25 mai 2013
University fundraising: what the UK can learn from Canada
By Andrew Derrington. Major donors are motivated both by the excitement of giving and the satisfaction that their money has been put to good use, finds Andrew Derrington on a recent fundraising study trip. Canada is a good place to learn about university fundraising because the giving culture is fairly similar to the UK, but its practice tends to be about 20 years ahead. So it was that I recently found myself on the annual CASE fundraising study tour, which takes groups of academic leaders and fundraising professionals from Europe to Canadian universities to learn first hand how they approach this trickiest of businesses. Read more...UK higher education: let's not follow the leader but develop our own vision
By Saint John Walker. UK universities need an alternative to the US technology meme that says higher education is broken, says Saint John Walker. An avalanche is coming. Education is broken. Classrooms kill creativity. Higher education is a rotten tree being hit by lightning.All these things have been said about higher education recently (Clay Shirky wrote the last one if you're interested). In fact, when I playfully did a Google search on "higher education is doomed", it returned some 2 million results. Those who work in teaching, especially in higher education, have had a rough time of it recently. It seems everyone's got it in for them and everyone has a prognosis of what to do about it. Read more...Take a hard look at racism, sexism and homophobia on college campuses
By Andrew Longhi. My recent experience at Dartmouth College has shown me that we are still not the society we want to be. Like many universities, Dartmouth College has venerated traditions. The annual Dimensions show – a festive, student-organized musical revue performed to entice admitted, but undecided, students to come to Dartmouth – is one such tradition. Many prospective students decide to attend Dartmouth because of how much they enjoy the performance. On 19 April, a group of students calling themselves "#Realtalk" interrupted the show, protesting sexual assault, racism, and homophobia at the university. It was a real jolt for the campus community. President Carol Folt cancelled classes on 24 April for the first time since the mid-1980s due to the backlash: a barrage of rape and death threats on social media sites and internet forums. The ugliness and volume of these threats – not to mention the negative PR – convinced the administration that the school was in a state of crisis. Read more...Do students get enough contact time with tutors?
By Harriet Swain. A report for consumer watchdog Which? and the Higher Education Policy Institute last week found that nearly one in three first-year students at UK universities felt their courses were not good value. We ask: would you like more contact with your tutors?Bob Hughes graduated recently with a BA in English from York University
I had four to eight hours of seminars and lectures a week, with anything from 30 students to around 200 in lectures and around 10 to 15 of us in seminars. It gave me a lot of time to find my own arguments and thoughts and critically engage with it. Had we had more contact hours in certain areas, it would have detracted from our independent studies. But I know for a number of students paying £9,000 a year the expectation is higher. Some have tried working out roughly how much per hour a seminar or lecture costs. I think that number is arbitrary and doesn't reflect all the university experience. But they do want more bang for their buck. Read more...
Provost's Summit - Designing teaching and learning experiences to enhance student engagement
Provost's SummitA joint initiative by Melbourne Students and Learning and the CSHE, the Provost's Summit is an annual event focussed on a teaching and learning theme of contemporary importance to the University. This event is open to all University of Melbourne staff.
Designing teaching and learning experiences to enhance student engagement
Friday 19 July, 9am - 2pm
VENUE: Theatre 1, Ground Floor, Business & Economics (formally the ICT) building, Barry St.
The annual Provost’s Summit is an opportunity for the University community to discuss a ‘hot topic’ in teaching and learning, of broad and current relevance to the University’s teaching community.
This year’s Provost Summit will focus on enhancing student engagement within teaching and learning. The program for the day will feature Professor Diana Laurillard from the Institute of Education, University of London and a number of University staff, who will address the following question:
What teaching and learning experiences enhance student engagement across diverse learning contexts? How do we know these are effective?
The Summit is a joint initiative by Melbourne Students and Learning and the Centre for the Study of Higher Education. Online registration for this event is below.
For queries regarding the 2013 Provost's Summit, please contact Molly McKew (CSHE) tel: +61 3 8344 4605 email: molly.mckew@unimelb.edu.au. Read more...
Academic integrity seminar available to view online
The latest event in the HEA's research and policy seminar series is now available to view online.
'Academic integrity: learning lessons and exploring tensions' was presented by the HEA's Dr Erica Morris.
Dr Morris, Academic Lead for Assessment and Feedback and the HEAR, looked at the concept of academic integrity, including concerns about student plagiarism and collusion.
She also addressed different ways to approach the issue, and problems involved, within institutions.
The webinar can be viewed on our Research and Policy events page.
The next seminar, on 'Exploring links between research and teaching in higher education', takes place on 11 June. Professor Simon Haslett, Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Wales, will present the session.
People can attend in person or online. To book a place on the event, please click here.
Case studies on research-based curricula in college-based HE sought
A Higher Education Academy (HEA) funded project to support staff teaching in college-based higher education (CBHE) - also known as HE in further education (FE) - provides an opportunity to celebrate practices in the college sector in a new report.
The report's authors, Mick Healey, Alan Jenkins and John Lea, are seeking short examples (250-350 words) of curricula that support students learning about and through research and inquiry-based activities. Case studies should be specific as to what the student does, point to the key things staff need to consider, and highlight any relevant websites and/or publications that provide further detail.
The authors are also keen to source international case studies, e.g. from community colleges in the US and the vocational and educational training (VET) sector in Australia.
Selected case studies will be available on the HEA website, in the final report and will feature in workshops to be delivered in 2013-14. Read more about requirements for the case studies on the HEA website.
IREG Forum in Warsaw – a post conference note
Over 130 experts on university rankings and representatives and academic community from 32 countries met in Warsaw 16-17 May 2013 at the IREG Forum on University Rankings – Methodologies under scrutiny. The conference was organized by the IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence and the Perspektywy Education Foundation in cooperation with the Polish Academy of Sciences.Opening the Forum Jan Sadlak, President of IREG Observatory pointed out to the usefulness of university ranking as information, assessment and transparency tool. In the keynote speech Michal Kleiber, President of the Polish Academy of Sciences stressed the importance of good data and quality information both for rankings and for the higher education. Forum’s sessions were chaired by: Andrea Bonaccorsi (Italy), Waldemar Siwinski (Poland), Nian Cai Liu (China), Klaus Huefner (Germany) and Alex Usher (Canada).
The underlining philosophy of the Forum in Warsaw was that rankings can be only as good as the methodologies behind them are. Consequently both presentations and discussions focused on various aspects of methodologies used in making of rankings. The timing for discussion on this feature of ranking was perfectly chosen considering a number of important new initiatives emerging in the ranking field like U-Multirank in Europe (presented by Gero Federkeil) or Folha's University Ranking in Brasil (presented by Sabine Righetti). Another specific feature of the IREG Forum was special session with panelists representing institutions from several countries with different higher education systems. The panelists Sergey Tunik (Saint Petersburg University), Stanislaw Kistryn (Jagiellonian University), Lars Uhlin (Lund University), Mukash Burkitbayev (Al-Farabi University), Mircea Dumitru (University of Bucaresti) and Ladislav Nagy (University Babes-Bolyai) commented rankings as they are seen from the university’s perspective. The organizers introduced this session to give voice to those who are subject of rankings but rarely have a chance say what they think about the rankings, how they asses rankings’ positive and negative sides.
An active role in the Forum program played a group representing Polish universities, including Marcin Palys, Rector of University of the Warsaw and Wladyslaw Wieczorek, Vice Rector of the Warsaw University of Technology. The two Warsaw universities also hosted the Conference Dinner. The Frederic Chopin Institute was Forum's partner. Elsevier BV publishing house was the sponsor of the IREG Forum. Over the past three years IREG Observatory has worked on the idea of ranking audit and at the Forum the first ranking audit results were announced. Two rankings, national and international, Perspektywy University Ranking (Poland) and the QS World University Rankings were granted the right to use the quality certificate “IREG Approved”. Jan Sadlak, IREG President and Klaus Huefner, IREG Audit Coordinator handed the certificates to Ben Sowter of the QS Inteligence Unit and Waldemar Siwinski, President of the Perspektywy Education Foundation.
IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence is an association of ranking organizations, universities and other organizations, interested in the improvement of the quality of rankings and quality of higher education in general. IREG Observatory was established in 2009. The number of its members have grown from nine to 34 since then and new applications are pending. The IREG Observatory and QS Intelligence Unit invite to the IREG-7 Conference Employability and Academic Rankings – Reflections and Impacts, to be held in London, 14-15 May 2014. Additional information: k.bilanow@ireg-observatory.org.
Africa on the Move: the Quest for Sustainable Growth
Ernst & Young in collaboration with experts from the Institute for Emerging Market Studies (IEMS) at the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO have issued new research on Africa’s economic growth. This research report analyses the main factors driving Africa’s success such as government initiatives to reduce inflation, budget deficits and debt levels. Interestingly, Africa’s population will be 20% of the world population in 2050 with a median age of 20 and moreover a genuine middle class is emerging. Another powerful indicator is that the economic presence of the BRICs is expected to be 50% of African trade by 2030 and it is no secret that Africa has great reserves of natural resources. Nigeria, Angola, South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia and Republic of Congo are in the global top 20 of oil, gold or copper producers. Read more...
White Paper: MOOCs - Massive Open Online Courses
MOOCs are on the Move: A Snapshot of the Rapid Growth of MOOCsA White Paper by Dr Lindsay Ryan - January 2013
What are MOOCs
MOOCs are Massive Open Online Courses and they are rapidly changing the game for higher education, executive education and employee development generally. MOOCs offer free online courses covering a growing range of topics delivered by qualified lecturers from some of the most well-known universities in the world. In this age of lifelong learning, MOOCs are a means of providing learning and development to virtually everyone, anytime, anywhere in the world with internet access. This paper presents a snapshot of current developments in MOOCs, noting that MOOCs have really only gathered momentum in the past year and are constantly developing and evolving almost on a weekly basis.
Background
The original concept for a MOOC came from academic research in the early 1960s with the idea that people could be linked by a series of computers to listen, discuss and learn about a particular topic. Now, continuous development in technology has become the enabler for virtually everybody in the world to have access to a broad and diverse range of education and learning topics. MOOCs provide free online courses that enable people with an interest in a selected topic to study and learn through interaction with others also interested in the same topic. Other participants could be from the same organisation, city or region, learning together with people from other organisations, cities, regions and countries from around the world. MOOCs are the internet equivalent of distance education and there could be 1,000 or 100,000 participants in a single course.
MOOCs create the opportunity for vast numbers of people across the world to access learning through quality courses, content and lecturers that most would never have access to. For many people, further and higher education can seem overwhelming or beyond them. MOOCs open a world of opportunity for people in remote areas and developing countries as well as people with aspirations to achieve more with their lives. MOOCs are changing the traditional nature of education mainly being for the affluent and elite to being free and accessible to virtually everybody.
The growth of MOOCs is phenomenal. During the three months from mid-October to mid-January, including the quiet period for learning and development over Christmas-New Year, one major player, Coursera, continued to grow at the rate of 6,900 new participants (Courserians) PER DAY. Anything that grows at such a rate cannot be ignored and Coursera is just one of an increasing number of MOOC providers bringing together a diverse and expanding range of open online courses.
MOOCs started as a form of collaborative online learning with people interacting and learning from each other and being exposed to different perspectives, views and ideas. Over the past year, MOOCs have started to move to the mainstream and increasingly resembling more traditional courses, especially as a significant number of MOOCs are shorter versions of many traditional courses, and often delivered by highly qualified professors and academics whose research and academic expertise underpins the course on a MOOC.
Some of the MOOCs, such as EdX, continually research their courses to better understand how participants learn and explore ways of using the technology to transform and further enhance the learning and online experience for the participants. Read more...
