COU Colleagues working paper

It argues that the respond to changing circumstances, it is essential to stimulation of critical thought and creativity is central to argue for the proper balance between mass efficiency the purpose of a university and that the only way to and personal attention, to defend the importance of the engage students and stimulate such intellectual activity is learning community. [...] It is too and their administrations need to articulate and promote late to resist the lure of IT, but it is not too late to the importance of personal, individual contact between choose the extent to which we allow IT to dictate the the scholar/teacher and student, as well as individual teaching methods appropriate to the university experi- contact among students, as fundamental to the purpose enc [...] The teaching methods employed by universities meet the traditional demands of personal instruction, should foster these goals from the beginning of a stu- and lead them to prefer the flexibility of more tech- dent’s undergraduate career through to the conclusion of nological, and impersonal, methods of course delivery. [...] The first year of the old-fashioned, and expensive, virtues of a low stu- an undergraduate education is not too early to begin the dent/teacher ratio as we do for the modern, and expen- process of learning to think critically, creatively and origi- sive, solutions offered by the impersonality of technolog- nally. [...] They are simply a mechanism for investigating and opening Several other Canadian organizations in the postsec- discussion on matters of interest to the Colleagues and the Council – and their readership at large ondary and graduate education sectors, such as CAGS, AUCC and NSERC, have also signalled the need to increase enrolment in graduate programs in order to sup- As with all of the Working Pape