Action In Higher Education Research Articles

Selecting the Best K Features for Predicting Student Participation in Generic Competency Development Activities in Higher Education

Generic competency (GC) is an essential but often overlooked aspect of developing students in higher education. While there is much research about using technologies to develop discipline- specific skills for students, the use of technologies in GC development is insufficient. In particular, more research is needed on using technologies to predict student participation in GC development activities (GCDAs). Machine learning (ML) can use student characteristics, known as features, to predict their involvement in GCDAs. However, too many features will slow down the prediction process and reduce the ability to pinpoint the best features for prediction. This study explored an effective way to identify the minimal number of features essential for predicting student participation in GCDAs. The findings help educators develop recommendation systems to help students select the most beneficial GCDA for their holistic development. We collected 98 features from 9570 students from a community college. Then, we applied the Principal Component Analysis and SelectKBest algorithms to reduce the number of features from 98 to 8. Finally, we compared the accuracy of predictions using KNN and ANN based on the all-feature dataset with those based on the reduced-feature dataset. The results showed that the reduced-feature dataset maintained good prediction accuracy and enabled the educator to recommend the GCDAs to students. The findings could drive further research and development in applying machine learning technologies to enhance the recommendations for GCDAs for higher-education students.

Immediate and long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on South African higher education

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the higher education sector significantly. It forced the stakeholders to do new things and brought many innovations to educational activities. As the pandemic hit the shores of many countries, among other things and sectors, education activities were disrupted. Many, not well-advanced universities in terms of technology and learning management systems (LMS) embarked on a forced recess, using the period to put online education platforms in place. The advanced universities immediately migrated contact teaching and learning to online platforms. This paper aimed to investigate the immediate effects that the pandemic has on South Africa’s higher education systems in terms of how both lecturers and students were made to use new technologies/tools, how the tools enhanced teaching and learning, how assessments transformed due to the pandemic, and if some of the interventions employed during the pandemic will find usefulness when the pandemic has finally retreated. In this study, universities that are offering engineering degrees in South Africa are used as a case study, and data were obtained from both engineering students and engineering lecturers at these universities through qualitative (survey with open-ended questions) together with quantitative (surveys with closed-ended questions) research methods. The study shows that higher education activities cannot go back to the way they were before the pandemic. The study brings to light that some old techniques will be combined with some innovations employed during the pandemic to ensure effectiveness and greater throughputs in the higher education systems going forward.
 Received: 2 December 2021Accepted: 1 August 2023

Designing a virtual reality-support for the thesis supervision meetings: A case of a Sino-British international university in China

Thesis supervision is a crucial teaching activity in higher education that plays a vital role in assisting students in completing their studies. The outbreak of COVID-19 has necessitated the transitionto remote, synchronous interactions for supervising academic papers. However, existing tools for conducting these remote sessions often fall short of meeting the requirements of both teachers and students. This paper focuses on an investigation into the utilization of virtual reality (VR) technology for conducting remote thesis supervision meetings at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), a Sino-British institution located in Suzhou, China. Through a year-long qualitative inquiry involving two teachers and five students who participated in the project both in Liverpool and Suzhou, this research examines how actual collaborative work is conducted during remote supervision via a research-developed tool. The results of this study emphasize the need for improvements in the current design to better align with the practical requirements of teachers and students during such meetings. Furthermore, this research provides insights into the design considerations for VR applications tailored to specific use cases and offers a set of implementation details to guide the development of VR-based remote collaboration tools for thesis supervision meetings.

Teachers’ Beliefs and Actions on affective responses during music listening activities in higher education in China

Music listening is very important in all stages of music learning. Affective response and cognition take place simultaneously during the music-listening process. However, there is a paucity of research on how university music teachers deal with the issues of involving the affective responses of students in listening. This study employed a questionnaire survey to investigate the current situation of teaching beliefs and actions of music academics towards affective responses while listening to music in China. The views of 160 music university teachers recruited from 15 different universities have been surveyed. The questionnaire was designed based on the concept of music teaching and learning with an acceptable reliability of K=0.58. The survey data identified the potential correlation between the teacher’s beliefs and their actions (r=0.67). Moreover, the possible correlation between several predictors associated with the teachers (gender, educational degree, teaching experience and the type of university, and so on) also have been investigated. The results of this study revealed that around 90% of respondents agreed that affective responses can be enhanced music cognition during the teaching process. The relationship between teachers’ beliefs and actions is found to be positive but not linear related. In addition, it was found that the teacher’s knowledge of effective pedagogical responses during music listening has the potential to broaden the scope of their teaching.

Harnessing Instagram® for collaborative learning in higher education

ABSTRACT This research proposes a methodological approach to using the social network Instagram® as a tool for collaborative e-learning activities in higher education. Collaborative e-learning activities are conducted on Instagram® through challenges and quizzes. The main aim of these activities is to encourage students’ creativity, motivation for learning, and collaboration through mutual interaction in assessing responses to challenges. The collected data were analyzed using social network analysis methods. The results showed students’ positive attitudes towards e-learning on social networks and readiness to use Instagram® for collaborative e-learning. The results further showed that social network analysis could provide teachers with valuable information about the students’ interactions and group dynamics, allow teachers to identify groups of students, and adapt teaching and learning strategies accordingly.

What evidence-based learning activities help students acquire knowledge, correct confidence in their own knowledge, and accurate self-assessment?

The current study examines the development of higher education students' knowledge, correct confidence in their own knowledge, and accuracy of self-assessment over one semester and if the use of evidence-based learning activities (such as practice testing) is associated with these outcomes. The present study assessed N = 285 university students' use of learning activities, their knowledge, correct confidence, and accuracy of self-assessment five times over the course of a semester in a lecture course. All learning outcomes improved and were explained by learning activity use beyond students' prior knowledge, prior achievement and motivation. Latent profile analyses distinguished five subgroups of students regarding the frequency and combination of learning activity use. Results indicate that students benefitted most from using multiple activities. The study provides evidence that in a realistic learning setting several learning activities contribute to students' knowledge, correct confidence, and accuracy of self-assessment gains. Educational relevance statementThe study identifies positive changes in various learning outcomes, i.e., knowledge, correct confidence, and accuracy, over the course of a semester in a cohort of university students. It also examines students' learning behavior with a person-centered approach and if students learning behavior adds to the explanation of learning outcomes. The results support the benefits of engaging in many different learning activities beyond individual learning prerequisites. The study adds to current research by combining the study of multiple learning activities in a lecture course and the longitudinal investigation of multiple learning outcomes. The study further reinforces the importance of providing evidence-based activities in higher education.

Academic Discourse Socialization Through Oral Activities in Higher Education: A Systematic Review

Despite several attempts made to analyze students’ socialization into academic discourse in relevant reviews, we still lack a topical study providing an overview of how students are apprenticed into academic communities through oral activities at post-secondary institutions. This study aims at contributing to a comprehensive overview of both theoretical and empirical studies in the field of academic discourse socialization (ADS). A systematic review approach was adopted due to the qualitative and quantitative research design and connections between theory and evidence. The material search of ADS literature published between 2000 and 2022 resulted in 72 studies in total. While the synthesis of theoretical studies reveal the extant definitions, categorization of characteristics and theoretical orientations, the empirical study findings compare differences in participants and contexts, research approaches, communication events, and academic outcomes. This review also discusses major areas of research concerning ADS, mainly types of socialization agents, students’ feedback, learners’ identity construction, and assessment of consequences of ADS. With limitations concluded, the review encourages further focused investigation into micro-macro connections, application of digital technologies, a wider range of participants, disciplines and contexts, multiple types of oral activities and perspectives, learners’ linguistic production as well as correlation of oral and written texts, and joint efforts from multiple sides.

Profiling support in literacy development: Use of natural language processing to identify learning needs in higher education

Reading and writing are core activities in higher education, by means of which students learn to participate in specialized discourses. Although there is consensus on the conceptualization of reading comprehension, its measurement, and development, the same is not true for written expression. Writing complexity has been found to improve with schooling, but there are ample differences between literacy practices at school and at the university that require extra attention in diagnosing students’ compositions. The present study set out to test a natural language processing tool to build domain profiles of writing complexity in first-year university students at a private university. The processing of texts resulted in 49 indices which, after exploratory factor analysis and theoretical discussion, gave rise to 4 dimensions of complexity explaining 52.3% of variance: lexical richness, syntactic complexity, informative text structure and specialized language use. Significant differences were found between more and less skilled writers in the aggregated scores, lexical richness, and syntactic complexity. Interestingly, novice and expert writers did not differ significantly in more over-arching aspects of writing. We discuss how this technology can help identify students’ needs in more superficial aspects of writing complexity that have been shown to improve by means of different strategies.

The leadership role of THEQC in the development of quality assurance system in higher education in Türkiye

Higher education, which has a wide stakeholder structure with many actors at different levels, from international organizations to students, has a complex structure in which various actors are intertwined. Quality assurance is one of the policy areas that represents this complexity with many stakeholders at the international, national and institutional level. Quality assurance is an important issue in the Turkish higher education system and improvements are needed in this area. Massification and internationalization activities in higher education have brought quality problems to the fore. It is important to design a quality assurance system so that Türkiye can compete internationally and achieve qualitative growth.
 The focus of this study is the institutional leadership role of the Higher Education Quality Council (THEQC). It is important for THEQC to assume an effective leadership role in the development and implementation of quality assurance processes. The aim of the study is to analyze the quality processes in higher education and develop recommendations based on this in the center of the institutional leadership role of YÖKAK in the quality assurance system.Within the scope of the study, the development and implementation of quality assurance in the Turkish higher education system, the issues that should be done during the development phase in order to respond qualitatively to the quantitative development of quality assurance processes, and the improvement of the current leadership role of YÖKAK were emphasized. Document analysis method was used in the study. The institutional leadership role in quality processes has been tried to be interpreted by reviewing the provisions in the Constitution on the basis of the duties and responsibilities of CHE, and the regulation and other institutional or text-based documents regarding the quality assurance system for the development of the quality assurance system.

Research is for Hunters, Teaching for Farmers. Investigating Solutions to Lecturer-Related Problems of the Teaching–Research Mission of Swiss Universities of Applied Sciences

Abstract This study qualitatively investigates solutions to lecturer-related problems caused by the relatively recent introduction of a teaching–research mission at Swiss universities of applied sciences (UASs). It thereby makes an empirical contribution to the debate on organizational actors in higher education. The investigation is informed by a theoretical framework primarily drawn from the literature on organizational actorhood and relies on data from semi-structured interviews. Representing all public UASs in Switzerland, the sample consists of 19 directors and 1 head of institutes of business schools and engineering schools. The analysis identified five problem themes and numerous solutions. The findings suggest that after almost 30 years of their inception, UASs have been utilizing their decision-making leeway to a great extent at the central and decentral levels, and in some cases are still in the process of solving the problems caused by integrating teaching and research activities at the individual and institutional levels. While various solutions in terms of structure, culture, and resources have been developed and implemented, isomorphic tendencies can also be observed. The data suggest that the common key to solving many problems lies in the human resources and a post-Humboldtian configuration of research and teaching.

Digital Marketing and Social Media as a Strategy to Increase Brand Awareness: Case Study Increasing the Number of Students on Brand Awareness in Social Media and Digital Marketing Activities in Higher Education X

This research aims to provide knowledge related to post-covid 19 digital marketing strategies to increase the number of students at private universities in Indonesia. This study uses a qualitative method with a case study approach in data collection. Observing, interviewing, and sorting the required data as well as conducting data validity through data triangulation from experts to confirm the effectiveness of digital marketing activities on social media in increasing brand awareness in the form of interviews to confirm the data obtained. It can be concluded that the university's x strategy in utilizing digital marketing is effective, with an increase of 155% in a period of approximately 1.5 years doing advertisements on social media, Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads. Promotional strategies for price reductions and tuition installments are the second strategy in marketing activities. Third in this digital marketing communication strategy is the suitability of the target market with copywriting in advertisements and ad creators, namely generation z. These three strategies are strategies for increasing university brand awareness x.

Systematic literature review as a digital collaborative research-like learning activity: a case study

Within the higher education sector, the principle of student-active and research-based education are established in strategy documents and action plans, but at the same time there is an ongoing debate about what is meant by research-based learning and how it can be applied in practical teaching contexts. The aim of this empirical study is to explore inclusion of research elements in higher education. The study introduces the concept of using systematic literature review (SLR) and digital collaboration as a learning method, and addresses how to succeed with digital collaborative systematic literature review as a research-like learning activity in higher education. An exploratory multiple case design is used, with participatory observation technique and thematic analysis. A practical contribution of this study is an example of how SLR is well-suited to do collective research-like learning activities. The main contribution is that the higher education teacher needs integrated knowledge, including research competence in addition to the traditional link between professional, didactic and technological competence. A model for research-like learning is proposed, which illustrates the need for research knowledge in relation to the technological pedagogical content knowledge.

APA Speaks Out Against Supreme Court Ruling on Affirmative Action in Higher Education

APA Speaks Out Against Supreme Court Ruling on Affirmative Action in Higher Education

Student empowerment for internationalisation at a distance: enacting the students as partners approach in virtual mobility

ABSTRACT The popularisation of virtual mobility offers opportunities to reconsider power imbalances among different actors in higher education and to affirm the centrality of student agency and diversity. This article explores possibilities for applying the Students as Partners (SaP) approach to virtual mobility in order to empower students and foster reciprocal and ethical interactions. Drawing on interviews with students involved in an action research project, the article highlights the roles and perspectives of students in formulating authentic intercultural exchange experiences online. The findings suggest that application of the SaP framework reorganises students’ agentic capacities and allows them to flourish in a way which, in turn, shifts the power balance in international learning and contributes to the ongoing re-configuration of approaches to internationalisation beyond the educator/student binary.

Issues of modernization of academic activities in higher education in Russia

Subject. This article examines the issues of reform of the education system of Russia. Objectives. The article aims to propose measures to transform higher education, taking into account the goals of ensuring the technological sovereignty of Russia. Methods. For the study, we used general scientific research methods. Results. The article identifies trends in the development of the Russian higher education system and offers recommendations for the modernization of scientific and educational activities in Russia. Conclusions. Modern Russian higher education needs crisis management. It is possible to develop the concept of crisis management in the field of education only on the basis of the concept of socio-economic development of the country.

Revisitando Ações Afirmativas

O objetivo deste artigo é revisitar o desenvolvimento das Ações Afirmativa no ensino superior no Brasil e traçar as mudanças ocorridas entre os elegíveis ao ensino superior (estudantes com o ensino médio completo) articulando com as mudanças no perfil dos universitários ao longo do tempo. O ensaio conclui que ações afirmativas desempenharam papel fundamental para a inclusão de um novo perfil de universitário, mas não esgotou seu papel na redistribuição de oportunidades educacionais.

Developing teamwork in a multidisciplinary, multicohort curricular context: A case study of vertically integrated projects

The ability to work effectively in a diverse team is a valuable skill which is transferable to many contexts. As such, it is important to build this skill through deliberate, targeted, and meaningful learning activities in higher education. The Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) model enhances team diversity by combining students from different disciplines and years of study to work together on a research project within the curriculum. Additionally, VIP provides the option to remain on the project for an extended period over several semesters and gain team leadership experience. Our research investigates the recent implementation of VIP at the University of St Andrews. Using a survey of student perceptions and analysis of student reflective writing, this case study reports evidence that the VIP model adds value to the development of teamwork skills.

Ableism in Kinesiology in Higher Education: A Conversation Starter

In this expository paper, we reflect upon our understanding of how disabled people are discussed and treated in kinesiology and adapted physical activity in higher education and explore potential areas of unintentional harm that may be present in our everyday practice. There are three particular aspects of kinesiology in higher education that we discuss: access, language, and assessment. We discuss the challenges of access of disabled people in positions in higher education, language in higher education which serves as centers for knowledge creation, and the problematic nature of assessments based on societal norms, and for us, it is important to shine a spotlight on the many systemic limitations and barriers that disabled persons experience, in hope to amplify the importance of these issues.

Ролевая структура профессиональной деятельности педагога высшей школы в условиях цифровизации образовательной среды

In the context of changing the paradigm of vocational training, teachers of higher education are faced with new requirements related to changes in the content of the pedagogical process and new functions that teachers need to master in the context of the introduction of systemic and integrated learning technologies. The elements of the educational environment form a whole range of new forms of activities that a modern teacher must implement in the educational process. The current conditions determine the emergence of contradictions, the resolution of which requires the study of a new role structure of professional pedagogical activity. The purpose of the publication is to present the results of a study of the role structure of pedagogical activity in higher education, to identify areas of gaps in the expectations and assessments of the existing role structure of teachers on the part of students and in the assessments of the teachers themselves. The sample of respondents-teachers consisted of more than 70 people, as well as more than 200 people - students of various areas of training at universities in Novosibirsk. The methodological basis of the study is the principles of the subject-subject approach in pedagogy, a number of developments of domestic researchers dedicated to the formation and development of open education in the Russian Federation, as well as the evolution of the teacher's role set in connection with changes in the pedagogical paradigm of higher education). In the process of collecting empirical material, the author's standardized questionnaire was used to identify the types of roles of a modern teacher. As a result of the study, the predominant types of roles in the professional activities of teachers of higher education were identified, a comparison was made in the areas of training, gaps were identified in relation to the existing role structure in the views of teachers and students, as well as between the expectations that students have and those roles that today demonstrated by teachers in the learning process. The novelty of the study lies in the empirical substantiation of the role model of a higher education teacher, determining the most relevant roles and identifying those problem areas that require systematic and targeted work on self-development and professional development of higher education teachers.

Development and validation of the peer assessment motivation scale (PAMS) in higher education

ABSTRACT Measurement of students’ peer assessment motivation is critical to understand how they participate in such activities in higher education. The current study was conducted to develop and validate a brief scale that measures student peer assessment motivation in higher education using the Expectancy-Value Theory (EVT). Initial items were developed, revised, and administered to 369 students. Exploratory factor analyses suggested a three-factor model structure (ability belief, expectancy, and task value) aligning with EVT. Confirmatory factor analyses (n = 399) supported a higher-order factor structure with the three first-order factors (i.e. ability belief, expectancy, and task value) with a decent model fit. The 20-items Peer Assessment Motivation Scale (PAMS) had decent internal reliability, test-retest reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity, suggesting that it is a high-quality measure. This scale is beneficial for instructors and researchers who are interested in investigating peer assessment motivation in higher education.