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1 – 10 of over 38000Emmanuel Mogaji, Josue Kuika Watat, Sunday Adewale Olaleye and Dandison Ukpabi
Like many other organizations, universities are using social media to engage with their stakeholders as they have varying interests and commitments. This chapter focuses on…
Abstract
Like many other organizations, universities are using social media to engage with their stakeholders as they have varying interests and commitments. This chapter focuses on strategic communication and stakeholder engagement by UK universities on Twitter. It presents a descriptive study about their engagement on Twitter in terms of their followers, number of tweets, etc. In addition, it analyzes the tweets’ content to identify British universities’ communication strategies. Hence, the results revealed a thematic model in the form of an interrelated conceptual theory that comprises three strands of communication: (i) recruiting prospective students, (ii) retaining present students and staff, and (iii) reporting activities and media coverage. This contribution presents implications for university marketing communication managers who are involved in student recruitment and/or in managing relationships with stakeholders.
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This paper examines the varying experiences of quality amongst key stakeholders (those who have an interest in, an impact on or are users of) in faculty student administration in…
Abstract
This paper examines the varying experiences of quality amongst key stakeholders (those who have an interest in, an impact on or are users of) in faculty student administration in an Australian university and proposes a framework for understanding quality in this context. Data were obtained using a qualitative phenomenographic research approach and collected through 42 face‐to‐face interviews with key stakeholders (students, parents, administrative staff, academic staff, executive officers, domestic partners, offshore partners and a careers adviser). Data were categorised into eight conceptions which represent stakeholders' understanding of quality. The relationships between the conceptions are discussed and represented diagrammatically to form a new understanding of quality in faculty student administration.
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Jane Seale, Laura King, Mary Jorgensen, Alice Havel, Jennison Asuncion and Catherine Fichten
The purpose of this paper is to examine and critique current approaches of higher education (HE) community concerning stakeholder engagement in the development of information and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine and critique current approaches of higher education (HE) community concerning stakeholder engagement in the development of information and communications technology (ICT) related accessibility practice.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach taken to this examination is to draw on presentations, panel discussions and World Café reflections from an international symposium held in Montreal where researchers and practitioners debated two key questions as follows: have all the relevant stakeholders really been identified? Are there some stakeholders that the HE community has ignored? And what factors influence successfully distributed ownership of the accessibility mission within HE institutions?
Findings
A number of “new” internal and external stakeholders are identified and it is argued that if they are to be successfully engaged, effort needs to be invested in addressing power imbalances and developing opportunities for successful strategic silo-crossing.
Originality/value
The value of this paper is in critiquing the argument that all stakeholders in the development of accessible ICT in HE need to be involved, identifying a gap in the argument with respect to whether all relevant stakeholders have actually been engaged and offering insights into this omission might be rectified.
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Theres Konrad, Arnim Wiek and Matthias Barth
For professional sustainability work, graduates need to be able to work in teams and collaborate with stakeholders; in other words, they need to have developed interpersonal…
Abstract
Purpose
For professional sustainability work, graduates need to be able to work in teams and collaborate with stakeholders; in other words, they need to have developed interpersonal competence. There is growing evidence that project-based sustainability courses facilitate interpersonal competence development. However, research so far has focused on single case studies and on assessing learning outcomes. The purpose of this study is to deepen the understanding of how graduate students learn interpersonal competence in project-based sustainability courses.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts a multi-case study approach triangulating observations, semi-structured interviews and focus groups supported by Photovoice method. A comparison of three project-based sustainability courses in graduate programs at universities in the USA, Germany, Switzerland and Spain is conducted to gain generalizable insights on how interpersonal competence can be developed through project-based sustainability courses.
Findings
Receiving inputs, experiencing, reflecting and experimenting are four learning processes supportive of interpersonal competence development. Interpersonal attitudes seem to be mostly learned through a combination of experiencing and reflecting, followed by experimenting; not surprisingly, interpersonal knowledge is mostly developed through a combination of receiving inputs, experiencing and (collective) reflection; and interpersonal skills seem to be mostly learned through a combination of receiving inputs and experimenting, or, more directly, experiencing and experimenting.
Practical implications
These findings support the unique learning opportunities offered through project-based sustainability courses and can help instructors to better facilitate students’ development of interpersonal competence.
Originality/value
The value of this study is three-fold: (i) it provides a comprehensive picture of interpersonal competence, including attitudes, knowledge, and skills; (ii) it spells out specific teaching and learning processes; and (iii) it links these to specific interpersonal competence facets and components.
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Giustina Secundo, Gioconda Mele, Giuseppina Passiante and Francesco Albergo
The paper aims to contributes on the debates about University Idea Incubation by investigating the role and the engagement of different University's stakeholders in the process of…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to contributes on the debates about University Idea Incubation by investigating the role and the engagement of different University's stakeholders in the process of opportunity recognition in an entrepreneurship education program targeted at students with an interdisciplinary background.
Design/methodology/approach
Through a longitudinal case study methodology, the Contamination Lab at University of Salento (Lecce, Italy), the learning approaches and the knowledge process to create an entrepreneurial awareness, mindset and capability in students with different educational background are presented.
Findings
The findings demonstrates the crucial role of stakeholders' engagement for business idea presentation, open innovation challenge, contamination workshop on specialized topics, enterprise projects are important vehicle for effective students' business ideas and innovative projects development in a multidisciplinary environment. The close interaction among students, academia, companies and institutions creates a favourable environment that enables opportunity identification, idea generation through a deep contamination of knowledge, skills and experiences.
Research limitations/implications
Limitations include the need to generalise the results even if this limitation is typical of the case study methodology. Other research is necessary for an in-depth analysis in deep of the other Contamination Lab in Italy and to derive the “invariance traits” of this environment according to the features of the local entrepreneurial ecosystems.
Practical implications
Implications for practices include recommendations for designing innovative programs where the interactions between University-Institutions-Industry are realized.
Originality/value
A conceptual framework is proposed by defining all the entrepreneurial knowledge process and knowledge creation within the Contamination Lab, highlighting the contribution of the stakeholders in each phase and learning initiative of the program.
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Carla Oonk, Judith Gulikers, Perry den Brok and Martin Mulder
Sustainable development requires multiple stakeholders to work and learn across practices, in other words, it requires boundary crossing competence. To prepare students for their…
Abstract
Purpose
Sustainable development requires multiple stakeholders to work and learn across practices, in other words, it requires boundary crossing competence. To prepare students for their future sustainability professions, higher education should facilitate the development of boundary crossing competence in its curricula. This study aims to confirm whether boundary crossing learning can be stimulated by workshop-based support in multi-stakeholder projects.
Design/methodology/approach
This quasi-experimental intervention study (N = 122) investigates the effect of a series of supporting workshops on students’ boundary crossing learning in multi-stakeholder projects. The workshops allowed students to adopt four learning mechanisms (identification, coordination, reflection and transformation) theorised to stimulate learning across boundaries between practices. Students followed zero, one, or two workshops. By analysing the student learning reports, the study examines the effect of the workshop intervention on students’ self-efficacy for stakeholder collaboration, the number of reported student-stakeholder collaborative activities and the reported boundary crossing learning mechanisms.
Findings
The results show that a series of two workshops increase the number of reported collaborative activities and activates the students’ boundary crossing learning in terms of reflection and transformation.
Research limitations/implications
These findings support the evidence-based design of multi-stakeholder learning environments for sustainable development and contribute to the body of knowledge regarding learning across practices.
Originality/value
Boundary crossing competence receives increasing attention as an asset for sustainable development. The added value of this study lies in its confirmation that the boundary crossing theory can be translated into directed educational support that can stimulate students’ boundary crossing learning.
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Diana Adela Martin, Christian Herzog, Kyriaki Papageorgiou and Gunter Bombaerts
The chapter presents the implementation of ethics education via challenge-based learning (CBL) in three European settings. At TU Eindhoven (the Netherlands), a mandatory…
Abstract
The chapter presents the implementation of ethics education via challenge-based learning (CBL) in three European settings. At TU Eindhoven (the Netherlands), a mandatory first-year User, Society, and Enterprise course on the ethics and history of technology offers a CBL alternative on ethics and data analytics in collaboration with internal student and research teams. The University of Lübeck (Germany) initiated the project CREATE – Challenge-based Learning for Robotics Students by Engaging Start-Ups in Technology Ethics, which enables 60 students in Robotics and Autonomous Systems to integrate ethical and societal considerations into technological development processes, in cooperation with start-ups from a local accelerator. In Spain, CBI-Fusion Point brings together 40 students from business and law (ESADE), engineering and technology (Polytechnic University of Catalonia), and design (IED Barcelona Design University) for an innovation course focused on the application of CERN-developed technologies to real-world problems. The chapter documents the process of setting up three CBL courses that engage students with grand societal topics which require the integration of ethical concerns from the design stage of technological development. The authors also reflect on the challenges of teaching ethics via CBL and the lessons they learned by delivering experiential learning activities rooted in real-life challenges and contexts marked by high epistemic uncertainty. The contribution reflects the transition to remote teaching and presents strategies employed to enhance online communication and collaboration. The chapter thus provides guidance for instructors interested in teaching ethics via CBL and recommends further lines for action and research.
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Kelly Franklin, Sarah J. Halvorson and Fletcher Brown
This paper aims to investigate the impacts of service learning (SL) on teaching sustainability competencies in an undergraduate tourism program at Bamyan University, Afghanistan…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the impacts of service learning (SL) on teaching sustainability competencies in an undergraduate tourism program at Bamyan University, Afghanistan. This study reports on tourism students’ experiences in the SL course which taught five key sustainability competencies (collaboration, values thinking, action-oriented, systems thinking and integrated problem-solving).
Design/methodology/approach
This paper assessed students’ perceptions of their sustainability competencies gained during the implementation of the course in 2016 and 2017 through focus groups, reflective essays and participant observation.
Findings
The results demonstrate how the SL experience led students to self-discovery, strong conceptualizations of sustainability and working relationships with community stakeholders.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to assess the impacts of a SL course in Afghanistan. The analysis provides valuable information for developing effective higher education programs, relationships of trust between students and community stakeholders and the empowerment of students to contribute to local solutions which serve a role in stabilization efforts in conflict-affected contexts.
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This article outlines the work of the PORTAL (Presenting natiOnal Resources To Audiences Locally) project. The recently published Stakeholder Requirements for Institutional Portals…
Abstract
This article outlines the work of the PORTAL (Presenting natiOnal Resources To Audiences Locally) project. The recently published Stakeholder Requirements for Institutional Portals report involved consultation with over 600 stakeholders from across the higher and further education community and provides a valuable view of stakeholders’ perceptions of institutional portals and their features. This article will focus on the needs and views of students, a key stakeholder group in institutional portal deployments. The article will look at the key areas of resource discovery, communication, course administration and institutional information as well as students’ views of institutional portals generally. The article includes tables illustrating the popularity of various features amongst student groups.
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