Strategies for Promoting Virtual Higher Education: General Considerations on Africa and Asia

AbstractEducation in general, and specifically higher education, plays an important role in the development process of all nations. Institutions of higher education have an important responsibility to support knowledge-driven economic growth strategies. This paper investigates the strategies of how by applying technologies on a large scale—with close attention to quality—virtual education can help higher education to find a way through the crisis of access, prohibitive cost, and lack of flexibility that we find all over the developing world. By addressing various issues related to planning, implementation, and quality with proper strategies, virtual education can provide immense opportunity to reduce the North-South knowledge gap and also to promote the development of the developing world. This paper reviews various issues related to promotion and quality control in virtual higher education and addresses possible strategies with general considerations of Africa and Asia.

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Studentification in Bloemfontein, South Africa

Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series ◽

10.1515/bog-2016-0001 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 31 (31) ◽

pp. 7-17 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Anton Ackermann ◽

Gustav Visser

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

South Africa ◽

Large Scale ◽

Developing World ◽

Student Housing ◽

Higher Learning ◽

Research Attention ◽

Institutions Of Higher Learning ◽

Student Enrolment ◽

Negative Impacts

Abstract Studentification is a global phenomenon that has been prominent in urban geographical discourse since the large-scale expansion of higher education in the early 1990s. In many developed and developing world countries, expansion in student enrolment has outstripped the ability of institutions of higher learning to provide adequate accommodation. Similar trends have been recorded in South Africa. The task of this paper is to investigate studentification as experienced in one of South Africa’s secondary cities. The paper draws attention to the economic, socio-cultural, and physical characteristics of this form of student housing on host locations. It is argued that studentification holds both positive and negative impacts for the host communities of Bloemfontein. Finally, it is suggested that studentification in South Africa requires greater research attention.

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Análisis del proceso metodológico en programas de educación superior en modalidad virtual

Revista de Educación a Distancia (RED) ◽

10.6018/red.450711 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 (65) ◽

Author(s):

Paula Andrea Díaz Guillen ◽

Yamilhet Andrade Arango ◽

Ana María Hincapié Zuleta ◽

Adriana Patricia Uribe Uran

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Graduate Programs ◽

Qualitative Approach ◽

Virtual Education ◽

Educación Superior ◽

Digital Inclusion ◽

Educational Models ◽

Educacion Superior ◽

Educación Virtual ◽

Virtual Higher Education

El propósito de este artículo consiste en identificar las características metodológicas de los programas virtuales de educación superior en instituciones colombianas. Este objetivo se deriva de la carencia de lineamientos acerca de cómo implementar procesos de educación virtual a nivel de pregrado y posgrado en un país en vía de desarrollo como Colombia. Para lograr este objetivo, se llevó a cabo una investigación de enfoque cualitativo en una muestra a propósito de 10 instituciones de educación superior en Colombia, las cuales tienen una oferta importante de programas de pregrado y posgrado para la modalidad virtualidad. Como resultados se reflejan modelos educativos que se transforman en torno a la realidad educativa y a las formas de concebir, planear, implementar y evaluar desde estrategias y alternativas metodológicas que conllevan al acceso, la permanencia y la democratización de la educación en miras a la calidad y la inclusión digital. The purpose of this article is to identify the methodological characteristics of virtual higher education programs in Colombian institutions. This objective is derived from the lack of guidelines on how to implement virtual education processes at the undergraduate and graduate levels in a developing country like Colombia. To achieve this objective, a qualitative approach research was carried out in a sample of 10 higher education institutions in Colombia, which have an important offer of undergraduate and graduate programs for the virtual modality. The results reflect educational models that are transformed around the educational reality and the ways of conceiving, planning, implementing and evaluating from strategies and methodological alternatives that lead to access, permanence and democratization of education in view of quality and digital inclusion.

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Hybrid Courses with Flexible Participation

Practical Applications and Experiences in K-20 Blended Learning Environments - Advances in Mobile and Distance Learning ◽

10.4018/978-1-4666-4912-5.ch011 ◽

2014 ◽

pp. 153-177 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Brian Beatty

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Development Process ◽

Online Courses ◽

College Education ◽

Institutions Of Higher Education ◽

Hybrid Courses ◽

Online Delivery ◽

Evaluation Data ◽

Continuous Basis ◽

Systematic Solution

Students in higher education have more demands placed on their time and need a college education for more careers than ever before. Flexible class participation options are needed that provide students with opportunities to manage their hectic lives with more individualized control. At the same time, most institutions of higher education are under pressure to serve more students and serve existing students more effectively. Online courses are often considered part of a systematic solution to these issues, but many schools and their faculty do not want to jettison their effective classroom approaches in order to shift to online delivery, nor should they. HyFlex courses may support both online and classroom-based courses and programs without deploying separate classes in each mode. HyFlex courses allow students to participate in the classroom or online and to make that choice on a continuous basis. The HyFlex design is used at many institutions to provide these benefits. This chapter describes the HyFlex design and development process, explains two common course types, and provides summary evaluation data on effectiveness of the approach.

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Weaving a Web Development Curriculum

10.28945/2495 ◽

2002 ◽

Author(s):

Wayne Haga ◽

Janos Fustos

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Information Systems ◽

Development Process ◽

Research Process ◽

Education Level ◽

The Internet ◽

Institutions Of Higher Education ◽

Web Development ◽

Computer Information Systems ◽

Web Developers

Faculty in the Computer Information Systems department at the authors’ institution is in the process of developing a new Computer Information Systems degree with several areas of emphasis. One of the proposed areas of emphasis will be to prepare students for a career as a web developer. As part of the curriculum development process, the authors collected data regarding the current demand for web developers, the education level requested, salaries, and the specific skills employers are demanding. The research process included reading and recording the education level, experience, and specific skills employers are requesting for hundreds of jobs that have been posted on the Internet within the last few months. Additionally, data was gathered from other sources including courses and programs offered at other institutions of higher education. Using this data, a model curriculum for a degree leading to a career in the field of web development is proposed.

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The SHEILA Framework: Informing Institutional Strategies and Policy Processes of Learning Analytics

Journal of Learning Analytics ◽

10.18608/jla.2018.53.2 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Yi-Shan Tsai ◽

Pedro Manuel Moreno-Marcos ◽

Ioana Jivet ◽

Maren Scheffel ◽

Kairit Tammets ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Learning Analytics ◽

Large Scale ◽

Development Process ◽

Complex Environments ◽

Senior Managers ◽

Effective Strategies ◽

Policy And Strategy ◽

Institutional Strategies ◽

Two Stages

This paper introduces a learning analytics policy and strategy framework developed by a cross-European research project team — SHEILA (Supporting Higher Education to Integrate Learning Analytics), based on interviews with 78 senior managers from 51 European higher education institutions across 16 countries. The framework was developed adapting the RAPID Outcome Mapping Approach (ROMA), which is designed to develop effective strategies and evidence-based policy in complex environments. This paper presents four case studies to illustrate the development process of the SHEILA framework and how it can be used iteratively to inform strategic planning and policy processes in real world environments, particularly for large-scale implementation in higher education contexts. To this end, the selected cases were analyzed at two stages, each a year apart, to investigate the progression of adoption approaches that were followed to solve existing challenges, and identify new challenges that could be addressed by following the SHEILA framework.

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Retrospection: The First Hundred Years of North Carolina’s Libraries - 1905

North Carolina Libraries ◽

10.3776/ncl.v63i1.52 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 63 (1) ◽

pp. 5-11

Author(s):

Elizabeth Smith

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

North Carolina ◽

Public Libraries ◽

The State ◽

Institutions Of Higher Education ◽

The North

This first in a series of articles will highlight events and statistics about North Carolina’s libraries in 1905, which were collected fromvarious publications in Joyner Library’s Verona Joyner Langford North Carolina Collection. The Biennial Report of the Superintendent ofPublic Instruction of North Carolina and the Biennial Report of the State Librarian provided information about school and public libraries. Information about college and private libraries was taken from the First Biennial Report of the North Carolina Library Commission and from books about the institutions of higher education.

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Ecological regional analysis applied to campus sustainability performance

International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education ◽

10.1108/ijshe-02-2016-0023 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 18 (7) ◽

pp. 974-994 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Shana Weber ◽

Julie Newman ◽

Adam Hill

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

North American ◽

Large Scale ◽

Regional Analysis ◽

Content Type ◽

Sustainability Performance ◽

The North ◽

Level I ◽

And Performance ◽

Practical Implications

Purpose Sustainability performance in higher education is often evaluated at a generalized large scale. It remains unknown to what extent campus efforts address regional sustainability needs. This study begins to address this gap by evaluating trends in performance through the lens of regional environmental characteristics. Design/methodology/approach Four sustainability metrics across 300 North American institutions are analyzed between 2005 and 2014. The study applies two established regional frameworks to group and assess the institutions: Commission on Environmental Cooperation Ecoregions and WaterStat (water scarcity status). Standard t-tests were used to assess significant differences between the groupings of institutions as compared to the North American study population as a whole. Findings Results indicate that all institutions perform statistically uniformly for most variables when grouped at the broadest (Level I) ecoregional scale. One exception is the Marine West Coast Forest ecoregion where institutions outperformed the North American average for several variables. Only when institutions are grouped at a smaller scale of (Level III) ecoregions do the majority of significant performance patterns emerge. Research limitations/implications This paper demonstrates an ecoregions-based analytical approach to evaluating sustainability performance that contrasts with common evaluation methods in the implementation field. This research also identifies a gap in the literature explicitly linking ecological sub-regions with their associated environmental challenges and identifies next research steps in developing defensible regional targets for applied sustainability efforts. Practical implications The practical implications of this research include the following: substantive changes to methodologies for rating sustainability leadership and performance, a framework that incentivizes institutions to frame sustainability efforts in terms of collaborative or collective impact, a framework within which institutions can meaningfully prioritize efforts, and a potential shift toward regional impact metrics rather than those focused solely on campus-based or generalized targets. Originality/value The authors believe this to be the first effort to analyze North American higher education sustainability performance using regional frameworks.

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