Collaboration In Higher Education Research Articles

An Exploratory Survey Study of Grand Rounds as an Interprofessional Education Tool for Graduate Students in the Health Professions

Purpose Interprofessional education (IPE), collaboration, and training are essential for health programs at the graduate level, but there are often challenges in implementing initiatives that transcend several departments/schools. Grand Rounds is an interprofessional case-based team-building activity that involves faculty facilitators and students from several health professions. The purpose of the current study was to explore the benefits of Grand Rounds for IPE, particularly among graduate students, and share the academic process and experience in developing IPE activities. Method Program directors were asked to e-mail surveys to eligible students inviting them to attend the Grand Rounds event; those who participated in the event were sent a follow-up survey. Results One hundred twenty-two faculty and students attended the event; 81 were graduate students. The data from graduate students' preevent and postevent surveys were analyzed. Students' knowledge of their own professions and those of others was enhanced as a result of participation in the Grand Rounds event. Conclusion The results indicate that Grand Rounds is a promising activity for IPE and a potential tool for cultivating interprofessional collaborations in higher education.

Shadow organising: emerging stakeholder collaboration in higher education to enhance quality

ABSTRACTMuch research is currently addressing how to establish, maintain and govern stakeholder collaboration in higher education. In this article, the concept of shadow organising, i.e. stakeholder imitation of formal educational provision, is introduced to illustrate bottom-up, proactive ways to connect multiple autonomous organisations and stakeholder groups within and outside universities (such as professional bodies, employers and student unions). The article exemplifies the concept of shadow organising by analysing emerging stakeholder collaboration in legal education. The case illustrates the collaborative but informal efforts of a range of supporting actors. The results show that the actors are connected to each other through concrete and practical actions, instead of agreements, regulations or partnerships, which have stabilised into a widespread latticework of interlinked activities: training law students, hiring law graduates, supervising learning processes and instituting quality control. Simultaneously, however, actors maintain their distinctive roles, identities and mandates without initiating official collaboration or a common discussion of objectives and rationales.

Future EU-UK research and higher education cooperation at risk: what is at stake?

The UK higher education sector has entered a period of turbulence, as the consequences of the UK leaving the European Union (EU) hit home. Higher education institutions are bracing themselves for what will no doubt be a period of substantial change, uncertainty and challenge. The complexity of the intricate relationships linking EU member states, as well as the EU institutions and their member states, appears to have been misunderstood and understated in the UK, by both the political class and the general public, at the time of the June 2016 referendum. If information is indeed power, its current unavailability is a concern, given that the UK government’s plans to remain firmly embedded within the European Research Area and the Erasmus+ programme remain non-committal. In what can be described as a game of high politics between the EU and the UK government, the fate of research and higher education collaboration will be sealed by high-level inter-governmental agreements decided behind closed doors.

14th workshop on European Collaboration for Higher Education and Research in Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Protection

14th workshop on European Collaboration for Higher Education and Research in Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Protection

Ingredients for Innovation: impacts for practice and the education of health service managers

Background: Innovation is associated with improvement, however, there is little published about the “ingredients” for successful innovation in healthcare, and the skills required of Health Service Managers (HSMs) who facilitate change in their organisations. Aim: This paper synthesizes the findings of a literature review performed to describe the organizational and contextual factors that enable and sustain innovation in healthcare settings. Implications for the practice of Health Service Management and curriculum development have been extrapolated as innovation has been identified as a solution to escalating health system demands in a rapidly changing environment.Approach: A literature review used a systematic approach to source articles from the Scopus and Emerald databases over the period of 1993 to February 2016. Papers were also retrieved from a BMC Health Services Research weekly alert. Snowballing from relevant articles identified additional and significant papers. Grey literature, peer-reviewed papers and reports were similarly reviewed to incorporate contemporary perspectives on this topic across the business, health and University sectors, and to facilitate discussion of the skills and competencies for HSMs practice and education in relation to this topic. Context: Innovation is crucial to the sustainability and viability of Australia’s world class health system. There is potential for innovation to lead to more cost-effective and efficient ways to address the challenges of limited health budgets and increasingly complex morbidities in an ageing population. Main findings: Successful innovation according to the literature, is determined by a complex interaction of determinants including organizational culture, support and resourcing for innovation, leadership and a clear and shared vision. An organizational culture supportive of innovation includes strong transdisciplinary communication, engaged and invested staff and recognition of the role of innovation in health improvement and outcomes. A setting that is open to identifying, testing and evaluating initiatives for innovation requires capabilities to establish and maintain the working relationships, team dynamics and to prioritise resourcing to facilitate and sustain new ways of working, services, products or technologies.Recent research on the skills required for health service management employability and career success was also examined and identified the importance of skills such as communication, creativity and problem solving. These skills are critical and linked to the role of the HSM in accelerating innovation in their organisations.Conclusions: The key ingredients for successful innovation in health were inferred from the literature. HSMs are well positioned to support innovation as they possess the necessary technical and professional skillsets. The literature suggests that the development of graduate skills in the areas of communication, problem solving, and team work is critical to meet industry needs and for HSMs to enable innovation.Universities educating health service managers strive to ensure that graduates are professionals equipped to lead and manage health services. HSM graduates can foster the organizational and contextual factors that sustain and sanction innovative ideas to flourish and progress to implementation. Current research advocates that strong industry and higher education collaboration is important to further develop the graduate attributes necessary for innovation.

Different, yet similar: factors motivating international degree collaboration in higher education. The case of Finnish-Russian double degree programmes

ABSTRACTThe study investigates factors motivating universities to engage in international degree collaboration. The Finnish-Russian university framework is used as the locus for studying international collaboration. The paper employs resource dependency and institutional, stakeholder and market push and pull perspectives in a conceptual model explaining the drivers of international degree collaboration. The research focuses on the interaction of the various factors that motivate partners to seek international degree cooperation, possible sources of conflict, and issues of compatibility and complementarity. In particular, the study compares the roles of different stakeholders and the institutional contexts of Finland and Russia. The motives of the Finnish and Russian universities included in the study were found to be generally compatible, yet different enough to complement each other.

Feminist collaborations in higher education: stretched across career stages

ABSTRACTCategorical career stages offer an institutional framework through which mobilities can be claimed and contested by feminists in academia. Inhabiting career stages uncritically can serve to reproduce neoliberal academic structures that feminists may seek to resist. Collaboration across career stages is a significant empirical case for understanding how feminists occupy academic space. We use auto-ethnographic methods to read career stages and feminist collaboration through each other, analysing the authors’ cross-career collaborations and mentoring relationship in a Scottish University. We ask how feminist collaboration can claim and disrupt the neoliberal temporal logics of competitively achieving individuals on upward career trajectories, where academic arrival can feel permanently deferred. As such we argue for more pluralised and fragmented understandings of ‘career stages’, which as fixed categories work to position academics as either precarious or privileged, and for a messier imaginary of academic work and careers.

INDIA – CANADA COLLABORATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION – THE ROAD AHEAD

Higher education accreditation is a type of quality assurance process under which services and operations of post-secondary educational institutions or programs are evaluated by an external body to determine if applicable standards are met. If standards are met, accredited status is granted by the agency.

Perspectives from graduate students on effective teaching methods: a case study from a Vietnamese Transnational University

Vietnam is emerging as an accelerated economic and political society with an increased global presence; thus, increased attention has been given to producing qualified college graduates who can contribute to the growing global economy. Yet challenges exist due to lack of educational infrastructure and ineffective teaching practices. As a result, the Vietnamese government embraces international collaborations in higher education as a way to address educational needs; however, although research exists on policy implications and government priorities, very little is known about how students perceive the teaching methods provided at these collaborative transnational universities. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to examine graduate students’ perceived effectiveness of teaching methods at Vietnamese-German University (VGU), a predominantly technology and engineering university that is an international collaboration between Vietnam and Germany. We seek to answer the research question of, ‘how is the use of student-centred practices effective in an international learning environment?’ Findings from graduate students indicate that collaborative learning, specifically through group work and modified flipped classrooms, are effective ways to maximise student learning. Implications for practice and future research are discussed as ways to emphasise the benefits of student-centred teaching and learning at transnational collaborative universities.

A Study into the Role of International Collaborations in Higher Education to Enhance Research Capacity for Disaster Resilience

International collaborations in the context of Disaster Resilience (DR) is pivotal due to several reasons. It helps to propose ways to create more coherent international approaches on disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and resilience strengthening; it helps to enhance risk management capabilities by bridging the gap between science and legal/policy issues; it helps to address the issue of efficient management of trans-boundary crises. The need to optimise international cooperation in relation to resourcing research, capacity building to undertake research and facilitating its uptake is mentioned throughout the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction 2015-2030 (SFDRR). Given their different capacities, as well as the linkage between the level of support provided to them and the extent to which they will be able to implement the SFDRR, developing countries require an enhanced provision of means of implementation, including adequate, sustainable and timely resources, through international cooperation and global partnerships for development, and continued international support, so as to strengthen their efforts to reduce disaster risk. The purpose of this paper is to examine the level of engagement of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in developing countries in Asia in international collaborations to improve their Research and Innovation (R&I) capacities in DR. Based on a project entitled ASCENT (Advancing Skills Creation and Enhancement), the findings of the paper focuses on three Asian countries, i.e. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Other than an extant literature review, the paper findings are drawn from a questionnaire survey carried out in eight HEIs from the said countries. There are already several regional initiatives that promote collaboration among HEIs towards building resilience. These networks should be supported and encouraged to grow. These global networks should collaborate with existing bodies to ensure that the role of higher education is understood and can be made use of. Findings of this paper supports the need for an enhanced international partnership to improve the science-policy interface in DR and to achieve the objectives of the SFDRR.

Sport business and marketing collaboration in higher education

In the spring of 2014, steps were taken at a southeastern university to overhaul an existing Sport Administration curriculum that functioned more as a general physical education and sport program instead of a sport business and leadership program. An almost entirely new major was created, curriculum was designed, and the program was approved by a southeastern university's curriculum committee in May of 2014. Since then, the new Sport Administration major has undergone revisions to continue to enhance the sport business and leadership focus, but also the program has partnered the last two years with the School of Business and Journalism and Mass Communication Department to form sport business, marketing and media partnerships. These unique academic collaborations have allowed for incredible student experiences, shared curriculum, common guest speakers, and increased campus “buy-in” related to sport business initiatives and emphases.

The glocal curriculum: A model for transnational collaboration in higher education for sustainable development

Transnational collaborations between universities provide an underutilized opportunity to teach sustainability competencies emphasizing the global and local nature of (un)sustainability. This article asks: what kind of curricula and teaching-learning environments can we use in transnational collaborations so as to prepare future generations to address (un)sustainability across different scales and contexts? The article presents a glocal model for transnational collaboration for sustainability which combines the use of digital technologies for global collaboration with experiences and engagement for local learning and impact. The glocal model was designed and implemented in The Global Classroom, a collaborative project between Arizona State University and Leuphana University of Lüneburg. The model fills two important gaps in higher education for sustainable development. In the theory, it provides new concepts to think about the curriculum and teaching-learning environment of transnational collaborations for sustainability. In the practice, it presents an exemplary implementation that can inform the curriculum as well as the teaching-learning environment of such collaborations. The article concludes that transnational collaborations for sustainability ought to more systematically integrate curriculum reform with approaches to internationalization and digitalization of higher education.

Breaking white silences in South African-Dutch collaboration in higher education

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to show the complex positionality and the complexity that comes with the study of whiteness in South African higher education by Dutch, white academics. This complexity stems from the long-standing relationship between Dutch universities, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VUA) in particular, with their South African counterparts, which predominantly supported apartheid with reference to a shared religious (Protestant) background.Design/methodology/approachThe paper rests upon a literature review of the development of South African higher education, and an assessment of the prominent role played by the Dutch Vrije Universiteit in support of the all-white, Afrikaans Potchefstroom University (presently North-West University). The authors, who are both involved in the institutional cooperation between Vrije Universiteit and South African universities, reflect on the complexity of this relationship by providing auto-ethnographic evidence from their own (religious) biography.FindingsThe paper reflects the ambiguous historical as well as contemporary contexts and ties that bind Vrije Universiteit to South African universities, especially formerly Afrikaans-speaking ones. The ambiguity is about the comfort of sharing an identity with formerly Afrikaans-speaking universities, on the one hand, and the discomfort of historical and political complicities in a (still) segregated South African society on the other hand.Originality/valueThis auto-ethnographic paper breathes an atmosphere of a “coming out” that is not very common in academic writing. It is a reflection and testimony of a lifelong immersion in VUA-South African academic research relations in which historical, institutional, and personal contexts intermingle and lead to a unique positionality leading to “breaking silences” around these complex relations.

Collaboration and Gender Equity among Academic Scientists

Universities were established as hierarchical bureaucracies that reward individual attainment in evaluating success. Yet collaboration is crucial both to 21st century science and, we argue, to advancing equity for women academic scientists. We draw from research on gender equity and on collaboration in higher education, and report on data collected on one campus. Sixteen focus group meetings were held with 85 faculty members from STEM departments, separated by faculty rank and gender (i.e., assistant professor men, full professor women). Participants were asked structured questions about the role of collaboration in research, career development, and departmental decision-making. Inductive analyses of focus group data led to the development of a theoretical model in which resources, recognition, and relationships create conditions under which collaboration is likely to produce more gender equitable outcomes for STEM faculty. Ensuring women faculty have equal access to resources is central to safeguarding their success; relationships, including mutual mentoring, inclusion and collegiality, facilitate women’s careers in academia; and recognition of collaborative work bolsters women’s professional advancement. We further propose that gender equity will be stronger in STEM where resources, relationships, and recognition intersect—having multiplicative rather than additive effects.

Professional Socialization and Attitudes Towards Interprofessional Collaboration Among Graduate Social Work and Health Professions Students

Although there is an aggressive push towards interprofessional collaboration in higher education as well as in practice, the traditional culture and organization of higher education, as well as the need for and history of disciplinary distinction, may impede these efforts. Using an online survey, this study explored the relationship between professional socialization of 157 graduate students in four disciplines and their perceptions and attitudes about interprofessional collaboration. Results indicate that first year students had more positive perceptions and attitudes about interprofessional collaboration than more advanced students. Furthermore, social work students perceived themselves as having lower prestige than graduate-level nursing, pharmacy, and medical students. These findings suggest that, unless managed strategically, professional socialization may diminish positive perceptions and attitudes towards interprofessional collaboration. Thus, social work educators should pay careful attention to the role of professional socialization and how it is manifest in both the explicit and implicit curriculum.

Pilot development of innovation scales for beverage manufacturing companies in a developing country

AbstractInnovation can enhance economic success for companies and countries alike. This study identified innovation drivers for beverage manufacturing companies in the developing nation, Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). Factor analysis using principal components analysis was applied to self-reported data from 14 beverage manufacturers, organising 10 influencing variables into 3 components that impacted on the companies’ innovation. Component 1 addresses the role of company acquisitions, customer feedback and employee feedback regarding product improvements, Component 2 deals with the value of same-industry company collaborations and new ideas proposed by managers or customers and Component 3 focuses on supporting research and development through industrial park tenancy, hiring R&D personnel and higher education collaboration. Findings are discussed in the context of several characteristics of innovation in T&T, including the observed tendency of companies to practice incremental as opposed to radical innovation...

12th Workshop on European Collaboration for Higher Education and Research in Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Protection

12th Workshop on European Collaboration for Higher Education and Research in Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Protection

Wiki acceptance by university students to improve collaboration in higher education

Web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis, can play a key role in promoting interaction, delivering education and providing communication between students. However, most of the existing literature does not seem to consider relationships between designing wiki-based learning activities and the student acceptance of this technology. The purpose of the study was to investigate the acceptance of students when making use of wikis in an undergraduate course at a university in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The study made use of a quantitative approach whereby an online questionnaire was distributed to 113 students involved in an undergraduate course. A forty per cent response rate was recorded while data were analysed making use of descriptive and inferential statistics. The study found that the majority of the students did experience the wiki as useful to improve collaboration in the course, however, there are fears about content being vandalised and plagiarised. Therefore, students will not voluntarily make use of the wiki despite the numerous advantages the technology can offer. The study recommends that students should be educated on the potential benefits of a wiki to improve collaboration before it is implemented in order to positively impact the perceptions and use by the students.

Business, Industry and Higher Education Collaboration: A Panacea in Developing Professional Work-Ready Graduates

The purpose of this paper is to explore how institutions of higher learning, industries and businesses work together to accomplish mutual goals, intended to help shape and inform up-to-date curriculum and course design. The aim was to improve mutual understanding and exchange of ideas between the Education and business sectors that can lead to produce professional work-ready graduates. The research method was essentially qualitative case-study design method (Yin, 2003), was used. The researcher collected documents, conducted semi-structured interviews and recorded observations at the selected multinational companies and recognized institutions of higher learning. The emergent themes from the data, in form of field notes, interview scripts, audio recordings and information from documents, representing the views of both Educationists and Industrialists were analyzed. The four emergent themes as characterized by the participants views on collaborative efforts between business and Education were identified as; cooperative study programme, technical support and programme delivery, representation in the institution governing council and collaboration through shared facilities. The study represent a means of contributing quality in teaching and learning graduate employability skills, that is vital in the survival and challenge to industry to succeed in an increasingly competitive world market. This paper attempts to provide new ways of thinking as well as formal flexible commitments from business and Education in forming partnership, that enable both sectors share the needs, problems, issues, strengths and weakness of in training professional work-ready graduates. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6p512

Models of interuniversity collaboration in higher education – How do their features act as barriers and enablers to sustainability?

This study combines conceptual and empirical review of the literature around interuniversity collaborations to identify known models and applications, and enablers and barriers impacting on their sustainability, to inform development of a collaborative public health teaching programme in Australia. A range of literature was explored in this study, including commentary on appropriate theoretical frameworks, exploratory studies, descriptive analyses and specific case study investigations. There was a dearth of literature that compares the factors that ultimately lead to success or failure of the models of collaboration identified. Further research investigating how different types of collaboration affect particular barriers and enablers, and how certain types of collaborations are more sustainable than others, is required.