The Implementation of e-Learning in Higher Education in the United Kingdom: The Road Ahead

The quality assurance bodies for higher education in the United Kingdom, particularly HEFCE and QAA, have concluded that the information and communication technologies can serve as powerful stimuli for improving the three principal instructional functions in higher education institutions: teaching, learning, and assessment. Thus, quality ratings will increasingly be influenced by staff competence in the use of these technologies and, as a result, institutions must make efforts to generalize their use. HEFCE is setting up a Learning and Teaching Support Network and a Generic Learning and Teaching Centre intended to provide subject-based support for the sharing among higher education institutions of innovation and good practice. The Council is also proposing to set up an e-University that would operate commercially as a clearing-house, outsourcing many of its activities to a core of selected campus universities. Many view this proposal as a threat to traditional universities.     

英国RAE与我国CDR之比较

英国RAE与我国CDR同为评估机构为促进高等教育质量而实施的评估,均以学科为评估对象,对高校的科研质量进行的评估活动。但这两种评估活动在实施主体、指标体系、运行程序等方面均有很大差异。英国的高等教育质量评估工作在国际上享有盛誉,将其与我国的学科评估进行对比,探寻差异,可以为我国高等教育学科评估工作的完善提供借鉴。     

Strength,Weakness, Opportunity,Threat (SWOT) Analysis of the Adaptations to Anatomical Education in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland in Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic has driven the fastest changes to higher education across the globe, necessitated by social distancing measures preventing face-to-face teaching. This has led to an almost immediate switch to distance learning by higher education institutions. Anatomy faces some unique challenges. Intrinsically, anatomy is a three-dimensional subject that requires a sound understanding of the relationships between structures, often achieved by the study of human cadaveric material, models, and virtual resources. This study sought to identify the approaches taken in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland to deliver anatomical education through online means. Data were collected from 14 different universities in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland and compared adopting a thematic analysis approach. Once themes were generated, they were collectively brought together using a strength, weakness, opportunity, threat (SWOT) analysis. Key themes included the opportunity to develop new online resources and the chance to engage in new academic collaborations. Academics frequently mentioned the challenge that time constrains could place on the quality and effectiveness of these resources; especially as in many cases the aim of these resources was to compensate for a lack of exposure to cadaveric exposure. Comparisons of the actions taken by multiple higher education institutions reveal the ways that academics have tried to balance this demand. Discussions will facilitate decisions being made by higher education institutions regarding adapting the curriculum and assessment methods in anatomy.     

英国高等教育的特点及质量评估体系

本文介绍了英国高等院校的布局和高等教育的特点、学制体系和课程多样性,阐述了英国高等教育国际化特征及其生源组成、经费来源和教学科研质量评估体系。     

How Different Are Higher Education Institutions in the UK,US and Australia? The Significance of Government Involvement

Governments in the UK and many other countries have long sought to promote the diversity of their higher education institutions. However, diversity is hard to define, harder to measure and even more difficult to compare between countries. Most empirical analyses of the diversity of higher education systems use categorical variables, which shape the extent of diversity found. This study examines continuous variables of institutions’ enrolment size and proportions of postgraduate, fulltime and international students to find the extent of variation amongst doctoral granting and all higher education institutions in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia. The study finds that there is less variety amongst all higher education institutions in the United Kingdom than in Australia, which in turn has much less variety than the United States. The paper argues that the extent of government involvement in higher education is not so important for institutional variety as the form that it takes. More tentatively, the paper suggests that the more limited the range of institutions for which government funding is available the stronger government involvement is needed to have variety among the limited range of institutions for which government financial support is available.     

Assessing the Extent of Use of Part-time Teachers in British Higher Education: Problems and Issues in Enumerating a Flexible Labour Force

This article first describes the several types of part-time teacher in higher education in the United Kingdom and laments the paucity of data about them. It discusses how the Higher Education Statistics Agency [HESA] was founded and the extent of its coverage of part-time academic staff, focusing specifically upon how the criterion for submission of an individual staff record was developed and the implications of this criterion for enumerating the numbers and use of part-time teachers. Then are presented approximate survey-derived estimates of the numbers of various types of part-time teacher in United Kingdom higher education. There may be as many as 75,000 teaching positions, and probably more, in six particular categories of part-time teacher and it is suggested that perhaps 50,000 of the persons performing this work are not individually enumerated by HESA. Various reasons are suggested why many institutions might have been reluctant to compile full data on their part-time teaching staff, before a conclusion is given which stresses how contemporary developments in employment law are making it increasingly incumbent upon institutions to have adequate data on all their teaching staff, including those employed on different types of part-time basis.     

Ten years of external quality audit in Australia: evaluating its effectiveness and success

External quality audits are now being used in universities across the world to improve quality assurance, accountability for quality education and transparency of public funding of higher education. Some countries such as Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark have had external quality audits for more than a decade but there has been limited research as to their impact. This study analyses the extent to which external audits in Australia have improved quality assurance in universities over the past 10 years. The analysis is based on discussions with 40 participants in a workshop on the effectiveness of audits and the review of 60 external quality audit reports between 2001 and December 2010. The research found that while external audits have led to an improvement in systems and processes in Australian universities, they have not necessarily improved the student experience. This lack of impact on the student experience in Australia is similar to other countries, according to the literature review. This study is timely in its analysis on the effectiveness of the current improvement-led audits, as government in Australia is in the process of renewing quality assurance arrangements of higher education institutions with a focus on standards and outcomes.     

Changing localities for teacher training: the potential impact on professional formation and the university sector response

Early in its period of office the new United Kingdom coalition government produced an Education White Paper containing potentially devastating news for higher education training institutions in England and Wales. Drawing on research papers and policy documents, this article takes an historic approach to map the changing face of teacher training over the past 30 years. A variety of approaches to the training of teachers are examined in terms of the partnership arrangements each model espouses and the training approaches that each locality arrangement represents. A small-scale research project maps early responses from higher education institutions as they consider the implications of new policies. Finally, a future scenario where higher education institutions struggle for survival as meaningful providers of teacher education is postulated.     

Colonised by quality? Teacher identities in a research-led institution

This article explores the impact of quality assurance and enhancement initiatives on teacher identities in higher education. Data from an interview-based study of a research-led institution in the United Kingdom are drawn upon to consider the implications of quality – for example, whether it has captured the inner assumptive worlds of higher educators (and supplanted their own understandings of quality) or whether it has opened up new subject positions and possibilities for change. I focus on a particular group of people within the article – those who have demonstrated an interest in higher education teaching by participating in professional development programmes. Such programmes have proliferated in the light of the quality movement whilst offering exposure to ‘educationalist’ discourses. Contextualising the work through previous critical higher education research, I consider the group’s perceptions of quality initiatives and the construction of their teaching identities within a research-led institution.     

The Pedagogical Qualification of the Academic Teaching Staff and the Quality of Teaching and Learning

The author takes note of the relative unpopularity of pedagogical and in‐service training for university teachers, particularly in the German‐speaking university world, and asks himself why this is the case. The reason, he suggests, has to do with the traditional view that what counts in universities is research, teaching being a secondary preoccupation of the teaching staff. Yet, public opinion as well as selected European higher education institutions and administrations have mounted efforts to make pedagogical training a standard part of the required qualifications of university teaching staff members. Following a survey of European efforts, particularly in the United Kingdom and in Germany, to interest university teachers in university‐level pedagogy, the author presents what a polling of teachers and students in Germany consider to be good teaching practices. He urges all teaching staff members to adopt these practices.     

AN OVERVIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION IN A SAMPLE OF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO PROVISIONS OF DISTANCE TEACHING

This article gives an overview of current provisions for environmental education in the context of distance education programmes in a sample of European countries. The methodology, that was employed by means of a postal survey aimed at identifying current trends in environmental education in relation to distance teaching, is described. The sample surveyed consisted of approximately 500 higher education institutions, members of the Association of European Universities (CRE), over 200 of which had signed the CRE‐Copernicus Universities Charter on Sustainable Development. The article presents a regional summary of the research findings that formed part of a larger enquiry into the status of environmental education in European countries, Commonwealth countries, and individual countries such as the United Kingdom and Pakistan.     

EUROPEAN COLLABORATION IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

The article briefly describes the way in which an academic department in a major urban polytechnic in the United Kingdom established a study and research link with a similar departmental a major French university. This first link was a fruitful one which gave rise to other links with other French institutions. The article concludes with a short list of do's and don't's with regard to the establishment of international student exchange and research links among institutions of higher education.     

Teachers’ beliefs and intentions concerning teaching in higher education

A questionnaire measuring nine different aspects of teachers’ beliefs and intentions concerning teaching in higher education was distributed to teachers at four institutions in the United Kingdom, yielding 638 complete sets of responses. There was a high degree of overlap between the participants’ scores on the subscales measuring beliefs and intentions, and analyses of both sets of scores yielded two factors reflecting an orientation towards learning facilitation and an orientation towards knowledge transmission. However, teachers’ intentions were more orientated towards knowledge transmission than were their beliefs, and problem solving was associated with beliefs based on learning facilitation but with intentions based on knowledge transmission. Differences in teachers’ intentions across different disciplines and between men and women seemed to result from different conceptions of teaching, whereas differences in teachers’ intentions across different institutions and between teachers with different levels of teaching experience seemed to result from contextual factors. Teaching intentions thus reflect a compromise between teachers’ conceptions of teaching and their academic and social contexts     

借鉴英国开放大学经验 提高我国网络高等教育质量

英国开放大学是当今世界远程教育的典范。在教材建设、学习支持服务、教育技术研究和技术培训以及专职教师队伍建设方面借鉴英国开放大学经验将对提高我国网络高等教育的质量有重大意义。     

高职教学质量监控体系中学生主体作用的研究——以北京工业职业技术学院的实施为研究对象

全面提高教学质量,关系着高职院校的生存与发展。学生是教学活动的主体,在学校教学质量监控与评价工作中,充分发挥学生的主体作用,是保证其有效性、真实性和可操作性的重要因素之一。研究如何在高职教学质量监控体系中发挥学生的主体作用具有重要的现实意义,也是教育者和管理者必须认真思考的问题。     

Student assessment of teaching in higher education

Plans to introduce campus-wide assessments of college or university teaching which are largely dependent on student ratings are seen as a threat to academic freedom in those institutions with little or no experience of this form of evaluation. While regular student evaluations of teaching are very common in North America, their introduction is only now being considered in colleges and universities in a number of other countries. Research on the reliability and validity of student ratings indicate that they are capable of providing valuable information about the quality of teaching. Depending on the survey used, this type of evaluation may be used to provide evidence of teaching ability to staffing committees or to suggest ways of improving teaching. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for higher education institutions which are considering the regular assessment of all teachers by their students.     

英国教育实习的特点及现实启示

教育实习是教师教育的一个重要环节,是联系理论与实践的纽带,是衡量高师学校教育教学质量的重要标准,也是探索教师教育改革,促进教师专业化发展的有效途径。教育实习的目标、内容、实施形式、管理及考核评估等都直接影响着教师教育的质量。目前,我国的教育实习不断完善,但仍然存在一些问题,英国是世界上教师教育比较发达的国家,探讨和分析英国以中小学为基地的教育实习模式,对我国教育实习的改革和发展具有一定的借鉴意义。     

The changing relationship between institutional governance and management in the United Kingdom: A Scottish higher education funding council perspective

Abstract

The changing relationship between institutional governance and management in the United Kingdom arising from the second report of the committee on standards in public life, the United Kingdom National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, and from significant increased government expenditure on higher education is examined. The framework of accountability within which higher education institutions operate is related to these reports. The Scottish Higher Education Funding Council's (SHEFC) perspective of the role of the governing body is examined and contrasted with Bargh, Scott and Smith's research on governing bodies. Both SHEFC's perspective and Bargh et al.’s research are also contrasted with, and related to, a number of National Audit Office (NAO) reports and also to Professor Sizer's investigation and the NAO report into allegations of misconduct at Glasgow Caledonian University (1998). Finally, the paper draws conclusions on the changing relationship between governing bodies and managements, on the requirement on governing bodies to demonstrate that they are appropriately constituted and operate effectively as corporate bodies, and on how these are reflected in the SHEFC code of good practice and good practice benchmarks.     

Being highly internationalised strengthens your reputation: an empirical investigation of top higher education institutions

In an educational context characterised by globalisation, reputation constitutes a crucial issue for today’s higher education institutions. Internationalisation of higher education is often seen as a potential response to globalisation and, consequently, higher education has become increasingly internationalised during the past decade. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between internationalisation and reputation in top higher education institutions. Results reveal that internationalisation positively influences a university’s reputation but also moderates the relationship between the institution’s reputation and its institutional performance with regard to research quality, teaching quality and graduate employability.     

Industrial Collaboration in Engineering Education in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom engineering education as it was set-up was more divorced from industry it served than in, for example, Germany and France. During the last three decades some efforts have been made to achieve a partnership between industry and the institutions of higher education in the education and training of engineers. Up till a few decades ago much of engineering research in the universities was in the field of engineering science, but now more engineering research is being carried-out in co-operation with industry and it is realised that the advantages greatly outweigh the problems it poses. University engineering departments have also realised that they have a contribution to make in providing advisory services for industry and short post-experience courses for engineers in industry.