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1 – 10 of over 58000Katrina Crotts Roohr, Margarita Olivera-Aguilar and Ou Lydia Liu
For more than a decade, there has been an increased focus on the need for accountability and transparency about the value that United States and international higher education…
Abstract
For more than a decade, there has been an increased focus on the need for accountability and transparency about the value that United States and international higher education institutions add to students' knowledge and skills to help increase their economic productivity and career opportunities. This focus on accountability and transparency within the U.S. dates to 2005 when former US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings established a Commission on the Future of Higher Education to develop a national strategy for higher education reform. This led to an increased focus on measuring value added within higher education institutions and using value-added scores to make institutional comparisons. This chapter presents a brief history of value added within the United States and presents high-level summaries of initiatives, assessments used to measure value added, and a review of how value added is measured. We also present challenges around methodology and interpretation of results. Lastly, we discuss some of the future directions in evaluating value added in higher education and areas for future research.
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The paper aims to sum up the principal and original set of information related to the special project covered by Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, which was oriented…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to sum up the principal and original set of information related to the special project covered by Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, which was oriented to quality assurance and assessment at Czech higher education institutions. It brings main results and lessons learned from comprehensive quality assessment methodology pilot testing.
Design/methodology/approach
Brainstorming conferences, seminars, comparative analysis, interviews, design review and validation were used by the expert team to develop and to test the comprehensive quality assessment methodology.
Findings
The EFQM Excellence Model is the most comprehensive tool for quality assurance and quality assessment. It is pragmatic and practical, but it is necessary to adapt this model for effective use at Czech higher education institutions as a set of assessment criteria. The comprehensive quality assessment approach does not only examine what universities and other higher schools have achieved in the past (through lagging indicators), but it also includes assessment of their potential for the future through the so-called leading indicators.
Research limitations/implications
The pilot testing of designed methodology of comprehensive quality assessment was performed within 12 Czech higher education institutions, but the lessons learned have common validity for any Czech higher education institution.
Originality/value
The proposed methodology of comprehensive quality assessment is a quite new approach from the point of Czech higher education institutions view. It offers new and efficient tool for next higher schools and universities development.
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In an effort to position higher education institutions to survive in this fiercely competitive environment, the paper aims to identify the direct and indirect relationships…
Abstract
Purpose
In an effort to position higher education institutions to survive in this fiercely competitive environment, the paper aims to identify the direct and indirect relationships between higher education institutional positioning and exogenous factors (student engagement, employability, technology adaptation, teaching quality, and moral values).
Design/methodology/approach
A cross-sectional data was collected from 1,015 students studying in the pre-final year of graduation or post-graduate course/program from various educational institutions that were shortlisted based on the Indian NAAC and NIRF rankings. Thereafter, robust assessment criteria of PLS-SEM were used for model assessment and computation of results.
Findings
The findings revealed that to develop the greatest platform for upcoming young talent, higher educational institutional positioning ought to be addressed as a priority, which in turn will result in better living standards for upcoming generations.
Research limitations/implications
Framing strategies for urban students can never match those living in rural areas, as they are deprived of money due to their level of upbringing from childhood, which creates a high difference in the psychological mindset of students while choosing a career path.
Practical implications
The higher positioning of educational institutions clearly reflects the authentic learning environment, with professionalism leading to better student engagement with best industry practice.
Originality/value
Research novelty is highlighted as a more focused and streamlined approach to students’ career development and institution branding by reanalyzing and grouping various concepts of institutional positioning into a single model.
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Graham Bullock and Nicholas Wilder
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the comprehensiveness of competing higher education sustainability assessments. Higher education institutions (HEIs) have been increasingly…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the comprehensiveness of competing higher education sustainability assessments. Higher education institutions (HEIs) have been increasingly communicating their sustainability commitments to the public. To assist the public in evaluating these claims, a broad range of actors have assessed the sustainability of HEIs.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses an evaluation framework (the GRI-HE) consisting of criteria developed by the Global Reporting Initiative and the Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future to analyze the comprehensiveness of nine publicly-available frameworks that have been used to assess HEI sustainability.
Findings
While finding that in general these assessments are not comprehensive and particularly lack coverage of the social and economic dimensions of sustainability, the paper identifies the Pacific Sustainability Index and Sustainability Tracking and Assessment Rating System (STARS) as the most comprehensive assessments in the sector.
Research limitations/implications
This study does not assess the quality of the match to the GRI-HE’s criteria, only whether they match to a reasonable degree. The analysis highlights areas where each HEI sustainability assessment framework can add criteria and improve their comprehensiveness and validity. Future research should explore the causes and relative importance of the gaps in these frameworks.
Originality/value
The paper provides a valuable discussion and demonstration of the use of comprehensiveness as a proxy metric for the validity of sustainability assessments. This analysis is the first detailed, comprehensive and transparent analysis of HEI sustainability assessments based on a broad-based and widely accepted set of criteria.
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Ravi Chinta, Mansureh Kebritchi and Janelle Ellias
Performance evaluation is a topic that has been researched and practiced extensively in business organizations but has received scant attention in higher education institutions. A…
Abstract
Purpose
Performance evaluation is a topic that has been researched and practiced extensively in business organizations but has received scant attention in higher education institutions. A review of literature revealed that context, input, process, product (CIPP) model is an appropriate performance evaluation model for higher education institutions. However, little guidance exists for choosing appropriate metrics and benchmarks in implementing the CIPP model. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework using CIPP model for performance evaluation of higher education institutions.
Design/methodology/approach
To achieve the purpose of the study, a review of literature was conducted to identify an appropriate evaluation model. Then metrics and benchmarks framework were formed based on practical approaches used in a large university in the USA.
Findings
Nine perspectives in performance evaluation using the CIPP model and their application in higher education institutions were developed and discussed. The discussion provides examples, relative prevalence including frequency of usage, advantages and limitations of each of the nine perspectives of performance evaluation in higher education institutions. An actual application of the suggested CIPP model in the USA largest university, by student enrollment, was provided. Implications for institutional assessment and continuous improvement for higher education institutions were made.
Originality/value
The study provides a practical framework, model and guidelines that can be used by higher education institutions to evaluate and enhance their performances and better prepare students to effectively work in society.
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Unsustainable actions have resulted in the deterioration of the environment. Higher education institutions are social entities responsible for developing future leaders who have…
Abstract
Purpose
Unsustainable actions have resulted in the deterioration of the environment. Higher education institutions are social entities responsible for developing future leaders who have the skills and abilities to solve societal challenges. This study aims to develop a conceptual assessment model of environmental sustainability in higher education and apply the model to test the environmental sustainability level of a higher education institution.
Design/methodology/approach
The fuzzy logic method is used to develop the conceptual model, and a higher education institution in India was selected for evaluating the environmental sustainability level.
Findings
The fuzzy environmental sustainability index for the higher education institution selected for the study was computed as (3.58, 4.95, 6.33). The computed value identifies the institution as “environmentally sustainable”. The calculation of the fuzzy performance importance index further helped in identifying weak attributes that need improvement.
Research limitations/implications
The result of this study would help the management understand their current environmental sustainability level and take corrective measures to improve the weak attributes. It would also assist the institution in reworking its processes and practices.
Originality/value
This study has contributed to the literature of environmental sustainability assessment by creating a conceptual model for evaluating environmental sustainability in higher education. This model can be applied to any higher education institution.
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Marco Kalz, Jan van Bruggen, Bas Giesbers, Wim Waterink, Jannes Eshuis and Rob Koper
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first the paper aims to sketch the theoretical basis for the use of electronic portfolios for prior learning assessment; second it endeavours…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first the paper aims to sketch the theoretical basis for the use of electronic portfolios for prior learning assessment; second it endeavours to introduce latent semantic analysis (LSA) as a powerful method for the computation of semantic similarity between texts and a basis for a new observation link for prior learning assessment.
Design/methodology/approach
A short literature review about e‐assessment was conducted with the result that none of the reviews included new and innovative methods for the assessment of open responses and narrative of learners. On a theoretical basis the connection between e‐portfolio research and research about prior learning assessment is explained based on existing literature. After that, LSA is introduced and several examples from similar educational applications are provided. A model for prior learning assessment on the basis of LSA is presented. A case study at the Open University of The Netherlands is presented and preliminary results are discussed.
Findings
A first inspection of the results shows that the similarity measurement that is produced by the system can differentiate between learners who sent in different material and between the learning activities and chapters.
Originality/value
The paper is original because it combines research from natural language processing with very practical educational problems in higher education and technology‐enhanced learning. For faculty members the presented model and technology can help them in the assessment phase in an APL procedure. In addition, the presented model offers a dynamic method for reasoning about prior knowledge in adaptive e‐learning systems.
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Juan Yang, Xu Du, Jui-Long Hung and Chih-hsiung Tu
Critical thinking is considered important in psychological science because it enables students to make effective decisions and optimizes their performance. Aiming at the…
Abstract
Purpose
Critical thinking is considered important in psychological science because it enables students to make effective decisions and optimizes their performance. Aiming at the challenges and issues of understanding the student's critical thinking, the objective of this study is to analyze online discussion data through an advanced multi-feature fusion modeling (MFFM) approach for automatically and accurately understanding the student's critical thinking levels.
Design/methodology/approach
An advanced MFFM approach is proposed in this study. Specifically, with considering the time-series characteristic and the high correlations between adjacent words in discussion contents, the long short-term memory–convolutional neural network (LSTM-CNN) architecture is proposed to extract deep semantic features, and then these semantic features are combined with linguistic and psychological knowledge generated by the LIWC2015 tool as the inputs of full-connected layers to automatically and accurately predict students' critical thinking levels that are hidden in online discussion data.
Findings
A series of experiments with 94 students' 7,691 posts were conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The experimental results show that the proposed MFFM approach that combines two types of textual features outperforms baseline methods, and the semantic-based padding can further improve the prediction performance of MFFM. It can achieve 0.8205 overall accuracy and 0.6172 F1 score for the “high” category on the validation dataset. Furthermore, it is found that the semantic features extracted by LSTM-CNN are more powerful for identifying self-introduction or off-topic discussions, while the linguistic, as well as psychological features, can better distinguish the discussion posts with the highest critical thinking level.
Originality/value
With the support of the proposed MFFM approach, online teachers can conveniently and effectively understand the interaction quality of online discussions, which can support instructional decision-making to better promote the student's knowledge construction process and improve learning performance.
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Tsung-Hsien Kuo and Han-Kuang Tien
The content of training (art-based method) and instructional strategies (blended learning) can improve business school students' creativity and attempts to determine how training…
Abstract
Purpose
The content of training (art-based method) and instructional strategies (blended learning) can improve business school students' creativity and attempts to determine how training can be maintained using longitudinal tracking. The study aims to answer (1) whether the incorporation of art-based methods enhances the creativity of students compared to traditional face-to-face (F2F) teaching, and (2) whether such creative training and blended teaching methods have a higher transfer of training.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted a two-stage design (1) it adopted a 2 × 2 (with or without art-based methods * blended teaching or F2F teaching) between-subject design of experiments with 221 participants and (2) a one-year follow-up study was conducted (participants who were employed for 6 months to one year after graduation) with 187 participants and their directors.
Findings
The results showed that the inclusion of art-based methods in the creative training of students strengthens creative ability of the students; there were no significant differences between blended and traditional learning. The authors examined the effect of transferring creative training through a questionnaire analysis of participants and employers of the participants. Self-regulated and self-directed learning positively influence motivation to transfer, which positively influences creative performance.
Originality/value
The higher the level of self-regulated and self-directed learning of students, the more effective the transfer of creative training is over time.
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