Towards a Definition of Environmental Sustainability Evaluation in Higher Education

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 447-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Alba-Hidalgo ◽  
Javier Benayas del Álamo ◽  
José Gutiérrez-Pérez
2010 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-14
Author(s):  
Laure Itard ◽  
Maartje van den Bogaard

This paper deals with teaching environmental sustainability to students in higher education, focusing on the sustainability of buildings and the built environment and more specifically on energy. Integrating sustainability issues into the curricula of engineering education proves to be a big challenge. The main issues are: the fuzzy definition of sustainability; continuously advancing insights in environmental sciences and mono disciplinary versus multidisciplinary approaches. These issues are put into relation with theories and practice regarding curriculum development and change.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2565 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Parra-Martínez ◽  
María-Elia Gutiérrez-Mozo ◽  
Ana Gilsanz-Díaz

As one of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda, gender equality is a necessary foundation for a peaceful and sustainable world. The integration of the frameworks of analysis and action provided by gender perspective into the design, development and assessment of any program related to university education, research and management is essential to the fulfillment of both quality higher education and an effective transfer of knowledge and values to society. Starting from a standpoint of commitment to this progressive outlook, this essay focuses on the specific case of the University of Alicante, Spain, and on its Architecture studies. It seeks to underline the achievements of this institution in the fostering of a critical spirit and the empathy of its students by way of the implementation of gender perspective as a tool for the conception of complex, diverse and integrating projects, aligned to the objective of mutual care between people and the environment. This is crucial for the co-education of future generations of architects, who will play a central role in the definition of new practices and policies related to space and materials, which favor a more sustainable, inclusive and caring scenario for both humans and non-humans.


Author(s):  
Beata Bielska ◽  
Mateusz Rutkowski

AbstractThe article offers analyses of the phenomenon of copying (plagiarism) in higher education. The analyses were based on a quantitative survey using questionnaires, conducted in 2019 at one of the Polish universities. Plagiarism is discussed here both as an element of the learning process and a subject of public practices. The article presents students’ definitions of plagiarism, their strategies for unclear or difficult situations, their experiences with plagiarism and their opinions on how serious and widespread this phenomenon is. Focusing on the non-plagiarism norm, that is the rule that students are not allowed to plagiarize, and in order to redefine it we have determined two strategies adopted by students. The first is withdrawing in fear of making a mistake (omitting the norm), which means not using referencing in unclear situations, e.g. when the data about the source of information are absent. The second is reducing the scope of the norm applicability (limiting the norm), characterized by the fact that there are areas where the non-plagiarism norm must be observed more closely and those where it is not so important, e.g. respondents classify works as credit-level and diploma-level texts, as in the credit-level work they “can” sometimes plagiarize since the detection rate is poor and consequences are not severe. The presented results are particularly significant for interpreting plagiarism in an international context (no uniform definition of plagiarism) and for policies aimed at limiting the scale of the phenomenon (plagiarism detection systems1).


2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belinda A. Christie ◽  
Kelly K. Miller ◽  
Raylene Cooke ◽  
John G. White

Author(s):  
Oliver Tafadzwa Gore ◽  

Although policies to widen participation have been implemented in South African higher education since 1994, inequality of achievements persists in universities. The failure of the higher education policy to clearly define ‘disadvantage’ in various interventions seems to have contributed to the continuing inequalities. This study theorises disadvantage using the capabilities approach pioneered by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum and argues for a more nuanced definition of disadvantage by exploring the opportunities, agency and achievements available to students in universities. The theorisation is based on findings from a qualitative case study of 26 semi-structured interviews conducted with students from one South African university. Using empirical findings, the theorisation in this study shows how the conversion factors intersect, resulting in some students achieving fewer functionings, which put them at a disadvantage. While gender equality seemingly has been achieved through enrolment figures that show parity levels, some female students are still disadvantaged through subtle forms of discrimination and sexual harassment in universities. This study therefore recommends that higher education policies should consider an expansive definition of disadvantage that encompasses the various dimensions of student wellbeing for all students to have flourishing lives.


CADMO ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 21-37
Author(s):  
Antonella Poce ◽  
Francesca Corradi

Lps-Diped - Universitŕ Roma Tre chaired the Tempus Demed - Development of Master Study Programmes in Education (2009-2011) - project. The project's main objective was the renovation of the Masters courses in Education in certain Balkan countries (Macedonia, Albania e Kosovo). The basic intention involved the adaptation of the higher education provided in the cultural reference area to the principles established within the European context. In particular, during the Dublin Conference in 2004, the so-called Bologna follow up group drew a number of indicators. As already mentioned, at different times, EU policy has highlighted the need to carry out actions aimed at a renovation of higher education cycles, but not much was provided in terms of definition of the curricula, especially for the second cycle of studies. The Demed project also attempted to fill a gap in this regard, operating an indepth revision of this level of studies in the Education sector in Albania, Kosovo e Macedonia. This intervention, moreover, was always carried out working in close cooperation with the partner countries, so that the support provided by Lps Diped, as leader, by Cdell - Centre for Developing and Evaluating Lifelong Learning - University of Nottingham (UK) and by DPU - Arhus University (DK) was realized with an actual collaboration programme, and never resulting as an imposition of certain Western models. The present contribution, therefore, is intended to give a general overview regarding the Tempus funding programme, a description of the Demed project itself, a synthetic report of the online seminar broadcasted to Seeu staff during the project period and of the data collected while evaluating the same experience.


Author(s):  
Hanlie Liebenberg ◽  
Yuraisha Chetty ◽  
Paul Prinsloo

<p>Amidst the different challenges facing higher education, and particularly distance education (DE) and open distance learning (ODL), access to information and communication technology (ICT) and students’ abilities to use ICTs are highly contested issues in the South African higher education landscape. While there are various opinions about the scope and definition of the digital divide, increasing empirical evidence questions the uncritical use of the notion of the digital divide in South African and international higher education discourses.</p><p>In the context of the University of South Africa (Unisa) as a mega ODL institution, students’ access to technology and their functional competence are some of the critical issues to consider as Unisa prepares our graduates for an increasingly digital and networked world.</p><p>This paper discusses a descriptive study that investigated students’ access to technology and their capabilities in using technology, within the broader discourse of the “digital divide.” Results support literature that challenges a simplistic understanding of the notion of the “digital divide” and reveal that the nature of access is varied.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jude Fransman

The past decades in the UK have witnessed renewed interest by policymakers, research funders and research institutions in the engagement of non-academic individuals, groups and organizations with research processes and products. There has been a broad consensus that better engagement leads to better impact, as well as significant learning around understanding engagement and improving practice. However, this sits in tension to a parallel trend in British higher education policy that reduces the field to a narrow definition of quantitatively measured impacts attributed to individual researchers, projects and institutions. In response, this article argues for the mobilization of an emerging field of 'research engagement studies' that brings together an extensive and diverse existing literature around understandings and experiences of engagement, and has the potential to contribute both strategically and conceptually to the broader impact debate. However, to inform this, some stocktaking is needed to trace the different traditions back to their conceptual roots and chart out a common set of themes, approaches and framings across the literature. In response, this article maps the literature by developing a genealogy of understandings of research engagement within five UK-based domains of policy and practice: higher education; science and technology; public policy (health, social care and education); international development; and community development. After identifying patterns and trends within and across these clusters, the article concludes by proposing a framework for comparing understandings of engagement, and uses this framework to highlight trends, gaps and ways forward for the emerging field.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronika Bocsi ◽  
Hajnalka Fényes ◽  
Valéria Markos

In this article, the motives for voluntary work and work values in higher education contexts are examined in a cross-border region in Central Eastern Europe. Our goal is to find out what kind of relationship exists between different types of volunteering and work values among young people. In the theoretical section, we deal with the definition of volunteering in the education system, the types of and motives for students’ volunteering, and finally, the relationship between the work values and voluntary work of students. In the empirical section, we created cluster groups based on students’ motives for volunteering, and we examined differences among countries. Then we revealed the factor structure of the work values of students and analyzed the relationship between cluster groups and factors with variance analysis. Five cluster groups were identified: “careerists with postmodern features,” “unmotivated,” “highly motivated,” “volunteers in an anti-volunteering climate,” and a “helping new type volunteers” group. There were only slight differences among countries, as most respondents are characterized by mixed motivations. An interesting result is that the most frequent group is “the volunteers in an anti-volunteering climate” in all the countries examined, especially in Ukraine, so the culture of volunteering is not popular enough in this region of Central Eastern Europe. Regarding the relationship between work values and volunteering, we have found that these two fields (work values and volunteering) are closely related.


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