Alternative Digital Credentials in Higher Education

Alternative digital credentials (ADCs), also known as digital badges, demonstrate great promise as a strategy for closing the skills gap and supporting the alignment of industry skills with traditional and nontraditional higher education programs. The authors seek to highlight advances in ADC development in a public university setting, demonstrating how higher education institutions can weave ADCs into both traditional classrooms and larger community initiatives such as workforce development and non-credit offerings. The chapter details the institution's ADC pathway from conception to a workforce development project awarded in response to the COVID-19 pandemic including key project objectives, strategies, and best practices. The authors also discuss the use of existing learning resources and tools such as EMSI, Jove, and augmented reality technology, including learner reviews from current program participants. Finally, institutional strategies for prior learning assessment and integration of digital badges into undergraduate degree programs are discussed.

Higher Education Institutional Strategies to Sustain Quality Education

During the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education institutions (HEIs) faced serious challenges that raised concerns about sustaining the quality of education delivered to students and the quality of the graduates produced. Many HEIs throughout the world were unable to sustain the quality of teaching and learning due to many issues including lack of clear strategies, policies, procedures, and practices. This chapter will identify successful practices of HEIs for achieving sustainable quality education during COVID-19, based on transformation strategies in line with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This chapter will also highlight the role of governance in strategic decision making throughout strategy transformation and the impact of leaders on effective decision making during the crisis in developing successful practices for sustainable quality education.

‘Same storm – Different boats’: A Southern African Methodist response to socio-economic inequalities exposed by the COVID-19 storm

This article critiques the theological basis for the Methodist Church of Southern Africa’s response to the socio-economic impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In light of the fact that there are few (if any) clergy historical accounts on how to respond to a deadly pandemic like COVID-19, this article is an analytic description that weaves together narrative renditions of the authors’ experiences with formal correspondence of the institution’s documentation on the inequalities exposed by the imposition of the lockdown in South Africa and countries that form part of the Methodist Connexion. Theological questions of human dignity, solidarity, and economic justice that have been surfaced by the pandemic are also raised. The article makes practical observations and offers insights that contribute to the ongoing dialogue and institutional strategies for responding to COVID-19. It further offers a resource for future researchers and communities who may respond to a similar pandemic in the future.

Modeling Work Commitment in the Covid-19 Era

In this regard, the objective of this study was modeling work commitment in the health sector. For this purpose, we used a sample of 100 social work students with experience in implementing social programs and monitoring of institutional strategies for health promotion. Were established normality, reliability, sphericity, adequation, linearity, and validity on the scale that measured labor commitment. The structural model was established in which reflective commitment to the institution was positively related to work engagement. The residual fit indices and corroborated the hypothesis of multidimensionality of work commitment.

Study of Food Intake and Physical Activity Patterns in the Working Population of the Uruguayan State Electrical Company (UTE): Design, Protocol and Methodology

Noncommunicable diseases are the main cause of death globally, and most are potentially preventable; they are long term diseases and generally evolve slowly. In Uruguay 64.9% of the population between 25 and 64 years of age are either overweight or obese. The available scientific data show that workplaces are good for developing food-intake interventions for a healthier life. The present study aims to report the design, protocol and methodology for the evaluation of the food intake and physical activity patterns of the Uruguayan State Electrical Company (UTE) workers, as it is distributed across the whole country, and has established associations with overweight and obesity in order to establish institutional strategies to improve the situation. This study uses a population and a cross-sectional, randomized, representative sample of UTE workers with a precision of 3% and a confidence level of 95%. The considered anthropometric variables are weight, height, waist circumference, percentage of fat mass and percentage of visceral fat. A questionnaire on frequency of consumption of different foods and two 24-h dietary recalls (24-h DR) will be performed to evaluate the food intake. Accelerometry will be used to evaluate physical activity, and the International physical activity questionnaire (IPAQ) will be applied. Clinical data will be obtained from the UTE clinical charts. This is the first study of its kind that will be undertaken in Uruguay. It is registered under ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier nº NCT04509908.

Blue Ocean Strategy for Improving Quality and Competitiveness of Islamic Educational Environment

Competition often makes someone do everything to achieve goals. That happens because they aren’t successful in innovating their products, but only imitating and following their competitors. Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS) offers a new strategy in competition, which makes competitors, not enemies but makes them more motivated to change the spirit of the institutional environment. The purpose of this research studied BOS in Islamic educational institutions, which includes mapping strategies in creating a market space where there are no competitors, strategies in making the competition irrelevant, and its implications in Islamic educational institutions. This study used qualitative methods through field research type. Data obtained through in-depth interviews, participant observation, and study of documents. The results of this study concluded that: 1) The strategy of mapping educational institutions in creating market opportunities that have no competitors is by creating innovations that do not yet exist in other levels of the educational institution; 2) Institutional strategies in making competition no longer relevant are carried out by always showing innovations that are applied to other institution without a cover-up (always open); 3) The implications of BOS in the educational institution can be seen in terms of the output produced which can be realized through graduates who can be used both in companies and in educational institutions in need.

Preparing Student Teachers to Teach with Technology: Case Studies in Finland and Israel

This quantitative study examines the training of student teachers for ICT-based teaching in two teacher education institution, in Israel and Finland. The data was collected in 2015-2017 using a questionnaire administered to 41 Finnish and 44 Israeli student teachers. The results show that most student teachers had practice in ICT-based teaching. However, about a third of student teachers in both institutions practiced only two times or less using ICT. Those who practiced mostly used a teacher-centred approach as did their college and school mentor teachers who integrated ICT in their lessons. The variable describing competency in ICT-based teaching correlated with student teachers' attitudes, the number of ICT-based lessons they taught, modelling by the school mentor teacher, and the various schools’ infrastructures and support. The results show that students in Israeli institutions are better prepared to teach with ICT which can be explained by the impact of the latest national reforms. We conclude that students' perception of their TPACK is the function of a variety of factors: on a personal level (attitudes towards the contribution of ICT to teaching and learning); on an institutional level (curriculum, modelling by faculty, institutional strategies); on a field practice school level (modelling by school mentors, infrastructure, pedagogical, technological, and administrative support); and on a national level (reforms and their implementation models). All these factors must be considered to promote the pedagogically innovative integration of ICT in teacher training and the overall education system. The best strategy to achieve this goal is to support collaboration between TEIs and schools on the national level. Wide-scale implementation of ICT in teaching demands significant investments in infrastructure and training. Hence much of its success depends on the national vision and priorities given to this purpose.

Inclusive University Education in Bolivia: The Actors and Their Discourses

Education policies in Bolivia and other parts of Latin America have improved significantly in recent years. However, there continue to be barriers to higher education for students with specific educational support needs and difficulties are still found in the institutional management of inclusive education. This paper aims to better understand the elements that facilitate and hinder university inclusion of students with functional diversity in Bolivia. The methodology used is qualitative. The discourses of key informants within the university community were collected using the focus group technique. The software Atlas.ti-8 was used for data processing and inductive coding was performed using the constant comparison method. The study’s main findings indicate that both the categorization of functional diversity and the financing model in place have a great impact on inclusive education actions at the university level. The research also reveals a lack of correspondence between the rights of people with functional diversity and the resources allocated to them. The conclusions point to the need to establish intersectional institutional strategies based on the recognition of diversity as an essential value in the development of inclusive and sustainable education.