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...