Scholarship of Trans Disciplinary Learning (TDL) as an Innovative Pedagogy in University System

Pedagogy in higher education is evolving by adopting and testing multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary pedagogy to make their students more knowledgeable and also more employable in industry. The pedagogy of Trans disciplinary is established as a project based and research oriented approach which is adopted by a private university in Haryana by the name of Star University which was established in 2012 as per UGC guidelines. The Star University management is dedicated to providing an advanced quality of education and so with the above ideology in mind they have incorporated Transdisciplinary learning as part of their basic curriculum. It is done in the form of a project wherein students are asked to take a project each semester from a pool of courses that have been designed and defined for every semester. The result makes the author believe that Trans disciplinary pedagogy is successful.

Teaching Amidst Unexpected Unknowns

Globalisation, technology, migration, competition, changing markets and transnational environmental and political challenges have added a new urgency to develop the skills and knowledge needed in the 21st century. Educators, governments, foundations, employers and researchers refer to these abilities as ‘higher-order thinking skills' ‘deeper learning outcomes' and ‘complex thinking and communication skills'. We need to understand how students today are different from those of yesteryears. Although everyone believes that the knowledge and skills that students need today are different from what they needed yesterday, terminology differs from country to country, as does the composition of knowledge, skills and values. This chapter is broadly divided into four sections. The main objectives of the narrative are to understand the growth and evolution of teaching, to develop an understanding of the differences between the teaching of the East and that of the West, to explore teaching as an art and a skill and finally to prepare ourselves for the burgeoning demands of digital-age teaching.

Widening the Lens

To meet the challenge of bridging the digital divide among Net Generation students and Higher Education (HE) lecturers, a ‘Storyboard' methodology was piloted at the South Australian Institute of Business and Technology (SAIBT). Within an Associate Degree in Management program, a digital story-telling assessment task was introduced into a ‘Communication in Organisations' course to augment culturally diverse students' engagement with the discipline, as well as advance their English-language proficiency and academic achievement. Photos were gathered and shared over the trimester to capture students' reflections on what they were learning and how that felt at the time. Students then digitally collated the photos into a final original and introspective photo-story ‘film' that encapsulated the challenges, realisations and successes of the teaching and learning journey.

Harvard Style

Over the years, there has been an increased interest among educators and researchers that today's students need new skills to excel in the highly globalised world. This resulted in looking for new pedagogies to prepare students for academic and professional life. This research builds on Gardner's (2006) framework of disciplined, synthesising, creating, respectful and ethical mindsets, which would develop capacities and skills required for the future. Qualitative research, using in-depth interviews was conducted in a New Zealand university to understand how students from two disciplines react to the five mindsets. The findings suggest that though there were some similarities and differences in perceptions by the students, the ethical mindset was strongly demonstrated by all respondents. Implications for educators and future research are discussed in this chapter.

Effective Change in Educational Institutions

This chapter discusses the theoretical framework of management and leadership of change, focusing on the construct of power in educational institutions. Managers and leaders in educational institutions can adopt different models to apply change in the existing organisational procedures. According to the model they follow, they use their power differently. This chapter argues that the manner managers and leaders utilise their power strongly influences effective organisational change and their role in the organisation. Relevant managerial and leadership models of change are analysed in relation to different forms of power, with regard to the theoretical and research literature. The argument is further illuminated with a change event in a school in Greece in order to create a link between theory and everyday practice.

Innovative Andragogy

This chapter attempts to explain the management andragogies in use and demonstrate the paradigm shift to heutagogy by putting forth some of the innovative methods in their nascent stage in b-schools today. Previously college students learned from reading an assigned textbook, attending class, listening to the professor's lecture, and occasionally through research for term papers. Different methods are adopted to teach Management today ranging from tradition to co-operative and constructive methods. Use of art and literature is also a new trend. The focus, today now it has shifted from what the teacher can teach to what the learner can learn. Management concepts are continuously evolving. Consequently there is a need to develop in students the ability to sort through issues that resist discrete, pre-formulated solutions.

Management Andragogies

In an attempt to find out the teaching methods currently in use in Indian B-schools and to assess the response to the concept of using literature as a Management teaching too, a survey was conducted among Indian B-school faculty. The aim of the survey was to find out the teaching methods used by B-school faculty members, the types of constructive, co-operative and Art & Literature methods used; the response to using literature as a Management teaching tool and the issues envisaged in using literature as a Management teaching tool. Based on the inputs from interactions with B-school faculty from Mumbai (India) and review of related literature such as research articles and case studies, a suitable research tool (questionnaire) was constructed in Google docs. Qualitative analysis was done on the data collected on the basis of teaching experience and subject taught. The chapter will demonstrate the analysis done and the findings thereof.

Crowd Learning

Understanding sources of learning has become a major area of research in Education Management. Building on the assumptions that crowd learning is distributed across societies and education institutions and that it creates an innovative perspective for education for next-generation over the time, this article examines the link between formal education and innovative crowd-created knowledge. The article concludes by examining implications of crowd learning concept for actual and future education management systems. This paper explores how the crowd learns and remembers over time in the context, and how more realistic assumptions of student experience may be used in building crowd knowledge processes. The aim of the paper is to determine the assessment of crowd learning, its history, concepts and its influence on future learning process, including the changing instructor's role.

Leadership Education at the Middle and High School Levels

This study used extensive interviews, observations, a self-assessment of youth leadership skills, and collection of student academic, fitness, attendance and discipline data to analyze the impact of the California Cadet Corps on the youth in grades 4-12 that the program serves. Interviews with adult alumni of the program were also conducted. The data showed a remarkable long-term impact on promoting leadership development as well as skills and attitudes of citizenship, patriotism, basic military knowledge, personal wellness, and academic resiliency.

Learning and Knowing

This chapter aims to establish a clear distinction between learning and knowing. The chapter states that, in higher education learning, facilitates transfer of knowledge and builds the proposition that in higher education, learning essentially takes place when students construct meaning from various instructional messages. The authors build the discussion using literature and illustrate the argument using two cases to substantiate how learning and knowing are two different aspects. They argue that learning and knowing cannot be used interchangeably. The aim of higher education is to prepare students for the real world and the classroom is the simulated environment where students collaborate and learning facilitates transfer of knowledge.