With the introduction of research activities in higher professional education in the Dutch higher education system, the notions of ‘research’ that were previously silently agreed upon among academics in traditional universities also came under pressure. Additionally, bothtypes of higher education actively claim to have educational programs of a different character. The ground underneath the difference is claimed to be the presence of distinct research activities. This study considers this difference through the discourse on ‘research’ of lecturers in both higher professional education and university education. In interviews, lecturers were asked to judge an argument on their own work-related activities to be ‘research’ or ‘nonresearch’. Through a network-analysis approach, the data results in five discursive building blocks that all lecturers apply in their arguments, and three discursive themes on research. Furthermore, this research indicates that differences among lecturers on discursive themes areonly partly based on institutional differences.
In today’s era of content abundance, a huge amount of resources is available digitally, from research articles to news items and from online courses to YouTube videos. As a result, lecturers in higher education have an endless supply of crossmedia materials that they can present to students as learning materials. This presents lecturers with the challenge of selecting those materials in such a way that they match the course topic and prior knowledge and proficiency level of the students. Additionally, they need to consider how to structure resources and how to make connections between them in order to support students’ learning (Kallenberg, et al., 2009). It is often recognized (e.g. Anderson, 2015; Siemens, 2008) that this task is remarkably similar to the task of curators in museums, who expertly make selections and organize and contextualize artefacts (Bhaskar, 2016). Considering those similarities, surprisingly little is known about how lecturers conduct this task. This study investigates how lecturers in Dutch higher professional education select, structure and present crossmedia resources for educational purposes, from the perspective of curation. This paper aims to provide an overview of relevant research regarding “lecturers as curators” in the context of higher education. It will share the outcomes of a literature review, for which articles were identified in three databases (ERIC, Web of Science (WoS) and Catalogue Plus), using the search word “curation” combined with filters for the field of (higher) education. Only articles published in English in peer reviewed journals, institutional research reports and conference proceedings prior to November 2018 were selected. This led to a selection of 64 articles that focused on curation within higher education. Of these, 17 focused on curation of learning materials done by lecturers. Findings show that there is relatively little research into lecturers’ curational processes. Although most articles identify the notion of curation as a useful approach in teaching, they fail to describe overarching processes or criteria for succesful curation. Five of the reviewed studies describe curational practices by specific groups of lecturers, teaching a specific subject such as maths or music. Seven other studies focus on the outcome of lecturers’ curation processes, describing the curated collections that are the result of it. Additionally, two articles present a conceptual model of educational curation; namely Wolff & Mulholland’s (2013) Curational Inquiry Learning Cycle and Deschaine & Sharma’s (2015) 5C Model. Both models approach the process of curation as a sequential multistep model, in which steps cannot be seen independently: meaning is added with every step of the process. Although they use different terminology, steps such as collecting, selecting, organising, and presenting resources are identified. However, both models have not been tested empirically. The authors acknowledge the importance of this, by stressing that more research into the topic is necessary. The proposed paper will present a complete overview of the findings, summarize the two models, and indicate how these models can be a starting point for further empirical research.
MULTIFILE
This article explores the development of skills of lecturers for internationalisation at home. It discusses backgrounds and the current situation, but also suggests ways forward. These suggestions are made mainly on the basis of experiences in The Netherlands, one of the few countries outside the English-speaking world, where a body of literature is emerging that discusses the implementation of internationalisation at home. The insights generated by this research may benefit universities in other countries in continental Europe, where English is not the standard language of instruction. Original Article at: https://www.zfhe.at/index.php/zfhe/article/view/1095
First Virtual Reality Museum for Migrant Women: creating engagement and innovative participatory design approaches through Virtual Reality Spaces.“Imagine a place filled with important stories that are hard to tell. A place that embodies the collective experience of immigrant women during their temporary stay”. In this project the first museum around immigrant women in Virtual Reality is created and tested. Working with the only migration centre for women in Monterrey, Lamentos Escuchados, project members (professional developers, lecturers, and interior design, animation, media and humanity students) collaborate with immigrant women and the centre officials to understand the migrant women stories, their notion of space/home and the way they inhabit the centre. This VR museum helps to connect immigrant women with the community while exploring more flexible ways to educate architects and interior designers about alternative ways of doing architecture through participatory design approaches.Partners:University of Monterey (UDEM)Lamentos Escuchados
Ervaringskennis zijn persoonlijke ervaringen die gebruikt kunnen worden als kennisbron voor persoonlijke ontwikkeling en beroepsontwikkeling. In het bijzonder gaat het om ervaringen die de kwaliteit van leven beïnvloeden. Denk daarbij aan trauma, ziekte, beperkingen of armoede. Dit project gaat over ervaringskennis in mensgerichte beroepen zoals sociaal werk en verpleegkunde.
Examining in-class activities to facilitate academic achievement in higher educationThere is an increasing interest in how to create an effective and comfortable indoor environment for lecturers and students in higher education. To achieve evidence-based improvements in the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) of higher education learning environments, this research aimed to gain new knowledge for creating optimal indoor environmental conditions that best facilitate in-class activities, i.e. teaching and learning, and foster academic achievement. The academic performance of lecturers and students is subdivided into short-term academic performance, for example, during a lecture and long-term academic performance, during an academic course or year, for example. First, a systematic literature review was conducted to reveal the effect of indoor environmental quality in classrooms in higher education on the quality of teaching, the quality of learning, and students’ academic achievement. With the information gathered on the applied methods during the literature review, a systematic approach was developed and validated to capture the effect of the IEQ on the main outcomes. This approach enables research that aims to examine the effect of all four IEQ parameters, indoor air quality, thermal conditions, lighting conditions, and acoustic conditions on students’ perceptions, responses, and short-term academic performance in the context of higher education classrooms. Next, a field experiment was conducted, applying the validated systematic approach, to explore the effect of multiple indoor environmental parameters on students and their short-term academic performance in higher education. Finally, a qualitative case study gathered lecturers’ and students’ perceptions related to the IEQ. Furthermore, how these users interact with the environment to maintain an acceptable IEQ was studied.During the systematic literature review, multiple scientific databases were searched to identify relevant scientific evidence. After the screening process, 21 publications were included. The collected evidence showed that IEQ can contribute positively to students’ academic achievement. However, it can also affect the performance of students negatively, even if the IEQ meets current standards for classrooms’ IEQ conditions. Not one optimal IEQ was identified after studying the evidence. Indoor environmental conditions in which students perform at their best differ and are task depended, indicating that classrooms should facilitate multiple indoor environmental conditions. Furthermore, the evidence provides practical information for improving the design of experimental studies, helps researchers in identifying relevant parameters, and lists methods to examine the influence of the IEQ on users.The measurement methods deduced from the included studies of the literature review, were used for the development of a systematic approach measuring classroom IEQ and students’ perceived IEQ, internal responses, and short-term academic performance. This approach allowed studying the effect of multiple IEQ parameters simultaneously and was tested in a pilot study during a regular academic course. The perceptions, internal responses, and short-term academic performance of participating students were measured. The results show associations between natural variations of the IEQ and students’ perceptions. These perceptions were associated with their physiological and cognitive responses. Furthermore, students’ perceived cognitive responses were associated with their short-term academic performance. These observed associations confirm the construct validity of the composed systematic approach. This systematic approach was then applied in a field experiment, to explore the effect of multiple indoor environmental parameters on students and their short-term academic performance in higher education. A field study, with a between-groups experimental design, was conducted during a regular academic course in 2020-2021 to analyze the effect of different acoustic, lighting, and indoor air quality (IAQ) conditions. First, the reverberation time was manipulated to 0.4 s in the intervention condition (control condition 0.6 s). Second, the horizontal illuminance level was raised from 500 to 750 lx in the intervention condition (control condition 500 lx). These conditions correspond with quality class A (intervention condition) and B (control condition), specified in Dutch IEQ guidelines for school buildings (2015). Third, the IAQ, which was ~1100 ppm carbon dioxide (CO2), as a proxy for IAQ, was improved to CO2 concentrations under 800 ppm, meeting quality class A in both conditions. Students’ perceptions were measured during seven campaigns with a questionnaire; their actual cognitive and short-term academic performances were evaluated with validated tests and an academic test, composed by the lecturer, as a subject-matter-expert on the taught topic, covered subjects discussed during the lecture. From 201 students 527 responses were collected and analyzed. A reduced RT in combination with raised HI improved students’ perceptions of the lighting environment, internal responses, and quality of learning. However, this experimental condition negatively influenced students’ ability to solve problems, while students' content-related test scores were not influenced. This shows that although quality class A conditions for RT and HI improved students’ perceptions, it did not influence their short-term academic performance. Furthermore, the benefits of reduced RT in combination with raised HI were not observed in improved IAQ conditions. Whether the sequential order of the experimental conditions is relevant in inducing these effects and/or whether improving two parameters is already beneficial, is unknownFinally, a qualitative case study explored lecturers’ and students’ perceptions of the IEQ of classrooms, which are suitable to give tutorials with a maximum capacity of about 30 students. Furthermore, how lecturers and students interact with this indoor environment to maintain an acceptable IEQ was examined. Eleven lecturers of the Hanze University of Applied Sciences (UAS), located in the northern part of the Netherlands, and twenty-four of its students participated in three focus group discussions. The findings show that lecturers and students experience poor thermal, lighting, acoustic, and IAQ conditions which may influence teaching and learning performance. Furthermore, maintaining acceptable thermal and IAQ conditions was difficult for lecturers as opening windows or doors caused noise disturbances. In uncomfortable conditions, lecturers may decide to pause earlier or shorten a lecture. When students experienced discomfort, it may affect their ability to concentrate, their emotional status, and their quality of learning. Acceptable air and thermal conditions in classrooms will mitigate the need to open windows and doors. This allows lecturers to keep doors and windows closed, combining better classroom conditions with neither noise disturbances nor related distractions. Designers and engineers should take these end users’ perceptions into account, often monitored by facility management (FM), during the renovation or construction of university buildings to achieve optimal IEQ conditions in higher education classrooms.The results of these four studies indicate that there is not a one-size fits all indoor environmental quality to facilitate optimal in-class activities. Classrooms’ thermal environment should be effectively controlled with the option of a local (manual) intervention. Classrooms’ lighting conditions should also be adjustable, both in light color and light intensity. This enables lecturers to adjust the indoor environment to facilitate in-class activities optimally. Lecturers must be informed by the building operator, for example, professionals of the Facility Department, how to change classrooms’ IEQ settings. And this may differ per classroom because each building, in which the classroom is located, is operated differently apart from the classroom location in the building, exposure to the environment, and its use. The knowledge that has come available from this study, shows that optimal indoor environmental conditions can positively influence lecturers’ and students’ comfort, health, emotional balance, and performance. These outcomes have the capacity to contribute to an improved school climate and thus academic achievement.
