The health risks posed by COVID-19 mean most Canadian university classes are online this year. As a result, some students will write exams online via remote proctoring platforms that surveil their activities. These tools go by names like ProctorU, Examity, Respondus and Proctorio, among others. Designed by for-profit tech startups, they monitor students’ laptops, tablets or phones during the course of an exam. […] … learn more→

The long movement of school massification under way in our country since the 1960s was supposed to increase attachment to democratic values. To the extent that school education is imbued with the values ​​of equality and tolerance, and conveys the belief in the virtues of science and reason, the fact that a majority of young […] … learn more→

The rapid shift to remote learning has demonstrated that it’s no longer enough for academics to prioritise research and scholarly publication above their teaching responsibilities. Today’s diverse students need much more interaction with their professors inside and outside class. They also need more extensive feedback on their academic performance. If our institutions of higher learning […] … learn more→

Just as writers and artists today are responding to the Anthropocene through climate fiction and eco art, earlier generations chronicled an environmental crisis that presaged humanity’s global impact. The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch that powerfully expresses the planetary scale of the environmental changes wrought by human activity. Yet almost a century ago, New Zealand and Australia were at […] … learn more→

Unpaid internships are finally receiving much-needed scrutiny in the UK, with the prime minister welcoming efforts to close loopholes that allow people to work for free for prolonged periods. The Unpaid Work Experience (Prohibition) Bill, currently going through parliament, seeks to restrict unpaid placements to four weeks, on the grounds that – as the 2017 […] … learn more→

Climate change is resulting in profound, immediate and worsening health impacts, and no country is immune, a major new report from more than 120 researchers has declared. This year’s annual report of The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, released today, presents the latest data on health impacts from a changing climate. Among its results, the […] … learn more→

La Trobe University is in talks to discontinue its Hindi program, along with Greek and Indonesian. In the mid-1990s, six Australian universities taught Hindi. If La Trobe ends its program, Australia will be left with just one university (ANU in Canberra) that teaches Hindi. This would be a significant setback for Hindi in Australia. The decision reflects […] … learn more→

Historians are often disappointed when they look closely at the foundational documents of the Humboldt University of Berlin. Many expect to see lengthy treatises on the “unity of research and teaching” from its spiritual founder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, particularly in the short memorandum he wrote in 1809 or 1810 after the institution’s formation in 1809 […] … learn more→

Maths anxiety is the feeling of tension and fear that many people experience when called on to work out a sum. For children, it can lead to behavioural problems in class, as well as physical symptoms such as butterflies in the stomach and a racing heart. Students with high maths anxiety perform worse in standardised maths tests and school […] … learn more→

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, stories have been shared of schools delivering food parcels, phoning struggling families and providing on-site care for the children of key workers. We have seen many schools go much further than their statutory role of educating and safeguarding their pupils, sometimes acting as the most important support institution for whole neighbourhoods. This broader school […] … learn more→