By Phil Hill. Late last week I described the new plan from the US Department of Education (ED) and their Office of Educational Technology (OET) to “call for better methods for evaluating educational apps”. Essentially the ED is seeking proposals for new ed tech evaluation methods so that they can share the results with schools – helping them evaluate specific applications. More...
The Government is, rightly in my view, committed to raising the salience of good teaching in higher education.
Its preferred means for doing so is a new Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). No one yet knows exactly what that will look like.
Only two things are certain: one, that the TEF will be hard to get right; and two, that the Government’s stated timetable is optimistic – arguably to the point of impossibility. More...
On this morning’s BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Lord Norton of Louth, a Conservative member of the House of Lords, noted that one of his former students, Kevin Shinkwin, had been included in the 2015 Dissolution Peerages list published yesterday.
It triggered HEPI to undertake a quick analysis of the higher education of all 45 new peers. More...
By . If there is one thing that the departure of Arvind Gupta has demonstrated, it’s that there are a large number of faculty (and others) who either misunderstand or dispute the role of Boards of Governors at universities.
Here’s the deal. Regardless of whether an organization is for-profit or not-for-profit, there is some kind of committee at the top, which usually has the word “Board” in its title – Board of Trustees, Board of Governors, whatever. More...
By . One of the easiest things to do in policy is to advocate for policy X, so as to change effect Y. One of the hardest things to do is to get people to explain clearly their theory of change. That is, what are the steps by which changing X actually affects Y. More...
By . Policy-making in Ottawa is like a huge river, moving in a slow stately procession, and only occasionally providing excitement if you hit some rapids. It’s not like Washington, which – for all its vaunted “gridlock” – is actually more like an ice jam: there is a lot of pressure in the system, and things can move pretty quickly if the jam breaks somewhere. Partly it’s because of our Westminster system, and our tradition of party discipline: there are not many independent policy actors on the hill, and hence, not many points where interest groups can exert leverage. Add to that a relative lack of genuinely independent intellectual life in Ottawa (government and interest groups are dominated by policy analysts – Canada has no real equivalent to the Brookings Institute, or even the New America Foundation), and what you’ve got is a shop that doesn’t absorb new ideas easily. More...
By . As the price of oil continues to plummet, just a few thoughts on the financial implications for universities.
In provinces that are oil importers, the effect is likely net positive, slightly. Economic growth should be a little bit above trend, inflation will fall a bit, and those factors will make it easier for provincial governments to balance budgets this year, without turning to cuts. More...
By Debra Beck - Evolllution. Reducing the perceived distance between students and instructor and building a sense of community in a group of learners who may live states—or even continents—away from each other are essential functions of social presence in an online classroom. More...
By Susan Martin - Evolllution. Improving the success, retention and graduation rates of transfer students requires institutions to engage in critical self-reflection. Given that transfer students comprise almost half of the student population at UMBC, it was imperative for us to think seriously about how students experienced the transition between institutions, and to adopt new approaches to improve the process. More...
By Kermit Kaleba - Evolllution. Public higher education today is facing a great deal of internal and external scrutiny, from students, employers, observers and government bodies alike. Through a number of policy changes and suggestions, the federal government is starting to take a leading role in the reform of colleges and universities across the United States, focusing on improving access, completion and long-term success of graduates. More...
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