led us to question the tried and true historical "transmission" model of education. In this episode, Ken Steele gives a brief lecture on "the Death of Lecture." Check out how familiar a 14th-century lecture hall at the Universite di Bologne looks. Former Quest University president David Helfand explains how the human brain is wired for two-way communication - and the lecture is the opposite of that. https://youtu.be/-J8PcPC7l5U fMRI studies have demonstrated the impact of curiosity on the brain's ability to soak up new information. Gen Y and Z have significantly decreased attention spans. They don't have the patience for a 60-minute lecture, and the Columbia University TEDx organizers worry that they don't have the focus for a 16-minute TED talk either. https://youtu.be/wRwPoR707UI Hundreds of studies have demonstrated that students in lecture classes are 1.5x as likely to fail the course. The lecture is actually "toxic" to student learning, but large first-year lectures subsidize upper-year seminars and graduate studies. In the past century, most of the innovation in undergraduate teaching and learning has amounted to little more than scaling an outmoded industrial model of education, designed to graduate students into the industrial economy of the 1930s. We need to re-engineering our approach for the 21st century. Instructors often underuse the active learning methodologies, to rely on passive methods like lecture and demonstrations. Next time, we'll take a closer look at active learning in the classroom. #ICYMI, Trinity Western University has a dynamic new commercial - and out of 90 seconds, just 1.5 show students in a lecture hall. Seems like a wise idea! https://youtu.be/INPUwp2Fz3k For exclusive early access to upcoming episodes, subscribe to the Eduvation newsletter! www.eduvation.ca/subscribe
This year, we distill the best moments from 76 holiday greeting videos that were published by colleges and universities across Canada in December 2015, and select a few as “Best in Class” for their categories. Please “take twenty” with us, and enjoy! If you’re creating your own holiday greeting video, be sure to animate your logo with snowflakes and sleighbells. Your task is to convey best wishes on behalf of the campus community, most often featuring the president as spokesperson. A snowy Canadian winter is a natural, non-denominational symbol of winter break, and so many holiday greeting videos feature footage of campus wrapped in a blanket of snow. Perhaps last year was particularly green, since quite a few videos faked the snow – from Royal Roads to Western (which got Best in Class for this category.) The simplest way to incorporate the many voices on campus is to feature a collage of photographs, either taken throughout the year, or staged using holiday props. More popular is the “Holiday Shout-Out”, a compilation of many staff and students sharing their holiday wishes, often in a range of languages and reflecting a variety of traditions. (Humber College gets Best in Class for this category, although there are plenty of other great examples. VIU deserves honorable mention for involving their “Extreme Science” team. uWindsor produced a very slick multilingual video, but Queen’s ultimately got Best in Class for the sheer range of voices and their enthusiasm.) A variation on the “shout-out” is the “on-the-street Q&A”, and again there are plenty of great examples. Many ask students and staff what the holidays mean to them, or what they are looking forward to about the holidays. (SFU gets Best in Class for this category, for a polished and energetic video asking staff and students about their gift to the world.) Many institutions showcase the skills and talents of their students and alumni in their holiday greetings. Sheridan has a tradition of animated videos, and Mohawk of very polished musical greetings. Last year we saw alumni talents featured by NSCC, ECUAD, Ryerson, and Georgian as well. (We awarded Mohawk Best in Class for their musical videos, and even behind-the-scenes video.) Special mention goes to MSVU's recruiters, who clowned around while demonstrating their gift-wrapping skills. We saw tree-trimming parties at King’s and CBU, among others, but uVic took it to a new level with their best-in-class approach to symbolic ornaments and student sound bytes. A close runner-up was George Brown, which created a strong example as well. Santa Claus made an appearance at Douglas, posing for photos with all the good little girls and boys. At Niagara, gifts were delivered by Basil, the greenhouse cat. Brock staged a "parking miracle". A staffer named Lori played Secret Santa at Durham, while Lassonde tackled intergenerational peace and understanding with a defense of Millennials. UNB created an emotional thank-you from scholarship recipients to donors. But our favourite in this category was a wordless music video from uLeth, featuring gorgeous cinematography and Tyrone Wells’ song “Christmas at Home.” (Unfortunately UofL has just recently deleted their upload.) Some institutions promote professional, accomplished singers of Christmas Carols, while many publish videos of enthusiastic amateurs. Some try to stay in key, while others focus on having fun. NSCC shared a sign language caroling performance. Waterloo's Faculty of Environment rewrote “Winter Wonderland” with a “green” focus. Algoma staff participated in a collective reading of “The Grinch”. Bow Valley “put a bow on it.” Fleming produced their own version of Jimmy Fallon’s “Thank You Notes.” RDC parodied “The Night Before Christmas.” Definitely Best in Class for the parody category, however, was a version of the “12 Days of Christmas” by the Film & Video students at CNA. (Of course I can’t resist including uMich Engineering's Star Wars parody, “The Holiday Jedi Rap.”) You can watch the original, unedited versions of these holiday videos in our 2015 Holiday Videos playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLodJ8ParJmYULq5f-_JsusgbW1V8BNfSd On behalf of everyone here at Eduvation, and from my family to yours, I want to wish you a truly peaceful holiday season, and a happy and prosperous 2017! We’re already assembling a YouTube playlist of 2016 holiday videos, so please add yours here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLodJ8ParJmYW50HvU2lrHm_DURpmz8jqk&jct=HCQjNaZ4OsE7aqyhuMM-_4ox4oMGcg (We’ll summarize them for next year’s holiday special.)
This year, we distill the best moments from 76 holiday greeting videos that were published by colleges and universities across Canada in December 2015, and select a few as “Best in Class” for their categories. Please “take twenty” with us, and enjoy! If you’re creating your own holiday greeting video, be sure to animate your logo with snowflakes and sleighbells. Your task is to convey best wishes on behalf of the campus community, most often featuring the president as spokesperson. A snowy Canadian winter is a natural, non-denominational symbol of winter break, and so many holiday greeting videos feature footage of campus wrapped in a blanket of snow. Perhaps last year was particularly green, since quite a few videos faked the snow – from Royal Roads to Western (which got Best in Class for this category.) The simplest way to incorporate the many voices on campus is to feature a collage of photographs, either taken throughout the year, or staged using holiday props. More popular is the “Holiday Shout-Out”, a compilation of many staff and students sharing their holiday wishes, often in a range of languages and reflecting a variety of traditions. (Humber College gets Best in Class for this category, although there are plenty of other great examples. VIU deserves honorable mention for involving their “Extreme Science” team. uWindsor produced a very slick multilingual video, but Queen’s ultimately got Best in Class for the sheer range of voices and their enthusiasm.) A variation on the “shout-out” is the “on-the-street Q&A”, and again there are plenty of great examples. Many ask students and staff what the holidays mean to them, or what they are looking forward to about the holidays. (SFU gets Best in Class for this category, for a polished and energetic video asking staff and students about their gift to the world.) Many institutions showcase the skills and talents of their students and alumni in their holiday greetings. Sheridan has a tradition of animated videos, and Mohawk of very polished musical greetings. Last year we saw alumni talents featured by NSCC, ECUAD, Ryerson, and Georgian as well. (We awarded Mohawk Best in Class for their musical videos, and even behind-the-scenes video.) Special mention goes to MSVU's recruiters, who clowned around while demonstrating their gift-wrapping skills. We saw tree-trimming parties at King’s and CBU, among others, but uVic took it to a new level with their best-in-class approach to symbolic ornaments and student sound bytes. A close runner-up was George Brown, which created a strong example as well. Santa Claus made an appearance at Douglas, posing for photos with all the good little girls and boys. At Niagara, gifts were delivered by Basil, the greenhouse cat. Brock staged a "parking miracle". A staffer named Lori played Secret Santa at Durham, while Lassonde tackled intergenerational peace and understanding with a defense of Millennials. UNB created an emotional thank-you from scholarship recipients to donors. But our favourite in this category was a wordless music video from uLeth, featuring gorgeous cinematography and Tyrone Wells’ song “Christmas at Home.” (Unfortunately UofL has just recently deleted their upload.) Some institutions promote professional, accomplished singers of Christmas Carols, while many publish videos of enthusiastic amateurs. Some try to stay in key, while others focus on having fun. NSCC shared a sign language caroling performance. Waterloo's Faculty of Environment rewrote “Winter Wonderland” with a “green” focus. Algoma staff participated in a collective reading of “The Grinch”. Bow Valley “put a bow on it.” Fleming produced their own version of Jimmy Fallon’s “Thank You Notes.” RDC parodied “The Night Before Christmas.” Definitely Best in Class for the parody category, however, was a version of the “12 Days of Christmas” by the Film & Video students at CNA. (Of course I can’t resist including uMich Engineering's Star Wars parody, “The Holiday Jedi Rap.”) You can watch the original, unedited versions of these holiday videos in our 2015 Holiday Videos playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLodJ8ParJmYULq5f-_JsusgbW1V8BNfSd On behalf of everyone here at Eduvation, and from my family to yours, I want to wish you a truly peaceful holiday season, and a happy and prosperous 2017! We’re already assembling a YouTube playlist of 2016 holiday videos, so please add yours here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLodJ8ParJmYW50HvU2lrHm_DURpmz8jqk&jct=HCQjNaZ4OsE7aqyhuMM-_4ox4oMGcg (We’ll summarize them for next year’s holiday special.)
Increasingly careerist students, at colleges and universities alike, are attracted to work-integrated learning opportunities. This week, Ken continues his series on innovations in teaching and learning with a closer look at Experiential Learning. Colleges like Sault College have been promoting hands-on learning opportunities for years, like their Field Camp for outdoor recreation students. https://youtu.be/gCfa_LFTRHQ Calgary’s SAIT Polytechnic emphasizes the value of real-world, career-focused education in their “Get Real” commercials. https://youtu.be/9cOUKB6nfic Algonquin College nicely shows how a daycare, flight deck, kichen, and construction site are all “my classroom.” https://youtu.be/AXnbZhIoU64 Universities Canada reports than more than 50% of undergrad students at Canadian universities now get some form of experiential learning opportunity – although this could be as simple as a few labs, or as intense as a co-op work term or study abroad experience. The so-called “Maker movement” is taking hold on hundreds of campuses across North America. At the University of Southern California, the Iovine & Young Academy (named for the two Beats Electronics co-founders) offers space for problem-based learning, 3D printing, rapid prototyping and more. Even smaller institutions, like BC’s Douglas College, have opened MakerSpaces, sometimes in prominent public locations. New YouTube CreatorSpaces are opening around the world, recently at Ryerson University. Workshops are open to creators with at least 1,000 channel subscribers. (We could really use your help getting to 1,000 – have you subscribed to this channel yet?) It’s telling that a recent survey of graduating college and university students found that the 3 most important “academic activities,” in their opinion, were internships, co-ops, and work experiences. Colleges have been experimenting with creating on-campus work opportunities like the student-managed farm at Lakeland College in Vermilion Alberta, the oldest and largest in the world. Or the campus hotel and conference centre at Olds College. Or the “Learning Enterprises” established at Niagara College, which give hundreds of students work experience and often generate a million-dollar surplus for the college to boot! At St Lawrence College, the on-campus ad agency “Spark” gives marketing students experience, and also creates videos, video games, and other digital resources for college instructors. But we may just be streaming kids into career-directed education too young. Since 1935, Raisbeck Aviation High School, just outside Seattle, has focused students on careers in aviation from grade 9 onward. NAIT and the Edmonton School Boards have announced a new “Collegiate for Science, Technology & Trades” high school to open adjacent to the NAIT campus. Calgary’s West Island College, an independent high school, offers several “Institute” programs focused on careers in Business, Health, and Engineering. It’s no wonder, either, that as students place more and more emphasis on work experiences, many are opting to take a “gap year” off from school to pursue employment instead. Uncollege.org is capitalizing on this movement, offering students a self-directed gap year complete with travel, mentors, and internship for just $16,000. It’s like university, but without the classes or the grades. Finally, just #ICYMI, we highlight a “Strive” video from Nova Scotia Community College that focuses on one student’s experiential learning journey in the Therapeutic Recreation program. https://youtu.be/ilcPb8CzuzE Next time, we’ll take a look at one specific form of experiential learning that seems to be in ascendance: campus incubators and accelerators. To get exclusive early access to upcoming episodes, subscribe to our free email newsletter at www.Eduvation.ca/subscribe
For more than a thousand years, students have been gathering in lecture halls to listen to the "sage on the stage." But shorter attention spans, new technologies, and empirical testing of learning outcomes have led us to question the tried and true historical "transmission" model of education. In this episode, Ken Steele gives a brief lecture on "the Death of Lecture." Check out how familiar a 14th-century lecture hall at the Universite di Bologne looks. Former Quest University president David Helfand explains how the human brain is wired for two-way communication - and the lecture is the opposite of that. https://youtu.be/-J8PcPC7l5U fMRI studies have demonstrated the impact of curiosity on the brain's ability to soak up new information. Gen Y and Z have significantly decreased attention spans. They don't have the patience for a 60-minute lecture, and the Columbia University TEDx organizers worry that they don't have the focus for a 16-minute TED talk either. https://youtu.be/wRwPoR707UI Hundreds of studies have demonstrated that students in lecture classes are 1.5x as likely to fail the course. The lecture is actually "toxic" to student learning, but large first-year lectures subsidize upper-year seminars and graduate studies. In the past century, most of the innovation in undergraduate teaching and learning has amounted to little more than scaling an outmoded industrial model of education, designed to graduate students into the industrial economy of the 1930s. We need to re-engineering our approach for the 21st century. Instructors often underuse the active learning methodologies, to rely on passive methods like lecture and demonstrations. Next time, we'll take a closer look at active learning in the classroom. #ICYMI, Trinity Western University has a dynamic new commercial - and out of 90 seconds, just 1.5 show students in a lecture hall. Seems like a wise idea! https://youtu.be/INPUwp2Fz3k For exclusive early access to upcoming episodes, subscribe to the Eduvation newsletter! www.eduvation.ca/subscribe For the hi-res version of this episode, see https://youtu.be/yW_3asg92zM
Ken Steele distills dozens of interviews on the floor of North America's largest higher ed trade show, the Ontario Universities' Fair. This week we look specifically at what new programs are attracting student attention. With more than 100,000 prospective students and parents flooding the OUF, it’s a massive market test. Unique Signature Programs:Including Carleton’s Bachelor of Global & International Studies; Lakehead’s Outdoor Recreation, Mining, Forestry and Environmental Studies programs; Laurentian’s Forensic Science, Sports Administration, and Human Kinetics programs, and new Masters in Indigenous Relations; Trent’s Child & Youth Studies and Communications programs at their Durham campus; and the Fine & Performing Arts programs in Brock’s brand new facilities. Professional Programs:Including Science, Engineering, and Commerce at Guelph; Business and new Bilingual Engineering degrees at Laurentian; and UOIT’s new Mechatronics Engineering program. Health, Medicine & Social Work:Including Biomedical and Nursing programs at Laurentian; a new Biomedical Sciences program at Trent; and a new Health Sciences program and downtown facilities for Social Work studetns at Windsor. New Law Programs:The first new law school in Ontario in 43 years opened at Lakehead 3 years ago, with a focus on natural resources, sole practitioner law, and aboriginal law. Windsor’s dual Juris Doctorate program with the University of Detroit Mercy allows graduates to practice law in both Canada and the US. Laurier just signed a 2+3+1 agreement with the UK’s University of Sussex Law School, which allows students to enroll at Laurier and wind up with a Laurier BA, a British LLB, and be prepared to pass the Ontario Bar Exam as well. Video Game Design: UOIT has a Game Development & Entrepreneurship program, which has been very popular and has quite competitive admissions. Brock has a new interdisciplinary program in Video Game Design, offered jointly with Niagara College. University/College Collaborations:For more than a decade, the University of Guelph-Humber has been a success story for large-scale collaboration, but at the program level many Ontario universities and colleges have collaborations. Lakehead is partnering with Georgian College in Orillia to offer an Electrical Engineering program, and have others in development. Trent has a strong relationship with Durham College and UOIT, and with Fleming College, which has an environmental science focus as well. Laurentian is exploring several new pathways with College Boréal and Cambrian College in Sudbury. Ken closes with excerpts from a fun video by USC Viterbi, the NAE, and Funny or Die, which explores what it would look like if the E! Network covered Engineers like celebrities: https://youtu.be/P-OBJNkCanY Remember to subscribe free to the Eduvation Loop email to get exclusive early access to upcoming episodes, and now also Ken’s “Eduvation at a Glance” visual summary of exciting developments in higher ed. www.eduvation.ca/subscribe
Last week, Ken Steele looked back at some major PR headaches sparked by students and faculty, from white student unions to a blogging board member. https://youtu.be/qn0ylCsR9Jw But some of the biggest media relations migraines of all start at the top, with board chairs and presidents. It’s a considerable risk for a multi-million-dollar organization to rest its reputation squarely on the shoulders of a single individual. Last year Subway’s spokesperson, Jared, went to prison on child sex charges. And the president of a small Christian college in South Carolina resigned in disgrace over his sexual indiscretions. At Western University, president Amit Chakma’s double pay made headlines in 2015, but he had done nothing wrong in accepting a contract with administrative leave. The bigger issue was that the board committee normally responsible for negotiating such contracts was bypassed, and the board chair, Chirag Shah, seemed responsible. A task force made 22 recommendations for governance reform at Western, and Shah stepped off the board at the end of his term last November. The year’s biggest PR headache, though, was the abrupt resignation of UBC president Arvind Gupta, only a year into his term. The board hired a passionate reformer with a bold agenda. Gupta didn’t have the usual university administration experience, but instead had founded Mitacs, a fairly small nonprofit. From the beginning, Gupta made it clear he wanted to make UBC more relevant to the needs of society, and he knew that driving change would make some people uneasy. The board itself started growing uneasy, with the departure of senior executives like provost David Farrar, and rumblings of poor morale across the institution. There were controversial, perhaps political, appointments made to the president’s office. Board chair John Montalbano wrote strongly-worded emails to Gupta, urging him to “refrain from thinking controversial thoughts out loud,” and expressing concern about his “willful disregard for the board’s authority.” With the leaking of these emails, in January 2016, Gupta went public with his side of the story, expressing regret that he didn’t push back harder against the board, and instead chose to resign. The abrupt departure of a president, after significant executive changes and barely concealed friction with the board chair, would have been bad enough for the media relations people tasked with managing the situation. But then, business professor Jennifer Berdahl wrote a blog suggesting that Gupta lost a “masculinity contest.” The blog itself might have gone unnoticed amid a storm of speculation, if not that board chair Montalbano took exception. He felt “hurt” that accusations of racism and sexism were being hurled by a professor he knew personally. And so, one fateful day, he called her to discuss the blog directly. Montalbano claimed he was extraordinarily careful, throughout the call, to confirm that Berdahl felt comfortable discussing the blog, and that she did not feel her academic freedom was being threatened or compromised. But a few days later, Berdahl either changed her mind or found her voice, and a new blog railed against Montalbano’s attempt to intimidate her and suppress her right to academic free speech. She went to the media, and claimed he threatened to discuss the “trouble she was causing” with her dean. Ultimately a fact-finding investigation agreed with Berdahl, and Montalbano stepped down from the UBC board in August. Global News interview with Arvind Gupta: http://globalnews.ca/news/2484938/watch-one-on-one-with-former-ubc-president-arvind-gupta/ Global News interview with John Montalbano: http://globalnews.ca/video/2173090/extended-ubc-board-chair-john-montalbano CBC interview with Jennifer Berdahl: http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2673915157 Some of the biggest dysfunctions on college and university campuses occur when outsiders attempt to push an agenda without truly appreciating the subtleties of academic politics. It’s vitally important to recognize that universities aren’t so much hierarchies, as loose democracies. Even after someone is fired, the media migraine can continue. Last year, former president Ralph Weeks sued Medicine Hat College for wrongful dismissal in 2013, and Ilene Busch-Vishniac sued the University of Saskatchewan too. Scandals and controversies can explode in the media like a reputational bomb. There’s no point attempting to bury an inconvenient truth on campus, because it will always surface, and when it comes to light the damage will be even worse. It’s always preferable to identify potentially explosive issues early, be proactive in treating them, and transparent in reporting them to the campus community. Best to find the bomb and defuse it, than have it go off unexpectedly and take everyone by surprise. BTW, Ken Steele is available to facilitate workshops or present at conferences and on campuses about PR headaches and how to manage media relations in a crisis. More information at http://eduvation.ca/pr-headaches-how-to-treat-them/ #ICYMI, this week we feature an excerpt from UNB Fredericton’s “dog’s eye view of campus” featuring Lucy. https://youtu.be/aaxJwxOKrQk For exclusive preview access, a week early, to future episodes of "Ten with Ken", be sure to subscribe to Eduvation's "in the loop" email newsletter, at http://www.eduvation.ca/subscribe/
This week, Ken Steele looks back at some of the biggest PR headaches afflicting Canadian colleges and universities in the past year, looking for common causes and some lessons we can learn about crisis communications. Academia may well be the most challenging environment in which to manage messaging, with opinionated faculty, unrestrained students, and concerned parents, alumni, and taxpayers in the community. Without a doubt, many PR headaches are caused by the students, intentionally or not. In previous episodes we’ve looked at sexist behavior in social media and during orientation, but Dalhousie’s School of Dentistry struggled with the biggest PR headache of 2015, when 13 male students posted sexist, misogynistic remarks to a supposedly private Facebook group. Protests, suspensions, a task force – in all, it cost the school about $650,000. And the underlying culture of sexism should have been addressed years earlier. CBC’s “This Hour Has 22 Minutes” parody commercial – https://youtu.be/RtffrcWeMf0 Last year the University of Toronto had to ramp up campus security in the wake of a series of online threats posted by an anonymous user named “Kill Feminists.” The University of Ottawa coped with the fallout of the alleged sex assault by male hockey players, and a $6 million class action lawsuit. Several universities tore down posters for “White Students Unions.” 2 Montréal CÉGEPs had to cope with more than a dozen students leaving Canada to join Jihad. But of course, students aren’t the only creative, intelligent and outspoken people on your campus. Last year we saw plenty of PR headaches caused by faculty members, too.In the UK there was Nobel-prize-winning biochemist Tim Hunt, and his ill-advised attempt at humour about the distraction of women scientists in the lab. (His botched apology made things far worse, and cost him his job.) In Ontario it was St Lawrence College business professor Rick Coupland, who was fired for violent homophobic comments last summer. At Carleton University, biology professor Root Gorelick has caused a stir with his blog, commenting on his experiences as a member of the university board of governors. He sees himself as elected by faculty, with an obligation to his constituents, but the rest of the board and the administration are concerned about the ways in which his blogs do not always agree with the official minutes. He is accused of attacking the personal integrity of fellow board members. Carleton has put in place a new code of conduct for board members, making it clear that governors must not criticize decisions once they have been made. Several campus groups are concerned that Gorelick may be removed for his refusal to sign this “gag order.” It seems pretty clear that when students or faculty behave badly, the institution needs to condemn their actions swiftly and unambiguously, suspend the perpetrators, start a thorough investigation, and possibly a restorative justice process. The institution may have to address the problem, through enhanced campus security, harassment policies, or codes of conduct. Sometimes swift action will lead to accusations of overreaction, such as at Ottawa and Dalhousie, where potentially innocent students are considered guilty by association. But these responses seemed to be the most popular approach in 2015. Next time we’ll look at some of the most serious higher ed headaches of all. And as the metaphor might suggest, they often start at the top, with presidents and board chairs. Meanwhile you might like to check out our review of the biggest higher ed headaches of 2014 - https://youtu.be/TJaZsXv68s4 Ken Steele is available to facilitate workshops or present at conferences and on campuses about PR headaches and how to manage media relations in a crisis. More information at http://eduvation.ca/pr-headaches-how-to-treat-them/ #ICYMI, check out ASAP Science’s a capella parody of Taylor Swift’s hit song, which they called “Science Style” - https://youtu.be/sWwd5vks9n8 For exclusive preview access, a week early, to future episodes of "Ten with Ken", be sure to subscribe to Eduvation's "in the loop" email newsletter, at http://www.eduvation.ca/subscribe/
This week, Ken Steele completes his countdown of the ten biggest trends impacting North American higher education in 2015, with the top 4: from political correctness and personal safety to major demographic shifts. If you missed part 1, check it out first: https://youtu.be/bziLQbNEXcI Trigger Warning: The topics of trigger warnings and sexual assault may be disturbing to some viewers. Discretion is advised. 4) Indigenous Content: Even before the recommendations of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, institutions began announcing new mandatory indigenous content in their curricula. Students at the University of Winnipeg proposed mandatory courses in indigenous history or culture. Lakehead University announced that it would introduce indigenous perspectives into courses across all faculties. UBC’s Sauder School of Business and the UBC Okanagan School of Nursing both announced that they would be integrating Aboriginal content. The new president at the University of Saskatchewan declared that he would make indigenization his top priority. And the Law Faculties at UBC and Lakehead had both established mandatory courses in Aboriginal Law and intercultural training. 3) Zero Tolerance: Last year we saw significant mainstream attention being paid to microaggressions on campus, and ongoing debate about trigger warnings for the curriculum. Faculty, most of whom are Baby Boomers or Gen Xers, are alarmed by the rising tide of political correctness and its potential to undermine academic freedom and free speech on campus. Generation Y students, on the other hand, take free speech for granted, but in a social media era have learned to retaliate against even the subtlest prejudice with a firestorm of outrage. Last year, several top comedians declared that they would no longer perform on campuses because students just couldn’t take a joke. A controversial prof at Laurentian asked his students to sign a waiver acknowledging coarse language in his lectures. Universities introduced microaggression training in their faculty orientations, collective agreements, and more. The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms ranked Canadian universities and gave 15 universities and 26 student unions grades of “F”. 2) Sex Assault Protocols: Although long-term trends in the incidences of sex assault on campus are debated, we saw an immense public spotlight focused on the issue last year. First there was the fallout of a discredited campus rape story published (and then retracted) by Rolling Stone magazine. The release of The Hunting Ground, a full-length documentary about Ivy League schools covering up rape to protect their brands. A Columbia student carrying a mattress with her everywhere on campus, including to her graduation. Task force recommendations at the University of Ottawa, in the wake of a sex assault that resulted in the suspension of its men’s hockey team. Rape allegations at Royal Military College. And then there was the CBC’s ranking of colleges and universities based on sex assaults reported in the previous 5 years. Across the country, presidents announced task forces and new policies and protocols, student unions and mental health services launched awareness campaigns and bystander intervention programs. There are even smartphone apps designed to secure affirmative sexual consent in the heat of the moment. Full official trailer for The Hunting Ground: https://youtu.be/GBNHGi36nlM Full ad for Alberta’s #IBelieveYou: https://youtu.be/VruBjg_dc2Q 1) Peak Campus: Most significant of all, last year there was just no denying that enrolment was plateauing or declining at many campuses across North America. In the US, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported that college enrolment declined in 2015 for the third straight year, particularly at 2-year community colleges and for-profit institutions. The University of Phoenix had lost half of its students between 2010 and 2015, a whopping 250,000! The Council of Ontario Universities reported declines of about 5% in applicants province-wide over 2 years – and more remote institutions like the University of Windsor or Lakehead saw drops of up to 19%. The Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission reported a 1% decline in enrolment after 4 consecutive years of growth, and smaller campuses in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were particularly hard hit. Check out Ken’s white paper, Peak Campus, for more detail: http://eduvation.ca/2013/09/peak-campus/ Next time we’ll round up the top higher ed headaches of 2015. For exclusive preview access, a week early, to future episodes of "Ten with Ken", be sure to subscribe to Eduvation's "in the loop" email newsletter, at http://www.eduvation.ca/subscribe/
Ken Steele completes his survey of recent trends in college and university holiday greeting videos in this week’s 20-minute episode of Ten with Ken. (If you missed Part 1, watch it at https://youtu.be/iImd9p1O3nQ ). This time, we look at highlights from 27 institutional videos from some of our favourite categories: comedy and parody, seasonal goodwill gestures, and campus choirs and musicians. We’ve had to significantly edit these videos for the podcast, and although we’ve tried to retain their flavour and focus on their best moments, you may want to go watch the full, unedited versions: MARKETING DEPARTMENT GREETINGS: Fanshawe College Reputation & Brand Management, 2014 - https://youtu.be/o-DdAhlUbBY University of Waterloo Communications & Public Affairs, 2014 - https://youtu.be/DuwCR7PGJqg Western University Creative Services, 2014 - https://youtu.be/WFC-tiKVvBE HUMOUR & PARODY: Bow Valley College 2014 - https://youtu.be/dT6s4A8X8GM University of Waterloo Faculty of the Environment, Kris Kringle Research Institute 2013 - https://youtu.be/jx-tI5rLi3s UBC Ubyssey, 36 Things to Do 2014 - https://youtu.be/qinukwkwzwk Sheridan College Bachelor of Animation, 2014 - https://youtu.be/aHhLNCsytRs SEASONAL GOODWILL GESTURES: WestJet Christmas Miracle, 2013 - https://youtu.be/zIEIvi2MuEk University of Waterloo Faculty of the Environment, 2014 - https://youtu.be/ycx6mOHh0uk Trinity Western University, 2013 - https://youtu.be/3uVk_f4xT7k McMaster University, The Spirit of Giving 2014 - https://youtu.be/b1C7hU45eC0 Red Deer College, 2014 - https://youtu.be/T51u6kxFmnc Humber College, Spreading a Little Humber Happiness 2014 - https://youtu.be/PHWrbFwEkZg Saint Mary’s University (Halifax), Be Thoughtful Be Festive 2014 - https://youtu.be/51He8sxwSTA University of Victoria, Holiday Wishes 2014 - https://youtu.be/SvcSfPFcGi8 Durham College, Make it Merry 2014 - https://youtu.be/BhcrMrd2-AI MUSICIANS & CHOIRS: University of Waterloo Applied Health Sciences, 2013 - https://youtu.be/dRhmITUxEc4 Carleton University VP Research, 2014 - https://youtu.be/7QWWF63VNMY Upper Canada College, A Jingle Bells School Day, 2013 - https://youtu.be/OSkPQVhJRdg Huron University College, 12 Days of Christmas, 2013 - https://youtu.be/N81ybB-kqlA Mohawk College, Holiday eCard 2013 - https://youtu.be/6NV-S_l9DJA Mohawk College, Behind-the-Scenes 2013 - https://youtu.be/sNx_qr-SxPk Huron University College, Decorating in the Chapel, 2013 - https://youtu.be/EkUNNrxYjt0 Algonquin College, President’s Holiday Message 2014 - https://youtu.be/Wla_j1g0nSA Bow Valley College, 2014 - https://youtu.be/-eWLBmdIswI King’s University College Chamber Choir, 2014 - https://youtu.be/m3QV1J9O1lQ Capilano University, 2013 - https://youtu.be/DOCAgUMcvrc (also used over our closing credits) Cambrian College Choir, The Winter’s Night 2014 - https://youtu.be/ca9RX3nLjr0 St Clair College Performing Arts Students, O Holy Night 2014 - https://youtu.be/uHXPvjBCWW4 If you’ve seen a noteworthy campus greeting message this year, check to see if it’s on our 2015 Holiday Greetings playlist at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLodJ8ParJmYULq5f-_JsusgbW1V8BNfSd . If not, please drop me an email at ken@eduvation.ca so we can add it. (We’ll discuss this year’s crop next December.) For exclusive preview access to future episodes of "Ten with Ken", be sure to subscribe to Eduvation's "in the loop" email newsletter, at http://www.eduvation.ca/subscribe/ Best wishes for a peaceful holiday with family and friends, and for a happy and prosperous 2016! We’ll be back in early January with several “Year in Review” episodes of Ten with Ken!
As Canadian campuses wind down toward the winter holidays, Ken Steele surveys recent trends in college and university holiday greeting videos in 2 special extended episodes of Ten with Ken. In this week’s 19-minute episode, Ken shares extremely tightly-edited highlights from 49 institutional videos in 5 categories: animated greeting cards, short story vignettes, personal greetings, Q&A compilations, and multilingual greetings. Thompson Rivers University's marketing department captures the challenges of being politically correct and gaining committee approval, 2014 - https://youtu.be/5S5h_x8vLCQ ANIMATED CARDS:Vancouver Community College, 2013 - https://youtu.be/l_xwoG4e4CM University of Waterloo, CECA, 2014 - https://youtu.be/Bv5DoNH2PK0 St Lawrence College, 2013 - https://youtu.be/0KzxSuDVak8 University of Winnipeg, 2013 - https://youtu.be/yjTKfdn2Pjw Georgian College, 2014 - https://youtu.be/APdQM1wWKYM Humber College, 2013 - https://youtu.be/UECuf6MblwI BCIT, 2014 - https://youtu.be/kiJmwr1Oop4 Centennial College, 2013 - https://youtu.be/jt5Zm_HamLE Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2013 - https://youtu.be/GHSyo8uygs4 Red Deer College, 2013 - https://youtu.be/uW2gWhbsJs0 Carleton University, 2010 - https://youtu.be/jYJvv9cJ2e4 Ryerson University, 2014 - https://youtu.be/RA3RdWDgWQY Camosun College, 2013 - https://youtu.be/lcTvWbO3PZg UBC, Interactive Website, 2014 - https://support.ubc.ca/ecards/holiday-card-2014/ Nipissing University, 2013 - https://youtu.be/WwOM1-CWBNE Emily Carr University of Art + Design, 2014 - https://youtu.be/aliM2MOwzvs Royal Roads University, 2013 - https://youtu.be/kUf0A3jx8Jk George Brown College, 2013 - https://youtu.be/orUM1PPPV2k Acadia University, 2014 - https://youtu.be/_QWIUq9JsZw Nova Scotia Community College, 2012 - https://youtu.be/99mCxoykG-Y Mohawk College, 2014 - https://youtu.be/S9GrSNxdGnk Niagara College, 2014 - https://youtu.be/sQBxQQfuN1w Western University, 2014 - https://youtu.be/BHU5GPrqxps VIGNETTES:Sheridan College, 2013 - https://youtu.be/GOXFAN4gRRM Sheridan College, 2014 - https://youtu.be/jU3Rb1ZYkh8 York University Lassonde School of Engineering, 2014 - https://youtu.be/BvcELvQimPc Western University, 2013 - https://youtu.be/McDzHIkKMco PERSONAL GREETINGS:Collège Boréal, 2013 - https://youtu.be/yNw1Po8tPMg St Lawrence College, 2014 - https://youtu.be/DTbnoNYqKBI Briercrest College, 2014 - https://youtu.be/KRUHGnms9rM Mount Royal University, 2014 - https://youtu.be/mYANycbBYUE Trent University, 2014 - https://youtu.be/xf9HawOXgr4 Simon Fraser University, 2013 - https://youtu.be/OV67RXMCd2o Thompson Rivers University, 2014 - https://youtu.be/YCuS-bGItfA University of Waterloo, 2014 - https://youtu.be/Peb_Dpvjqbc Algonquin College, 2014 - https://youtu.be/Wla_j1g0nSA Nipissing University, 2014 - https://vimeo.com/113403258 Q&A COMPILATIONS:Dalhousie University, 2014 - https://youtu.be/Wu_J8Nmn8X8 King’s University College at Western, 2013 - https://youtu.be/G557sfnMxTw Saint Francis Xavier University Athletics, 2014 - https://youtu.be/v-MLNQOj6uY University of the Fraser Valley, 2014 - https://youtu.be/v-lR1708CDI Queen’s University, 2014 - https://youtu.be/1pcIt7vuFFc MULTILINGUAL GREETINGS:Vancouver Island University, 2013 - https://youtu.be/s4eRu4R3a3g Vancouver Island University, 2014 - https://youtu.be/iEjJpctxWoU Cape Breton University, 2014 (no longer online)Ryerson University, International Student Life, 2014 - https://youtu.be/3-ulasYNuXU McGill University, 2013 - https://youtu.be/M8NgbWtezGI Dalhousie University, 2013 - https://youtu.be/cUvNrgNTJCg Simon Fraser University, 2014 - https://youtu.be/Ql92s8LaL2Q Stay tuned next week for part 2, in which we share excerpts from 27 more holiday greeting videos, from categories like comedy and parody, seasonal goodwill gestures, and campus choirs! If you’ve seen a noteworthy campus greeting message this year, check to see if it’s on our 2015 Holiday Greetings playlist. If not, please drop me an email: ken@eduvation.ca. For exclusive preview access to future episodes of "Ten with Ken", be sure to subscribe to Eduvation's "in the loop" email newsletter, at http://www.eduvation.ca/subscribe/
Ken Steele pulls together the evidence for a growing majority of college and university students who are "invisible" part-time students -- registered full-time, for financial aid or other practical reasons, but in fact working as many as 34 hours a week. Now that the average Canadian's work week has declined to about 33 hours a week, these students are essentially working full-time, while registered as full-time students too. Whether because they need the income to survive financially, or they value work experience above all else, these students are inevitably cutting corners, cutting short their sleep and spending half the time on their studies that most universities claim to require. As more and more institutions use the NSSE (National Survey of Student Engagement) to measure student engagement on campus, it is clear that Canada's big urban universities are already at a significant disadvantage, perhaps in part because of broader participation and larger class sizes. Students who spend less time on their studies are, by NSSE's definition, less engaged students. Finally, just #ICYMI, we share clips from a recent video on Durham College's YouTube channel, about a cat named Odey who decides to enrol at Durham College to improve his life. Videos excerpted in this podcast have been significantly edited. Check out the full, original videos here: Centennial College: IMPACT Partnerhttps://youtu.be/7Vb3lyBUslM Gates Foundation, Get Schooled: Balancing Life and Collegehttps://youtu.be/ry2Hedfe1jM Dalhousie Student Union: The Student Poverty Songhttps://youtu.be/Cr2LiQGrC7A Odey the Cat goes to DChttps://youtu.be/u5a75Sn7JPY For exclusive preview access to future episodes of "Ten with Ken", be sure to subscribe to Eduvation's "in the loop" email newsletter, at http://www.eduvation.ca/subscribe/
Ken Steele pulls together the evidence for a growing majority of college and university students who are "invisible" part-time students -- registered full-time, for financial aid or other practical reasons, but in fact working as many as 34 hours a week. Now that the average Canadian's work week has declined to about 33 hours a week, these students are essentially working full-time, while registered as full-time students too. Whether because they need the income to survive financially, or they value work experience above all else, these students are inevitably cutting corners, cutting short their sleep and spending half the time on their studies that most universities claim to require. As more and more institutions use the NSSE (National Survey of Student Engagement) to measure student engagement on campus, it is clear that Canada's big urban universities are already at a significant disadvantage, perhaps in part because of broader participation and larger class sizes. Students who spend less time on their studies are, by NSSE's definition, less engaged students. Finally, just #ICYMI, we share clips from a recent video on Durham College's YouTube channel, about a cat named Odey who decides to enrol at Durham College to improve his life. Videos excerpted in this podcast have been significantly edited. Check out the full, original videos here: Centennial College: IMPACT Partnerhttps://youtu.be/7Vb3lyBUslM Gates Foundation, Get Schooled: Balancing Life and Collegehttps://youtu.be/ry2Hedfe1jM Dalhousie Student Union: The Student Poverty Songhttps://youtu.be/Cr2LiQGrC7A Odey the Cat goes to DChttps://youtu.be/u5a75Sn7JPY For exclusive preview access to future episodes of "Ten with Ken", be sure to subscribe to Eduvation's "in the loop" email newsletter, at http://www.eduvation.ca/subscribe/
Ken Steele continues his review of recent winners and sinners in higher ed social media, this time looking at orientation week highs and lows. It seems as though sometimes O-Week brings out the worst in students, who then seek to document their exploits on Instagram and Snapchat. In Sept 2011, it was students from HEC Montreal donning blackface to imitate Usain Bolt. In Sept 2013, it was Frosh Chants at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, and at the Sauder School of Business at UBC, seeming to advocate the rape of underaged girls. In 2014 it was Engineering Orientation songbooks that surfaced at Concordia University and McMaster. The pattern seems predictable now: outrage, recriminations, apologies, resignations, sensitivity training, counselling for upset students, and a fact-finding investigation. In July 2014, a young entrepreneur started promoting Ottawa Frosh Week Kits with hyper-sexualized videos encouraging "bad decisions with good friends" and excessive consumption of drugs and alcohol. But we did find at least one O-Week social media winner: Wageningen University in the Netherlands, which staged a student event with 1,000 smartphones to capture the entire campus for a "Student Street View". Subscribers to Ken Steele's free email newsletter, the Eduvation Loop, got access to the complete episode 9 of Ten with Ken more than a week early. For exclusive preview access to future episodes, be sure to subscribe to Eduvation's "in the loop" email newsletter, at http://www.eduvation.ca/subscribe/
In this week's 7-minute podcast, Ken Steele summarizes a variety of low-tech and high-tech ways in which universities attempt to bring a virtual campus to the largest PSE trade show in North America, the Ontario Universities' Fair. At #OUF2015, many universities use large campus photography or ever-larger video displays, capped off with Trent University's "jumbotron" screen. For several years now, Laurentian University has recreated their campus in miniature in their "5D presentation room." This year, Wilfrid Laurier University added a large touchscreen "virtual map" of campus to their exhibit, and UOIT partnered with Oculus Rift to deliver a virtual reality campus tour for the first time. Although virtual maps and VR helmets do give a good sense of the physical buildings on campus, they still need to bring to life the faculty and students who inhabit the campus. St Francis Xavier University had a good idea when they brought a live video wall to the OUF a few years ago, allowing prospective students and parents to interact with faculty and students in real time on the StFX campus. Subscribers to Ken Steele's free email newsletter, the Eduvation Loop, got access to the complete episode 9 of Ten with Ken more than a week early. For exclusive preview access to future episodes, be sure to subscribe to Eduvation's "in the loop" email newsletter, at http://www.eduvation.ca/subscribe/
Ken Steele and the Eduvation team present some recent highlights of the Youtube channels of Canadian colleges and universities. This episode we look at some of our favourite back-to-school videos from September 2015, from a safety video for an extinction-level event, to a pyromaniac’s delight, to a puppy outfitted with a GoPro… This 4-minute episode includes excerpts from newscasts Humber Today (Humber College), This Week at UBC (UBC), The Caper Buzz (Cape Breton University), The DiscoverUNB Show (UNB), and MoCast (Mohawk College). We also take a look at back-to-school safety videos, including the University of Calgary’s Emergency App, and Dorm Room Burns at the University of Saskatchewan and Georgian College. Last but not least, a truly unique campus tour video from Great Plains College in Saskatchewan, shot from a Dog’s Eye View.Subscribers to Ken Steele’s free email newsletter, the Eduvation Loop, got access to the complete episode 9 of Ten with Ken more than a week early. For exclusive preview access to future episodes, be sure to subscribe to Eduvation’s “in the loop” email newsletter, at http://www.eduvation.ca/subscribe/
In this special extended 15-minute episode, Canada's most trusted higher ed monitor and futurist, Ken Steele, returns to North America's largest PSE exhibition, the Ontario Universities' Fair. Attracting about 120,000 prospective students and parents each year, the OUF is the second-largest annual event held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Ken spent two full days onsite, capturing the university exhibits, contests, and viewbooks, and interviewing front-line recruiters, deans, presidents and others about the latest trends and news. In this episode, we review how the OUF has evolved in its 19-year history, how exhibits and staffing have changed, how the audience has expanded, and how the questions posed by prospective students have shifted toward a focus on experiential learning, mental health supports, and career prospects. We'll also hear why the OUF seems so important to university presidents and staff. The episode ends with a sneak peek at the other 12 hours of footage, which will be featured in upcoming episodes of Ten with Ken. (And, as usual, stay tuned for a couple of bloopers after the closing credits.) For exclusive preview access to future episodes of "Ten with Ken", be sure to subscribe to Eduvation's "in the loop" email newsletter, at http://www.eduvation.ca/subscribe/
On The Radar: In September 2015, the world's highest-trafficked pornography website, PornHub, announced it was launching a charitable foundation, PornHub Cares, with a $25,000 college scholarship. Eligible students have to submit a 5-minute video explaining how they seek to make others happy. Also this fall, hookup app Tinder released its ranking of American university campuses based on their ratio of "right swipes" - the hottest males seem to attend private Christian colleges and military academies, while the hottest females were at campuses in the deep south. Social media winners and sinners: Ken shares a few examples of the best and worst in higher ed social media from his keynote at the 2015 PSEWEB conference. Sinners range from Nobel-prize-winning biochemist Tim Hunt and his ill-advised joke about "girls" in the lab (and his botched apology), to Rick Coupland's violently homophobic Facebook post. In response, though, some winners appeared, like the #DistractinglySexy viral campaign, or the NoHomophobes.com campaign at the University of Alberta. The Big Picture: Like it or not, libraries are moving paper books into underground storage vaults and textbook publishers are rushing to embrace access codes that defeat the most common student efficiencies (photocopying, piracy, sharing, buying used, borrowing from the library, etc). What's promising are the institutions bundling textbooks into student fees, often providing free iPads in the bargain, like the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, College Boreal, Olds College, and more. Some studies have found that 77% of students don't even buy mandatory textbooks - so small wonder that Algonquin College is finding substantial improvements in student learning and success when etexts are provided to 100% of students. Since the government of California committed to creating free, peer-reviewed open-source online versions of the textbooks for the 50 top college courses in 2012, the governments of British Columbia and Manitoba have followed suit. We're likely to see a lot more provinces jump on the bandwagon to score political points on the cheap. Stay tuned after the credits for a few bloopers, as well! For exclusive preview access to future episodes of "Ten with Ken", be sure to subscribe to Eduvation's "in the loop" email newsletter, at http://www.eduvation.ca/subscribe/
Canada's most trusted higher ed monitor and futurist, Ken Steele, reviews a few examples of recent developments affecting gender equity on campus, continues his survey of college rebrandings with a look at those given new university status, and explains LinkedIn's new plans for world domination.
What were the ten biggest headaches confronting Canadian higher education leaders and public affairs practitioners in 2014? In part 2, Ken Steele looks at self-inflicted headaches including Labour Negotiations at University of New Brunswick, Mount Allison University, and University of Windsor; Expense Accounts at Red River College; and Executive Compensation at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
What were the ten biggest headaches confronting Canadian higher education leaders and public affairs practitioners in 2014? In the final part of a 3-part series, Ken Steele reviews the 2 biggest headaches confronting Canadian college and university public affairs practitioners in 2014: the endless debate over Trinity Western University's new Law School, and the story behind the story of the University of Saskatchewan's TransformUS plan, and the media relations debacle that cost the president, provost, and others their jobs. And he sums up some lessons learned!
Canada's most trusted higher ed monitor and futurist, Ken Steele, begins his review of trends in visual identity design at Canada's colleges looking at new brands for Lethbridge Community College, NAIT, Red Deer College, College of the North Atlantic, University College of the North, Niagara College, Sault College, Northern College, Mohawk College, Langara College, Douglas College, and Vancouver Community College.
Canada's most trusted higher ed monitor and futurist, Ken Steele, completes his review of trends in visual identity design at Canada's colleges, looking at rebrands for NorQuest College, New Brunswick Community College, La Cité Collégiale, Sheridan College, Fanshawe College, Georgian College, and SIAST (Saskatchewan Polytechnic). He also sums up the 5 Signs a Brand Needs Refreshing, and 9 Colleges that may be Due, as well as predicting 6 Traits New Brand Identities will Likely Share.
What were the ten biggest headaches confronting Canadian higher education leaders and public affairs practitioners in 2014? In part 1, Ken Steele reviews some acute headaches caused by campus crises and crime, data hacking, protests and fraud, including: Bomb threats at SIAST and Red River College, Shooting at York University, Stabbings in Calgary, uWaterloo applicant data exposed, Western student hacks CRA, UBC student banking data exposed, UNB student union website hacked by ISIS, Divest McGill, University of Toronto petition, University of Victoria faculty divestment, UBC faculty referendum, Divest Dal at Dalhousie, Capilano University, York University billing frauds, and the UBC Dentistry fraud.
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