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Learning design ecosystems thinking: defying the linear imperative and designing for higher education at-scale
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to posit an alternative learning design approach to the technology-led magnification and multiplication of learning and to the linearity of curricular design approaches such as a constructive alignment. Learning design ecosystem thinking creates complex and interactive networks of activity that engage the widest span of the community in addressing critical pedagogical challenges. They identify the pinch-points where negative engagements become structured into the student experience and design pathways for students to navigate their way through the uncertainty and transitions of higher education at-scale.
Design/methodology/approach
It is a conceptual paper drawing on a deep and critical engagement of literature, a reflexive approach to the dominant paradigms and informed by practice.
Findings
Learning design ecosystems create spaces within at-scale education for deep learning to occur. They are not easy to design or maintain. They are epistemically and pedagogically complex, especially when deployed within the structures of an institution. As Gough (2013) argues, complexity reduction should not be the sole purpose of designing an educational experience and the transitional journey into and through complexity that students studying in these ecosystems take can engender them with resonant, deeply human and transdisciplinary graduate capabilities that will shape their career journey.
Research limitations/implications
The paper is theoretical in nature (although underpinned by rigorous evaluation of practice). There are limitations in scope in part defined by the amorphous definitions of scale. It is also limited to the contexts of higher education although it is not bound to them.
Originality/value
This paper challenges the dialectic that argues for a complexity reduction in higher education and posits the benefits of complexity, connection and transition in the design and delivery of education at-scale.
... This idea rests on an understanding of pedagogy as non-linear. Instead of being understood as a linear transferral of knowledge, pedagogy should be recognised as pedagogy should be recognised as an 'ecosystem' that is a dynamic (sometimes chaotic) experience that unfolds in specific moments of teaching and learning (Bryant, 2024). Advocates of ecosystem thinking in learning highlight its potential to broaden students' horizons by encouraging innovation and collaboration through a 'crowd' approach (Ardner, 2006). ...
... To benefit from the power of applied drama and performance in large-scale educational contexts, the following points are vital: Understand the wider ecosystem: recognise that the application of performance and drama in a large-scale teaching and learning context does not happen in a vacuum but occurs within a broader ecosystem. In particular, the learning experience should take account of the fact that students and staff not only bring different experiences to the learning environment, but that they also operate within a wider institutional context, with specific learning outcomes which students and staff are expected to meet (Bryant, 2024). ...
... Design Thinking provides a structured yet flexible framework that nurtures this skill set, encouraging students to push beyond traditional boundaries and explore unconventional solutions.Creative problem solving is at the heart of the Design Thinking process. [6]During the Empathize and Define phases, students are encouraged to deeply understand the problem from various perspectives, which often leads to the identification of unexpected opportunities for innovation. This interdisciplinary approach enriches the creative process, as students are exposed to a broader range of ideas and methodologies. ...
This paper examines the integration of Design Thinking into higher education as a means to enhance student creativity and critical thinking skills. Design Thinking, with its structured yet flexible framework, offers a transformative approach to traditional teaching methods, fostering an environment that encourages innovation and practical problem-solving. The paper outlines the core phases of the Design Thinking process — Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test — and discusses how these can be applied within an academic setting to stimulate creative problem solving and interdisciplinary collaboration. It highlights the benefits of this approach in enriching the curriculum, evolving teaching strategies, and redefining assessment methods to better prepare students for the demands of the modern workforce. The paper also emphasizes the importance of nurturing creativity through cross-disciplinary approaches and the exploration of diverse perspectives. In conclusion, the integration of Design Thinking into higher education is posited as a strategic investment in the future, equipping students with the skills necessary to thrive in a rapidly changing world and to contribute meaningfully to society.
Designing strategic pedagogical change through the lens of a student experience that is yet to be experienced offers a critical frame for embedding the impacts of transition, uncertainty, belonging and the complexity of the student journey into the co-design of teaching and learning. A digital storytelling approach extends the notion of the student experience beyond the singular and metricised descriptions common in online student satisfaction survey instruments into a rhizomatic, resonant living community that resides in the intersecting spaces of work, life, play and learning. This paper describes an ethnographic-like model of collecting and evaluating the student experience through a semi-structured digital storytelling methodology that supports both co-design and cogenerative dialogue as a form of curriculum enhancement. The paper outlines how the Student Experience Digital Storytelling model was iteratively designed, deployed, and then evaluated through participatory action research-informed case studies at the University of Sydney Business School (Australia) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom) that embedded the student experience into the co-design of curriculum and assessment interventions.
Universities, like other sectors that perform public tasks are transforming into something similar to social enterprises, linking their production of goods and services to a social mission.
(Benneworth & Jongbloed 2010, p. 669)
Introduction
Following on from the opening chapter, the present chapter continues our review of trends and developments shaping the social future of academic libraries with a particular focus on the evolving social roles of higher education institutions (HEIs) in the 21st century. The key trend over the past 50 years is the evolution from an elite higher education system serving a small minority of young people to a mass higher education model open, in principle, to a majority of the population at a time when the world has also experienced major demographic changes and unprecedented technological advances. The social purpose of higher education (HE) has thus become a matter of wider public concern that has come under renewed scrutiny as a result of the economic downturn, political challenges and social inequalities that have defined the period since the turn of the century. Governments in many countries expect universities to contribute to both economic recovery and social inclusion, to support their local communities and to compete in global markets by producing world-leading research and recruiting international students.
Expansion of the HE sector is a worldwide trend manifested in larger and more diverse student and faculty populations across the globe, increasingly recruited from other countries and resulting in the development and diversification of campus infrastructure and professional services. At the same time, HEIs have expanded their portfolios of activities beyond the campus and academy in response to economic and political challenges by engaging more actively with the commercial world of business and industry, on the one hand, and non-profit community organisations and the general public, on the other. Research and teaching activities have both been affected by both business and public agendas, with undergraduate curricula expected to incorporate both business acumen and civic education to prepare students for global citizenship, while research funding schemes push academics towards work with demonstrable social and economic benefits, such as the design of new products or services to improve health and well-being that have commercial potential. Academic activities and responsibilities have become more complex, making conflicts of interests, commitments and values more common in the HE workplace.
In March 2020, the University of Bristol in the UK was in the middle of the development of a new curriculum for a joint first year of 4-year undergraduate Engineering degrees for introduction in September 2021. This curriculum was designed using constructive alignment principles informed by significant student and staff input. The focus was on skills development, challenge-led projects, and creativity for professional programmes. Assessment was rebalanced from mostly summative to mostly formative. The arrival of the global COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the rollout of this curriculum: the new approach had so many advantages for this challenging situation that its introduction was brought forward to September 2020. This paper centres on the elements of the new curriculum which made it particularly resilient for the pandemic. The constructive alignment approach ensured that curriculum developers concentrated on the overall educational aims of the first year, rather than trying to fit the education into set forms and modes of delivery. The process of developing programme-level intended learning outcomes, followed by a process of paring down the content and assessment of the programmes to focus on these learning outcomes, resulted in a simplification of the structure of the programme. Delivery methods were greatly diversified and blended, allowing teaching to very large cohorts in a variety of situations. True team teaching with staff members developing content together (rather than delivering sequentially) meant that, for the first time, there was some redundancy in the teaching teams. These and other positive and negative aspects of the features of the curriculum in terms of adaptability in the pandemic are discussed in the paper. .
Since the mid-twentieth century, higher education has been subject to spectacular growth. While the expansion of higher education is undoubtedly a general trend, its actual characteristics in terms of its specific conditions and driving forces vary by context. In this article, our aim is to develop such a socio-political historical narrative of Swedish higher education since 1945. We focus on how the Swedish case evolved in four salient aspects: (I) the transformations of the welfare state and the economy broadly defined; (II) the policies directly involved in redesigning the higher education system; (III) the scale, composition and structural relations between the parts of the higher education system; and (IV) the way different social groups (vis-à-vis gender and class) have used the system. We show that higher education policy has shifted its focus from massification and unification to marketisation and internationalisation. We notice that the conditions for the expansions differ substantially during the first three decades after 1945 compared to the 1990s in political, economic and demographic terms. While the system has opened up for increased participation overall, the way students are sorted into different institutions and fields of study by gender and class reveals a remarkably rigid social structure.
This paper explores how academics navigate the Higher Education (HE) landscape being reshaped by the convergence of unbundling, marketisation and digitisation processes. Social Realism distinguishes three layers of social reality (in this case higher education): the empirical, the actual and the real. The empirical layer is presented by the academics and their teaching; the actual are the institutional processes of teaching, learning, assessment, mode of provision (online, blended); the real are the power and regulatory mechanisms that shape the first two and affect academics’ agency. Two dimensions of academics’ experiences and perceptions are presented. The structural dimension reflects academics’ perceptions of the emergent organisation of the education environment including the changing narratives around digitisation, marketisation and unbundling in the context of digital inequalities. The professional dimension aspects play out at the actor level with respect to work-related issues, particularly their own. This dimension is portrayed in academics’ concerns about ownership and control.
As colleges and universities continue their commitment to increasing access to higher education through offering education online and at scale, attention on teaching open-ended subjects online and at scale, mainly the arts, humanities, and the social sciences, remains limited. While existing work in scaling open-ended courses primarily focuses on the evaluation and feedback of open-ended assignments, there is a lack of understanding of how to effectively teach open-ended, university-level courses at scale. To better understand the needs of teaching large-scale, open-ended courses online effectively in a university setting, we conducted a mixed-methods study with university instructors and students, using surveys and interviews, and identified five critical pedagogical elements that distinguish the teaching and learning experiences in an open-ended course from that in a non-open-ended course. An overarching theme for the five elements was the need to support students' self-expression. We further uncovered open challenges and opportunities when incorporating the five critical pedagogical elements into large-scale, open-ended courses online in a university setting, and suggested six future research directions: (1) facilitate in-depth conversations, (2) create a studio-friendly environment, (3) adapt to open-ended assessment, (4) scale individual open-ended feedback, (5) establish trust for self-expression, and (6) personalize instruction and harness the benefits of student diversity.
Massification of Higher Education has resulted in a rapid increase in undergraduate populations, without an increase in the number of teaching staff. One consequence is that students are typically taught in larger classes. While the impact of class size on student satisfaction and attainment is debated, there has been little attention paid to the academic experience of large class teaching. We present results of a questionnaire completed by 80 academics, primarily based in the UK. Academics perceived classes of 100 or more as large, and most had taught classes of several hundred students. Academic perceptions of large class teaching varied considerably. We find no evidence that institution type or contract type affects perceptions of large class teaching. We also find a lack of training that specifically addresses the demands of large class teaching. We call on academic developers to support academics teaching large cohorts to ensure effective education at scale.
University teachers’ practices of resistance against dominant epistemological norms have been described in recent critical higher education literature, but comparatively little work has explored students’ practices of intellectual resistance and negotiation within the university. As part of a larger study on students’ experiences of study-life overlap in health professional education, this paper examines students’ responses when their knowledge arising from life experience was marginalised. Students used five epistemological strategies to respond to this side-lining of lived knowledge, i.e. building the case that lived knowledge is ‘academic’, switching to institutionally recognisable language, considering epistemological framing when responding to discrimination or assumptions, sustaining friendships as epistemological work and seeking out settings where their lived experience was valued. This paper argues for the need to understand students as active epistemological agents within the university. It adds to existing critical scholarship on staff practices of intellectual resistance by considering students’ practices as part of the academic community.
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are the educational buzzword of 2012. Media frenzy surrounds them and commercial interests have moved in. Sober analysis is overwhelmed by apocalyptic predictions that ignore the history of earlier educational technology fads. The paper describes the short history of MOOCs and sets them in the wider context of the evolution of educational technology and open/distance learning. While the hype about MOOCs presaging a revolution in higher education has focussed on their scale, the real revolution is that universities with scarcity at the heart of their business models are embracing openness. We explore the paradoxes that permeate the MOOCs movement and explode some myths enlisted in its support. The competition inherent in the gadarene rush to offer MOOCs will create a sea change by obliging participating institutions to revisit their missions and focus on teaching quality and students as never before. It could also create a welcome deflationary trend in the costs of higher education. Explanatory Note During my time as a Fellow at the Korea National Open University (KNOU) in September 2012 media and web coverage of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) was intense. Since one of the requirements of the fellowship was a research paper, exploring the phenomenon of MOOCs seemed an appropriate topic. This essay had to be submitted to KNOU on 25 September 2012 but the MOOCs story is still evolving rapidly. I shall continue to follow it. 'What is new is not true, and what is true is not new'. Hans Eysenck on Freudianism This paper is published by JIME following its first release as a paper produced as part of a fellowship at the Korea National Open University (KNOU). Both the original and this republication are available non-exclusively under Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY). Apart from this note and minor editorial adjustments the paper is unchanged. Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE
This article outlines a conceptual framework for conceptualising students' experiences of curricular space from an aesthetic perspective. The curriculum is conceived as a three-dimensional, aesthetic artefact that elicits sensory responses and judgements about meaning that can impact learning. Space is conceived in terms of three dimensions that may either be produced or foreclosed by curricular structures and content: time-space dimension, autonomy dimension, reflective dimension and cognitive dimension. Together, these spaces enable imaginative space, which is important for innovative and creative thinking. The Japanese concept of ma is proposed as a fruitful way of thinking about space in curricula not as wasteful, inefficient or a mere void to be filled but as the element that enables learning to result from exposing students to structures and content.
Complex systems are open, recursive, organic, nonlinear and emergent. Reconceptualising curriculum, teaching and learning in complexivist terms foregrounds the unpredictable and generative qualities of educational processes, and invites educators to value that which is unexpected and/or beyond their control. Nevertheless, concepts associated with simple systems persist in contemporary discourses of higher education, and continue to inform practices of complexity reduction through which educators and administrators seek predictability and control. I focus here on two specific examples of complexity reduction in higher education, namely, the widespread adoption of ‘constructive alignment’ (and equivalent curriculum design principles) and the similarly widespread imperative for teaching to be an ‘evidence-based’ practice modelled on Western medical science. I argue that a totally ‘aligned’ curriculum risks being oppressive, but that complexivist understandings can be deployed to mitigate this risk. I also argue that acknowledging the complexity of higher education should dispose researchers to value multiple and diverse concepts of evidence rather than reduce them to understandings privileged by Western medical science.
In introducing the special issue on Large Class Pedagogy: Opportunities and Challenges of Massification the present editorial takes stock of the emerging literature on this subject. We seek to contribute to the massificaiton debate by considering one result of it: large class teaching in higher education. Here we look to large classes as a problem in promoting student learning, quality education, and consequently as a challenge to socio-economic development. That said, whilst large classes do pose very specific challenges, they also hold promise and opportunities for innovation in support of student learning. Here we consider the contributions to this special issue from a cross section of disciplines and higher education environments.
Marketisation, increased student mobility, the massification of Higher Education (HE) and stagnating staff numbers in universities have combined to cause a ripple effect of change both in the demography and size of university classes across the world. This has implications for the quality and equity of learning and the need to examine and to transform pedagogical practices. Despite the growing attention of literature on teaching large classes, there is a scarcity of research addressing the twin issues of large classes in an increasingly internationalised context. This paper seeks to contribute towards filling this gap. The paper provides a theoretical exploration of the causes of such classes in HE, reviews the empirical evidence against large class teaching and examines the difficulties associated with teaching demographically diverse classes in HE. The paper identifies eight pedagogical strategies to address the issues of class size and diversity, which relate to increasing student participation and engagement; increasing curricula access and the language of instruction; increasing staff intercultural understanding; increasing opportunities for deep learning for all; on-going monitoring of student satisfaction; increasing opportunities to achieve; diversification of assessment; and the merit of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS). It calls for new research on global learning cultures; reviews of global assessment and promising pedagogical practices and processes.
The twenty-first century has seen the rapid emergence of wireless broadband and mobile communications devices which are inexorably changing the way people communicate, collaborate, create and transfer knowledge. Yet many higher education campus learning environments were designed and built in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries prior to wireless broadband networks. Now, new learning environments are being re-engineered to meet these emerging technologies with significant challenges to existing pedagogical practices. However, these next generation learning environments (NGLEs) have not been evaluated thoroughly to see if they actually work as they are scaled up across the higher education system. Whilst there have been a range of NGLEs designed globally – with Australia leading in the past five years or so – it is timely that a more rigorous research methodology drawing from health facility evidence-based design is taken to evaluate their effectiveness in improving the student experience and learning outcomes.
Purpose
The paper's purpose is to test: whether there are significant differences between England and Israel, in terms of perceptions of market orientation (MO) in higher education (HE); which MO dimensions (student, competition, intra‐functional) indicate more positive attitudes and whether the differences are significant; and the reliability of the instrument for using a larger sample of respondents internationally.
Design/methodology/approach
A comparative (online) survey of 68 academics in England and Israel was conducted during the academic year 2007. The MO questionnaire used comprises 32 factor items rated on a six‐point scale, categorised using three headings: market (student‐customer) orientation; competitor orientation; and inter‐functional coordination.
Findings
Overall, academics in both countries indicated that their HE institution is oriented towards meeting students' needs and desires, and cares for students' well‐being, teaching and learning. In addition, the respondents alluded to their contribution to internal marketing, i.e. to the promotion of their university through their own work tasks and performance.
Research limitations/implications
The study was restricted to a comparison of only two universities, one in Israel and one in England, and the sample size is small.
Practical implications
The meeting of student needs, and a student centred approach can be an institutional mission, as well as a government driven initiative imposed on universities through the introduction of a market.
Originality/value
As MO frequently underpins the development and implementation of successful organisation‐environment relationships, the current paper is a first attempt to trace the contextual determinants of this orientation by comparing its frequencies and elements in two different HE systems.
Faculty-student interaction is an important component of the undergraduate experience. Our year-long qualitative study explored the complex nature of faculty-student interaction outside the classroom. Our resulting typology identifies five types of interaction: disengagement, incidental contact, functional interaction, personal interaction, and mentoring. This typology provides researchers with a new lens through which they can examine faculty-student interaction and suggests that even non-academic interactions between students and professors can be meaningful to students. Finally, the typology will allow faculty, staff, and administrators to improve current practices and develop initiatives that build bridges between faculty and students outside the classroom.
The influx of technology into education has begun a transformation of the classroom. The authors replicated a 1996 study of college students’ expectations of technology to be used in the classroom. Students reported prior experience with computer technology, their ideal classroom instruction techniques, and what technology-enhanced pedagogies they anticipated in college classrooms. Although student desires have changed, the picture of an ideal classroom still shows a strong desire for lecture-dominated classes with class discussion and exercises, written handouts, and outlines. Implications and suggestions for future research are included.
Two lines of thinking are becoming increasingly important in higher educational practice. The first derives from constructivist learning theory, and the second from the instructional design literature. Constructivism comprises a family of theories but all have in common the centrality of the learner's activities in creating meaning. These and related ideas have important implications for teaching and assessment. Instructional designers for their part have emphasised alignment between the objectives of a course or unit and the targets for assessing student performance. "Constructive alignment" represents a marriage of the two thrusts, constructivism being used as a framework to guide decision-making at all stages in instructional design: in deriving curriculum objectives in terms of performances that represent a suitably high cognitive level, in deciding teaching/learning activities judged to elicit those performances, and to assess and summatively report student performance. The "performances of understanding" nominated in the objectives are thus used to systematically align the teaching methods and the assessment. The process is illustrated with reference to a professional development unit in educational psychology for teachers, but the model may be generalized to most units or programs in higher education.
Remote or online proctoring (invigilating) is a technology primarily used to improve the integrity of online examinations. The use of remote proctoring increased significantly as the world switched to online assessment during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Remote proctoring received negative media attention, including concerns about user privacy, discrimination and the accuracy of automated systems for detecting and reporting cheating. However, it is unclear whether these media concerns fully reflect the experiences of students. Online assessment offers a number of potential advantages to learners and education providers, and it seems likely that it is here to stay. It is essential to fully understand the learner experience of remote proctoring, with a view to ensuring it is as effective as possible while meeting the needs of all stakeholders, especially those being proctored. We undertook a scoping review of research into the student experience of online proctoring, with a pragmatic focus, aimed at developing guidance for higher education providers, based on the student experience. We reviewed primary research studies which evaluated the student experience of the use of remote proctoring for summative assessment in Higher Education. We used the Education Research Information Center database (ERIC) and Google Scholar. 21 papers were identified, from which the positives and negatives of the student experience were extracted, along with the main recommendations from the research. These were then synthesised into a series of summary recommendations by thematic analysis, by a team of researchers that included students and academic staff. We found that student experience was largely negative, influenced by concerns over privacy, technological challenges, fairness and stress. Recommendations were to include the student voice in decisions about how and why to use remote proctoring and limiting the use of remote proctoring. Working with students as partners and limiting the use of remote proctoring where possible, are key to ensuring a positive student experience.
Purpose
Digital technologies can enable engagement online as well as in physical infrastructures like large lecture theatres. Avoiding a tech-first approach to curriculum design, this article reviews a key resource for the use of a pedagogy-first, co-design approach in a specific instance of developing curriculum for connected learning at scale.
Design/methodology/approach
This article summarises key guidance for applying a co-design approach to a large educational transformation project (connected learning at scale) and reflects on the application in the UK (a developed economy) and in Vietnam (one of the fastest growing economies).
Findings
The guidance is found to reflect similar co-development processes in the UK and Vietnam, but adds additional layers of infrastructure and support to enable rich co-design processes. These are seen as proportionate given the impact of large-scale curricula.
Originality/value
This is the first time a review has been conducted from the perspective of different countries.
This chapter has traces how neoliberal thinking and practices have shaped the reorganisation of higher education worldwide, especially in high-income economies such as Australia. Funding cuts, user-pays, inter-university competition and entrepreneurial management, are commonplace. The consequences for academic work, in terms of role fragmentation and job insecurity, are familiar. At the same time, universities claim a public purpose and remain largely state-funded. They are gaining new roles delivering ‘universal’ higher education and can claim growing public support. This chapter outlines how these dynamics are shaping outcomes, crises and possibilities.
This chapter sets out to examine a national policy approach to student learning by triangulating three perspectives: (1) who the people (students) are, what they study and how; (2) what we promise them through the Higher Education Standards Framework; and (3) how we perform based on national indicators that their perceptions about the quality of their experience. The triangulation leads to further analyses identifying those aspects of the student experience that we do not measure, the cohorts systematically underrepresented in the feedback (pathway students and non-completers, for example), and most importantly, whether longstanding feedback instruments—designed and validated when the student experience was very different—are fit for purpose. The principles underpinning this analysis of the Australian system may be applicable to other national systems. The people, promise and performance aspects of the triangulation presented here can be repeated at the institutional level for quality assurance and benchmarking purposes.
This stimulus paper explores the concept of 'social ecosystems' as a way of understanding the dynamics of local economic and skills development. The paper draws on a range of international sources.
This chapter explores the ideological antecedents, processes, and outcomes of the marketisation of higher education, with an emphasis on business schools in particular. The chapter begins with a discussion of the theory of Scandinavian New Institutionalism in the context of higher education, explaining how ideologies spread across nations and fields through adoption and adaptation. It then elaborates the ideologies of neoliberalism and managerialism, and their relation to New Public Management. The chapter continues by elucidating the processes which are related to marketisation—namely commodification, corporatisation, and de-professionalisation. It then enumerates the various outcomes of the marketisation of higher education. Finally, the chapter concludes with suggestions for future research.
Massification is a reality facing universities around the world. While increased access to higher education has significant social and economic benefits, rapid growth in class sizes challenges institutions to maintain quality standards while teaching at scale, amidst ongoing cost pressure. This paper analyses this issue within the Australian higher education context. It employs the notion of the 'Iron Triangle' to examine the tensions between what appear to be mutually conflicting concepts of access, cost and quality. It also highlights key strategies that can be employed to potentially enhance quality without dramatically inflating costs.
Universities remain the most important organisations involved in developing knowledge and providing means of social mobility. However, they are facing challenges from new providers facilitated by new technologies. Here, we propose an analysis of three challenges to established understandings of higher education: Digitalisation, Commodification and Precarity. Each of them proceeds through claims to disrupt established hierarchies, representing the existing university system as a form of cartel that embodies the interests of knowledge ‘producers’ against those of ‘consumers’ of knowledge, or the wider publics that fund it. In this way, a particular idea of the university as a ‘bundle of functions’ is challenged, with those functions disaggregated and addressed separately as problems for technical solution. What is at stake, we shall suggest, is both social and epistemological. Social in the sense that the university is re-directed from serving the public good (including conceptions of economic benefit) to serving the market, including that of student investors in their human capital; epistemological in the sense that the conditions of knowledge production are dramatically transformed.
This chapter examines some of the policy drivers for community engagement. Policies and practices targeting an increase of diversity in the (often local) student body during a period of massification of higher education are examined with reference to aspects of widening participation. The AimHigher initiative is explored in some detail and progress towards ensuring the student population reflects to wider population are explored. The moves towards lifelong learning with its associated continuing professional development are discussed in the context of meeting community needs for higher education.
An interprofessional education conference was developed and delivered to undergraduate medical and pharmacy students to address training needs around appropriate antimicrobial prescribing, identification and management of sepsis, patient safety and interprofessional working. The day consisted of keynote lectures delivered by specialist speakers and three small group interprofessional teaching sessions exploring (1) the choice and prescribing of antimicrobials for a range of infections, (2) the diagnosis and management of sepsis utilising simulation methodology and (3) the discussion of a clinical error using significant event analysis. Students’ attitudes and acceptance towards this educational intervention were assessed using a mixed methods evaluation. The delivery of an effective learning and teaching intervention in a conference format to a large cohort of pharmacy and medical students (n = 352) was found to be feasible. The logistics of organising an IPE conference of this scale were challenging but not insurmountable if sufficient staff and financial resources can be secured. Scheduling access to adequate teaching rooms and student timetabling were amongst the other important aspects affecting the success of such an event.
Taking advantage of the vast history of theoretical and empirical findings in the learning literature we have inherited, this research offers a synthesis of prior findings in the domain of empirically evaluated active learning strategies in digital learning environments. The primary concern of the present study is to evaluate these findings with an eye towards scalable learning. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have emerged as the new way to reach the masses with educational materials, but so far they have failed to maintain learners' attention over the long term. Even though we now understand how effective active learning principles are for learners, the current landscape of MOOC pedagogy too often allows for passivity — leading to the unsatisfactory performance experienced by many MOOC learners today. As a starting point to this research we took John Hattie's seminal work from 2008 on learning strategies used to facilitate active learning. We considered research published between 2009 and 2017 that presents empirical evaluations of these learning strategies. Through our systematic search we found 126 papers meeting our criteria and categorized them according to Hattie's learning strategies. We found large-scale experiments to be the most challenging environment for experimentation due to their size, heterogeneity of participants, and platform restrictions, and we identified the three most promising strategies for effectively leveraging learning at scale as Cooperative Learning, Simulations & Gaming, and Interactive Multimedia.
This paper looks at the link between enhancing education and ensuring an innovative fit-for-purpose estate. It argues that a nuanced approach and joined-up dialogue is needed between university staff whose remit covers these areas. Using semi-structured interviews with students and staff at a research-intensive university in London, UK, the focus centres around the link between the institution’s innovative research-based education approach and its relationship to the university’s spaces. The paper outlines the institution’s approach to education and then moves on to unpack four key space principles to implement a research-based education strategy which is sensitive to a university’s physical environment.
This paper measures the effects of collegiate class size on college retention and graduation. Class size is a perennial issue in research on primary and secondary schooling. However, few researchers have focused on the causal impacts of collegiate class size. Whereas college students have greater choice of classes, selection problems and nonrandom sorting make it difficult to estimate causal impacts. Using unique data and exogenous variation in class size, we estimate the impacts of class size using a sample of nearly 60,000 four-year college students. Using an instrumental variables approach to control for selection bias, the results suggest that an increase in collegiate class size leads to an increase in dropout rates, a reduction in on-time degree completion, but no change in long-run degree completion.
Motivated by education expenditure studies consistently finding that education expenditures per student decrease in cohort size, I investigate the relationship between cohort size and the probability of graduating from upper secondary education. If resources are important for student performance, education expenditure studies suggest that being part of a large cohort is a disadvantage. Using a 24-year panel of Norwegian municipalities, I find a small positive effect of cohort size on the probability of graduation, suggesting that being part of a large cohort is actually beneficial. These results are robust to several checks, including accounting for possible Tiebout sorting across school districts and using birth cohort size as an instrument for cohort size in an IV approach. While the analyses conducted in this paper are unable to shed light on whether reduced spending per student actually hurts student outcomes, they indicate that a potential adverse effect of cohort size, working through educational resources, is not strong enough to offset the beneficial effect of larger cohorts on student performance.
Based on the International Conference on Information Systems’ (ICIS) 2014 senior scholars’ forum, we share insights on the relationship between evolving university business models and the adoption of electronic pedagogy. In recent years, particularly with the initiation of MOOCs, the potential for delivering high-quality and widely distributed coursework has expanded. However, particular instances of MOOCs and other electronic pedagogies do not guarantee equally high-quality educational outcomes for all participants. For example, some studies have suggested that most individuals completing MOOC coursework already have baccalaureate degrees, which contrasts with the idea that individuals undertake such coursework as a substitute for traditional degree programs. With this paper, we present varied experiences and views on using electronic pedagogy and report on both the conclusions and new questions raised about adopting these technologies for universities.
Online learning communities are frequently created for higher education students; however, these are most often designed to cater to a particular unit or subject.
In an effort to strengthen the Bachelor of Arts course at the University of New England, the author sought to create an online space that would promote an interdisciplinary and collegial dialogue among their broad on- and off-campus student cohort. This paper examines the building of an academic community among a large and diverse group of undergraduate students on a Moodle platform.
The paper tracks the development of the multi-layered portal from the initial
stages of planning to the indicators of strong engagement taken up by
students, and eventually leading to the creation of similar portals across the university.
In examining this process this paper highlights the shared desire by distance
education students and academics for authentic and personal higher
education participation regardless of the students’ location.
Research on teaching from a student learning perspective has identified two qualitatively different approaches to university teaching. They are an information transmission and teacher-focused approach, and a conceptual change and student-focused approach. The fundamental difference being in the former the intention is to transfer information to students, while in the latter the intention is to change and develop student understanding. Much of our research has been conducted in first-year classes of 100 or more students. The paper begins by outlining a model of teaching and learning based upon this research. It then reviews the quantitative research showing the relationship between teachers’ approaches to teaching in large classes and their students’ approaches to learning. Further analyses of previously collected data are used to identify the size of the relationship between teachers’ approaches and their students’ approaches. The paper concludes by discussing how a more conceptual change and student-focused approach can be manifested in large classes.
Large classes have increasingly become a feature in many countries around the world. This paper present a two-pronged analysis of this phenomenon, drawing on the political economy of higher education as well as the sociology of knowledge to contribute to a principled discussion about why we have large classes, and when a large class is too large. I argue that much of the justification for expansion in higher education is not borne by an analysis of the political economy of higher education. I then explain why the expansion of higher education through increasing class sizes is self-defeating: because contact between lecturers and students is necessary for the acquisition of disciplinary knowledge, and it is difficult to achieve such contact in large classes. I conclude that the current discourse on large class teaching, which suggests that lecturers must accept ever increasing class sizes in the name of access and development, is unrealistic, both in terms of the political and economic imperatives, and also in terms of the nature of education, and the conditions for the development and acquisition of knowledge.
This study focuses on the real scenario of listening skill of learners at the tertiary level in private universities in our country and through this attempt we have tried to find out the reasons of poor listening skills of the learners. At secondary and higher secondary level, where Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is in practice, writing and speaking are given maximum importance. Since learners' listening skill is not assessed like other skills, it remains unattended through out their academic career. The scenario of poor listening skill of the learners continues with the same negligence even at the tertiary level. Giving importance to the development of this skill, the study has been done throughout questionnaire survey both from students' and teachers' point of view. The survey result has been analyzed and some suggestions are given regarding the matter. Key words: Listening Skill, Tertiary level, Private UniversitiesDOI: 10.3329/dujl.v2i3.4144 The Dhaka University Journal of Linguistics: Vol.2 No.3 February, 2009 Page: 69-90
High-definition televisions should, by now, be a huge success. Philips, Sony, and Thompson invested billions of dollars to develop TV sets with astonishing picture quality. From a technology perspective, they've succeeded: Console manufacturers have been ready for the mass market since the early 1990s. Yet the category has been an unmitigated failure, not because of deficiencies, but because critical complements such as studio production equipment were not developed or adopted in time. Under-performing complements have left console producers in the position of offering a Ferrari in a world without gasoline or highways--an admirable engineering feat, but not one that creates value for customers. The HDTV story exemplifies the promise and peril of innovation ecosystems--the collaborative arrangements through which firms combine their individual offers into a coherent, customer-facing solution. When they work, innovation ecosystems allow companies to create value that no one firm could have created alone. The benefits of these systems are real. But for many organizations the attempt at ecosystem innovation has been a costly failure. This is because, along with new opportunities, innovation ecosystems also present a new set of risks that can brutally derail a firm's best efforts. Innovation ecosystems are characterized by three fundamental types of risk: initiative risks--the familiar uncertainties of managing a project; interdependence risks--the uncertainties of coordinating with complementary innovators; and integration risks--the uncertainties presented by the adoption process across the value chain. Firms that assess ecosystem risks holistically and systematically will be able to establish more realistic expectations, develop a more refined set of environmental contingencies, and arrive at a more robust innovation strategy. Collectively, these actions will lead to more effective implementation and more profitable innovation.
Analyses of college attainment typically focus on factors affecting enrollment demand, including the financial attractiveness of a college education and the availability of financial aid, while implicitly assuming that resources available per student on the supply side of the market are elastically supplied. The higher education market in the United States is dominated by public and non-profit production, and colleges and universities receive considerable subsidies from state, federal, and private sources. Because consumers pay only a fraction of the cost of production, changes in demand are unlikely to be accommodated fully by colleges and universities without commensurate increases in non-tuition revenue. For this reason, public investment in higher education plays a crucial role in determining the degrees produced and the supply of college-educated workers to the labor market. Using data covering the last half of the twentieth century, we find strong evidence that large cohorts within states have relatively low undergraduate degree attainment, reflecting less than perfect elasticity of supply in the higher education market. That large cohorts receive lower public subsidies per student in higher education explains this result, indicating that resources have large effects on degree production. Our results suggest that reduced resources per student following from rising cohort size and lower state expenditures are likely to have significant negative effects on the supply of college-educated workers entering the labor market.
The Student as Customer: A Study of the Intensified Marketisation of Higher Education in England
- K Banwait
Banwait, K. (2021), The Student as Customer: A Study of the Intensified Marketisation of Higher
Education in England, University of Derby, Derby.
Risks of AI foundation models in education
- S L Blodgett
- M Madaio
Blodgett, S.L. and Madaio, M. (2021), "Risks of AI foundation models in education", arXiv preprint
arXiv:2110.10024.
Re-shaping learning: an introduction
- A Boddington
- J Boys
Boddington, A. and Boys, J. (2011), "Re-shaping learning: an introduction", in Re-shaping Learning:
A Critical Reader, Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, pp. xi-xxii.
Finding their place in the world: using digital storytelling to understand the intersections between students technology use and their work, life, play and learning
- P Bryant
Bryant, P. (2019), "Finding their place in the world: using digital storytelling to understand the
intersections between students technology use and their work, life, play and learning",
European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN) Conference Proceedings, Bruges, Belgium.
Leaders for good in a post-crisis world: designing transdisciplinary and resonant leadership education programs in transitional spaces
- P Bryant
Bryant, P. (2023a), "Leaders for good in a post-crisis world: designing transdisciplinary and resonant
leadership education programs in transitional spaces", European Academy of Management
Conference (EURAM).