Posts Tagged ‘canada’

microcredentials and higher ed

Are microcredentials the future of higher ed?

Canada has reflected that global interest, with major government investment over the last two years: $59.5 million announced by the Ontario government in late 2020 to fund microcredential development and related student loans; $9 million announced by British Columbia’s government since 2020, with federal support; and $5.6 million announced by Alberta’s government last August for microcredential pilot projects after the Business Council of Alberta (BCA) issued a report in 2020 urging the provincial and federal governments to expand microcredential opportunities. Ontario’s government-backed digital learning organization, eCampus Ontario, has been working in this area since 2017. Microcredential development is included in the strategic plans of the University of New Brunswick and Dalhousie University. As far back as 2015, the University of British Columbia promoted the use of “open badges” to recognize discrete skills that students had acquired within for-credit courses. It started running several non-credit microcredentials in 2021, thanks to provincial funding.

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What Are Micro-Credentials And Why Are So Many Universities Talking About Them?

https://www-suitable-co.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.suitable.co/knowledge-center/blog/what-are-micro-credentials

https://www.suitable.co/knowledge-center/blog/what-are-micro-credentials

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more on microcredentials in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=microcredential

microcredentials and faculty

Why faculty need to talk about microcredentials

There is reason to believe that shorter, competency-based programs will play an important role in the university landscape in the coming years.

 Australian commentator Stephen Matchett expands: “MCs are the wild west of post-compulsory education and training, with neither law on what they actually are or order as to how they interact with formal providers. … Until (or if) this is sorted by regulators there needs to be a sheriff providing workable rules that stop the cowboys running riot.”

The lack of standards is also an issue in Canada. While  degree standards have been agreed upon – the Canadian Degree Qualification framework, contained in the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC)’s 2007 Ministerial Statement on Quality Assurance of Degree Education in Canada, outlines expectations for bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees – the CMEC has yet to issue a pan-Canadian framework for microcredentials.

In the absence of a pan-Canadian model or definition, for the purposes of this column I will use the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO)’s definition, put forward in its May 2021 report, Making Sense of Microcredentials:

“A microcredential is a representation of learning, awarded for completion of a short program that is focused on a discrete set of competencies (i.e., skills, knowledge, attributes), and is sometimes related to other credentials.

Developing and running effective microcredential programs is not simply a matter of bundling a group of existing classes into a new sub-degree level program (although there will certainly be some who try that approach). Effective microcredential programming needs to be an institution-wide effort, with appropriate resourcing and guidelines, along with effective recruiting and student support.

department chairs and other unit leaders to lead collegial discussions about the following questions:

  • Gaps: who is not being served by our current degree offerings? Is there potential demand for our disciplinary knowledge and skills from people who don’t want a full degree program? Are there ways people could upgrade their skills by taking certain types of our courses? Can we identify potential short programs to meet new, distinct learning outcomes?
  • Student diversity: are there opportunities to develop short programs that could introduce a new demographic of students to our discipline? How might microcredentials be developed that meet the needs and interests of Indigenous students, first-generation students, or international students?
  • Connection: how might we create partnerships with external organizations to inform our understanding of skill-training needs? Can these partnerships be leveraged to create new career pathways for students, and/or new research opportunities for faculty, postdocs, and graduate students?
  • Impact: in what ways do our discipline’s insights relate to Canada’s current and future public needs? How might our disciplinary knowledge be combined with knowledge from other disciplines to train students to help address particular challenges? In what ways could our discipline contribute to student competency development that we consider meaningful and impactful?

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more on microcredentials in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=microcredential

U.S. Ed Tech Spending $27.6 Billion in 2021

U.S. Ed Tech Spending to Reach $27.6 Billion in 2021

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2021/10/07/report-u.s-ed-tech-spending-to-reach-27.6-billion-in-2021.aspx

The report forecast China’s growth in ed tech spending to be 15.6 percent over the same period, reaching $34.2 billion by 2026. Japan, Canada and Germany are all expected to see double-digit growht in ed tech spending over the report period as well: Japan at 14.5 percent, Canada at 14 percent and Germany at 11.9 percent CAGR.

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More on educational technology in this blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=Educational+technology

Australia and QAnon

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/16/how-australia-became-fertile-ground-for-misinformation-and-qanon

Last year the Institute for Strategic Dialogue released a report that found QAnon’s following had grown considerably in Australia during 2020, with Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter driving increased engagement.

The report found Australia was the fourth largest country for QAnon activity, behind the US, UK and Canada. Its presence in Australia is also evident on less mainstream sites. For example as Canadian QAnon research Marc-Andre Argentino has pointed out, there were at least six Australian Q “research boards” on the site 8kun with about 4,000 posts by January last year. That had increased to 11 boards by the start of 2021.

Last year, Guardian Australia revealed QAnon had found a follower in Tim Stewart, a family friend of the prime Scott Morrison. Stewart was behind one of Australia’s largest QAnon-linked accounts, BurnedSpy34.

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more on QAnon in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=qanon
more on QAnon in Germany: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=qanon+germany

first VR optometry lab

University of Waterloo to have first virtual reality optometry lab in Canada

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2018 https://uwaterloo.ca/news/news/university-waterloo-have-first-virtual-reality-optometry-lab

A new virtual reality (VR) training lab at the University of Waterloo’s School of  Optometry and Vision Science, will help Canada’s next generation of optometrists learn how to diagnose vision problems and eye diseases more quickly and accurately.

The new lab, funded through an $800,000 investment by national eye care provider FYidoctors, At a total cost of $1.5 million, the FYidoctors Simulation Lab is the first of its kind in Canada and will ensure the School remains at the forefront in optometric education in North America.

Dr. Al Ulsifer, CEO and Chairman of FYidoctors and  Waterloo alumnus, said that this investment isn’t just an investment in the University, but a stake in the future generation of optometrists.

The Equipment:

The lab will initially include 5 Eyesi® Binocular Indirect Ophthalmoscopes (BIO) are state of the art augmented reality simulator for training of retinal examinations and provides a highly realistic and dynamic 3D simulation of the anatomical structures of the eye and ophthalmoscope optics.

For more detailed information visit:  https://www.vrmagic.com/simulators/feature-pages/indirect/

Phase two of the lab, to be unveiled at a later date, will include the addition of the Eyesi® Slit Lamp simulators.  This technology will allow students to practice basic handling of the device and skills required to conduct a corneal exam, retinal exam and Gonioscopy & Tonometry.

 

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more on AR Augmented Reality in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=augmented+reality

Library Technoculture

Cultivating a Library Technoculture: We are Tech Workers!

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