Critical Pedagogy and Place

To address potential processes of reconciliation and examine colonial and settler colonial situations, this chapter draws upon the author's role as a professor at the University of Guam within the larger Western-dominant space of academe and as an apprentice to Austronesian seafaring directly connected to cultural networks in the Marianas, Micronesia, and Oceania. They suggest that decolonization and its closely associated processes of demilitarizing involves an ontological shift through which the knowledge, testimonies, and insights of Indigenous populations are actualized in transformation-based practices of critical pedagogy. This chapter highlights ways to approach contemporary learning situations as every form of institutional learning occurs within the classroom setting and the social historical geography of the region. Ultimately, they construct an example of what critical Indigenous performance pedagogy might look like.

Menstrual Equity Initiatives at USA Universities: A Multiple Case Study of Common Obstacles and Enabling Factors

Background: In recent years there has been growing momentum in the USA around addressing issues of “menstrual equity” and “period poverty,” including a proliferation of university-level initiatives seeking to provide access to free menstrual products. This multiple case study examined four such efforts at a diversity of tertiary institutions to identify the factors that facilitated or impeded success.Methods: We conducted a qualitative multiple case study, including a desk review and key informant interviews with student and administrative actors from universities with free menstrual product initiatives. We sought to identify key learning regarding common challenges and obstacles, enabling factors which supported success and sustainability, and practical learning for future initiatives. From the desk review, four schools (n = 4) were purposively selected to represent a range of geographic regions, student population size, and university type. Purposive sampling was used to identify students and administrators engaged in the menstrual equity initiatives on each campus (n = 20; 4–6 per school). Data from the desk review and interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis.Results: Key themes included (1) the critical role of champions, (2) the importance of social and financial support, (3) challenges diffusing menstrual equity from pilot to scale, and (4) recommendations for future initiatives. University initiatives varied greatly in terms of their scope, funding, and implementation strategy.Conclusion: This multiple case study provides valuable insights regarding the facilitating factors and obstacles faced by initiatives providing free menstrual products at universities. To date, these initiatives have proven successful across the four case studies; however, in most cases, the scope of the initiatives was constrained by limited resources and sustainability concerns. Future campus menstrual equity strategies would benefit from cross-institutional learning and dialogue highlighting design and implementation successes and challenges.

Democracy and the Challenge of Climate Change

Climate change actions in democracies face perceived challenges such as short-term bias in decision-making, policy capture or inconsistency, weak accountability mechanisms and the permeability of the policy-making process to interests adverse to fighting climate change through the role of money in politics. Apart from its intrinsic value to citizens, democracy also brings critical advantages in formulating effective climate policy, such as representative parliaments which can hold governments to account, widespread civic participation, independent media and a free flow of information, the active engagement by civil society organizations in policymaking and the capacity for institutional learning in the face of complex issues with long-term and global social and political implications. International IDEA’s work on change and democracy aims to support democratic institutions to successfully confront the climate crisis by leveraging their advantages and overcoming the challenges to formulating effective and democratically owned climate policy agendas.

Still Open During the Covid-19 Lockdown: An Analysis of Online Students’ Engagement with the Virtual Campus

The global pandemic caused by the Covid-19 outbreak and the subsequent mandatory lockdown made university students spend more time at home, changing their daily habits including studying, as a consequence of the forced self-confinement. In this article we describe the changes observed in the connection patterns to the institutional learning management system of the students enrolled in a Spanish online university during the lockdown. Our results show that the students were more likely to connect to the virtual campus, they did so more evenly over the days of the week, and more concentrated in a few hours in the central part of the days. Interestingly, the changes in students’ connection patterns were not associated with their socio-demographic characteristics, although they were affected by their academic trajectory and their academic enrolment.

Virtual Instruction On Demand for Educational Orientation of Graduate Medical Education Trainees During The COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: Graduate medical education (GME) orientation is traditionally an in-person endeavor. The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted virtual approaches to trainee onboarding to reduce viral transmission; however, virtual orientation has not been well-described in GME. This study assesses the effectiveness of virtual orientation of GME trainees using data from an electronic survey.Objectives: We aimed to determine the usefulness of virtual instruction on demand for GME trainee onboarding at a large sponsoring institution.Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of de-identified electronic survey responses by residents and fellows who underwent GME orientation at our institution from June to August 2020. The primary outcome was to determine the effectiveness of virtual GME orientation for onboarding, and secondary outcomes included identifying barriers to implementation and weaknesses associated with virtual GME orientation. We conducted orientation sessions for the incoming residents and fellows using CarmenCanvas, our institutional learning management system (LMS).Results: 272 of 337 incoming trainees completed the virtual GME orientation survey. 97% of respondents reported that the contents of the orientation modules would help them perform their duties. 79% of trainees rated the overall quality as very good or good, 91% responded that virtual orientation provided effective learning, 94% reported accessing the course content easily, 92% reported easy navigation of the modules, 91% described it as well-organized, and 87% said that the modules supported their learning.Conclusions: Virtual instruction on demand is a safe, effective, and practical approach to resident and fellow onboarding into a GME sponsoring institution in the COVID-19 pandemic era.

SISTEMA DE GESTIÓN DEL CONOCIMIENTO BASADO EN ESTÁNDARES DE ALTA CALIDAD PARA UN PROGRAMA EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR

Knowledge management is a useful tool for the competitiveness of many organizations. The higher education sector is particularly oriented towards adherence to this type of schemes, since its nature implies constant institutional learning based not only on its own experience but also on the exchange of knowledge in the academic environment. In Colombia, higher education institutions perceive an opportunity for improvement in the high quality standards of the National Accreditation Council, which requires an infrastructure oriented to the strategic knowledge management. This article presents the experience of implementing a prototype of a knowledge management system in a higher education undergraduate program. It describes the phases of the process and its relationship with the technological platform that supported the development. The conclusions highlight the advantages of the exercise, emphasizing institutional learning, the importance of the technological platform and, finally, reflections on knowledge management as a fundamental axis of accreditation processes.

A Review on State of the Art in Flipped Classroom Technology A Blended E-Learning

Flipped is an emerging mode of blended e-learning, as blended is mix mode of learning to enhance the skills of students, saving the time and cost either sides (students and educators). Flipped classroom is such as an e-learning blended approach in which instructions can be hovered into individual and groups, interactively to exchange and solving the assigned problems. Flipped classroom approach presents the dynamic, interactive and user’s friendly environments for in class and online blended learning. This kind of mode leads students to enhance their interpersonal skills, collaborate the experiences, and innovate new horizons by mutual activities for the given problems. The flipped mode has at least four dimensions; friendly easy environment, supporting culture for learning, contents availability when offline, minimizing time cost, trained educators/professionals and reducing repetition of learning content’s cost. In Flipped model of learning, first students go to seeking the exposure of problems by visiting the contents, materials, videos and other materials before getting in the classroom in person, fully aware to share or inquire the problem related matters in the class, its inverse approach against traditional institutional learning model. This is very effective mode of learningfor activity based and assignment-based learning strategies prior commencing class, fruitfulfeedback can be shared and reducing the tutorial part.

Internal Quality Assurance of Institutional Learning Outcomes: United States Case Study and Implications for Vietnam Higher Education

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are under pressure to provide evidence of student success. In addition to traditional performance indicators such as GPA, grades, and rates of retention, graduation and employment, stakeholders also required institutions to provide evidence of institutional learning outcomes (ILOs). ILOs encompass the knowledge and skills that all students regardless of disciplines from a specific university are expected to demonstrate upon their graduation. This case study examines a complete internal quality assurance (IQA) cycle from a U.S. comprehensive university, including the adaptation of national authentic assessment measures, the use of technology in data analysis, the best practices to communicate assessment results to multiple internal stakeholders to facilitate leadership decision-making, the challenges encountered, and the improvement plans to sustain the procedure. Researchers also make recommendations to Vietnam HEIs that want to adopt IQA of ILOs for both quality improvement and accountability purposes.