Can Canadian Graduate Education Be Redesigned Around Jobs?

In "Arts graduate education in Canada should be redesigned around students’ and society’s needs" Malloy, Young, and Berdahl (2024) suggest focusing on public good. The authors argue not mimicking STEM degrees for arts and social science. As it happens a decade ago I enrolled in a Canadian social science graduate program which does what the authors call for.

The authors make the point that course-based professional masters degrees tend to be focused on careers, research degrees are less so. This is no accident, but by design. Research degrees are for training researchers, professional degrees for professionals. Australia has formalized this at the doctorate level with separate definitions for research and professional doctorates. The professional doctorates have a smaller research component and are more focused on industry needs. However, this requires finding a needed bundle of skills, in specific jobs, which students want, which are currley not met by other forms of education, and which university academics are capable of providing. Teaching professional skills requires teachers with professional experience, not just researchers. It also requires skills in educational design.

Malloy, Young, and Berdah criticise arts graduate student training for being linked to academic career skills, when their are few such jobs for them. However, do current academics have the skills and knowledge to train students for other careers? I teach computer project students using my decades of experience in the computer industry. However, when it comes to teaching them how to apply for a job, I hand the task to staff in the university's careers unit, who are specialists in the field (I then just manage the classes and assessment). 

If university arts academics are to redesign courses to fit new needs, they will need skills in program design. They will also need to get the real world requirements from somewhere. As a computer professional who started teaching at university I had had to learn how to teach. I then learned about how to design courses. Also tough my professional body I helped define the skills which professionals in my field need. The skills definitions are used by universities to design courses and by government to decide who is professionally qualified. This requires careful application of design and testing skills. While academics in STEM disciplines, as well as medicine, law and business are used to having to comply with these forms of external guideice, it may be challenging for arts academics.

It might be asked why, as an Australia, I am writing about Canadian graduate education. As it happens I have a Canadian graduate degree. I had intended to follow the research path, but ended up a coursework student. My degree is a Master of Education in Open, Digital and Distance Education. This is far from the author's view of Canadian degrees being unrelated to careers or society's needs. In my degree I studied how to teach students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds who otherwise miss out on education. I also looked at how to teach students if an emergency kept them from campus. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these skills became vital. Not only was I able to teach my own students, but train tutors and advise colleagues on how to rapidly switch to online learning. 

Post-Covid 19 K-12 Online and Blended Teaching and Learning

Athabasca University (where I completed my MED in 2016), is offering a special graduate course for next term: "Post-Covid K-12 Online and Blended Teaching and Learning" (MDDE 690). There is not a lot of information provided about the course. For more, contact the ever helpful Leanne Jewell, Graduate Programs Administrator, Athabasca University.

Dr. Susan Bainbridge

"This is a special offering of MDDE 690 that will be of particular interest to K-12 teachers, administrators, and instructional designers. Participants will co-create their individual learning objectives, activities, and assignments with the instructor, Dr. Susan Bainbridge. They will also have the opportunity for valuable collaborative sessions that will assist them in critical reflection that will support assignment completion. There will be two assignments.

Suggested assignments are a short paper due Week 4 worth 20% and a final assignment due Week 13 worth 60%, which may take various forms after discussion with the instructor. Participation will be valued at 20%. This course will be a collaborative effort of participants and the instructor to delve into the past year in K-12 education and assess the challenges, the successes, and the failures, to see if we can learn from these and prepare for K-12 education as we move forward. The format of the course will include synchronous sessions every two weeks and ongoing asynchronous discussions."

Study and the Single Student

Moser (p. 5, 2016) investigates the question "How do real-time interactions between academic support departments and online graduate students impact student interaction with the course content?", concluding that synchronous web conferencing between staff and distance education students improves graduate student's views of the course. The idea is to use the web conferencing to reduce the student's sense of isolation. The research was carried out using eight on-line US graduate social science students at one institution in 2015. The students had undertaken four or more synchronous sessions.

Moser does not precisely define "web conferencing": is audio sufficient, or is video required? Is this predominately staff talking and students just listening, or truly interactive? Is it one-to-one or with a group of students? In addition, the value of text based chat, as an alternative to audio or video was not considered. Moser provides no evaluation of web conferencing in terms of improving student outcomes, such as by increasing completion rates: it is assumed that a happier student is a better student.

The cost and inconvenience of web conferencing is not considered in Moser's study. One reason for the use of on-line education is to reduce the cost of tuition. A one-to-one live chat imposes a very high cost, compared to asynchronous communication. The amount of time an instructor is typically given to run a course equates to about seven minutes per student per week*. I have found it preferable to use some of this time providing group and individual feedback asynchronously and to reserve synchronous individual chat for the few students who need additional help.

A live chat requires the student to be available at one of the times offered by the staff member. This can be a problem for working students and those in different time zones. As an international distance student myself, I have found that the problems of getting web conferencing to work and of scheduling outweighed the benefits. Most events are scheduled at what is in my time zone the early hours of the morning before dawn. There are frequent problems with the technology, so much of a session is spent saying "Can you hear me now?". Also most of the sessions are taken up with administrative matters, which could be better handled via text. When the course is addressed, the web conference tends to turn into a mini-lecture by the instructor, which could have been better provided pre-recorded.

What I have found far more useful and rewarding than web conferencing with the instructor is audio voice chat with fellow students, while working on group projects. With this three or four students have a document open for group editing and discuss changes as these are made. This also provides an opportunity to also gossip about the course and grumble about the instructor and the administration, which is a healthy way to release the frustrations of being a student.

* Australian university academics have 15 to 25 students each to teach (Gallagher, p. 16, 2011) and work about 38 hours per week. Assuming an academic spends half their time teaching (19 hours) to 20 students, that is 57 minutes of staff time for each student each week. Note that this is to undertake all activities for a course and it could be expected that course design, administration and assessment would take proportion, leaving perhaps seven minutes for individual student interaction.

Reference

Gallagher, M. (2011). Academic Staffing Trends in Go8 and Other Australian Universities, 2000-2010. Go8 Backgrounder 25. Group of Eight (NJ1). Retrieved from https://go8.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/go8backgrounder25_staffingtrends-1.pdf

Moser, H. J. (2016). Online Learning And Academic Support Centers: How Synchronous Support Opportunities Affect Graduate Students’ Interaction With The Content. Retrieved from http://dune.une.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1055&context=theses

Australian Bids to Run NZ ICT Graduate Schools

The New Zealand Government has announced $28.6M to set up three Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Graduate Schools. NZ Tertiary Education Commission and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment will run a tender process for education provider/industry partnerships to provide the grad schools. Under the ANZ Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement (CER), Australian and NZ organisations have access to each others markets. So it may be possible for Australian universities and companies to bid to run the NZ grad schools.