The mission of higher education in the 21st century must focus on optimizing learning for all students. In a shift from prioritizing effective teaching to active learning, it is understood that computer-enhanced environments provide a variety of ways to reach a wide range of learners who have differing backgrounds, ages, learning needs, and expectations. Integrating technology into teaching assumes greater importance to improve the learning experience. Optimizing Higher Education Learning Through Activities and Assessments is a collection of innovative research that explores the link between effective course design and student engagement and optimizes learning and assessments in technology-enhanced environments and among diverse student populations. Its focus is on providing an understanding of the essential link between practices for effective "activities" and strategies for effective "assessments," as well as providing examples of course designs aligned with assessments, positioning college educators both as leaders and followers in the cycle of lifelong learning. While highlighting a broad range of topics including collaborative teaching, active learning, and flipped classroom methods, this book is ideally designed for educators, curriculum developers, instructional designers, administrators, researchers, academicians, and students.

Universities all over the world are increasingly recognising the challenges of globalization and the pressures towards internationalization. This collection draws together a wealth of international experience to explore the emerging patterns of strategy and practice in internationalizing Higher Education. Questions considered include: - How is the concept of globalization in the context of higher education understood by those who lead universities across the world?- What new challenges are being created as universities seek to become more international?- Which forms of leadership are needed and will be needed in the future in these transforming institutions and how are they going about preparing for and achieving this? >

This book is about people whose beliefs and affiliations have opposed powerful interests in the present-day United States. This eclectic group of people and controversial issues, from climate-change scientists who have been censored by the Bush administration to Muslims accused of terrorism, have one thing in common. All of them straddle the limits of what Noam Chomsky has called permissible debate as defined by dominant political and economic institutions and individuals. The central thesis is that restriction of free inquiry is harmful to our culture because it inhibits the search for knowledge. Johansen presents case studies in the borderlands of free speech in a Jeffersonian cast-an intellectual framework assuming that open debate-even of unpopular ideas-is essential to accurate perception of reality. This book is about people whose ideological circumstances have found them opposing established beliefs in our times-scholars advocating the Palestinian cause in a very hostile intellectual environment, for example, as well as climate scientists defending themselves against the de-funding of their laboratories by defenders of fossil-fuel interests; opponents of creation science under assault for teaching what once was regarded as household-variety biology (a.k.a. Darwinism); Marxists in a political system dominated by neoconservatives. The central thesis that unites this diverse array of controversies is that shutting down free inquiry-most notably for points of view deemed unpopular-dumbs us all down by restraining the search for knowledge, which demands open inquiry. We have been told when going to war, as in Iraq, that freedom isn't free, the unstated assumption being that our armed forces are fighting and dying to safeguard our civil rights at home and abroad. During recent years, however, freedom to inquire and debate without retribution has been under assault in the United States. This assault has been carried out under a distinctly Orwellian cast, under Newspeak titles such as the Patriot Act, parts of which might as well be described more honestly as the Restriction of Freedom of Inquiry Act. The information gathered here will interest (and probably anger) anyone who is concerned with protecting robust, free inquiry in a nation that takes seriously its freedom to speak out, and to define truth through open debate.

Globalization is changing the face of Higher Education across the world. Academics and students today are internationally mobiles and unprecedented numbers of international exchanges are cross-border education projects are being developed. The implications for individual universities are significant: international students can bring much needed revenues to boost university coffers and stimulate university classrooms but they also have high expectations and demands. This book discusses the implications for those involved in managing the organizational processes and those designing programmes and supporting the student experience. A key concern in the text is that of reciprocal internationalization - the importance for universities to develop within an internationally-integrated environment rather than as national universities which accommodate the needs of people from other countries into their pre-existing practices. The emphasis throughout the discussion is therefore on the development of inter-cultural competences for university people supported by sustainable international management practices.

This book has been primarily written for people who are interested and involved in helping students maximise the learning and development they gain from their higher education experience. The authors contributing to this book hope that their attempt to examine and give practical meaning to the idea of lifewideness makes sense to you and helps you support and facilitate development of people in your professional context. We hope also that it might have meaning for you in your own life. The book is also written for people who are helping higher education institutions develop a better understanding of the ways in which students engage in and are shaped by their whole life experience while they are studying. And for those people who are trying to bring about change in institutional practice, particularly those who are finding it challenging, we hope the contributions in this book will reinforce your conviction that this is a worthwhile thing to do. In recent years, Universities in the UK have been encouraged to evaluate what they do through the lens of the students' experience. This has resulted in an increasing institutional interest and awareness in the way in which students integrate higher education with their life beyond the campus. Student Support Services in some universities have been inspired by the visionary report 'Learning Reconsidered: A Campus-wide Focus on the Student Experience' (NASPA and ACPA 2004). We hope that this book will encourage and be of value to those who make decisions or who create policies relating to the student experience.

In the 21st century global knowledge economy, research based universities occupy prime position, and have multiple roles to play beyond teaching, learning and supporting the academic achievements of students. Offering an international perspective, this book demonstrates how these emerging trends are being viewed across different countries with a broad range of completely diverse socio-cultural backgrounds. The authors explore the contribution of universities towards the advancement of global science and scholarship in countries like Turkey, Kosovo, Latin America and US. Delving into new information and processes across these countries, they investigate how the future of academic research is changing, evolving, and ultimately contributing towards emerging trends which are significant in shaping the academic and societal roles played by universities, and in understanding the human condition. It is by engaging in this research that the authors demonstrate to readers how culture, technology and society interact within and beyond the academic space, and are rooted in the foundation of intellectual and scientific trends.

Online degree programs have long faced the issue of retention and engagement from their students. Proper support and guidance for students can encourage continuation in these programs, and can help lead to student success. Coaching for Student Retention and Success at the Postsecondary Level: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on the application of student support systems as a promising intervention for post-secondary retention and student success. While highlighting topics such as student assessment, online programs, and professional identity, this publication explores support strategies that boost retention, as well as the methods of using support and guidance to promote student success. This book is ideally designed for educational professionals, educational organizations, educational administrators, universities, and academics seeking current research on the effects of guidance on student retention rates and success.

The higher education landscape is embracing the call to be innovative, yet scholars have not clearly defined what it means to innovate. Innovation is not limited to the use and adoption of educational technologies, and it encompasses a broad array of elements that must be considered if we are to truly aspire toward innovative teaching in higher education. Enhancing Learning Design for Innovative Teaching in Higher Education is a critical scholarly publication that examines how instructional systems design, instructional design, educational technologies, curriculum design, and program design impact innovation and innovative teaching in higher education. The book offers definitions of innovative teaching and examines critical intersections to achieve innovation and innovative teaching in post-secondary environments. Highlighting a wide range of topics such as program mapping and learning design, this book is essential for academicians, administrators, professionals, curriculum developers, instructional designers, K-12 teachers, educational technologists, researchers, and students.

This book focuses on integrity throughout the PhD journey and beyond, and is organised around two main themes: (1) integrity in relation to the capabilities developed by doctoral candidates for professional practice; and (2) integrity and coherence at the PhD system level. The working methods of key participants such as PhD candidates, supervisors, university managers, government agencies and politicians are central to achieving integrity goals within PhD programmes. In this context, a number of constructs are developed that inform the practice-based elements of the book in relation to conducting doctoral research, research supervision, academic writing, and research training support systems; in particular, these include our Moral Compass Framework for professional integrity, notions of collective morality, decision-making when faced with 'wicked' problems, connected moral capability and our double-helix model of capability development, negotiated sense in contrast with common sense, completion mindsets and contexts, mindfulness, liminality, and mutual catalysis in joint authorship. While the data the book employs stems from practice-led research within the Australian doctoral system, the conclusions drawn are of global relevance. Throughout the book, wherever appropriate, comparisons are made between the Australian context and other contexts, such as the doctoral systems of the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.

The book is centered on international higher education's role for the global common good. The purpose of this book is to critically examine the need for globally competent citizens, professionals, and leaders in the 21st century and higher education's role in the global common good for a sustainable world. The book presents an evidence-based interdisciplinary framework and promising strategies to allow all learners to develop global citizenship and global leadership while addressing the need to prepare human capital for the global knowledge economy and digital transformation in the 21st century. Cross-sector case studies are shared to demonstrate global leadership in action.

With the rapid availability of information, it becomes essential to keep pace with this availability as well as process the information into knowledge that has real-world applications. Neuroscientific methods allow an approach to this problem based on the way that the human brain already operates. Over the centuries and through observation and trial and error, we already know a great deal about how we can teach and learn, but now we can verify this with scientific fact and discover previously unknown aspects of brain physiology. These observations of brain functioning have produced many learning theories, all of which have varying degrees of validity. These theories, in turn, give birth to theories and models of instructional design, which also have varying degrees of validity. A Conceptual Framework for SMART Applications in Higher Education: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a critical scholarly publication that explores how the brain acquires and processes information to turn information into knowledge and the role of SMART technology and how it combines and integrates visual and aural data to facilitate learning. The book also discusses ways to apply what is known about teaching to how the brain operates and how to incorporate instructional design models into the teaching and learning process. Highlighting various topics such as neurogenesis, smart technologies, and behaviorism, this book is essential for instructional designers, online instruction managers, teachers, academicians, administrators, researchers, knowledge managers, and students.

Widening access to university has become a major component of education policy in the past few decades, particularly in the UK and Europe. The aim is to make a university education more accessible for people from traditionally under-represented backgrounds and to ensure student bodies reflect the diversity of wider society. This key volume presents, for the first time, a critical analysis of the 'business of widening participation' in a marketised context, featuring contributions from some of the major academic and practitioner researchers in the field. Encompassing how WP policy (as a subset of HE policy) is made, enacted and implemented at various stages, also presented are multiple professional and cultural perspectives on how WP is experienced and understood by those enacting policy. Chapter authors explore how the two aspects of the 'business of widening participation' work together to shape how WP is understood and done, as well as the possibilities for doing otherwise by employing a dual usage of the term 'business' in relation to WP. The first, figurative, usage explores the ways in which WP has been drawn into institutional positionality as HE providers differentiate themselves in the market; the second, literal, usage explores the ways in which WP policy is actuated by HE providers (including 'alternative' providers and FE colleges), state actors and third sector and private organisations increasingly engaged in the delivery of WP interventions and as policy stakeholders in this field. Offering both a comprehensive policy history of widening participation in UK higher education and exploration of how that policy has translated into institutional practices in different contexts, this timely work offers new analysis to academics familiar with the field whilst also offering sufficient background to practitioners who may be less familiar with the historical context and academic debates around WP.

The true success of a nation can be measured by its ability to create, disseminate, and utilize knowledge through education. A quality education instills in students the capability to add value to the economy through his or her skills, to participate in society, and to improve the overall wellness of his or her community. Systemic Knowledge-Based Assessment of Higher Education Programs offers theoretical and pedagogical research concerning the management of educational systems on both the national and international scale. Exploring the most effective ways to utilize intellectual capital, this publication implores educators to ensure that their students hone the skills necessary to interact in the globalized economy, using all of the information available to them. This book is a versatile asset for educators, administrators, government agencies, and students of education.

Beyond their educational value, university institutions can play a pivotal role in community improvement. By utilizing academic resources, these organizations can positively impact their communities. Engaged Scholarship and Civic Responsibility in Higher Education is a critical reference source for the latest scholarly research on the adoption and implementation of civic engagement initiatives in higher education institutions. Including a range of pertinent topics such as service learning, economic development, and social justice, this book is ideally designed for academics, practitioners, students, professionals, and researchers interested in the growing influence of universities on community improvement.

This book attempts to offer not just a bird's-eye view of the communities of designers project, but also to help identify broad themes and issues that can inform discussions and policies of technology integration at other institutions.