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Today, modern educational models are concerned with the development of the teacher-student experience and the potential opportunities it presents. User-centric analyses are useful both in terms of the socio-technical perspective on data usage within the educational domain and the positive impact that data-driven methods have. Moreover, the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in education and process innovation has emerged due to the strategic perspectives and the process monitoring that have shown to be missing within the traditional education curricula. This study shows that there is an unprecedented increase in the amount of text-based data in different activities within the educational processes, which can be leveraged to provide useful strategic intelligence and improvement insights. Educators can apply the resultant methods and technologies, process innovations, and contextual-based information for ample support and monitoring of the teaching-learning processes and decision making. To this effect, this paper proposes an Educational Process and Data Mining (EPDM) model that leverages the perspectives or opinions of the students to provide useful information that can be used to enhance the end-to-end processes within the educational domain. Theoretically, this study applies the model to determine how the students evaluate their teachers by considering the gender of the teachers. We analyzed the underlying patterns and determined the emotional valence of the students based on their comments in the Students Evaluation of Teaching (SET). Thus, this work implements the proposed EPDM model using SET comments captured in a setting of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies what can be called the 'paradox of interdisciplinarity' (Weingart ) in Australian higher education research governance and explores some of its constitutive dimensions. In the Australian context, the paradox of interdisciplinarity primarily concerns the proliferation of a programmatic discourse of interdisciplinarity in government reports and government policy and strategy documents, often tied to notions of innovation and applicability, parallel to the persistence or even reinforcement of modes of governance and associated mechanisms that almost exclusively rely on rigid discipline-based classification systems to evaluate and fund research. Two interrelated dimensions of this apparent paradox are discussed. First, the conceptions of knowledge that underpin the use of notions of disciplinarity as well as interdisciplinarity in Australian government reports and policy and strategy papers are analysed. Second, an analysis of the Australian research governance system and its underlying mechanisms is presented, as they pertain to interdisciplinary forms of research. On the basis of these analyses, it is concluded that there is a significant mismatch between the discourse of interdisciplinarity and associated conceptions of knowledge on the one hand, and current, relatively inflexible governmental research funding and evaluation practices on the other. It is finally proposed that the occurrence and perpetuation of such a mismatch in the Australian context can only be understood properly if placed in the context of a more general paradox of research governance, where a politically charged rhetoric of innovation conflicts with the actual trend toward an increasingly diminishing scope for the self-organisation of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Progress files, involving personal development planning (PDP), are becoming a feature of many higher education systems internationally. In the UK they will become mandatory for all undergraduate students from 2005. This presents a major implementation challenge, because while reflection has been a cornerstone of practice in some areas of higher education for a considerable time, its generalisation as national policy changes its discursive location. The paper presents findings from a case study of the implementation of PF in one UK Higher Education Institution (HEI). It reports on how staff in one institution understand PF in the context of national policy, and on how they interpret the challenges they face in facilitating reflection for all students. The paper argues that pedagogical innovations take on a different meaning when applied to the system as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Review of Education / Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

At the crossroads of current innovation policies towards a European Research Area (ERA) and a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) lies an important province of higher learning and research: doctoral training and the further careers of PhD graduates. A considerable number of higher education systems across Europe shift their paradigms for doctoral training away from the traditional so-called Humboldtian model towards the so-called professional model. On this background, the paper discusses (1) the German pattern of a strong link of the PhD to the labor market outside academe that is based on a traditional academic-disciplinary mode of apprenticeship training, and (2) approaches that argue for a new mode of knowledge production replacing an academic-disciplinary model of research training by a hybrid model that crosses disciplinary and organizational borders. The paper argues that a diversity of organisational and structural forms as well as different validation criteria and procedures will probably determine the future face of research training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the driving forces behind the Bologna process, its advantages and possible negative effects. It also analyses the dangers that may result in commoditisation of the European higher education systems, in emergence of rigid accreditation systems and of a centralised bureaucracy that will impair innovation and creativity.The paper develops the idea that the Bologna process may be interpreted as a step in the neo-liberal movement to decrease the social responsibility of the state by shortening the length of pre-graduate studies and transferring responsibility for supporting employability to individuals through graduate studies.Consideration is also given to the mechanisms and forces behind the Bologna process that try to present an apparent climate of consensus despite some obvious difficulties and disagreements at the level of implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education community has developed a large number of innovative teaching strategies and materials, but the majority of these go unused by instructors. To help understand how to improve adoption of evidence-based education innovations, this study focuses on innovations that have become widely used in college-level STEM instruction. Innovations were identified via a questionnaire emailed to experts in STEM instruction. Descriptions of identified innovations were validated by preparing brief descriptions of each innovation and sending them to the original developers, when applicable, for feedback, and searching relevant literature. Publicly available funding data was collected for each innovation. STEM disciplines surveyed include biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, geoscience, mathematics, and physics. Results: The 43 innovations identified were categorized based on two criteria: level of specificity (general, recognizable, branded) and type of change (pedagogical, content, both, neither). The 21 branded innovations were analyzed in more detail. The majority (14/21) require relatively modest changes in pedagogy and no changes in content. In addition, nearly all have received at least 3 million dollars in external funding over at least 10 years. Conclusions: This paper presents the full list of instructional innovations produced, which can be used by educational innovation developers to understand how their ideas fit within the broader landscape and to identify innovations in one discipline that may have promise for transfer. The findings regarding funding of the branded innovations have important implications for both educational innovation developers and funding agencies. In particular, the study indicates that a long-term mindset and access to long-term funding are vital for broad adoption of new teaching innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it is common to claim that university reforms are based on universal and standardised ideas about 'modernising' the university, few studies have examined in a more coherent way how the combined external pressure for change with respect to the areas of education, research and innovation has affected the university. In this paper it is argued that one can identify three different sets of logics concerning the current external reform agenda, and that these logics together create new challenges as to how knowledge is created, diffused and governed by the university. In the conclusion, it is discussed whether the current pressure for reform might change the university as we know it, or whether new institutional translations might emerge from the process renewing the university while maintaining its identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing importance of knowledge, research and innovation are changing the social role of universities in the globalized world. One of the most popular concepts used to approach these changes in post-industrial and post-modern societies is the concept of ‘Knowledge Society’. In this paper, we will analyse the roles higher education is expected to play with regard to various knowledge society discourses. We will begin with analyzing the uses of knowledge society as an intellectual device and continue by reflecting on how changes in higher education are related to knowledge society discourses in national, regional and global levels. In the final section we will reflect on current challenges and expectations generated within these discourses for higher education and the implications these expectations have for higher education research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a study that explored the utility and efficacy of the application of a Web-based tool to promote learner engagement among first year students in a large class in an undergraduate communications degree. The Web-based tool was developed to support an inquiry-based learning approach that was characterised by strong learning scaffolds, meaningful contexts, feedback and support and administrative efficiencies. The study explored the forms of engagement that the Web-supported inquiry-based learning approach was able to engender among first year undergraduate students and the factors that were found to influence students’ levels of engagement and achievement in the approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents results from an interview investigation with teachers in Swedish nurse education especially interested in internationalising the education. The aim has been to study teachers’ understandings and experiences of internationalisation against the backdrop of the strong concern for internationalisation expressed in policy documents. The results are seen in the context of globalisation, constraints to educational change, in a cultural perspective, and in relation to the need of a curriculum theory. The teachers united the global, in the form of personal experiences of other countries and cultures, with the national and local. Their experiences abroad were a basis for their interest in, and choice of content in, their teaching, considered to represent internationalisation of the education. The teachers were interpreting internationalisation in line with there understanding of nursing and the general approach to nursing in the education, without making any clear distinction concerning what specifically was internationalisation. The teachers seem to represent an important resource in internationalising the education. However, their understanding of and approach to internationalisation did not represent a shared culture and there was no shared curriculum including a distinct understanding of internationalisation. This is seen as a big challenge to both policy makers and teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work seeks to support scholars interested in non-face-to-face modalities of higher education in making decisions about the use of digital and educational technologies (DET) to promote educational transformation (ET) in the context of their organizations. This organizational change deals with the implementation of technology-based flexible educational practices, focused on helping students develop competencies of interest for their personal and professional growth. With this in mind, in 2018 we identified and followed six leading higher education institutions on three continents that, for years, have carried out educational innovation experiences with the support of technology. Two of the analyzed experiences make use of eLearning, another of bLearning, and the others combine eLearning and bLearning as a complement to the face-to-face modality. The meta-analysis of the cases, carried out in 2019, followed suggestions from (Stake in The art of case study research, Sage Publications Inc., 1995) as well as from qualitative research that seeks to understand what is behind the cases from three dimensions: education, technology, organization. For each one, we determined what they do, how they do it, and what success factors must be considered. As the data was collected before the 2020 pandemic and this issue produced structural imbalances in society and in higher education, it was considered pertinent, at the end of 2020, to check the pulse of the ET mediated with DET in three of the six institutions studied. The purpose was to refine the findings of the meta-analysis and learn from the decisions made in the situation of forced change in environments, means, and strategies to continue providing quality higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education, an integral part of China's nation-building project, is a critical element in China's strategic policy initiative of building national strength through science and education. One way to achieve this goal is to develop a higher education system of international stature. Perhaps more than any other country, through national programs such as 211 and 985, China has been explicit in selecting its best universities for intensive investment, with the expressed aim of making them world-class within coming decades, and contributing more to overall R&D and scientific development. Analysing how these top-tier universities in China are reaching for the gold standard, and using Tsinghua University as an example, this article examines the role of higher education in China's rise and how Chinese universities are responding to the drive for innovation, against a background of globalisation and internationalisation. It analyses the experience of Tsinghua, a Chinese flagship university, sometimes dubbed 'China's MIT', through an in-depth case study in an international context, seeking to answer the question of how far Tinsghua embodies the qualities of a world-class university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the process of initiation, design, implementation and embedding of educational innovations in higher education is necessary to develop better strategies for sustainable, large-scale educational innovation. Often early initiated educational innovation projects are not evaluated well enough, making it hard to identify lessons learned. The aim of this study is to investigate how project leaders of innovation projects in Dutch higher education institutions are coping with organizational challenges. To address this we analysed qualitative focus group data with innovators that run projects at Dutch higher education institutions through the lens of contextual coping theory. Results show that the innovators identified challenges (primary appraisal), proposed possible solutions (secondary appraisal) and also were able to take concrete steps (coping efforts) to overcome challenges to design and implement open online educational innovations. From these findings it can be concluded that bottom-up initiatives can create awareness and are capable of finding local resources to establish support for embedding innovations locally, yet, appropriate, synchronized and timely top-down action is needed in order to create a sustainable and institution wide support system for experimentation and embedding of educational innovations. These findings will contribute towards developing better strategies to develop innovative educational practices and quality education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an update on a higher education bill in the U.S. as of May 1972. Although higher education legislation continues to be delayed in a House-Senate conference committee by such thorny issues as public school bussing, general aid to institutions, and the program of student support, several important decisions have been reached. Two of these concern the administration's proposed National Foundation for Higher Education (NFHE) and the National Institute of Education (NIE). Put most briefly, the former is out and the former is in. The NFHE was designed in part as a response to those who argued that higher education was receiving short shrift of all sorts and was being criticized for lack of innovation at the same time that support for innovation was denied. Actually the proposal drew relatively little attention and more yawns than passion on either side. This was partly because many felt it to be an organizational exercise whose real merit depended entirely on its undetermined staffing and budget. As it is, the House-Senate conference sought to accomplish some of the same results without the bureaucratic fanfare. Thus, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) was authorized to hire up to five top-level administrators and to establish an advisory commission to promote higher education innovation.

The article presents an innovative educative experience in higher education in Spain that combines methodology, content and new technologies in a multilingual environment. It presents an experience of implementing a subject called International Perspectives on Social Innovation in Social Work and Social Education degrees. By using the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) model, the subject aimed to promote problem-solving and creative thinking among students. To this end, students developed a project using Appreciative Inquiry (AI), a tool used to promote change and innovation in organizations. The objective was to provide a broader outlook on social intervention or social action and to enhance student's knowledge and their willingness to build society and shape key values. In order to accomplish its goals, the subject fostered the use of innovative ideas and technologies and offered a multilingual working environment. Results have shown a predisposition to adopt new technologies in their professional life as the final products reflected a very positive image of the perspectives of innovations in the social sector as well as their willingness to innovate as future professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is the result of a Teaching Innovation Project funded by the University of Cantabria's Vice-Rectorate for Teaching Staff. Its goals are to analyze the phenomenon of MOOCs with pedagogical criteria and to develop a Best Practice Guide. The project was developed by the Universities of Cantabria and Oviedo, all the work was divided into three phases: 1) Theoretical review and the design of classroom activities, 2) The implementation of classroom activities and analysis of the main results and 3) The development of a MOOC Best Practice Guide. The results of the second phase at the University of Cantabria are presented here. They demonstrate the need to introduce these massive open online courses into degree programmes in Education, updating higher education studies and providing valuable knowledge for understanding the educational potential (not just technological or financial) of this online training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on work examining differences in the emphasis faculty place on effective educational practices, this study uses data from nearly 8,000 faculty members from the 2007 Faculty Survey of Student Engagement to explore how disciplinary area moderates the effect of teaching a general education course (GEC) on the emphasis faculty place on deep approaches to learning. Results showed that the GEC effect was strongest in hard-applied-life fields and weakest in hard-pure-life and soft-applied-life fields, suggesting that proponents of general education reform need to temper their efforts by a clearer understanding of disciplinary differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to present a systems-based mentoring model of technology integration that follows a research-based path. The model moves teachers through four specific stages of technology adoption toward using technology to support learning in more student-centered ways. The model describes how a mentor can negotiate the interplay of multiple barriers (time, beliefs, access, professional development, culture) on teachers who are learning to integrate technology and suggests a number of strategies for integrating technology, such as establishing a culture of technology integration, modeling technology use, and creating teacher leaders. Unlike previous mentoring approaches to integrating technology into the classroom, this model culminates with the establishment of a teacher-led community of practice that uses the resources currently available at a school to support and sustain the implementation of the system. Suggestions for implementing the model in a variety of K-12 and higher education settings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last decade, the higher education sector has experienced many pressures and changes (Hanna, Educause Review, 38(4), 25–34, 2003; Scott, Educause Review, 38, 64–80, 2003; Waterhouse, The power of e-learning: The essential guide for teaching in the digital age, 2005). Universities around the world are facing the need to adapt to a rapidly changing educational and social landscape, in which technology is both the main cause of change and a tool for dealing with the change. This study examines the organization-wide technological changes that have infiltrated every aspects of life at all universities that are part of the higher education system in Israel during the last 7 years: the introduction of on-line instruction, e-learning and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) technology for university work processes The research findings show that there is a mechanism for managing organization-wide technological changes at Israeli universities but it is not a rational one. This study proposes a model for managing organization-wide technological changes in universities on the basis of the existing mechanism, using knowledge management strategies for the purpose of change management: KM-M-CM (Knowledge Management as a Mechanism for Change Management) Implementation of this model will make it possible to realize the challenge of transforming the university from a "knowledge institution" to a "learning institution." It will come life to the extent that the higher education system in Israel, its leaders and decision-makers understand the need for a permanent mechanism to manage change and adopt this rational model in order to establish it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Review of Education / Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The search for more flexibility in financial management of public universities demands adjustments in budgeting strategies. International studies on this topic recommend wider financial autonomy for management units, the use of budgeting models based on performance, the implementation of formula systems for the determination of financial needs of units and the signing of management goal-oriented contracts between decentralized units and the central administration of each institution. In this article we present a descriptive study of processes of internal resource allocation in Spanish public universities, with the following aims: firstly, to know the degree of introduction of normative models of internal resource allocation, the type of mechanisms applied and the variables on which such schemes are based; secondly, to analyse the degree of influence of regional funding models of higher education on the allocation of resources within each university; and, finally, to estimate the degree of delegation in financial management. In general, this study reveals the embryonic state in which Spanish universities are regarding a more strategic distribution of funds within institutions, although we have come across some universities with more innovative approaches to management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the issues of trust, control, professional autonomy and accountability in higher education quality assurance in the UK. The main part of this article is conceptual, but it includes results from semi-structured interviews with academic staff that were conducted at two “new university” business schools. Both institutions are broadly similar in their key characteristics and have experienced a transformation to university status in the early 1990s. The article argues that there has been a change from informal “light-touch” quality control systems based on local practices and a significant amount of trust and professional autonomy in the early 1990s to a highly prescribed process of audit-based quality control today. The article argues that accountability and transparency are important principles that academics should wholeheartedly embrace, but that the audit format adopted in the UK introduces a one-way accountability and provides “rituals of verification” (Power 1997) instead of fostering trust, has high opportunity costs and may well be detrimental to innovative teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]