Currently, various higher education (HE) institutes develop flexible curricula for various reasons, including promoting accessibility of HE, the societal need for more self-regulated professionals who engage in life-long learning, and the desire to increase motivation of students. Increasing flexibility in curricula allows students to choose for example what they learn, when they learn, how they learn, where they learn, and/or with whom. However, HE institutes raise the question of what preferences and needs different stakeholders have with regard to flexibility, so that suitable choices can be made in the design of policies, curricula, and student support programs. In this workshop, we focus on student preferences and share recent insights from research on HE students' preferences regarding flexible education. Moreover, we use participants’ expertise to identify new (research) questions to further explore what students’ needs imply for several domains, namely curriculum-design, student support that is provided by educators/staff, policy, management, and the professional field. Firstly, a conceptual framework on flexible education and student’s preferences will be presented. Secondly, participants reflect in groups on student personas. Then, discussion groups have a Delphi-based discussion to collect new ideas for research. Finally, participants share the outcomes on a ‘willing wall’ and a ‘wailing wall’.
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This is the editorial paper for the virtual special issue “Using Q methodology in higher education: Opportunities and challenges”, consisting of nine original research studies from different international contexts. In addition to presenting novel findings, contributors were invited to discuss the following two questions at the center of the special issue call: In what sense has Q methodology served as a fitting approach to investigate subjectivity in higher education? What methodological opportunities and challenges arise with Q methodology in higher education settings? This editorial provides an overview and discussion of the various justifications mentioned for Q methodology. Furthermore, it collates the opportunities and challenges contributors discuss in relation to their studies using this almost 90-year-old methodological approach. The editorial paper concludes with recommendations for future Q methodological studies in higher education and beyond.
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Teachers have a crucial role in bringing about the extensive social changes that are needed in the building of a sustainable future. In the EduSTA project, we focus on sustainability competences of teachers. We strengthen the European dimension of teacher education via Digital Open Badges as means of performing, acknowledging, documenting, and transferring the competencies as micro-credentials. EduSTA starts by mapping the contextual possibilities and restrictions for transformative learning on sustainability and by operationalising skills. The development of competence-based learning modules and open digital badge-driven pathways will proceed hand in hand and will be realised as learning modules in the partnering Higher Education Institutes and badge applications open for all teachers in Europe.Societal Issue: Teachers’ capabilities to act as active facilitators of change in the ecological transition and to educate citizens and workforce to meet the future challenges is key to a profound transformation in the green transition.Teachers’ sustainability competences have been researched widely, but a gap remains between research and the teachers’ practise. There is a need to operationalise sustainability competences: to describe direct links with everyday tasks, such as curriculum development, pedagogical design, and assessment. This need calls for an urgent operationalisation of educators’ sustainability competences – to support the goals with sustainability actions and to transfer this understanding to their students.Benefit to society: EduSTA builds a community, “Academy of Educators for Sustainable Future”, and creates open digital badge-driven learning pathways for teachers’ sustainability competences supported by multimodal learning modules. The aim is to achieve close cooperation with training schools to actively engage in-service teachers.Our consortium is a catalyst for leading and empowering profound change in the present and for the future to educate teachers ready to meet the challenges and act as active change agents for sustainable future. Emphasizing teachers’ essential role as a part of the green transition also adds to the attractiveness of teachers’ work.
The population in rural areas in the northern provinces are aging in a much higher pace than in other parts of the Netherlands. Many young and higher educated citizens move out of these provinces. Quality of life in rural villages decreases likewise and the inhabitants that stay behind are more vulnerable, with lower income and educational levels. Recent decentralization policies put a larger burden on local constituencies to guarantee the quality of the living environment but a lot of them lack sufficient knowledge and capacity to tackle this complex issue.The initiators of this application have joined their knowledge and experience to put together a consortium with the aim to support these smaller constituencies in rural areas in the three northern provinces with a new and innovative methodology: the GO! approach. This approach was developed in the neigborhoods of Utrecht municipality and will be used for the first time in rural communities with a comparable size .This approach consists of the following steps:• First to identify possibilities to create a healthier living environment by analyzing available data on pollution, spatial layout and social cohesion.• To discuss the result of this analysis with local citizens and other local stakeholders in order to link the data with local experiences• To prioritize into major themes as a result of the combination of all this available information.• To link these major themes to combinations effective measures available from RIVM and international databases.• To present these combinations to the local government, their citizens and other local stakeholders in order to let them choose for an effective approach and inplemant it together in order to create a local healthier living environment.The GO! approach will provide local citizens and professionals with the necessary tools and knowledge to work jointly and effectively to realize a healthier living environment. The project partners that jointly started the consortium will put in effort during this first year to build and formalize the consortium and to make arrangements with several constituencies in the three northers provinces to formulate their own specific knowledge agenda as a basis for concrete project proposals in the second stage to be implemented with the support of the formalized consortium.
Our country contains a very dense and challenging transport and mobility system. National research agendas and roadmaps of multiple sectors such as HTSM, Logistics and Agri&food, promote vehicle automation as a means to increase transport safety and efficiency. SMEs applying vehicle automation require compliance to application/sector specific standards and legislation. A key aspect is the safety of the automated vehicle within its design domain, to be proven by manufacturers and assessed by authorities. The various standards and procedures show many similarities but also lead to significant differences in application experience and available safety related solutions. For example: Industrial AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles) have been around for many years, while autonomous road vehicles are only found in limited testing environments and pilots. Companies are confronted with an increasing need to cover multiple application environments, such restricted areas and public roads, leading to complex technical choices and parallel certification/homologation procedures. SafeCLAI addresses this challenge by developing a framework for a generic safety layer in the control of autonomous vehicles that can be re-used in different applications across sectors. This is done by extensive consolidation and application of cross-sectoral knowledge and experience – including analysis of related standards and procedures. The framework promises shorter development times and enables more efficient assessment procedures. SafeCLAI will focus on low-speed applications since they are most wanted and technically best feasible. Nevertheless, higher speed aspects will be considered to allow for future extension. SafeCLAI will practically validate (parts) of the foreseen safety layer and publish the foreseen framework as a baseline for future R&D, allowing coverage of broader design domains. SafeCLAI will disseminate the results in the Dutch arena of autonomous vehicle development and application, and also integrate the project learnings into educational modules.
