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Category: Teaching & Learning

Pivot

One of the more interesting higher ed books I’ve read so far this year is Pivot by Mark Lombardi and Joanne Soliday.  It’s not a brand-new book – it came out a few months before COVID – but its tales of small institutions transforming themselves (usually) in the face of overwhelming enrolment and financial pressures are still very fresh and reading their stories is worth anyone’s time. The four institutions covered in this book are, with one exception, places few

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May 16, 2022 2 Comments

Innovations in Engineering Education

Alex Usher and Jonathan McQuarrie Today HESA is releasing the fifth edition of our publication Monitoring Trends in Academic Programs, written by Jonathan McQuarrie.   This issue is a bit of a departure for MTAP.  Unlike previous editions which have focused largely on innovations that occur at the intersections between different fields of study, this one focuses squarely on a single domain of study which is undergoing some serious re-invention; namely, Engineering.  What is happening right now in Engineering education is

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March 30, 2022 No Comments

Breaking the Discipline/Degree Nexus

Just a quick one today because the expanded HESA Towers opened yesterday and there’s been a lot going on.  It’s about an experiment that I wish more institutions would undertake, upon building a new university (it has to be a new university, for reasons which I think will be obvious): that is, to allow the institution to offer degrees on any basis it wishes except that of disciplinarity.  No history degrees.  No physics degrees.  Kill disciplinarity, at least as it

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March 29, 2022 7 Comments

A Tech Talent University?

Late last week, Sheldon Levy, former President of Sheridan College & Ryerson University, former Deputy Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities of Ontario, and current Interim President of University Canada West (UCW) wrote an op-ed in the Globe and Mail about the tech talent shortage in Canada and why existing universities may not be up to the challenge of ending it.  When someone like Sheldon Levy talks, everyone should listen. The op-ed is a follow-up to a white paper that

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February 23, 2022 No Comments

Smash the Calendar

The north side of Edmonton’s downtown is maybe the most amazing couple of square miles in Canadian post-secondary education.  You’ve got Norquest College (15,000 students) on 102nd.  There’s MacEwan University (another 15,000) between 104th and 105th, and then starting around 115th you’ve got the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), which adds another 20,000 students or so.  That’s a lot of teaching and learning. So why isn’t it better known?  I’d say the concentration doesn’t get the love/notice it should because there

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December 7, 2021 5 Comments
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One Thought to Start Your Day

One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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