Search results for "higher education"
showing 10 items of 1325 documents
One size does not fit all! New perspectives on the university in the social knowledge economy
2016
Universities face a tension from two urgent pressures they face, firstly to demonstrate that they deliver value for society in return for public investments, and secondly to demonstrate their responsibility by introducing strategic management to demonstrate to their funders that they meet their goals. In this special issue, we explore the ways in which these tensions play out in practice, as universities facing 'mission overload' in turn try to develop additional regional development missions, highlighting three findings. Firstly, there can be no one-size-fits all idea of a 'third university mission' alongside teaching and research because engagement is so context-dependent. Secondly, unive…
Factors and information sources influencing students' consumer behaviour: a case study at an Italian public university
2018
This article examines the factors and the preferred sources of information that influence prospective Italian students' choice of a Department of Business and Economics at a public university. Results, based on quantitative survey data, show that both future undergraduate and future postgraduate students value the reputation of the university, the guidance services offered by the institution and the degree of specialisation as important factors that drive their choice, and peers' suggestions are the most relevant information source for both groups. The paper provides insights on how traditional elements are combined with more contemporary ones in domestic Students' Consumer Behaviour. Findi…
Sustainable Higher Education and Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL)
2018
The field of education is not immune to advances in sophisticated information and communication technology (ICT). Going beyond the ICT-hype, the objective of this paper is to examine to what extent and how technology-enhanced teaching and learning (TEL) can enhance teaching and learning and, hence, turn them into levers of sustainable socio-economic growth and development. To address these questions, a multidimensional survey was developed and distributed internationally to lecturers/professors active in the field of higher education. The initial point of departure for this study was consistent with the well-referenced in the literature thesis that TEL has profound value added in view of en…
Agency, expertise and working life skills : Students’ conceptions of the generic competences required in the world of work
2021
Fundamental changes in working life highlight the demands on the co-operation between the educational sector and working life, that should contribute to students’ employability. In addition to discipline-specific expertise, the development of working life skills has received increasing attention when it comes to employment. Drawing on data from Finnish universities of applied sciences (n=5) and universities (n=3), this paper examines how students (n=380) value the generic competences needed in in the world of work. The study is based on European reforms of labour markets and educational structures. This paper adds to current discourses around employability by highlighting differences betwee…
Higher education and the development of competencies for innovation in the workplace
2012
PurposeThis paper aims to analyze the production function nexus between higher education practice and the development of innovation‐related competencies by university graduates in Spain. The research hypothesis is the presence of statistically significant relationships between the development of innovational competencies and the modes of teaching and learning used in higher education practice.Design/methodology/approachThe relationships are modeled through a set of stochastic frontier and variance component equations with the development of each competency as the dependent variable. The main explanatory variables capture the prevalence of diverse teaching/learning modes and the behavior of …
Virtual university–a vehicle for development, cooperation and internationalisation in teaching and learning
2005
The paper discusses the approaches of virtual university strategies and developments in Europe. The discussion is partly based on the work done in the Activity 5 in the EU Thematic Network E4 and partly to the experiences gained through the activities of EUNITE virtual university network of six European universities. Based on our experience we see, that e-learning and virtual university approach can be used for renewal of teaching and learning, both on and off campus. Just three years ago, universities seemed mainly to aim only to develop on campus teaching and learning through ICT. Lately, the use of e-learning as a tool for international cooperation and for virtual mobility (Virtual Erasm…
What does it mean to be visually literate? Examination of visual literacy definitions in a context of higher education
2018
Full Article Figures & data References Citations Metrics Reprints & Permissions Get access Abstract Competency in visual literacy (VL) is crucial for effective visual communication, and thus for living and working in a visually saturated environment. However, VL across disciplines is still marginalized in higher education curricula. This tendency is partly caused by the lack of knowledge and agreement on what it means to be visually literate. This study juxtaposes and evaluates 11 VL definitions, selected as the most relevant for higher education practitioners and coined from 1969 (the first one) to 2013 (the most recent one). The study further proposes three lists of VL skills with themati…
From scribe to YouTuber: A proposal to teach the History of the English Language in the digital era
2019
The present paper deals with a proposal for enhancing students’ engagement in the course ‘History of the English Language’ of the Degree in English Studies (Universitat de València). For the purpose, the traditional lectures will be combined with a research project carried out by groups of students (research teams) in which two digital tools will be used: electronic linguistic corpora and YouTube. Electronic linguistic corpora, on the one hand, will allow students to discover the diachronic development of certain linguistic features by looking at real data and making conclusions based on frequencies by themselves. YouTube, on the other, is a most appropriate online environment where student…
The First Decades of Independence – White Finland
2019
The Republic of Finland was established after a bloody civil war between the Reds and the Whites in 1918. This chapter analyses the emergence of Finnish independence and the role higher education played in the new republic in the 1920s and 1930s. During this period, the University of Helsinki was Finland’s dominant higher education institution, even though one public pedagogical college and seven private higher education institutions were also established: two universities (one Swedish-speaking and one Finnish-speaking), three business schools, a technical university, and a higher education institution of social sciences.
The Acquisition of Professional Expertise—a challenge for educational research
1997
This article examines the acquisition of professional expertise from the educational viewpoint and outlines emerging approaches to research on expertise. The starting points are the need to reflect the nature and content of expertise in the changing world and the aim to understand the preconditions for integrating the viewpoints of working life and education in developing prerequisities for expertise in educational contexts. The section after the Introduction briefly reviews how expertise has been conceptualized in recent research. The next section deals with the role of higher education in developing expertise from the viewpoint of constructivist approaches in research on learning. Then cu…