“Its about the learning” or a least it should be according to several authorities quoted in this Globe and Mail article. Canadian universities must place as much emphasis on teaching and learning as they do on research. This is not a new warning and organizations like the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) have seen the proverbial writing on the wall and are looking at how Canadian universities can proactively address these challenges and has developed a website called Great Beginnings that points to examples of innovative teaching and learning in undergraduate education. Institutions like Concordia are in a unique position to provide leadership in undergraduate education because for the most part we have been focusing on teaching and learning while balancing our research efforts.
The call to action for Universities to change here in Canada by AUCC the Federal and Provincial governments and many other stakeholders echo similar calls for change that we are seeing in the US. Richard Arum points to even greater challenges in Higher Education in the US in his book Academically Adrift:Limited learning on college campuses. Arums findings show that 59% of students show no significant difference in their critical and thinking skills after 4 years of undergraduate education. The solution to the problem is really not that difficult and is well within the reach of all academic institution. Arum recommends that if students were to simply read and write more then most of these problems will vanish. The solution really is this simple–we need to embrace the fundamentals of reading and writing with in a context of critical analysis and our learners will be better prepared to learn how to learn.
We need to move from the passive educational environment of main lecture points, rubrics, individual competition and standardized testing to an active educational environment of interactive presentations, critical and analytical thinking, collaboration and meaningful projects. We already do this at Concordia but we can do it better and we also need to let the world know what we have to offer.
