Innovation is crucial for higher education to ensure high-quality curricula that address the changing needs of students, labor markets, and society as a whole. Substantial amounts of resources and enthusiasm are devoted to innovations, but often they do not yield the desired changes. This may be due to unworkable goals, too much complexity, and a lack of resources to institutionalize the innovation. In many cases, innovations end up being less sustainable than expected or hoped for. In the long term, the disappointing revenues of innovations hamper the ability of higher education to remain future proof. Against the background of this need to increase the success of educational innovations, our colleague Klaartje van Genugten has explored the literature on innovations to reveal mechanisms that contribute to the sustainability of innovations. Her findings are synthesized in this report. They are particularly meaningful for directors of education programs, curriculum committees, educational consultants, and policy makers, who are generally in charge of defining the scope and set up of innovations. Her report offers a comprehensive view and provides food for thought on how we can strive for future-proof and sustainable innovations. I therefore recommend reading this report.
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Over the last two decades, institutions for higher education such as universities and colleges have rapidly expanded and as a result have experienced profound changes in processes of research and organization. However, the rapid expansion and change has fuelled concerns about issues such as educators' technology professional development. Despite the educational value of emerging technologies in schools, the introduction has not yet enjoyed much success. Effective use of information and communication technologies requires a substantial change in pedagogical practice. Traditional training and learning approaches cannot cope with the rising demand on educators to make use of innovative technologies in their teaching. As a result, educational institutions as well as the public are more and more aware of the need for adequate technology professional development. The focus of this paper is to look at action research as a qualitative research methodology for studying technology professional development in HE in order to improve teaching and learning with ICTs at the tertiary level. The data discussed in this paper have been drawn from a cross institutional setting at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands. The data were collected and analysed according to a qualitative approach.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the importance for university teachers to have adequate pedagogical and technological competences to cope with the various possible educational scenarios (face-to-face, online, hybrid, etc.), making use of appropriate active learning methodologies and supporting technologies to foster a more effective learning environment. In this context, the InnovaT project has been an important initiative to support the development of pedagogical and technological competences of university teachers in Latin America through several trainings aiming to promote teacher innovation. These trainings combined synchronous online training through webinars and workshops with asynchronous online training through the MOOC “Innovative Teaching in Higher Education.” This MOOC was released twice. The first run took place right during the lockdown of 2020, when Latin American teachers needed urgent training to move to emergency remote teaching overnight. The second run took place in 2022 with the return to face-to-face teaching and the implementation of hybrid educational models. This article shares the results of the design of the MOOC considering the constraints derived from the lockdowns applied in each country, the lessons learned from the delivery of such a MOOC to Latin American university teachers, and the results of the two runs of the MOOC.
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Despite the willingness of many educational institutions worldwide to embrace Education for Sustainable Development and Education for Sustainable Development Goals, critical scholars have pointed out that the very enterprise of sustainable development is not without its contradictions. Therefore, any education that engages with sustainable development needs to be carefully reviewed, rather than supported, in its ambition to promote the supposedly universally desirable aims. The rhetoric of sustainable development as meeting the needs of present and future generations is largely anthropocentric in failing to take nonhuman species into account when setting up pragmatic and ethical objectives. Similarly to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that have helped to raise living standards across the world, but have largely failed to address environmental sustainability challenges, the Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) tend to prioritize “inclusive economic growth” at the expense of ecological integrity, which is very likely to negatively affect not only nonhuman species but also future generations and their quality of life. Thus, as this chapter will argue, universally applicable Education for Sustainable Development Goals (ESDGs) is problematic in the context of addressing the long-term sustainability for both human and nonhuman inhabitants of the planet. Given escalating climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and depletion of natural resources, this chapter questions whether ESDGs can qualify as a desirable “quality education”. The paradoxes of sustainable development and ways forward that seem a better alternative for ESDG include indigenous/traditional learning, ecopedagogy, ecocentric education, and education for degrowth, steady-state, and Cradle-to-Cradle and circular economy. Advantages of universal education are also highlighted, as any education that supports basic literacy, numeracy, and values attributed to the intrinsic rights of humans and nonhumans can help students to be equipped to deal with social and environmental challenges. https://doi.org/10.3390/books978-3-03897-893-0-1 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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This article examines how collaborative design practices in higher education are reshaped through postdigital entanglement with generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). We collectively explore how co-design, an inclusive, iterative, and relational approach to educational design and transformation, expands in meaning, practice, and ontology when GenAI is approached as a collaborator. The article brings together 19 authors and three open reviewers to engage with postdigital inquiry, structured in three parts: (1) a review of literature on co-design, GenAI, and postdigital theory; (2) 11 situated contributions from educators, researchers, and designers worldwide, each offering practice-based accounts of co-design with GenAI; and (3) an explorative discussion of implications for higher education designs and futures. Across these sections, we show how GenAI unsettles assumptions of collaboration, knowing, and agency, foregrounding co-design as a site of ongoing material, ethical, and epistemic negotiation. We argue that postdigital co-design with GenAI reframes educational design as a collective practice of imagining, contesting, and shaping futures that extend beyond human knowing.
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In competence-based vocational education, personal professional theories, in which students integrate different types of knowledge and beliefs, are seen as important. Exactly how these theories can be measured is the main focus of this study, which uses a multi-method triangulation approach, an interview and a self-report. The latter (less-structured) matter seems to provide less insight into personal professional theories then the structured methods. Both structure and adequate prompts are important when personal professional theories are explicated.
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eHealth education should be integrated into vocational training and continuous professional development programmes. In this opinion article, we aim to support organisers of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and teachers delivering medical vocational training by providing recommendations for eHealth education. First, we describe what is required to help primary care professionals and trainees learn about eHealth. Second, we elaborate on how eHealth education might be provided
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With the increasing presence of new media, life in classrooms all around the world has drastically changed. The critical and conscious use of media messages provided by technological devices has developed into a crucial 21st century skill. Lin et al. (2013) have laid ground for a useful and proven theoretical framework regarding media literacy. Based on the concept of presuming and consuming media in a critical or functional way, the authors suggest ten fine-grained indicators to define new media literacy (Lin et al., 2013). Building onto this framework, recent academic research discusses the concept of new media, media literacy and the importance of implementing adequate courses in curricula (Koc & Barut, 2016; Zhu et al., 2020). However, the development of an apt way to test media literacy is still a great challenge for secondary education. After conducting an extensive search in scientific literature, it turns out that there is no usable, validated tool for a precise measurement of media literacy as a 21st century skill in secondary education. Researchers have been able to construct definitions, frameworks and questionnaires (Zhu et al., 2020), but a validated instrument to test and check the precise development of a specific skillset is still lacking. The aim of this developmental research is therefore to draw up an instrument to measure the mastery of various, specific components of media literacy in secondary education. An adequate tool to be able to formatively test these skills would be a rubric with a five-point scoring scale: it can help teachers to better understand their students' skills and progress in media literacy, and in addition, it gives students insight into specific learning outcomes that have to be achieved. The development of this rubric is conducted through an iterative process in which results are regularly tested through experiments in educational practice. In this process, the targeted audience consists of not only teachers but students, advisors and researchers as well. With this instrument, the use of specific workshops and courses and can be tested on efficiency. By letting teachers (and students) use this rubric as a guideline, it is possible to assess whether students structurally develop better mastery of media literacy after following specific workshops or courses. Through use of this crucial tool, media literacy can therefore be more fully integrated within the curricula of secondary education.
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From the pubisher's website: This paper aims to chart the (moral) values from a robotic industry's perspective regarding the introduction of robots in education. To our knowledge, no studies thus far have addressed this perspective in considering the moral values within this robotic domain. However, their values could conflict with the values upheld by other relevant stakeholders, such as the values of teachers, parents or children. Hence, it is crucial to take the various perspectives of relevant stakeholder's moral values into account. For this study, multiple focus group sessions (n=3) were conducted in The Netherlands with representatives (n=13) of robotic companies on their views of robots in primary education. Their perceptions in terms of opportunities and concerns, were then linked to business values reported in the extant literature. Results show that out of 26 business values, mainly six business values appeared relevant for robot tutors: 1) profitability, 2) productivity, 3 & 4) innovation and creativity, 5) competitiveness, and 6) risk orientation organization. https://doi.org/10.1109/DEVLRN.2019.8850726
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Due to fast and unpredictable developments, professional education is challenged with being responsive, which demands a rethinking of conventional curriculum development approaches. Yet, literature on curriculum development falls short in terms of recognising how to react rapidly and adequately to these new developments. This study focuses on curriculum development initiatives at the school level in a Dutch university of applied sciences. Open interviews were held with 29 curriculum developers to explore how they define and give substance to developing curricula for new, changing or unpredictable professions. These 29 participants were involved in seven curriculum development trajectories. Four themes were detected: (1) curriculum developers are in favour of open, flexible and authentic curricula; (2) the context in which the curriculum development takes place and the different roles and responsibilities of curriculum developers are challenging; (3) curriculum developers feel insufficiently equipped to carry out their tasks; and (4) involving stakeholders is necessary but results in a “viscous” social–political process. Responsive curriculum development requires a great deal of flexibility and adaptability from curriculum developers. Yet, in our study, “institutional concrete” is found to severely hinder responsive curriculum development processes. To be responsive, such processes need to be supported and institutional barriers need to be removed.
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