Life at Lambton

Lambton College is in my hometown of Sarnia, and I was especially looking forward to visiting the faculty there and listening to their experiences.  I was finally able to make the trip in late October, and spent an incredibly informative day with Local President Baiba Butkus and the officers and stewards of OPSEU 125.

President Baiba Butkus, left, and LEC members

Lambton is one of the smaller community colleges, with approximately 2,700 full time students, and 125 full time faculty.  Like most colleges, Lambton has seen the increasing use of part-time faculty, and the union has had to file grievances to maintain full time staffing levels.

A change that has profoundly affected professors at Lambton is the College's new practice of splitting up the theoretical and practical instruction that has traditionally been done by a single professor.  Management's goal is clearly cost-saving, as lab, studio, or other practical student contact is being given to lower-paid technicians.  Professors are then relegated to teaching theory courses, and are no longer able to globally evaluate the performance of students.

The fissuring of theoretical and practical instruction strikes at the heart of what makes the community college system unique - an educational environment in which theory and application are closely integrated, and in which students are able to learn directly from experts in the field.  Increasingly, professors are responsible for assigning student grades without ever observing them in practical situations.  Given this, is it any wonder they're questioning how reliable the evaluations are?

Technology Professor Khaled Nigim

Other changes are eroding the hands-on, interactive nature of education at Lambton, including he growing practice of putting core courses online, and expanding the size of face to face classes.  As with every other faculty group I have spoken to, professors at Lambton describe consistent student complaints about online learning, and equally consistent management indifference to these concerns.

In fact, management at Lambton has embraced a particularly tech-heavy vision of college education that they call "mobile learning".  The idea is that students will regularly use mobile devices - phones and tablets - in all aspects of their education.  To this end professors are being pressured to use i-pads, regardless of whether the technology is actually useful in a given class.  Of course, along with the vision of "mobile learning" comes lucrative corporate deals for hardware, software, and e-textbooks. 

Lambton College's vision for "mobile learning" speaks to the wider debate of how technology is used in education today.  On one side of this debate is the undeniable power that technology has to enhance learning and productivity, and also the inescapable need to be technologically proficient in today's economy.  On the other side of the debate are critical voices who argue that high-tech isn't always better, that mobile gadgets can be as distracting as they are helpful, and that corporate profit is driving the field more than sound pedagogy.

As I've said before in this blog, no professor I've spoken with is "anti-technology".  Heck, even I typed this blog entry on my i-pad and took the pictures with my smart-phone.  However, I also agree with professors concerned about an uncritical rush to bring every new technological trinket into the post-secondary learning environment.  Student and faculty experiences are already revealing the limitations, as well as possible strengths, of learning technologies.  For this reason it is critically important that professors be the ones to decide, based on research and experience, when and how technology is used.

Off to St. Clair College

Hot on the heels of my meeting with the members of Local 350 at Georgian College, I drove west to Windsor, Ontario, to meet with faculty at St. Clair College.  St. Clair is a mid-sized college, with approximately 8,600 full time students spread across three campuses.  Two of the campuses are in Windsor, and one is in Chatham.

The professors of St. Clair are represented by OPSEU Local 138.  I was able to meet with Local President Bernie Nawrocki at the Windsor campus of St. Clair, and then sat in on an LEC dinner meeting later in the evening.

In my meeting with the officers and stewards of Local 138, I heard about the increased workload being experienced by professors, and the ways in which "extras" keep getting added on to already maxed-out schedules.  Faculty are regularly being asked to do program review work, recruitment, marketing and committee work, and all of it on a volunteer basis.  When combined with the normal demands of a full teaching load, and the new demands of online learning management systems (LMS), faculty are starting to feel the pressure.

The high-stress environment facing professors is contributing to more strained workplace relations , and as a result the officers of Local 138 have been spending considerable time managing grievances concerning bullying and harassment.  This is a concern expressed by several colleges I've visited so far, and speaks to the broader impact on faculty, students, and support staff when a collegial environment focused on education turns into a competitive one focused on cost-cutting.

In our meeting, the faculty at St. Clair expressed both a sincere belief in the uniqueness and importance of the college system, and also a fear that its integrity was being threatened.  With fewer and fewer full time professors, counselors and librarians, and less faculty control over academic decision-making, our members are rightly asking what the ultimate result will be...

Talking Quality Education at Georgian College

In mid October I visited the campus of Georgian College in Barrie.  The professors, counselors and librarians of Georgian are represented by the hard-working team of Local 350, led by president Terry Heittola, vice president Andrea Lovring, chief steward Anita Arvast, treasurer Lydia Robertson, and communications officer Jason Murphy.  Georgian has about 272 full time professors, and this number reflects the tireless work of the Local in advocating for full time hires.  Even with the Local's success at securing new hires, ensuring adequate staffing is becoming increasingly difficult at Georgian, and overall about 70% of professors are now either part time or partial load.

Terry Heittola

Terry and his team have managed to balance good labour relations with effective representation of their members' interests.  However, despite a functional relationship between management and the union, professors at Georgian are still experiencing many of the same pressures affecting their colleagues system-wide.

Online learning is now being enforced by the Georgian administration, leading professors to voice the same concerns as their peers at Mohawk College.  Students don't like being forced to take online and "blended" courses.  They consider it to be lower quality education for the same price, and complain to the faculty forced to teach online courses.  As with many colleges, it is clear that online education at Georgian is being pushed far beyond its natural scope of use.  Used correctly, online learning can improve access to education for students who can't travel to campus or who's schedules demand a high degree of flexibility.  However, when used as an "across the board" cost-cutting measure, it actually disadvantages most students.  Ultimately, without faculty determining how this delivery method is used, an accessibility technology ends up having an anti-access effect.

The online strategy being pursued by Georgian management is also contradicted by a parallel push for student retention.  The Colleges say that using "early alert" protocols to identify students who need extra academic help is about providing better education.  However, while the college simultaneously increases class sizes, puts courses online for no academic reason, and doesn't give faculty enough time to actually provide the extra help that struggling students need, management's stated goals and observed outcomes fail to add up.  Instead, "retention" seems more and more like a cynical attempt to maximize tuition dollars, not to improve access to quality education.

The officers of Local 350 are clearly committed to their work, to education, and to the students they teach.  At the end of our meeting chief steward Anita Avrast stated it plainly: "Education is not a business".  I couldn't agree more, and that's why professors should have the academic freedom they need to put quality and student success back at the heart of the Ontario college system.

Whats up at Mohawk College?

Mohawk College, in Hamilton, is where I teach as a professor of social sciences.  Mohawk faculty, counselors and librarians are represented by the committed officers and stewards of OPSEU Local 240, and new president Geoff Ondercin-Bourne.  It's fortunate that faculty at Mohawk have such a strong team, because of late the college administration has made things particularly interesting.

Geoff Ondercin Bourne, hard at work

 Since president Rob MacIssac took over the top administrative job at Mohawk, a number of changes have occurred.  A welcome modernization of Mohawk's primary campus at Fennell avenue was undertaken, and is now in its last stages.  The new facilities are great, but how have changes at Mohawk impacted the two groups who form the core of the college's activities - students and faculty?

The answer is decidedly mixed.  While Mohawk's investment in infrastructure has helped boost its KPI scores, it has simultaneously pursued an online education strategy that is by far the most autocratic and undifferentiated in the Ontario college system.  This strategy has received significant push-back from both students and faculty, but to date none of this critical feedback has been considered by management.

Chief Steward Ann Bennet

Since 2008, Mohawk had focused on the development of online education as part of its strategic plan.  In the following years upper management began putting forward a number of targets for how many of the college's courses would be either fully online, or "blended", in which some percentage of face to face class time would be replaced by online time.  While faculty and students well appreciated the potential of online learning in certain situations, several concerns were raised about making sure that this form of delivery was used when pedagogically appropriate, and when it was in the best interests of student success.  Ultimately, professors argued that the question of whether to deliver a course online should be based on academic criteria, and decided by faculty.

In 2011, in response to growing concerns about management's push toward online education in a top-down and "across the board" manner, Local 240's Political Action Committee (PAC) hosted a focus group for students and faculty to talk openly together about online learning.  The Local also did a rigorous survey of just under 900 students, and produced a Report on Online Learning from the survey and focus group results. 

The focus groups revealed that faculty had considerable reservations about the academic quality of online education, and both the survey and focus groups showed that a majority of students preferred face to face over online instruction.  Concerns were particularly raised about how online learning affects access based on language, socioeconomic status, and disability.  These concerns were also prominent in the academic literature on online education.

Instead of considering the findings in the Local 240 report, in 2012 Mohawk management doubled-down on its previous online learning targets, and decreed that all courses taught at the college would lose 1 hour of face to face class time, to be replaced by an hour fully online.  The decree completely contradicted the Report on Online Learning's recommendations, and revealed just how little concerns about student success and faculty academic expertise factor into management decision-making.  With no ability to control the way in which online learning is implemented, or to advocate for their students, Mohawk professors have come to realize just how serious a lack of academic freedom is.

I'll further explore the complex issue of online education in my next entry...

Off to Algonquin!

On a beautiful day in early October I traveled back to Ottawa to meet with members of the other college that calls the city home: Algonquin.  The professors, counselors and librarians of Algonquin college are represented by the hard-working executive of OPSEU Local 415.  I was able to meet with President Patrick Kennedy, Chief Steward J.P. Lamarche, 1st Vice President Jack Wilson, 2nd Vice President Dave Haley, and Treasurer Shawn Pentecost, before I met with stewards in a local executive committee (LEC) meeting.

JP Lamarche (left) and Patrick Kennedy

Algonquin is one of the larger colleges in Ontario, with over 19,000 full time students.  The majority of students and programs are housed at the Woodroffe campus in Ottawa, with two smaller campuses located in Perth and Pembroke. With a large student population, Algonquin has an equally large number of professors, including 580 full time faculty.  Like other colleges though, part-time faculty now outnumber full time 3 to 1, and Algonquin maintains over 1,600 part-time and sessional professors.

The ratio of part time to full time professors at Algonquin is extreme, but would be even worse if not for the constant pressure of Local 415.  Through utilizing staffing grievances, the Local has been able to force the hiring of full-time professors.  The current faculty Collective Agreement (CA) says that College management has to prefer the hiring of full time over part time.  When the college system was founded this was how hiring worked, but today it takes constant vigilance and hard work on behalf of locals like 415 to keep the complement of full time professors from dwindling even further.  Colleges like Algonquin are a stark example of how the reasonable use of part-time faculty for operational flexibility has transformed into a  management cost-cutting strategy that places enormous pressure on full-time members and erodes the quality of education.

Another issue facing professors at Algonquin is a push from management to create more hybrid and fully online courses.  The cost-cutting imperative behind online learning is clear, with the possibility of larger class sizes, and the ability of managers to take online materials developed by full time faculty, and then turn the courses over to part timers.  A few years ago this happened to an Algonquin nursing professor who recorded her lectures at the behest of management, then saw her course, and her recorded lectures, taken from her and delivered by part-time faculty.

A final irony noted by Local 415 officers is that the majority of students don't prefer online learning, and instead want their instruction to be in a traditional,  classroom environment.  Students at Algonquin even expressed their distaste for online learning to their Student Association, and to management, but to date their resistance has had little impact on college policy.

This blatant disregard by college management to both student and faculty concerns about online learning is something that characterizes my next visit - to Mohawk College in Hamilton...