McMaster allocates $1 million to blended learning courses
David Wilkinson, Provost and Vice President (Academic) of McMaster University announced on Sept. 9 the allocation of $1 million towards creating ten new blended learning courses over the next two years.
The courses will focus on online learning, while also providing students with experiential opportunities to apply what they’ve learned online.
“We are working with the McMaster Institute for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning and working the faculties, investing quite heavily in a number of those kinds of courses,” said Wilkinson. “Five different faculties are going to be engaged in this. The Faculty of Science in particular will be leading the way.”
As well as in the Faculty of Science, blended learning courses will be offered in engineering, business, social science and humanities. The new blended learning technique will mainly be used to develop first-year courses.
A portion of the $1 million allocation will be set aside for MIIETL to develop tools to measure the effectiveness of blended and online learning strategies.
“There is evidence that providing students with different pathways to learn is effective. There is certainly lots of evidence that transfer of knowledge through lecture is a particularly ineffective approach […] to transmitting content,” said Wilkinson. “One of the areas where McMaster wants to lead through MIIETL is actually the development of evidence around [types of learning].”
In addition to the blended learning courses, McMaster has received funding from the Ontario Online Institute to develop seven online courses. These courses will be offered in both first-year and upper-level courses.
“We are going to focus more on blended learning than on purely online content, but we are developing online in a number of different ways,” said Wilkinson.
The Ontario Online Institute is a project that aims to provide online learning opportunities for students in Ontario, eventually enabling students to take online courses at different universities and apply the credit at their home school.
No one ever tells you how to move on after Welcome Week. Maybe you met some new friends, maybe you met some old friends, or maybe you met no one at all (which is totally okay!). No matter your Welcome Week experience, adjusting to the academic grind is always a hassle. The transition is hard - it's tempting to soak in the last days of summer, and midterms are far off on the horizon - making it easy to fall behind. But fret not. Here are three quick points to help you get into university life again no matter what year you are in.
The school grind gets busy fast, so it's easy to get overwhelmed and feel that there isn't time for extracurriculars beyond what you're already involved in. Wrong! It's all about time management - trade those endless hours on Netflix and explore your interests. Be willing to get involved, and take initiative, something only you can decide. Spending time with like-minded people can help keep you grounded even if you are all a bit more introverted or shy. If you do decide to get involved, the newly released MSU Clubza service is an excellent way to catch up on any clubs you may have missed. Better yet, get involved with us here at The Silhouette.
This is easier said than done. Everyone has a story of how procrastination put them in an awkward situation, yet very few people ever take the effort to prevent it from happening again in the future. Again, your time management skills will be tested as you attempt to prioritize what is important to you. Find a balance between academics, hobbies and your inner socialite. As a general guideline, a balanced lifestyle leads to more happiness and a better state of mind. Plan for the unexpected - like the unavoidable all-nighter - but leave room for life as well.
This common phrase does well to paint a perfect picture of health. With help from the Peer Support Line, someone is always there to listen to anything you may face, and psychologists in the Student Wellness Centre can help through counselling. Mental illness is serious business, and seeking the advice of professionals can definitely help. No matter is too small, and someone will always be there in times of need.
A Pulse gym membership is not required for a sound body, but it can help. The stress of being new to the gym is one that is quickly vanished once the realization that there are a lot of new people, as well as staff members who are more than willing to listen to any question you may have. The Student Wellness Centre also has physical-based services such as weight management, screening for sexually transmitted infections, birth control options, general health counselling, and anything else you could think of related to keeping your body in good health.
Emily Buddo
The Silhouette
The Ontario government has announced that they want universities to narrow their focus in the future by specializing in certain programs. This specialization is to help the government save money, an ever-present issue due to their ever-growing deficit.
All universities must make difficult decisions about what programs to focus on and what programs to scrap before the end of this year (to be implemented in later years) or they risk losing funding. What to specialize in is up to the universities, however, the government has the final say on all decisions.
The government knows that money is power. And with this knowledge the government is abusing their power by using universities’ need for money to control them, as well as limit the even more desperate-for-money university students who attend the now at-risk institutions.
Brad Duguid, the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, made the argument that two institutions may not be needed if both are offering the same course in the same region. But what Duguid and his ministry are neglecting to recognize is that there is so much more to universities than the programs they provide.
Choosing the right university has forever been a stressful decision for graduating high school and mature students, however with this new legislation would that decision soon cease to exist? Would students not be able to choose a university based on how close it was to home? How far away it was from home? Because their grandmother and mother went there? Because they liked the size and the campus atmosphere?
Following through with this legislation would take away a student’s right to choose a university based on what is the perfect fit for them – a choice that is crucial to a student’s success and happiness for the subsequent years after making their decisions.
This new legislation would put even more pressure on students because if a student chose a program and found they didn’t like it they would either be: stuck in it, forced to change into another one of their university’s limited specializations, drop-out or switch to another university.
What kind of implications would this have on students? No one really knows because students have always had options. With this legislation the government is taking those options, students’ right to choose a university based on more than academics, and a university’s right to provide their students with a variety of programs to major, minor, or just take electives in.
Making universities more specialized would get rid of out-of-faculty electives that help to expand science students brains past the chemical formulas, and arts students’ brains past the philosophy and sociology courses.
What Duguid is failing to realize is that there is so much more that needs to be added into the equation on universities specialization than just dollars and cents.
Would scrapping certain faculties on a certain campus limit the creation of clubs and groups that help to create community around the campus? Would it lead to narrow mindedness of students because nothing would challenge them? Would their growth in university become purely educational and lack the important intellectual growth?
There are too many unexplored potential consequences if universities and their students are forced to specialize.
Karen Piper
The Silhouette
Every year I listen to fellow students ramble on about how stressful midterms can be and the burden they have to bear of earning a reasonably ‘good’ grade on these seemingly purposeful academic assessments. Well, with Fall 2013 being my first term at McMaster, I generally had a positive attitude towards midterms and vowed my best to study hard and perform exceptionally well.
Of course, that is in a fairytale world where Thanksgiving break does not exist right before most midterms, where there are no group assignments due during the same period and one where you actually have no other life besides school. Needless to say, every one of us has multiple responsibilities, some more paramount than others.
However, should we blame our poor performance on midterm examinations on the fact that we have other commitments? Now, please do not misinterpret this previous statement, I am well aware of the fact that many students do work tirelessly and subsequently do achieve exceptionally good grades. Nonetheless, every time I hear a conversation about midterms, it mainly has negative connotations.
Why is this so? Are we ashamed to admit that we do not have proper time management skills or that we failed to attend many of our classes during the first half of the term?
In Organizational Behavior (Commerce 2BA3), there is a unit called ‘Self Serving Bias’ which states that one generally has the propensity to take full credit for successful outcomes and deny responsibility for failures. Therefore, if we receive a good grade on one midterm, we accept all the praise and recognition associated with that outcome.
On the other hand, if our grade is disappointing, we tend to blame this outcome on the ‘poor teaching strategies’ of the professor, confusing terminology on the exam and so forth. As a student myself, after receiving a few midterm grades last week which were less than outstanding, I decided to do some self-reflection; for once I stopped blaming external factors for my “average” performance and decided that I needed to take full responsibility for my below par performance.
I suggest that we all do the same. It is true that midterms are unfortunately always around the Thanksgiving period. During this time, we would rather forget about our academic responsibilities and viagra canada online spend quality time with our family and loved ones. And who can blame us?
However, maybe if we developed an efficient study-schedule that commenced at least a week or two before Thanksgiving, we wouldn’t be tangled in a dichotomy between studying and turkey. Ample use of plenty idle time during the first few weeks of the term can save students from a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety come mid-October.
In other words, procrastination is our biggest downfall. Our saving grace should be learning from our past midterm experiences and developing a plan to perform better each year by strategizing how we are going to manage our study time. Having said this, many midterms are now over! Whew! It is almost pointless to agitate over what we could have done better.
Now is the time to enforce new, productive habits that will lead to a better performance in the final examinations. I will leave you with a quote that has great meaning to me and is quite relevant to university life: “It is not about how many times you fail, but how many times you strive to succeed after failure.”
Welcome Week has the potential to make or break a first year’s experience at McMaster. But it’s difficult to say what this year’s batch of first year students thought about their Welcome Week.
The Student Success Centre (SSC) had originally scheduled Welcome Week focus groups for Nov. 21 and Nov. 22 in which first-year students are invited to voice their opinions on their Welcome Week. In the past, the SSC has attracted approximately 15 students per focus group. This year, no students signed up.
According to Rachel Nelson, SSC Events Coordinator, the Centre is currently looking into why this occurred. Students were notified of the sessions via a mass email notification sent to their McMaster emails.
The MSU already conducted Welcome Week focus groups in early October. These groups mostly consisted of SRA members who had held a variety of positions in Welcome Week. The groups looked at the purpose of Welcome Week, scheduling, levy fees, and Welcome Week representatives.
While the MSU coordinates some of the larger events such as the PJ Parade and Faculty Day/Night, the SSC is responsible for organizing move-in, distributing MacPasses and co-ordinating MACademics sessions.
MACademics are the school-oriented sessions run during Welcome Week in order to prepare first year students for the realities they will face in university. This year some sessions attracted up to 100 participants. For the first time, SSC also offered sessions tailored specifically for arts-based students and science-based students.
However, questions have been raised as to whether Welcome Week should have such a heavy academic focus. MSU Executives David Campbell and Huzaifa Saeed have put together a proposal to recommend an “Academic-focused Welcome Week” occurring the week after Welcome Week.
David Campbell, VP Administration noted that it is worth expanding MACademics due to its clear value to students. But he stated that, “Welcome Week should focus on social networking and getting your roots settled … which research shows is essential to academic success and retention.”
The MSU proposal would also aim to involve faculty societies and get more faculty-focused academic support for first year students. However, Campbell noted that this requires a significant amount of planning and resources.
With possible changes looming, it remains unclear what exactly first years think about their Welcome Week experiences. The SSC distributed a First Year Transition Survey earlier in November to ask new students about their overall experience so far. 1,000 students responded to this survey. With plans for Welcome Week hanging in the balance, the time for first year students to speak up is running out.
Farzeen Foda
Senior News Editor
One of McMaster’s relatively new graduate programs, the Masters in Global Health, will be taking a trip to India’s Manipal University in April as part of a two-week symposium in collaboration with a Manipal University and Maastricht University in the Netherlands .
During the event, which has the theme “Bridging Different Worlds,” students will also be working on various development projects, “ranging from assessing safe drinking water in urban slums, to examining causes of infant mortality at Karkala Hospital,” said Stena Sothiratnam, a student in the Masters in Global Health program who will be going on the trip.
“It is basically a practical placement in the field during which we will be participating in research data collection for research studies that are currently in progress or will be starting at that point,” said Ryhana Dawood and Natahsa McNamara, members of the Fundraising Committee for the project, in an email.
A project in a developing nation such as India would be a valuable experience for students in this program, as many intend to apply their expertise from their program outside of Canada, noted Dawood and McNamara, who further explained that the purpose of the program “is to get students better acquainted with development work, and what exactly that entails.”
With a focus on health care, the 28 students, including nine exchange students from the Netherlands, will be engaging in projects dealing with health care systems in other countries.
This is the second year the program is running and hosting a trip of this sort.
To fund the trip, a self-defense/fitness seminar will be held on campus for a nominal fee, and depending on demand, more than one such seminar will be held. Methods to engage the residence students in the fundraising efforts are under consideration as well.
With McMaster’s renewed commitment to the revitalization of the undergraduate learning experience, an endeavour of this nature is certainly a positive step in improving the educational experience. “There is only so much that can be learned from flipping through the pages of a textbook,” said Sothiratnam.
“We hope to gain a lot from this experience and we personally feel a service-learning component is beneficial to all learning environments,” said Dawood and McNamara.
