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As higher education institutions seek to prepare an increasingly diverse population of students for a rapidly changing future, makerspaces offer a pedagogical approach for engaging all learners in active thinking and hands-on learning while promoting creativity, problem solving, and collaboration skills. In this paper, we discuss ways to integrate makerspaces and maker-centered learning within undergraduate and graduate college courses that reach students from majors ranging across the college and university curriculum. We highlight four courses, each taken by students at different points within their academic programs of study: a) digital media production & 3D modeling in a first-year seminar, b) poetry writing and 3D modeling and printing in a flipped learning course, c) wiki page building workshops for future teachers, and d) learning, media, and technology undergraduate/graduate courses. Makerspace experiences are ongoing features of each course, but not in the same ways, offering models that faculty can use in adapting their courses to include more active and applied learning for students. [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]

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]

Nowadays the European Universities are worried about how to adapt higher education to the new European Higher Education Area, as proposed in the Bologna Magna Charta Universitatum of 1998, and signed by 32 European Education Ministers. One of the key points in this higher education reform was the introduction of new Master’s level curricula. These Masters will look for the professional specialization and they will have to be adapted to the specific skills demanded by the society. This paper presents the results from a cooperation project – funded by the AECI (International Cooperation Spanish Agency) and developed between the University of Seville (Spain) and the Catholic University of Asuncion (Paraguay) – by about the planning of a new master’s level curriculum in digital signal processing (DSP) area, taking into account the Bologna principles and the conclusions obtained by the Career Space Consortium. A scientific method from social science, known as concept mapping techniques, was used to perform this planning. Basically, the idea of concept mapping consists of compiling the opinion from actors belonging to different environments (lecturers, researchers, workers, businessmen, etc.) related to DSP applications. The compiled data were statistically computed to cluster the opinions of the different agents. The result will be a master’s level curricula adapted to the environment requirements and the social settings. [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]

Comments on an article about the use of educational technologies in the teaching of ethics in science and engineering. Reasons for the enhancement of learning by educational technologies; Way in which higher education faculty be supported in the appropriate uses of such technologies.