Culture and quality in higher education

The growth in quality assurance worldwide raises questions about what higher education should want from its quality programmes. The paper constructs a typology of quality assurance systems (drawing a distinction between the source of the judgement and the purpose of the process) and evaluates the alternatives. It argues that Total Quality strategies are the best suited to the higher education purpose but demonstrates that there are deep, often conflicting, cultural processes that can frustrate its introduction.     

推进异地高考——中国高等教育改革的突破口

推进异地高考成为今年的热门话题,它涉及大量流动人口随迁子女升学这一现实性问题。本文分析了推进异地高考面临的三点阻力因素和相应的解决对策;同时推导出三条实现异地高考的方法,它们可能带来更为公平的高考招生录取结果。     

高职院校学生素质教育刍议

在经济飞速发展的当今,高职院校学生教育管理过程中出现了专业教育与素质教育失衡、学生信仰理念不成熟、传统教育与时尚热点摩擦等方面的问题。高职院校学生工作管理应切实关注素质教育。做出适应社会需求、学生发展的切实可行的解决办法。     

Survey of academic programs for disadvantaged students in higher education

In the 1960's many colleges and universities developed programs for disadvantaged students in higher education. Almost all programs were involved to a certain extent with four different areas: basic skills development, affective objectives, use of technological aids, and evaluation of students.In order to determine the specific policies and practices in the academic programs now being implemented for the disadvantaged student, a questionnaire was designed and mailed to 262 colleges and universities. The questionnaire listed 14 academic program statements and asked the respondents to what extent the statements applied to their particular programs.The respondents indicated that teaching relationships with minority groups must be highly personal for effective learning to take place. They recognized the importance of communication skills but also felt that such virtues as self-discipline and self-respect were equally important as academic skills. In addition, most respondents felt their students did not need social skills (such as the ability to relate to fellow students) more than communication skills. Reading machines, tape recorders, computer-assisted instruction, and other technological aids tended not to be used in most programs. Compensatory work seldom carried college credit. Most programs did not have a pass-no-pass system for academic assessments, and almost no programs gave students financial incentives for grades or class attendance.     

Access and perceived ICT usability among students with disabilities attending higher education institutions

An increasing number of students with disabilities are attending higher education. These students might face various difficulties coping with academic skills and with learning methods compared to students without disabilities. Integrating information and communication technologies (ICTs) in academic studies may be effective and constructive for students with and without various disabilities, as ICTs can provide students with adaptive ways to compensate for disabilities and enable them to improve learning. The present study examined students’ knowledge of and accessibility to ICTs and it examined students’ perceptions of the ICTs used by professors teaching in a face-to-face traditional postsecondary educational institute (in Canada) and a distance/blended learning higher education institute (in Israel). The sample included 309 Canadian students and 963 Israeli students who completed questionnaires regarding ICT usage, accessibility, and perceived use by professors. Findings reveal that Israeli students reported higher use and greater accessibility of ICTs and they also reported higher use of ICTs by professors. For both groups of students – those with and without LD/ADHD - accessibility to ICTs was predicted by self-reported knowledge and use of ICTs, professors’ ICT use, gender and nationality. The study’s findings and its implications are likely to be important for promoting access to ICTs for students with and without disabilities in both the traditional higher education modality and in distance/ blended learning contexts.     

Promoting intergenerational learning in higher education: older adult perspectives on course auditing

ABSTRACT

As the population ages, colleges and universities have opportunities to promote intergenerational learning by inviting lifelong learners to engage with students in the classroom. This article outlines an initiative to enroll older adults as auditors and to describe their experiences. Thirty of 40 older adult auditors completed a hard-copy survey administered in 2017 (75% response rate). Results indicate that auditors were motivated to enroll in a college course due to the self-satisfaction of learning, subject of the course, and time of course offering. Over half described completing course assignments and a majority accessed content on Blackboard at least once per week. Older adults reported engaging with students in and out of the classroom and described the benefits of intergenerational engagement as learning about younger adults’ perspectives and the reciprocity of learning and mutual respect between generations. Suggestions for improvement relate to offering more courses for auditing and greater assistance with course technology. Implications for promoting this type of lifelong learning initiative are discussed.     

Benchmarks and quality assurance for online course development in higher education

As online education has entered the main stream of the U.S. higher education, quality assurance in online course development has become a critical topic in distance education. This short article summarizes the major benchmarks related to online course development, listing and comparing the benchmarks of the National Education Association （NEA）, the benchmarks of the American Distance Education Consortium （ADEC）, the benchmarks of the American Federation of Teachers, and the benchmarks of the Quality Matters project. In doing so the author hopes to promote awareness of and commitment to quality assurance in online education.     

高职高专院校医学生人文素质培养模式探究

人文素质泛指人们在人文方面所具有的综合素质和所达到的程度,是人最基本的素质。当前,我国高职高专生,尤其是医学生的人文素质培养让人担忧,很难适应现代社会对人全面素质的要求。从医学生的特点出发,做好人文素质培养工作要与当今的时代要求相结合,要与校园文化建设相结合,要与专业教育相结合,这就要求我们对医学生人文素质培养的模式进行研究,进一步明确目标、提出要求、优化方法,全面提高专科学生的人文素质。     

Institutional lifecycles in British higher education

Summary The twentieth century has witnessed exponential growth in the provision of higher education and this growth accelerates the dynamic of institutional change. The change structures discussed in the present paper can be summarized in a cyclical model of development as presented in Figure 8. Long-term development along familiar, accustomed lines is no longer the universal or ‘normal’ expectation — if indeed it ever was. Morphological change is probable, though the direction of that change may take time to clarify. One thing seems clear: the political and economic pressures on universities are much more intense now than they have ever been and these pressures can be expected to cause metamorphoses, mutations, births and deaths amongst our ‘population’ of higher education institutions.     

论高等教育大众化跨越式发展中的"数字化素质教育"

“数字化素质教育”是高等教育大众化跨越式发展中的最重要的发展现象。“学会数字化生存”的理念、“学会数字化学习”的目标和“学会数字化协作”的模式是“数字化素质教育”的三大要务,也是信息社会“最适应变化者”的“生存教育”要务。“数字化素质教育”既是高等教育大众化跨越式发展的标志,又是新一轮发展的基础,谁占领“数字化素质教育”的制高点,谁就是下一轮高等教育大众化跨越式发展的旗手。对“数字化素质教育”的研究和探索,为实践新一轮高等教育大众化从“规模、质量、效益”——发展型的“发展创新”模式向“比较、创新、统筹”——可持续发展型的“概念创新”模式转变,必将展现更为广阔的前景。     

浅谈现代礼仪课程在大学生素质教育中的应用

素质教育的理念是随着我国改革开放而提出来的一种教育模式,从某种意义上来说,素质教育是传统应试教育的一种延伸,在当前经济发展的背景下,应试教育由于主要培养学生的理论知识水平,具有很大的局限性,要想从本质上改变这种情况,必须培养学生的综合素质,本文通过研究素质教育的理念和特点等,对现代礼仪课程在大学生素质教育中的应用进行了具体的分析。     

Survey research in higher education

Although textbooks on educational research give only scant attention to survey research methodology, its extensive use in education provides a strong rationale for improving the preparation of educational researchers in effectively applying survey methods. This study reviews methods for dealing with nonresponse bias, the primary problem presented by survey methods. It also provides an updated review of the literature of studies investigating the effectiveness of incentives to increase survey response rates. We hypothesized that a reanalysis of reviewed studies, using a linear trend test, would resolve the inconsistencies found regarding the effectiveness of incentives to increase response rates. The results of the reanalysis and guidelines for educational researchers in systematically selecting and applying incentives to increase response rates are discussed.     

高等教育质量管理的新趋势及我国的选择

质量管理是高等教育质量保障的重要组成部分.近年来在普遍建立专门的质量评估机构、实施内部评估与外部认证相结合的基础上,高等教育质量管理又呈现出"绩效化"、"元评估"、"从技术到文化"以及"从监控到管理"四个新的发展趋势.目前我国高等教育质量管理还处在发展中,专门的质量评估机构缺乏应有的独立自治性,高校内部质量管理体系又严重缺乏,与此同时我国高等教育质量却又危机重重.在此背景下,唯有顺应高等教育质量管理的新趋势,借鉴发达国家的成功经验,才能获得"后发优势",从而实现我国高等教育从精英到大众的成功转型.     

提高高校德育课教学质量的思考

德育课是高校课程的重要组成部分，德育是培养“四有”新人不可或缺的环节。长期以来，高校德育课成效不够理想。如何提高德育课教学质量，是德育教育工作所面临和必须解决的问题。当前德育课教学难度大的原因主要来自学生、教师、学校和课程等四个方面。拙仅从学校和教师两方面提出高校管理要从意识、体制、内容和方法上给予德育课以足够的重视；高校德育工作在进行德育教育过程中要始终坚持正确的思想导向，不断改进和完善教学的方式方法，不断提高理论水平和加强自身修养。     

Measuring teaching quality in higher education: assessing selection bias in course evaluations

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are widely used to measure teaching quality in higher education and compare it across different courses, teachers, departments and institutions. Indeed, SETs are of increasing importance for teacher promotion decisions, student course selection, as well as for auditing practices demonstrating institutional performance. However, survey response is typically low, rendering these uses unwarranted if students who respond to the evaluation are not randomly selected along observed and unobserved dimensions. This paper is the first to fully quantify this problem by analyzing the direction and size of selection bias resulting from both observed and unobserved characteristics for over 3000 courses taught in a large European university. We find that course evaluations are upward biased, and that correcting for selection bias has non-negligible effects on the average evaluation score and on the evaluation-based ranking of courses. Moreover, this bias mostly derives from selection on unobserved characteristics, implying that correcting evaluation scores for observed factors such as student grades does not solve the problem. However, we find that adjusting for selection only has small impacts on the measured effects of observables on SETs, validating a large related literature which considers the observable determinants of evaluation scores without correcting for selection bias.     

英国私立高等教育机构类型及其质量保障体系探析

近年来,英国私立高等教育迅速发展,为英国高等教育规模扩张做出了巨大贡献.通过对英国私立高等教育机构类型的梳理和对其质量保障体系的分析,挖掘英国私立高等教育发展的优缺点,为我国私立高等教育发展提供有益借鉴.     

Gender and higher education in different national spaces: Female Palestinian students attending Israeli and Jordanian universities

This study examines the higher education experience among Palestinian Arab females in two national spaces and seeks to determine whether studying at an Arab institution of higher learning in a nearby Arab country can alleviate the emotional and economic difficulties that affect Palestinian women at Israeli universities. What can institutions of higher learning in Israel learn or derive from the proposed model to relieve the alienation and exclusion that their female Palestinian students experience? The study will compare two geographically distinct groups of women students. The first is a group of Palestinian women who attend university in Jordan, while the second consists of Palestinian women of Bedouin origin from southern Israel who study in the Jewish Israeli cultural space. The study seeks to shed light on the experience of Muslim students in Western and Muslim universities.     

创业教育在中国高等教育中的发展走向

在大学生创业活动发展的同时,有关创业教育的研究越来越受到社会各方面的重视与关注,各高校也开始着手进行创业教育的尝试.创业教育必将成为今后高校教育的重中之重.     

Special needs students in higher education

The topic in this paper is how former special needs students with academic competence from upper secondary school succeed in education on a higher level. The study concentrates on students who at their start in upper secondary education were registered with problems of concentration, difficulties in reading, writing or mathematics. The main part of this paper will base on qualitative interviews with nine former special needs students. Seven out of the nine informants were registered with reading and writing difficulties. However, it is also possible to compare these informants with longitudinal data from a larger group of students who have been followed prospectively since spring 1996. Theoretically the study is based on life course research with special emphasis on social transitions. In transitional processes between different educational arenas gatekeepers＇often play important roles. This study will examine how such gatekeepers, e.g. teachers, may facilitate or obstruct these transitions for a vulnerable group like former special needs students.