scholarly journals A Model for a Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence: A Catalyst for Program Improvement in Developing Institutions

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith J. Roberts

A focus on the past 20 years has shown an evolution in International Higher Education from the concept of teaching to the concept of learning. As universities in developing nations make the transition to become regional and international in quality it is important to the university administrators and the ministries of education to develop strategies to support this evolution from teaching to learning. This paper argues that an integral piece of this transition is the presence of a center for teaching and learning excellence.

Author(s):  
Idris Bello ◽  
Abdulraheem Zakari

Distance learning through e-learning courses has become the most important and commonly requested mode of learning in the higher education system over the past decade. Many aspects of our lives have been upended by COVID-19 including education. Distance education became a requirement at lightning speed, due to the pandemic and worldwide shutdown. According to the University of Kansas, at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak in early April, more than 1.5 billion students, or 91.3 percent of global enrolment, were directly affected by school closures. The question of whether or not to migrate from physical classroom is no more the priority but how quick and efficiently we can adopt distance learning. This paper evaluates the incorporation of the emerging technologies into the concepts of distance learning in terms of efficiency in the teaching and learning environment at universities, polytechnics and colleges.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Fort

It is widely held that collegiate athletic directors are trapped in an expenditure arms race.  But the arms race explanation completely omits the actual consideration of the university budgeting process.  In its place, the arms race logic imposes strained assumptions about the cooperative setting and the naïveté of university administrators, along with a curious distinction of one type of revenue to reach its conclusions.  And the interpretation of the data on spending and benefits from college sports has not been done particularly well in the past. This paper presents an alternative principal-agent explanation that is based on the observed actual financial (budget) relationship between university administrators and their athletic department and consistent with the entirety of the aggregate-level data on college athletics finance.  Empirically discerning between the two models is crucial since each generates decidedly different policy implications.


Author(s):  
Alessia Plutino ◽  
Kate Borthwick ◽  
Erika Corradini

This volume collects selected papers from the 9th annual conference in the Innovative Language Teaching and Learning at University series (InnoConf), which was hosted by the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of Southampton on the 28th of June 2019. The theme of the conference was ‘Treasuring languages: innovative and creative approaches in Higher Education (HE)’. The conference aimed to address the consistent decline in recent years in applications to study languages at UK universities by igniting discussions and seeking innovative and creative approaches to raising awareness about the value of learning languages.


2021 ◽  
pp. 5-19
Author(s):  
Yurii Skyba ◽  
Hanna Lebedynets

Ensuring and improving the quality of teaching and learning, in particular the academics’ potential development, is reflected in strategic European and domestic documents, namely in the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, the Paris Communiqué, the Strategy for Higher Education in Ukraine for 2021-2031 and others. The expediency for academics’ potential development is confirmed by the results of a national survey on the needs for the development of Ukrainian universities in the process of reforming higher education in the context of European integration. The article highlights the problems of academics’ potential development. Based on foreign and domestic experience, the theoretical bases for academics’ potential development, in particular the conceptual and terminological apparatus and structural components of teaching metacompetence are substantiated. The concept «potential of an academic» is defined as a set of intellectual, intangible resources, conditions and opportunities created for the production and accumulation of new knowledge, ideas, technologies, competencies and other productive properties at the university, which combines two levels of connections functioning in unity. The first level of connections are resources that are the result of past and present, and the second – opportunities, i.e. those abilities and connections that are future-oriented, constantly changing, evolving, forming new abilities, characteristics, including elements of the future development. The following components are distinguished in the structure of teaching metacompetence: prognostic; design; objective; innovative; pedagogical partnership; organizational; information and digital; reflexive; linguistic and communicative; inclusive; motivational; health-preserving; emotional-ethical and evaluative-analytical. The development of the above components of teaching metacompetence will help ensure the quality of higher education and increase the competitiveness of the university in the educational services market.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaw Owusu-Agyeman ◽  
Enna Moroeroe

PurposeScholarly studies on student engagement are mostly focused on the perceptions of students and academic staff of higher education institutions (HEIs) with a few studies concentrating on the perspectives of professional staff. To address this knowledge gap, this paper aims to examine how professional staff who are members of a professional community perceive their contributions to enhancing student engagement in a university.Design/methodology/approachData for the current study were gathered using semi-structured face-to-face interviews among 41 professional staff who were purposively sampled from a public university in South Africa. The data gathered were analysed using thematic analysis that involved a process of identifying, analysing, organising, describing and reporting the themes that emerged from the data set.FindingsAn analysis of the narrative data revealed that when professional staff provide students with prompt feedback, support the development of their social and cultural capital and provide professional services in the area of teaching and learning, they foster student engagement in the university. However, the results showed that poor communication flow and delays in addressing students’ concerns could lead to student disengagement. The study further argues that through continuous interaction and shared norms and values among members of a professional community, a service culture can be developed to address possible professional knowledge and skills gaps that constrain quality service delivery.Originality/valueThe current paper contributes to the scholarly discourse on student engagement and professional community by showing that a service culture of engagement is developed among professional staff when they share ideas, collaborate and build competencies to enhance student engagement. Furthermore, the collaboration between professional staff and academics is important to addressing the academic issues that confront students in the university.


Author(s):  
Monica Fedeli ◽  
Anna Serbati ◽  
Edward W. Taylor

This article looks at theories and practices related to faculty development and innovation in teaching and learning methods in Higher Education, in order to respond to the European 2020 Strategy, in which the High level group on the modernisation of higher education has been established, whose aim focuses on improving the quality of teaching and learning in Europe's higher education institutions (2013). The paper is framed within the context of the project PRODID (Preparazione alla professionalitŕ docente e innovazione didattica), funded by the University of Padova, Italy with the major goal of creating a permanent and effective academic center for research on learning and teaching and faculty development. The theoretical framework of PRODID is informed by constructivism and social constructivism, and the student centered approach, encouraging student-teacher partnerships as a dimension for faculty development and teaching and learning innovations. The University of Helsinki and Michigan State University are mentioned as relevant examples of organizational settings integrated in higher education institutions that offer a great variety of practices consistent with the chosen theoretical framework. They also offer the Italian program of University of Padova models for critical reflection in how their teaching strategies can be created and developed on the basis of this international experience. The final discussion aims to highlight the strategies adopted during the first year of the project, characterized by the Italian culture and revealing new insights and ideas to create an Italian model of teaching and learning center.


2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 4.1-4.21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Crichton ◽  
Angela Scarino

The internationalisation of education has become a major focus of international, national and institutional attention, reflected in a substantial and expanding literature on how internationalisation is manifested, how it might be promoted, its implications for areas such as government policy, strategic planning and management, educational quality, student mobility, teaching and learning, and the place of language and culture in teaching and learning. There is also general agreement in the literature on the need for internationalisation to include an ‘intercultural dimension’. In this paper, we examine how we are to understand the ‘intercultural dimension’ in higher education. Our approach is based on an analysis of current constructions of this dimension, to argue that these constructions are neither individually nor in combination capable of meeting the challenge of internationalisation. Drawing on recent studies undertaken at the University of South Australia, we propose culture as ‘intercultural’ as an alternative construction.


Author(s):  
Gabriele I.E. Strohschen

This chapter corroborates competence-based and social-situational educational practices with the principles of Blended Shore Education (BSE) and Metagogy. These two theorems emerged from several action research projects that engaged Chicago community members, university students, and educators from around the world. The principles, tenets, and descriptions of applied instructional methods in the context of civic and social engagement projects demonstrate how teaching and learning praxes and curricula and program design can be achieved by and with the learners, by the university, and by the community stakeholders to result in relevant and meaningful education models in higher education.


Author(s):  
Baraka M. Kagombe ◽  
Michael P. J. Mahenge ◽  
Sotco Claudius Komba ◽  
Safari Timothy Mafu ◽  
Camilius Aloyce Sanga

This chapter emanates from a study which sought to investigate challenges of teaching and learning computer programming in higher education. The study was conducted at Sokoine University of Agriculture. The study had three specific objectives: first, to identify learners' prior knowledge on computer programming at the time of joining the university; second, to investigate learners' self-efficacy in computer programming course; the third objective was to evaluate the learning styles used by learners in the computer programming course. The study adopted a quantitative research method, grounded in experiential learning theory. The data was collected from respondents using questionnaires and the analysis of the data was done using statistical software. The findings indicate that inadequate computer laboratories, lack of competent staff in ICT-based instructional design, inadequate teaching and learning materials, and students' lack of prior knowledge on computer programming at the time of joining the university are the main challenges.


2022 ◽  
pp. 76-94
Author(s):  
Nicoleta Duță

This chapter approaches the problematic of communication in teaching-learning activities in higher education during the crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors have proposed to present a theoretical and practical approach to the effective communication in teaching, with the objective of knowing which are the opinions of students on communication skills and motivation of them in the classroom. The study included a total of 261 students from different faculties at the University of Bucharest, who were a Likert-scale survey in the period May -July 2020. Results of the analysis of research data shows that students have seen their ability to concentrate and motivation to perform tasks affected, but they did not leave university. In this respect, most difficulties were in carrying out teamwork than individual. The adaptations made by the university during confinement have been positively appreciated. The research findings coming according to recent studies confirm that without communication the teaching and learning process will not take place.


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