This handbook covers ways of managing the teaching, learning and assessment process to improve students' learning.

Equality of opportunity is a complex and contested ideal. There is disagreement about what the most plausible account of equal opportunity is, why equal opportunity matters, and how much it matters relative to other considerations that bear on how we ought to act. Over and above those disagreements about the general ideal of equal opportunity, there are further disagreements about what equal educational opportunity requires, why equal educational opportunity matters, and how much it matters relative to other considerations that (...) bear on what educational policies we ought to enact. Much of the literature on equal opportunity and education focuses on equal opportunity and K-12 (i.e., primary- or secondary-level) education. But there is now also a sizeable literature that focuses on distinctive questions about equal opportunity and higher (i.e., tertiary-level) education. That latter set of questions – how the ideal of equal opportunity bears on higher education – is the primary topic of this chapter. The chapter is divided into two parts. The first part of the chapter focuses on more theoretical issues in normative ethics and foundational political philosophy. It first surveys some disagreements about the nature, scope, grounds, and stringency of equal opportunity requirements; in light of those disagreements, it then surveys a variety of views about how the ideal of equal opportunity bears on higher education. The second part of the chapter focuses on more practical issues in applied ethics and applied political philosophy. It surveys some contemporary controversies in higher education that implicate concerns about equal opportunity. (shrink)

I seek to answer the question of whether publicly funded higher education ought to aim intrinsically to promote certain kinds of ‘‘blue-sky’’ knowledge, knowledge that is unlikely to result in ‘‘tangible’’ or ‘‘concrete’’ social benefits such as health, wealth and liberty. I approach this question in light of an African moral theory, which contrasts with dominant Western philosophies and has not yet been applied to pedagogical issues. According to this communitarian theory, grounded on salient sub-Saharan beliefs and practices, (...) actions are right insofar as they respect relationships in which people both share a way of life, or identify with one another, and care for others’ quality of life, or are in solidarity with each other. I argue that while considerations of identity and solidarity each provide some reason for a state university to pursue blue-sky knowledge as a final end, they do not provide conclusive reason for it to do so. I abstain from drawing any further conclusion about whether this provides reason to reject the Afro-communitarian moral theory or the intuition that blue-sky knowledge is a proper final end of public higher education. I do point out, however, that the dominant Western moral theories on the face of it do no better than the African one at accounting for this intuition. (shrink)

Higher education has been changing radically in recent years, with increasing numbers of students, and complaints about declining standards. This volume brings together leading intellectuals from the US and UK to examine the issues involved.

This paper will argue the importance of the creation of a moral compass, driven by empathy and a rigorously trained will in higher education leadership to develop a tighter relationship between higher education and wealth equity. We will explore the foundational documents that first discussed these issues within a global context. Further, We explore how these goals, enhanced by insights promulgated by the United Nations, can be achieved by teaching empathy, developing a moral compass and (...) training the will. (shrink)

The purpose of the university should be grounded in the concept of citizenship rather than the promise of increased future earnings and research consultancy work. However, this conception of citizenship should be republican rather than liberal. British higher education institutions have suffered at the hands of mechanisms intended to promote accountability. The concept of accountability has undermined the legitimate authority of the university. As pressures from student fee increases, fiscal austerity and accountability mechanisms further undermine the ethic (...) of scholarship, the idea of the university needs to recover its central purpose to ward off civic privatism. (shrink)

It is well documented that the application of business models to the higher education sector has precipitated a managerialistic approach to organisational structures ( Preston, 2001 ). Less well documented is the impact of this business ideal on the student-teacher encounter. It is argued that this age-old relation is now being configured (conceptually and organisationally) in terms peculiar to the business sector: as a customer-product relation. It is the applicability and suitability of such a configuration that specifically concerns (...) this contribution. The paper maintains that the move to describe the student-teacher relation in these terms is indeed inappropriately reductive, but not straightforwardly so. The problem arises in that we remain unsure of the contemporary purpose of education. We lack any firm educational ideals that, in themselves, cannot be encompassed by the business paradigm. Indeed, the pedagogical critique of education (broadly, that education is only of use in as much as it is of use to society) extends further than has yet been intimated and prevents one securing any educational ideal that does not immediately succumb to critique. This pedagogical logic is unassailable in any linear way but, when pressed, precipitates an aporetic moment that prevents it from assuming any totalising hold over education. We draw on the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida to consider whether one might yet imagine an educational 'quasi-ideal' that will enable practitioners and institutions to counter the effects of customerisation. (shrink)

In recent years, different places in the world have witnessed demands for the decolonization of education. Nevertheless, it is not completely clear how this ought to be carried out. There are various factors that influence what such decolonization may entail, including the geographical place for decolonization and the discipline being decolonized. This requires a specific analysis of each context. In this article, I wish to make a proposal for how to carry out the decolonization of philosophy teaching at the (...) university level in the African context, with a special focus on South Africa. I propose that more African philosophy be included in the curricula, as well as the integration of teaching and assessing methods that reflect African culture. Further, I argue that those seeking for decolonization ought to try to pursue it incrementally, given that it is the best strategy to achieve decolonization. (shrink)

The managerial turn in academia is currently broadly discussed. Based on empirical data gathered from a sample that includes all German universities, we can give a broad and fine-grained account of this turn. What we can clearly see is that whole new categories of administrative management positions have been created over the last years. Furthermore, within the non-academic staff we can see a profound restructuration. Lower-level positions like those for clerical work decreased, while higher-level positions in the administration increased. (...) However, and in contrast to studies of countries, we do not observe a general shift from academic to non-academic positions. In addition to the statistical analysis of survey data and personnel data, we conducted seventy in-depth interviews with heads of administrative management units, in particular those being created over the last two decades, for example, on quality control, technology transfer, and career service. Although we clearly see important changes indicating a managerial turn in higher education, core characteristics of a professional organization whose basic processes are ultimately controlled by academics and not by administrators or managers have been retained. These findings call for further cross-national research. (shrink)

The prolific educational discussions of America's founding generation have led to extensive treatments surrounding the nature of early-national education in recent scholarship. Republican educational models Jefferson, Rush, and Webster have been scrutinized and praised as the forerunners to modern American higher education. Where these treatments are remiss, however, is in clearly identifying the fundamental shift in educational purpose between 1740 and 1780. Higher education classrooms were inundated with both Enlightenment and Evangelical literature, resulting in new (...) arenas of student autonomy, thus radically departing from the traditional model of higher education carried over from England. An analysis of this transformation will highlight how the highly regarded republican educational ideas on education did not necessarily illustrate a thoroughly new model of higher education. Rather, it gave new definition to an already existing paradigm. (shrink)

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the academe was introduced to online education, which is complicated. The sudden shift of traditional face-to-face classes to digital learning impacted every student's self-efficacy and motivation towards their studies. This study investigates the relationship between the self-efficacy and academic motivation of the 304 freshmen college students from private higher education institutions in the Philippines. Based on the data gathered, the participants' level of self-efficacy (x̄ = 3.27) and academic motivation (x̄ = 5.93) (...) is high. Further, the statistical analysis concluded a relationship between self-efficacy and academic motivation (r=.002, at 0.05 level) among the graduating college students. Implications of the study were discussed, and recommendations for future research were suggested. (shrink)

This book examines the dominant discourses in higher education. From the moment academics enter higher education, they are met with binaries such as teaching vs. research, quantitative vs. qualitative research, and constructivists vs. positivists. When embarking upon a teaching career in a university there are further binaries that immediately present themselves, with deep vs. surface learning probably being the most pervasive. Kinchin and Gravett contend that this presents a distorted view and contributes to the disconnect (...) between the aims and observable practice of higher education. Rather than celebrating difference, dominant discourses tend to seek similarities in an attempt to simplify and manage the environment, in what the authors perceive as a less than scholarly mode. In order to break down the barriers between 'structuralist' or 'traditional' academics and those who are more familiar with poststructuralist, critical perspectives, the authors explore the overlaps between these perspectives to offer a richer and more inclusive interrogation of the dominant discourses that pervade higher education. Offering methodological approaches to explore these perspectives, the authors bring together academics working in different parts of the university and examine the concept of a 'rich cartography', exploring how this can offer meaning within higher education research and practice. (shrink)

This study aims to explore the promoting effect of the combination of mental health education and ideological and political education for college students on improving their comprehensive psychological quality and ideological and political theoretical level. The research adopts a combination of system analysis methods, experimental methods and clustering algorithms, and conducts course experiments through experimental methods, providing basic data. In the process of the experiment, from the perspective of educational psychology theory, the systematic analysis method is used to (...) distinguish subject and object, and functional analysis is carried out. At the same time, clustering algorithms are used to classify the mental health problems of different students. The research results indicate that in terms of subjectivity, teachers’ psychological communication ability, psychological understanding ability and psychological guidance ability have a significant positive impact on students’ psychological state. The level of ideological and political theory and psychological strain ability also have a significant positive impact on students’ psychological state. Intervention on students’ values and personality psychological issues is also effective. These findings provide an important basis and guidance for further carrying out higher education reform. Contribution: With the development of society, students need to face more and more external concepts during their growth. Students whose mental growth is not mature are likely to have certain psychological problems in this process. This research can be utilised by scholars in the field of youth ministry and religious educational studies. (shrink)

The proliferation of diasporas has influenced the nature of internationalization in many higher education (HE) systems and institutions, especially in terms of academic and student mobility/migration. Through a systematic review of the academic literature, I critically analyze the widespread uses of and approaches to ‘diaspora’ in HE research and its relationship to internationalization. I identify two major areas of studies and corresponding approaches to diaspora: one which frames diaspora as human capital and focusses on the role of the (...) state; and the other which frames diaspora as marginalized other and social construct. I argue that ‘diaspora’ in HE studies tends to be ambiguous, under-defined, under-theorized, and fragmented. I further argue that it is loosely connected to internationalization discourses, despite its clear connections. I posit that this is because ‘internationalization’ is associated with humanitarianism, cosmopolitanism, global citizenship and the de-centering of states, nations, ethnicities, religions, and particularistic identities. Diaspora is often associated with these latter categories and thus, is shunned. I conclude by suggesting that the blending of (often conflictual) ideas, intentions, values and identities is precisely what diaspora engages in and that the conditions of our increasingly mobile and (inter)connected world necessitate a (re)thinking of diaspora in HE scholarship. (shrink)

This article introduces Transition 2.0, a paradigm shift designed to study and support students with disabilities' transition to higher education. Transition 2.0 is the result of a qualitative study about how a group of young people with vision impairments used digital technologies for their transition to university. The findings draw from observations, a researcher diary, focus groups, individual interviews, and data from social media. The article discusses a conventional view of transition, referred to here as Transition 1.0, which (...) has dominated disability-related research and service provision in higher education. It counters this view by further developing the conceptual framework for Transition 2.0. The findings expand current conceptual approaches to transition by incorporating in the analysis the role played by digital tools such as social media and mobile devices. They also provide a new lens through which to study and understand student engagement in higher education. (shrink)

In the higher education settings, the following questions are discussed and debated in modern times. Is ‘teaching’ a profession? Are university faculty members professionals? The paper attempts to answer these questions by adopting qualitative methodology that subsumes descriptive, evaluative, and interpretative approaches. While answering these questions, it discusses significance and usefulness of academic ethics in the university set up. It examines role of academic ethics to offer quality education to students. Further, it highlights university faculty members’ (...) roles and responsibilities toward students, colleagues, institution authorities, research works, and society at large. The paper submits that teaching in university settings is regarded as a profession, and university faculty members are regarded as professionals provided they perform their duties conforming to the teacher’s code of ethics. (shrink)

I begin the chapter with research, reported recently in The Atlantic, on the surprising phenomenon that many successful women, all accomplished and highly competent, exhibit high degrees of self-doubt. Unlike the original research, the chapter aims to bring into view the role self-respect plays in higher education as another crucial explanatory factor. First, I clarify the main concepts that are relevant for getting a clear view of the notion of self-respect: different kinds of self-respect and the connection to (...) the notion of self-esteem are discussed. After this, in section III, I move on to the main theoretical positions that historically have put self-respect in the centre of their theorizing. The story starts with Immanuel Kant, continues with John Rawls, and ends with the influential accounts of Axel Honneth, Avishai Margalit and several feminist thinkers. Having covered the theoretical and conceptual landscape, I finally connect self-respect to higher education both on the systematic as well as on the more applied level of thinking. I then wrap up the chapter by connecting back to The Atlantic story we have started out with as well as make suggestions of further reading for those with deeper interest in the topic. I also provide a a brief list of the main takeaways as well propose some questions for discussion. (shrink)

This research aimed to assess the potential of alternatives to extrinsic pecuniary rewards for cultivating employees’ commitment in denominational higher education institutions in Indonesia. Two ethics-related variables, namely ethical climates and ethical ideologies, were chosen as possible predictors. A model delineating the nexus between ethical climates types, ethical ideologies, and various forms of organisational commitment was developed and tested. A two-step structural equation modelling procedure was used as the primary means in testing the hypothesised relationships. The research involved (...) staff of nine Catholic higher education institutions in Indonesia and comprised 642 respondents. Results of the research revealed a negative relationship between egoistic climates and affective commitment. Benevolence climate was shown to have potential for generating not only affective, but also continuance commitment. However, our results suggested those climates that cultivate continuance commitment needed further examination. Principle-based climates were found to positively influence staff’s affective commitment through their positive impacts on staff’s idealistic ethical ideology. As expected, the principle-cosmopolitan was shown to have a negative influence on relativism. A number of managerial and scholarly implications are discussed. (shrink)

The study aimed to look into the organizational performance of Higher Education Institutions in the Philippines particularly in Zamboanga del Norte. The descriptive method of research was used. There were 95 respondents to the survey. Frequency count, percentage, and Mean were used as a statistical tool. The investigation revealed that organizational performance of the Higher Education Institutions involved was found to be very good along the areas of VMGO, faculty, curriculum and instruction, support to students, research, (...) extension, library, physical plant and facilities, laboratories and administration. The Higher Education Institutions met the standards of quality over and above the minimum requirement of government under Article XIV Accreditation, Section 60. There were areas need to focus such as congruent to the needs of the people in the community, monitoring of faculty adequacy and loading, sourcing out funds and other resources, and maintaining safety and security inside the campuses, even though all areas in organizational performance found very good, Further, the administration continuously requires planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. (shrink)

One of the important determinants of development during the transition to adulthood is the undertaking of social roles characteristic of adults, also in the area of finishing formal education, which usually coincides with beginning fulltime employment. In the study discussed in this paper, it has been hypothesized that continuing full-time education above the age of 26, a phenomenon rarely observed in Poland, can be considered as an unpunctual event that may be connected with difficulties in the process of (...) identity formation. Relationships between identity dimensions and identity statuses, and age and educational context were analyzed. 693 individuals aged 19-35 took part in the study. The participants attended three types of educational institutions: full-time university studies, part-time university studies, and full-time post-secondary school. Among the students of full-time university studies predictable dependencies, also in respect of highlevels of indicators of identity crisis and a high frequency of diffused identity occurrence, were observed. Such dependencies were not found in the group of full-time post-secondary school students. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of the quantification of higher education by introducing a theoretical framework for power relations and agency within this process. Instead of treating evaluation regimes as external and imposed on the sector, it argues for a relational approach to the problem of exercising power over the higher education sector through means of evaluation. To develop such an approach, the article draws on two sources: Guy Neave’s account of the evaluative state and Bob (...) Jessop’s strategic–relational approach (SRA) to the state. By using the latter to further develop our understanding of the logic under which the evaluative state operates, the article offers a general framework for inquiring about the conditions that shape power relations and impact the degree of agency at the disposal of the actors involved in the evaluative state. For this purpose, the article operationalises the six general dimensions of the state developed on the grounds of the SRA in the context of the evaluative state. In turn, to demonstrate its heuristic value, the article refers to the emergence of the evaluative state in Poland and how scholarly communication was quantified and made commensurate in this process. (shrink)

This book analyses higher education's digital transformation and potential disruption from a holistic point of view, providing a balanced and critical account from a variety of interdisciplinary viewpoints. It looks at case studies on educational and emerging technology, their impact, the potential risk of digitalization disrupting higher education, and also offers a glimpse into what the future of digitalization will likely bring. Researchers and practitioners from countries including New Zealand, Russia, Eswatini, India, and the USA, bring (...) together their knowledge and understanding of this rapidly evolving field. The contributors analyse academia's digitalization along the broad topics of the sector's general digital evolution. The book looks at changes in instructional formats from the Massive Open Online Courses to Small Private Online Courses and artificial intelligence. This work also provides analysis on how skills, competences and social networks demanded by future jobs and job markets can be further integrated into higher education. (shrink)

The gray prediction model, based on the GM method, is an important branch of gray theory with the most active research and the most fruitful results, and it is the most widely used because of its small sample size, simple modeling process, and easy to use. Such advantages have been successfully applied in many fields such as transportation, agriculture, energy, medicine, and environment and have been gradually developed into a mainstream predictive modeling method. This study combines the Three-parameter Whitenization Grey (...) Model ), which fits the inhomogeneous exponential law sequence, and the Particle Swarm Algorithm to optimize the order and background value coefficients under the condition of the minimum sum of squares of simulation errors, and hence, to solve the problem that the cumulative order is fixed to “1” and the background value coefficient value is fixed to “0.5.” As a result, a parameter-optimized gray system model with flexibility, adaptability, and dynamic adjustment is designed to simulate and predict China’s higher education gross enrollment rate. The application shows that the model has better overall simulation and prediction performance than others. On the one hand, the parametric optimization model significantly improves its own performance, and on the other hand, its intelligent and adjustable adaptivity improves the accuracy and further extends its application. (shrink)

International debates surrounding the management of universities in Western states have focused heavily upon the implications of neo-liberalism and the economisation of knowledge at national and international levels. However, investigations at the institutional level reveal that programmes for the development of human capital, organisational reputation and service quality in education and research are encouraged through regimes of self-development, directed towards organisational objectives. This article utilises governmentality theory to explore the relationship between governance and subjectivity within the Australian higher (...) education system. The governance of higher education, it will be argued, is enabled by mentalities of government which are dependent upon contemporary technologies, techniques for self-evaluation and career-planning, expertise about university labour, and—importantly—practices which engender an enterprising academic identity. To explore the utility of this analysis in contemporary Western liberal states, this study explores the construction of subjectivity implicit within Monash University’s Performance Development Online technology. Embedded with “technologies of the self,” this performance management platform is positioned within Monash as a gateway which requires academics to reflect upon their careers and selves, encouraging the genesis of marketable identities. This article points to the utility of further research into the development of career in a changing academic environment. (shrink)

In the midst of international opportunities available to academics and students, plagiarism keeps plaguing the Indonesian higher education sector. This paper reports the findings from an Australian Alumni Reference Group activity which took place in Jakarta, Indonesia, in May 2013. An exploratory survey on plagiarism was conducted with Australian Award Alumni to capture their perceptions and opinions on the incidence of plagiarism and plagiarism prevention in higher education institutions in Indonesia. The survey was then followed up (...) with a series of focus group discussions with representatives of higher education institutions to discuss the issues further. The findings revealed that a pattern of plagiarism conduct can be identified for both students and faculty members. One issue found is that there is a perceived discrepancy of standards between the overseas and local graduate faculty members on what plagiarism is. The overseas graduates are perceived as ‘stricter’, and this creates reluctance from the overseas faculty members to speak up on the issue for fear of being judged harshly. Concerns over standards and consistency, especially in law enforcement, were discussed in efforts to prevent plagiarism in higher education institutions in Indonesia. (shrink)

The purpose of our research was to explore the impact of fine arts education on psychological wellbeing among undergraduate students through moderating role of creativity and self-efficacy. Art is the most effective medium for expressing human ideals, culture, identity, lifestyles, emotions, and societal experiences. Cross-sectional research was carried out on 376 undergraduates in the 2022–2023 academic year at the public and private Chinese universities, and those students who are currently enrolled in fine arts courses. A link to the Google (...) Doc survey was sent through email and social media channels. The time frame of the data collection was 3 months, from February 2022 to April 2022. While analyzing the obtained data, we used IBM SPSS version 25, which includes both descriptive and inferential statistics. The overall results of the study indicate that the fine arts education positively and significantly influences psychological wellbeing. Moreover, findings also indicate that the creativity and self-efficacy positively and significantly moderate the relationship between fine arts education and psychological wellbeing. The study highlighted the significance of fine arts education in Chinese students. Through this study, students studying in this field should be made more aware of the importance of fine arts education and its link with psychological wellbeing. Further, art courses should be added to the curriculum at different levels of education to boost the creativity and self-efficacy of higher education students in China. Implications for parents, students, and teachers are also discussed. (shrink)

What way forward for the contemporary university? Critical University traverses fields in critical theory, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and the philosophy of education to focus and provoke further discussion of the university in crisis.

Though there is much interest nowadays in "aporias" there is relatively little research on the relation between these aporias and deconstruction, and further, between these two and the philosophy of education. First, it will be argued here that a sufficient understanding of the aporias must preserve the complexity of Aristotle’s own understanding and explications, or in other words, must avoid the reductive approaches one sometimes finds in some recent commentaries on studies of Aristotle’s aporias. Second, it will be (...) argued that some critiques of Aristotelian aporias, such as a deconstructive critique, require careful scrutiny. Third it will be argued that the complex Aristotelian understanding of aporias is by no means a tired or exhausted paradigm - far from it; it has rather some significant implications for educators and in relation to educational thinking in the twenty first century, especially when understood in relation to Wittgenstein’s work on some questions, some language games, as knots in our understanding (significantly, Aristotle used just the same kind of metaphor in relation to aporias). (shrink)

In this age of multiculturalism, global travel and terrorism, it is vital that citizens be inculcated with the fundamental values of democracy and equipped with the cognitive skills to further those values. Plato critiqued the democratic character for its potential selfishness and lack of civic engagement---this was true in ancient Athens and is still true today. Using a primarily philosophical but also an interdisciplinary approach, I discuss the historic and social contexts of moral education in democracies both ancient (...) and modern. My topic contributes to this inquiry about democratic education by discussing Virtue Ethics and Communitarianism, with attention to empirical matters as dealt with in Sociology and Psychology. This dissertation explores the Neutral Liberalism-Communitarian debate about moral education to explicate current social and educational circumstances, both theoretically and practically. I propose a model for teaching morality based on self-knowledge, without a traditional religious grounding, without competing with religious authority, resorting to dogma, or indoctrination. I draw on the works of Plato, Aristotle, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William James, Charles Taylor and others, supporting my proposals with current research from Social Cognitive Psychology. Research in Psychology has shown that some ways of thinking about the self are more efficacious and functional than others. By grounding moral education in self-knowledge and virtue theory, we can ensure the preservation of our democracy by improving the ability of our citizens to reason well about personal, practical and political matters. (shrink)

Although entrepreneurial intention has been widely studied using cognitive models, we still lack entrepreneurial vocation and, therefore, lack disruptive innovations. Entrepreneurship scholars have some understanding of the reasons underlying this weakness, although there is much room for improvement in our learning concerning how to promote entrepreneurship among university students, especially in the transformed context of digital technologies. This paper focuses on the early stages of start-up, and in particular seeks to evaluate what role social and psychological factors play in the (...) development of entrepreneurial intentions. Drawing on network theory, we consider the impact of social networks on entrepreneurial intention. Specifically, we analyze the influence of two types of social networks: face-to-face and online social networks, with the latter proving especially important in digital transformations. In addition, based on affective congruency theory, we relate affect with entrepreneurial intention. Particularly, we evaluate the influence of positive and negative dispositional affectivity on the formation of entrepreneurial intentions. Finally, since affect and emotions can also be related with social relationships, we analyze whether dispositional affectivities influence entrepreneurial intention through the mediation effect of social networks. Using structural equation modeling, we confirm the impact of both online and face-to-face social networks, as well as positive dispositional affectivity on entrepreneurial intention for 589 higher education students in Spain. However, negative dispositional affectivity is not seen to influence entrepreneurial intention. Furthermore, both face-to-face and online social networks are influenced by positive dispositional affectivity. Moreover, these two types of networks can even partially mediate the relationship between positive dispositional affectivity and entrepreneurial intention. Positive dispositional affectivity can thus influence entrepreneurial intention in two different ways: directly and indirectly through both face-to-face and online social networks. This study provides further insights and adds to the literature on affect, social networks, and entrepreneurial intention. From a broader perspective, we also contribute to the literature on disruptive innovations by explaining how the development of entrepreneurial intentions would have positive consequences for university students vis-à-vis achieving these disruptive innovations. (shrink)

The main aim of this study is to test the validity of the Motivation, Engagement, and Thriving in User Experience model in higher education. We propose a process model in which we investigate how the need-satisfaction of digital learning tools within the interface sphere and task sphere accounts for engagement, learning, and well-being. A total of 426 higher education students drawn from two subsamples participated in this cross-sectional study. A structural equation model shows that interface autonomy (...) and competence satisfaction positively predict task autonomy and competence. Task competence, in turn, negatively predicts focused attention and positively predicts perceived usability and well-being. Task autonomy positively predicts perceived usability and reward. Based on our results, we provide some initial support for the METUX model in higher education. However, more validation work is needed to improve the scale that measures need-satisfaction in the interface and task spheres. Moreover, we find no support for the effect of task sphere on learning. Further investigations are needed into how METUX can be used in domain- and situation-specific contexts to account for increases in engagement, learning, and well-being. Finally, future studies need to include all aspects of the METUX model in order to fully test its validity. (shrink)

University human research ethics application procedures can be complicated and daunting, especially for international students unfamiliar with the process and the language. We conducted focus groups and interviews with four research higher degree and 21 Master’s coursework international students at an Australian university to gain their views on the human ethics application process. We found the most important influences on their experience were: the time it took to do an application; support from supervisors, peers and others; their own language (...) skills; and their lack of familiarity with research ethics procedures. To improve the experience of international students undertaking research involving human research ethics applications, we recommend universities provide guidance on institutional ethics review processes, concepts and terminology, with translations in a range of languages, together with guidance on how to conduct research ethically within and outside the students’ own countries. We also recommend curricula be developed to further students’ understanding of the importance of ethical research practice, and that these curricula be embedded in undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs and reflected in course learning outcomes. (shrink)

Social-psychological dimensions of learning are under-researched, but they affect student achievement. Within a marketized higher education context in England, United Kingdom, this study examined whether the relation between students’ social identities as members of their discipline and academic achievement could be further understood by considering the mediating roles of approaches to learning and frequency of making course complaints. Undergraduates completed a questionnaire to assess these constructs. As expected, approaches to learning and course complaining both acted as serial (...) mediators of the link between discipline identification and academic achievement: stronger discipline identification was related to more deep approaches to learning, less complaining, and higher achievement, whereas weaker discipline identification was related to more surface approaches to learning, more complaining, and lower achievement. The findings suggest that addressing these social-psychological aspects of learning could improve students’ academic achievement. (shrink)

Academic misconduct in all its various forms is a challenge for degree-granting institutions. Whilst text-based plagiarism can be detected using tools such as Turnitin™, Plagscan™ and Urkund™, contract cheating and collusion can be more difficult to detect, and even harder to prove, often falling to no more than a ‘balance of probabilities’ rather than fact. To further complicate the matter, some students will make deliberate attempts to obfuscate cheating behaviours by submitting work in Portable Document Format, in image form, (...) or by inserting hidden glyphs or using alternative character sets which text matching software does not always accurately detect.Educators do not tend to think of academic misconduct in terms of criminality per se, but the tools and techniques used by digital forensics experts in law enforcement can teach us much about how to investigate allegations of academic misconduct. The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Glossary describes digital forensics as ‘the application of computer science and investigative procedures involving the examination of digital evidence - following proper search authority, chain of custody, validation with mathematics, use of validated tools, repeatability, reporting, and possibly expert testimony.’. These techniques are used in criminal investigations as a means to identify the perpetrator of, or accomplices to, a crime and their associated actions. They are sometimes used in cases relating to intellectual property to establish the legitimate ownership of a variety of objects, both written and graphical, as well as in fraud and forgery. Whilst there have been some research articles and case studies that demonstrate the use of digital forensics techniques to detect academic misconduct as proof of concept, there is no evidence of their actual deployment in an academic setting.This paper will examine some of the tools and techniques that are used in law enforcement and the digital forensics field with a view to determining whether they could be repurposed for use in an academic setting. These include methods widely used to determine if a file has been tampered with that could be repurposed to identify if an image is plagiarised; file extraction techniques for examining meta data, used in criminal cases to determine authorship of documents, and tools such as FTK™ and Autopsy™ which are used to forensically examine single files as well as entire hard drives. The paper will also present a prototype of a bespoke software tool that attempts to repurpose some of these techniques into an automated process for detecting plagiarism and / or contract cheating in Word documents.Finally, this article will discuss whether these tools have a place in an academic setting and whether their use in determining if a student’s work is truly their own is ethical. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to quantitatively analyze 34 independent papers collated from both domestic and international literature on the correlation between university entrepreneurial activities and college students’ entrepreneurial abilities by means of meta-regression analysis and to examine in detail the significant factors affecting the entrepreneurial competencies of university students. The study revealed a significant positive relationship between entrepreneurial activities in universities and university students’ entrepreneurial ability, and further explored the extent to which each of the three types (...) of entrepreneurial activities had an impact on college students’ entrepreneurial abilities. Then, the effects of different moderating variables on the relationship are further analyzed. The results show that the type of university, economic development, gender ratio, age structure, and time to publication all significantly moderate the degree of correlation between university entrepreneurial activities and college students’ entrepreneurial abilities. (shrink)

The articles included in this issue represent some of the most recent thinking in the area of critical thinking in higher education. While the emphasis is on work being done in the Australasian region, there are also papers from the USA and UK that demonstrate the international interest in advancing research in the area. -/- ‘Critical thinking’ in the guise of the study of logic and rhetoric has, of course, been around since the days of the ancient Greeks (...) and the early beginnings of universities. In a narrower sense, critical thinking has been central to higher education as a desirable attribute of graduates since at least the beginning of the twentieth century. The work of John Dewey, and others, emphasised the importance of ‘good habits of thinking’ as early as 1916. In 1945, the Harvard Committee placed emphasis on the importance of ‘thinking effectively’ as one of three desirable educational abilities in their General education in a free society. This was later endorsed in 1961 by the US-based Educational Policies Commission: ‘The purpose which runs through and strengthens all other educational purposes … is the development of the ability to think’ (Kennedy, Fisher, & Ennis, 1991, pp. 11–12). -/- In recent times, universities have made a point of emphasising the importance of critical thinking as a ‘generic skill’ that is central to most, if not all, subjects. There is not a university today (in Australia at least) that does not proudly proclaim that their graduates will – as a result of a degree program in their institution – learn to think critically. Further, there is rarely a subject taught that does not offer the opportunity to acquire skills in critical thinking. However, where is the evidence that we teach critical thinking in higher education? Disturbingly, despite our best intentions, it appears we may be teaching very little of it. (shrink)

Using mixed methods, we explored new music students’ concepts of wellbeing and success and their current state of wellbeing at a university music department in Switzerland. Music performance is a competitive and achievement-oriented career. Research suggests musicians face vocation-specific challenges to physical health and mental wellbeing but has yet to investigate music students’ beliefs about wellbeing and success. With a self-report questionnaire we investigated new music students’ quality of life and self-efficacy. Through qualitative workshops we explored students’ understanding of the (...) term “wellbeing,” and how this relates to “success.” Over half new music students believed the institution has 40–60% responsibility for their wellbeing. A simple linear regression showed that self-efficacy could predict better wellbeing, explaining 12% of the variance. Self-efficacy predicts wellbeing for new music students. The 17 flipcharts generated 121 inputs clustered into themes. Four themes solely described “wellbeing” and four separately depict “success”. Some themes intersected as elements of both constructs. Four further themes illustrated the relationship between the two. Music students believe responsibility for wellbeing is shared between themselves and their institution. As they scored low on both self-efficacy and wellbeing, these findings are an urgent call for action for school management and stakeholders of the music student population. (shrink)

The academic standing of the staff working in vocational higher education must be judged as unsatisfactory according to two possible criteria: the traditional criteria, which are derived from the universities operating within the previous unitary higher education system; and the criteria outlined by the bill of the Law of Higher Education Institutions. The latter derive from the same historical institutional pattern.There are many reasons to conclude that, academically, in most fields of study, the new (...) institutions do not reach the level of the old ones. However, the mission of the new sector—the second-rank academic institutions in the eyes of the traditional academic community—is at least debatable, if not mistaken. The public university sector appears to be in deep crisis, with academics so attached to the Humboldtian university that they ignore the claims for social relevance in education.8 This is further complicated by deepening financial hardship.Using traditional criteria, it is possible that Estonia will be left with two socially irrelevant higher education sectors, instead of one functioning sector. It is also possible that the second sector, which does not fit these criteria, will be eliminated. However, the fault does not lie wholly with the dominance of traditional university attitudes. It also lies in a lack of vision on the part of the new institutions. As children of the proletariat society, they fail to recognise their vocational orientation as a benefit, and instead try to hide it. They are developing theoretically overloaded four- to five-year study programmes. None of these institutions has solved the problem of balancing the requirement of employing 50 per cent faculty full time and maintaining a satisfactory academic level. The need to demonstrate that part-time employees may actually benefit the vocational sector has not yet been understood.9As long as the sector continues to accept the rules forced upon it by the old universities, it probably has no useful role in Estonia. Its institutions, especially the public institutions, cannot compete with the traditional universities in academic fields. The universities, on the other hand, are beginning to understand that the policy they proclaimed some years ago, which was based on the clear distinction between two sectors on the German pattern, does not work in a small country with very limited resources, and an inheritance from the previous regime of a large university sector with an enrolment rate of more than 20 per cent of the age group. The universities have agreed to offer their own non-degree courses at diploma level, and now seriously threaten the small new institutions. From the financial point of view, the universities' expressed desire to swallow the small vocational institutions is beneficial since the small institutions have no clearly distinct role of their own.The private vocational higher education institutions do not conceal the fact that, according to their own vision, they have little place in the vocational sector. Some of them would like an official status equal to that of the universities, the right to offer graduate and postgraduate courses as well as diploma courses, and the registration of their diplomas and certificates on an equal basis with the public universities in the Register of Diplomas and Certificates at the Ministry of Culture and Education. In other words, they are interested in becoming fully accredited universities. This increases competition for students and—given the Estonian mechanism of public financing of higher education based on the number of students admitted provided by the Ministry of Culture and Education10—there will be less money for public universities. Here lies the origin of the principle that the universities are established by parliament and the vocational higher education institutions by executive action by the government.The existence of the new sector is seriously threatened. The current pattern of postgraduate studies has blocked the preparation of a sufficient number of research-degree holders, even at master's level.11 The new institutions cannot train their own faculty. The recent experience of Concordia International University—which depends greatly on staff with bachelor's and master's degrees from the United States, who form some 80 per cent of the faculty—demonstrates that the participation of first- or even second-rank Western academics in Estonian higher education can never be very high. If the system cannot accept experienced local staff for legal appointments in the vocational sector, unless they have a research degree, these institutions will not survive for long. Society will be back to the position where there are a large number of underpaid or unemployed academics, but a shortage of qualified individuals who could be self-employed and capable of running small and medium-size enterprises. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to understand how academic integrity educational tutorials are administered across Canadian higher education. Results are shared from a survey of publicly funded Canadian higher education institutions, including universities and colleges, across ten provinces where English is the primary language of instruction. The survey contained 29 items addressing institutional demographic details, as well as academic integrity education questions. Results showed that academic integrity tutorials are inconsistent across Canadian higher (...) class='Hi'>education, with further differences evident within the university and college sectors. (shrink)

Teaching and research are organised differently between subject domains: attempts to construct typologies of higher education institutions, however, often do not include quantitative indicators concerning subject mix which would allow systematic comparisons of large numbers of higher education institutions among different countries, as the availability of data for such indicators is limited. In this paper, we present an exploratory approach for the construction of such indicators. The database constructed in the AQUAMETH project, which includes also data (...) disaggregated at the disciplinary level, is explored with the aim of understanding patterns of subject mix. For six European countries, an exploratory and descriptive analysis of staff composition divided in four large domains (medical sciences, engineering and technology, natural sciences and social sciences and humanities) is performed, which leads to a classification distinguishing between specialist and generalist institutions. Among the latter, a further distinction is made based on the presence or absence of a medical department. Preliminary exploration of this classification and its comparison with other indicators show the influence of long term dynamics on the subject mix of individual higher education institutions, but also underline disciplinary differences, for example regarding student to staff ratios, as well as national patterns, for example regarding the number of PhD degrees per 100 undergraduate students. Despite its many limitations, this exploratory approach allows defining a classification of higher education institutions that accounts for a large share of differences between the analysed higher education institutions. (shrink)

This study uses secondary data to examine Obiora’s education ethics vis-à-vis the higher education system in Nigeria. The discourse centered on government educational agencies such as the National Universities Commission (NUC); National Board for Technical Education (NBTE); National Commis-sion for Colleges of Education (NCCE) and Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) and their roles in the management of the educational system in Nigeria. The study further highlights the ethical lapses in the tertiary education (...) system in Nigeria. The researcher suggests that, the government should encourage private ownership of tertiary institutions, while the government through its agencies supervises them. (shrink)

This paper provides a broad bibliometric overview of the important conceptual advances that have been published during COVID-19 within “e-learning in higher education.” E-learning as a concept has been widely used in the academic and professional communities and has been approved as an educational approach during COVID-19. This article starts with a literature review of e-learning. Diverse subjects have appeared on the topic of e-learning, which is indicative of the dynamic and multidisciplinary nature of the field. These include (...) analyses of the most influential authors, of models and networks for bibliometric analysis, and progress towards the current research within the most critical areas. A bibliometric review analyzes data of 602 studies published in the Web of Science database to fully understand this field. The data were examined using VOSviewer, CiteSpace, and KnowledgeMatrix Plus to extract networks and bibliometric indicators about keywords, authors, organizations, and countries. The study concluded with several results within higher education. Many converging words or sub-fields of e-learning in higher education included distance learning, distance learning, interactive learning, online learning, virtual learning, computer-based learning, digital learning, and blended learning. This research is mainly focused on pedagogical techniques, particularly e-learning and collaborative learning, but these are not the only trends developing in this area. The sub-fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning constitute new research directions for e-learning in light of COVID-19 and are suggestive of new approaches for further analysis. (shrink)

Developing a Center for Teaching Excellence: A Case Study Using the Integrated Readiness Matrix builds on the 2015 text, Integrating Pedagogy and Technology: Improving Teaching and Learning in Higher Education with a focus on teaching in higher education. Developing a Center for Teaching Excellence is premised on our contention in the first book that, while individual faculty members can independently begin to use the IRM to improve their pedagogical and technological skills in their content areas, an (...) organizational structure is needed to sustain ongoing improvement. In addition, while the first book provided a primer on learning theory as it relates to pedagogy, Developing a Center for Teaching Excellence plumbs this topic more deeply from the perspective of the college instructor. Further, the second book is dedicated to demonstrating how the IRM can be institutionalized as the foundation for providing the structure and support to faculty and how they can help shape centers for teaching excellence by becoming more familiar with relevant learning theories and related pedagogical and technological approaches. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically altered the education sector. Rather than the impact of COVID-19, many higher education institutions are on the verge of insolvency due to a lack of digital transformation readiness and poor business models. The bleak financial future many HEIs will face while others may be forced to close their doors completely will erode HEIs’ ability to fulfil their societal responsibilities. However, HEIs that have survived and maintained their operations anticipate the transition to online (...) learning or the effects of any economic crisis, including university closures in the short, medium, or long term. The entire educational ecosystem was forced to transform its operations quickly and entirely to an online teaching-learning scenario in just a few weeks. Notably, HEIs that have long offered online courses worldwide can easily transition to digital teaching and learning when necessary. The second roundtable session’s result of the International Higher Education Conference, organized by INTI International University on March 31 2022, was used to organize a Delphi method to identify further factors that positively impact HEIs by COVID-19. The importance of these factors was then determined using Kendall’s coefficient of concordance. Recommendations on how HEIs should move towards institutional sustainability during the endemic phase are presented accordingly. (shrink)

Every school needs an advocate leader who can influence others to address issues, concerns, and problems that affect education, its quality, access, and the welfare of the stakeholders, especially that of the learners. This leader needs to subscribe to the redefined roles and nature of leadership. Advocacy leadership challenges educational leaders to take a progressive stance on pressing educational issues and problems. The next in line leaders need to awaken in themselves a specific advocacy and tune-in to this new (...) trend. With this, a qualitative inquiry explored the educational advocacies of twenty graduate students involved in focus group discussions and interviews. Using the thematic network as an analytical framework, the inquiry identified 46 keywords, 51 basic themes, and 6 organizing themes. Thus, a new thematic network of educational advocacies was generated. Learners’ welfare was the most dominant educational advocacy of graduate students, while leadership and governance, professional development, culture and religion, safety and environmental protection, and community development were considered as developing and noteworthy advocacies. These educational advocacies were deemed interconnected and interdependent to each other. Also, the study comes up with relevant propositions, while it makes recommendations for further research and utilization of the new framework. The results have implications for revisiting the educational administration curriculum by mapping out the subjects that contribute to the development of educational advocacy. (shrink)

Previous studies have documented a positive association between college education and happiness. However, the endogeneity of college education attainment is rarely examined, and a more robust link between college education and happiness needs to be built. Based on the Chinese General Social Survey data of 2017, the present study used the quasi-experiment of China’s higher education expansion started in 1999 to construct a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to examine the causal association between college education (...) and happiness. It is observed that college education indeed improved Chinese happiness, but this positive association was stronger in males than in females. Further, college education was observed to improve happiness by improving individual political status, perceived personal status, health and family social status, but not by increasing personal income. Accordingly, the government should continue to promote the development of higher education, and the fairness of higher education development deserves more attention to reduce population disparities in happiness. (shrink)

The education of safety science professionals is a key requirement to ensuring the ongoing recognition of Occupational Health and Safety as a profession. Safety science educators, at some point in their academic career, are required to align with an appropriate teaching philosophy, however this important aspect of education pedagogy rarely receives scholarly attention in the safety sciences. Therefore, this article makes the case for philosophical pragmatism as an overarching teaching philosophy that works well within the evidence informed safety (...) science practice model. Pragmatism is a logical and valuable teaching philosophy which centres on linking theory, research, ideas and actions to multi-disciplinary practical applications. It is embedded in the notion that both multiple stakeholder, and multiple perspectives are required to solve practical safety-oriented problems. Pragmatism links to a reflective practitioner paradigm whereby students are asked to think critically about what they do. Further, learning is influenced by self-discovery. The key theoretical underpinnings of pragmatism are presented, as well as the 4 Ps of pragmatism as a teaching framework. The rational for embracing pragmatism as a higher educational teaching philosophy for the safety sciences is presented. Pragmatism is seen as both a path forward in reducing the theory into practice divide for safety science educators and professionals, and a teaching philosophy which enhances the safety science pedagogy educational lens. (shrink)

Recent work in science and technological studies has provided a clearer understanding of the way in which science functions in society and the interconnectedness among different strands of science, policy, economy and environment. It is well acknowledged that a different way of thinking is required in order to address problems facing the global community, particularly in relation to issues of risk and uncertainty, which affect humanity as a whole. However, approaches to education in science tend to perpetuate an outmoded (...) way of thinking that is incommensurable with preparing individuals for participation and decision-making in an uncertain, complex world. Drawing on experiences of interdisciplinary dialogue and practice in a higher education context, this book illustrates how reformulating the agenda in science and technology can have a revolutionary impact on learning and teaching in the classroom at all levels. This exceptional study will interest scholars in Education, Science, Technology, and Society, and those looking to further deliberative democracy and civic participation in their students. (shrink)

To date, little understanding exists of how first-year students in professionally oriented higher-education programs experience their academic transition process. In the present study, we first argued how the constructs of academic adjustment and academic integration can provide complementary perspectives on the academic transition of first-year students in HE. Next, we examined what first-year students in professional HE contexts perceive to be the most important experiences associated with their academic transition process in the first semester of their first year (...) of higher education. To this end, we adopted the fundamentals of the critical incident technique and asked 104 students in a Flemish university college to complete “reflective logs” with open questions at the start of the second semester of their FYHE, wherein they reflected on three critical academic experiences during their first semester. An inductive, cross-case content analysis of the collected narratives showed that students reported on nine themes of academic experiences, which relate to five adjustment themes and four integration themes. Further analyses showed that although some of the nine themes of academic experiences appear to be more important at different times in the first semester, they all seem to be meaningful throughout the whole semester. (shrink)

There are multiple positive effects of internationalization of Higher Education (HE) on enriching students’ experiences in general and providing opportunities for exchange and development of all segments of university functioning. This paper aims to contribute to determining the role of institutional QA in promotion of the international cooperation in HE by analysing undergraduate students’ perceptions on their international experience and comparing them to their home University. Individual experiences of students from the Southeast European University (SEEU) in North Macedonia, (...) who participated in Erasmus exchange program in the last two academic years (2021/22 and 2022/23), with regard to the main quality assurance (QA) principles and measurements applied at their home University, are being considered. Their academic progress at the international universities is also taken into consideration. The aim is to collect firsthand information from the main stakeholders in the QA process about areas that can be further developed, as well as to position SEEU and self-check where it stands comparing and benchmarking it with some reputable European universities in order to better prepare its students for the international job market. SEEU has one of the most developed QA systems in the wider region, created and constantly being developed based on the international standards and guidelines and the long institutional experience. Thus, the paper also aims to contribute to defining some basic standards of internationalization of QA which would be recommended to the institutions from less developed, ITC (inclusiveness target countries) in order to assist them to place and welcome international students more successfully. (shrink)