Balancing high expectations with academic quality:achieving equilibrium in education to promote student employability

A discussion of how to promote employability within the curriculum

Higher education for a sustainable world

Purpose: The paper aims to explore the nature and purpose of higher education (HE) in the twenty-first century, focussing on how it can help fashion a green knowledge-based economy by developing approaches to learning and teaching that are social, networked and ecologically sensitive. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents a discursive analysis of the skills and knowledge requirements of an emerging green knowledge-based economy using a range of policy focussed and academic research literature. Findings: The business opportunities that are emerging as a more sustainable world is developed requires the knowledge and skills that can capture and move then forward but in a complex and uncertain worlds learning needs to non-linear, creative and emergent. Practical implications: Sustainable learning and the attributes graduates will need to exhibit are prefigured in the activities and learning characterising the work and play facilitated by new media technologies. Social implications: Greater emphasis is required in higher learning understood as the capability to learn, adapt and direct sustainable change requires interprofessional co-operation that must utlise the potential of new media technologies to enhance social learning and collective intelligence. Originality/value: The practical relationship between low-carbon economic development, social sustainability and HE learning is based on both normative criteria and actual and emerging projections in economic, technological and skills needs.

Reducing dependence on big brother:Higher Education looks for innovative funding opportunities

This paper presents innovative programs that business schools can utilize to reduce dependence on public funds. A review of the literature shows the theoretical and empirical foundation of higher education funding dilemmas. While higher education is moving towards a global ambition, scarcity hinders governments to fully support programs long-term; thus, cost-sharing and cost-shifting measures must occur for higher education to support current programs. In this study, we examine two universities (one U.S. and one U.K.) and provide practical summaries of programs that have provided additional funds. We show that diversity of funding sources is essential for survival of higher education institutions. Market forces require competition to reduce higher education operational costs while providing students and corporate clients an a la carte educational experience.

Engaging employers as partners in work-based learning assessment:proposal for a quality enhancement framework

This paper seeks to advance research and practice related to the role of employers in all stages of the assessment process of work-based learning (WBL) within a tripartite relationship of higher education institution (HEI), student and employer. It proposes a research-informed quality enhancement framework to develop good practice in engaging employers as partners in assessment. The Enhancement Framework comprises three dimensions, each of which includes elements and questions generated by the experiences of WBL students, HEI staff and employers. The three dimensions of the Enhancement Framework are: 1. ‘premises of assessment’ encompassing issues of learning, inclusion, standards and value; 2. ‘practice’, encompassing stages of assessment made up of course design, assessment task, responsibilities, support, grading and feedback; 3. ‘communication of assessment’ with the emphasis on role clarity, language and pathways. With its prompt questions, the Enhancement Framework may be used as a capacity-building tool for promoting, sustaining, benchmarking and evaluating productive dialogue and critical reflection about assessment between WBL partners. The paper concludes by emphasising the need for professional development as well as policy and research development, so that assessment in WBL can more closely correspond to the potentially transformative nature of the learning experience.

Variation in the length of an undergraduate degree:participation and outcomes

Recent policy in England has advocated the introduction of fast-track degrees to provide an alternative, shorter route to a bachelor's degree. It has been argued that this will widen participation in higher education and increase labour market flexibility by providing an option in which undergraduates spend one fewer years out of the labour market. Critics have suggested that the outcomes from this new undergraduate option will be worse than those for students following the standard length of undergraduate degree (which is three years for most subjects studied at universities in England). This criticism is based on a belief that students on the shorter degrees will be encouraged to 'cram', having less opportunity for reflection that will foster a deep understanding. These arguments are evaluated using data which compare students following two and three year degrees in the same subjects at the same university. © 2012 Copyright Society for Research into Higher Education.

Joining the dots:using structured e-portfolio assignments to enhance reflection

Although there has been an increased interest in the use of electronic portfolios in higher education over the last five years, relatively little is known about the potential of such tools to support the development of higher order abilities for students, such as reflection, in a structured way that is suitable for assessment. This paper reports the findings from a small-scale research which sets out to compare the outcomes of reflective assignments in two cohorts of participants in a Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice in Higher Education in the UK. Participants in the programme were asked to submit reflective accounts using an e-portfolio system as part of their formal assessment. One cohort completed the assessment using some generic guidelines of how to reflect and construct an e-portfolio page without a given template or structure, whereas another cohort was given a specific template with clear assessment criteria to gauge the assembly of their reflections. The authors, who are also tutors in the programme, analysed the submitted reflections following open coding procedures. The analysis found a tendency for the reflection in the first cohort to be merely descriptive without progressing to speculating objectively about answers to relevant analytical questions about the process involved in the ability under scrutiny. In contrast the assignments of cohort two were found to be more insightful in terms of assimilating random bits of materials, thoughts and self-questions into complete reflective accounts. These findings bring some evidence to support and indeed promote a more structured approach to reflective practice, which can be further enhanced through a carefully created e-portfolio template and associated assessment criteria.

Resisting the final word:challenging stale media and policy representations of students’ performative technological encounters in university education

This article explores powerful, constraining representations of encounters between digital technologies and the bodies of students and teachers, using corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). It discusses examples from a corpus of UK Higher Education (HE) policy documents, and considers how confronting such documents may strengthen arguments from educators against narrow representations of an automatically enhanced learning. Examples reveal that a promise of enhanced ‘student experience’ through information and communication technologies internalizes the ideological constructs of technology and policy makers, to reinforce a primary logic of exchange value. The identified dominant discursive patterns are closely linked to the Californian ideology. By exposing these texts, they provide a form of ‘linguistic resistance’ for educators to disrupt powerful processes that serve the interests of a neoliberal social imaginary. To mine this current crisis of education, the authors introduce productive links between a Networked Learning approach and a posthumanist perspective. The Networked Learning approach emphasises conscious choices between political alternatives, which in turn could help us reconsider ways we write about digital technologies in policy. Then, based on the works of Haraway, Hayles, and Wark, a posthumanist perspective places human digital learning encounters at the juncture of non-humans and politics. Connections between the Networked Learning approach and the posthumanist perspective are necessary in order to replace a discourse of (mis)representations with a more performative view towards the digital human body, which then becomes situated at the centre of teaching and learning. In practice, however, establishing these connections is much more complex than resorting to the typically straightforward common sense discourse encountered in the Critical Discourse Analysis, and this may yet limit practical applications of this research in policy making.

Higher education, equality & ethnicity:the attainment gap – what should we be doing?

This brief paper draws upon part of the findings of a HEA Sponsored evaluation of work conducted in 8 Universities across UK aimed at addressing the attainment gap between BME and White students. Following a grounded theory approach, semi-structured interviews with staff at each of the institutions were analysed and three main themes identified: Organisational Sensitivities: Language: and, Ownership. This paper provides a brief discussion of the issues identifying two areas where positive change is needed in institutional practice. The conclusion highlights the complexities of the underlying issues impacting and shaping the Attainment Gap before reaffirming the need to identify and evaluate which interventions are most likely to be transferable across the Sector so as to address the issues and thus enhance the experiences of all students.

Building bridges for future sustainability? Breaching the research-teaching nexus in engineering education

The relationship between research and learning and teaching represents what has been described as amongst the most intellectually tangled, managerially complex and politically contentious issues in mass higher education (Scott, 2005, p 53). Despite this, arguments that in order to achieve high quality scholarly outcomes, university teachers need to adopt an approach to teaching similar to that of research (founded upon academic rigour and evidence), has long been discussed in the literature. However, the practicalities of promoting an empirical and evidence-based approach to teaching in engineering education make dealing with the research / teaching nexus a somewhat challenging proposition. Using a phenomenographic approach, bringing together and applying the findings of a mixed methodological study, the workshop will adopt an activity based, interactive approach to encourage staff to consider the challenges and benefits of adopting an evidence-based approach to learning and teaching through the utilisation of research to inform their own practice. © 2009 Authors.