European Higher Education Institutions Research Articles

Are higher education institutions in Europe preparing students for IPSAS?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze whether higher education institutions (HEIs) in EU Member States are aware of the relevance of the ongoing reforms in public sector accounting (PSA) and the need to prepare their students to become expert professionals in that area. It particularly assesses whether these organizations currently provide, or will provide in the near future, education on International Public Sector Accounting Standard (IPSAS)/EPSAS, so that a sufficient number of graduates will be ready to match the foreseeable demand for experts in IPSAS/EPSAS.Design/methodology/approachAdopting a purposive sample, the paper compares the situation in four EU countries (Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain). Data have been obtained through a questionnaire provided to selected professors in relevant HEIs in the selected countries.FindingsHEIs are giving only limited room to PSA and financial management, with differences in terms of program offerings and coverage of topics among the four countries. Furthermore, in most cases, the programs are adapted to the national budgetary and accounting standards and courses are seldom focused on the IPSASs.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the literature on PSA harmonization, through an innovative analysis of PSA and financial management teaching, both at national and international levels.

Sustainability Strategies in Portuguese Higher Education Institutions: Commitments and Practices from Internal Insights

The Copernicus Declaration of 1994, which was understood as a commitment to sustainable development (SD) by top management in higher education, was signed by many universities. This signature worked as an important driver for these institutions to put different dimensions of SD principles into practice. In Portugal, a Southern European country, six of the fourteen universities belonging to the Portuguese University Rectors Council signed the declaration, but no attempt has been made to evaluate how these public universities integrated education for sustainable development at policy and strategy levels. This paper presents the results of a study aimed at identifying to what extent the integration of sustainability in the fourteen universities was achieved, through their own strategic and activity plans and activity and sustainability reports. A detailed content analysis was conducted on these plans and reports within the period from 2005 to 2014 (the time frame of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development), to identify the main commitments and practices. Notwithstanding a lack of national integrated strategies or policies related to education for SD, the results show that the movement made progress at the university level, with good examples and initiatives at several universities. This paper highlights the importance of analyzing the content of plans and reports from higher education institutions (HEIs) when intending to assess and define a country profile for the implementation of sustainability in the educational sector. In addition, this research, conducted in Portugal, may be helpful to understand and value how SD is being applied in the policies and strategies of other European HEIs, as well as to share and encourage best practices and ways of improvement.

Nurse professional competence (NPC) assessed among newly graduated nurses in higher educational institutions in Europe

Nursing education will play an important role in further advancing healthcare transformation in the future. The aim of this study was to assess and compare nursing education and self-reported professional competence among nursing students graduating with a bachelor's degree from higher education institutions in Europe. Data were collected using the Nurse Professional Competence Scale including 88 items and eight competence areas. In total, 752 nursing students at 11 higher education institutions in Europe participated in the study, with a response rate of 88.7%. The highest measured mean scores were found in the competence areas ‘Value-based nursing care’ and ‘Medical technical care’ and the lowest were found in ‘Legislation in nursing and safety planning’ and ‘Education and supervision of staff and students’. Nursing students in central Europe scored significantly higher on seven out of the eight competence areas than nursing students in northern and southern Europe. In order to standardize and further develop nursing education in Europe, the assessment of nursing-related competences is of crucial importance.

A New Paradigm in Croatian Higher Education: Non – Formal Foreign Language Learning

Knowledge of legal English, with English as lingua franca of international communication has become an essential precondition for communication of legal professionals worldwide. That is the reason why law students and legal professionals in Europe, especially those working in new member states of the EU, are interested in widening their knowledge in legal English within different forms of non-formal foreign language education. In this paper, the author presents a new paradigm of foreign language teaching at Croatian universities that was introduced due to recent changes in professional communication, the intensive development of IT, and growing importance of English in international context. The objective of the paper is to present examples of good practice and innovation in teaching LSP in Croatian higher education. The challenges of professional communication in the field of law are presented and discussed in the introduction of the paper. In the main part, the types of non-formal education are presented that were developed at the Faculty of Law Osijek, Croatia as a response to requirements of the EU labour market and the professional communication between lawyers. The first non-formal type of education presented in the paper is the Lifelong Learning Programme for Lawyer Linguists, and the second one the course Legal English for Civil Servants developed within the European cross-border project CATCH, organized by Croatian and Hungarian units of local and regional self-government. In the conclusion, the author discusses the achievements of the two programmes and offers her vision of the future developments in foreign language teaching at European higher education institutions.

Students’ perceptions of authenticity of plurilingual non-native teachers in multilingual higher education settings: an exploratory and comparative case study of Geneva and Hamburg

ABSTRACTThis paper addresses the issue of students’ perceptions of non-native teacher authenticity, combining the literature accounts of authenticity in the fields of foreign language learning, and teacher authenticity (both teachers’ skills and teachers’ linguistic resources). The data Analysis from an exploratory and comparative angle, involving two European Higher Education Institutions, reveals that: (i) assessing plurilingual teachers whose mother tongue is not the language of instruction is contextually, institutionally and disciplinarily bound; (ii) students are aware of the constraints and opportunities related to the teaching situation and are willing to sacrifice some ‘correctness’ in order to gain in multilingual and intercultural ‘depth’.

Queering and diversifying gender in equality work at European higher education institutions

Against the background of recent changes to EU legislation to meet the demands and needs of LGBTIQ* communities, the authors seek to situate a queered and diversified understanding of gender firmly at the centre of the gender equality discourse in higher education (HE). Based on case examples, the legal and discursive status quo in German and Dutch HE institutions as well as actors’ motivations, challenges and opportunities are examined through a queer lens. The results highlight how differently EU legislation is transposed into national law. They also show that change is currently driven by highly motivated individual actors, be they students, gender equality and diversity officers, or individual institutions. We argue that queering and diversifying should be understood and used as modes to reflect on and analyse the processes that lead to heteronormative understandings of gender in HE and to develop strategies that take the complexities of gendered identities and discrimination into account.

Teaching Sustainability in European Higher Education Institutions: Assessing the Connections between Competences and Pedagogical Approaches

There has been considerable progress in the incorporation of sustainable development (SD) into higher education institutions’ curricula. This has included research on competences for SD and pedagogical approaches used; however, there has been limited research on the connection between how pedagogical approaches are used and how they may develop sustainability competences. A survey was developed, based on the ‘connecting sustainable development pedagogical approaches to competences’ framework, to investigate sustainability being taught, sustainability competences developed, and pedagogical approaches used in European higher education institutions. The survey was sent to a database of more than 4000 contacts from which 390 complete responses (9.80%) were obtained. The results show that the social dimension was the least addressed at 18% of responses, while the economic, environmental, and cross-cutting dimensions were addressed almost equally. The correlation analyses showed a relation between the contribution to sustainability and the strength of competences, and between the strength of competences and the strength of pedagogical approaches. The results from the survey helped to update the theoretical framework, which provides a more precise perspective on how sustainability competences can be better developed in class, and how to better develop all the sustainability competences.

Systematic Review of Utilized ICTs in Quality Assurance and Accreditation of Higher Education and a Case Study of Developing Country

Numerous studies and surveys have examined the utilization of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Higher Education (HE), but the lack of studies on the utilization of ICTs in Quality Assurance and Accreditation (QAA) of HE led us to perform a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). This review mainly benefits QAA agencies and researchers interested in utilizing ICTs for QAA of HE. Several contributions of ICTs to QAA of HE are identified. 1) Compared to QAA agencies, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are more likely to implement ICTs. 2) Most ICTs in HEIs are for Quality Assurance (QA). 3) Most previous studies were conducted in Europe, demonstrating that efforts have been made to align QAA agencies and HEI QAA units with European Standards. Consequently, ICTs are more often utilized by European HEIs. Furthermore, we investigated the QAA status in a developing country (Afghanistan) as a case study.

MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES (MOOCS) WITH OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES FOR TOXICOLOGY LEARNING - DRUGS AND POLLUTANTS AS XENOBIOTICS

Due to the lack of European Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in the field of the Toxicology and the major differences in the styles of teaching and learning of this important subject in amongst various European life science-oriented institutions, the European Erasmus+ project Learning Toxicology through Open Educational Resources (TOX-OER) was developed and implemented. Considering the complexity and heterogeneity of the toxicology field, the TOX-OER project main objective was to develop and share toxicology-related knowledge and skills among students/ earners from seven countries, which promote the internationalization of Higher Education Institutions in Europe but also in countries from other continents. The project was coordinated by Universidad de Salamanca (Spain), and the partners were: Space Research and Technology Institute (Bulgaria), Univerzita Karlova V Praze (Czech Republic), South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (Finland), Universit di Bologna (Italy), Universidade do Porto (Portugal) and Universitatea Transilvania din Brasov (Romania). One of the goals/ objectives of the project is the dissemination, popularizing the information and reaching potentially interested people who can benefit from the offered courses. The aim of this paper is to present and analyze part of the TOX-OER s outcomes developed by the project s partnership, especially the modules/ topics related to the drugs, gaseous and persistent organic pollutants, as the principal groups of xenobiotics.

MOOC PRODUCTION WITHIN THE UNIVERSITY: AIMS, ACHIEVEMENTS, BARRIERS

The concept paper aims at defining the objectives associated by the administrators of higher educational institutions (HEIs) with massive open online course (MOOC) production and at revealing the progress achieved and the barriers faced. Ever increasing tempo of digitization and budget savings at educational institutions make rationality of this activity and elaboration of ideas for increasing it a hot topic for discussion – both for those HEIs that have already launched such projects and for those who, being able to start a project taking into account international and Russian experience, consider this perspective in the future. The paper covers the objectives that American and European HEIs, where the first MOOCs appeared, associate with MOOC production projects. It also presents the first attempt to bring the position of Russian university administrators into this context. English and Russian literature reviewed here reflects the experience of MOOC producers trying to accomplish these objectives. These research and non-research papers show that the objectives set have not been fully met yet, as they require additional mechanisms and tools which are as well limited. This leads to the suggestion that MOOC has not proved to be a stand-alone solution for the universities which produce them, but seems promising if introduced into the organization development strategy. An evident limitation of this paper is using non-research papers to describe the current situation in MOOC industry in Russia, since academic publications on the topic are scarce. Further research might clarify and extinguish the ideas presented in the paper. The conclusion contains some recommendations on measuring and increasing the effectiveness of MOOC production projects in accomplishing the HEIs’ objectives.

A New Paradigm in Croatian Higher Education: Non – Formal Foreign Language Learning

Knowledge of legal English, with English as lingua franca of international communication, has become an essential precondition for communication of legal professionals worldwide. That is the reason why law students and legal professionals in Europe, especially those working in new member states of the EU, are interested in widening their knowledge in legal English within different forms of non-formal foreign language education. In this paper, the author presents a new paradigm of foreign language teaching at Croatian universities that was introduced due to recent changes in professional communication, the intensive development of IT, and the growing importance of English in the international context. The objective of the paper is to present examples of good practice and innovation in teaching LSP in Croatian higher education. The challenges of professional communication in the field of law are presented and discussed in the introduction of the paper. In the main part, the types of nonformal education are presented that were developed at the Faculty of Law Osijek, Croatia as a response to requirements of the EU labor market and the professional communication between lawyers. The first nonformal type of education presented in the paper is the Lifelong Learning Programme for Lawyer Linguists, and the second one is the course Legal English for Civil Servants developed within the European cross-border project CATCH, organized by Croatian and Hungarian units of local and regional self-government. In the conclusion, the author discusses the achievements of the two programs and offers her vision of the future developments in foreign language teaching at European higher education institutions.

Enhancing graduates’ employability skills through authentic learning approaches

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to introduce a theoretical framework based on authentic learning approaches that can be taken into consideration in higher education (HE) contexts to design activities that enable students to develop employability skills.Design/methodology/approachThree methods were used to develop the framework: desk research on current demand and supply of new graduate’s employability skills; interviews in four European HE institutions to identify authentic learning scenarios; and asynchronous online focus group to validate the framework.FindingsThe paper takes a competence-centred approach to the concept of employability skills and sets out a taxonomy of skills required to enhance new graduates’ employability. It also gives criteria and examples of authentic learning scenarios in HE settings that promote the acquisition of these skills.Research limitations/implicationsThe framework developed remains theoretical. In a second phase, the framework will be applied to implement authentic activities in different programmes and subjects of five HE institutions, and the results will be reported in future publications.Practical implicationsThe framework gives directions to create real and practical ways to enhance new graduates’ employability skills by improving the connection between HE curricula and the demands of the real world.Originality/valueThe added value of the paper lies in adopting a learner-centred, genuine and effective learning approach, such as authentic learning as a catalyst for bringing work experience to formal learning in HE institutions, in order to better develop graduates’ employability skills.

Opportunities and challenges of Higher Education institutions in Europe: An analysis from a business model perspective

AbstractDuring the last decades, there has been increasing interest in the role of the university as a key stakeholder and agent in innovation and regional development. In the face of new technologies, especially growing digitalisation and new societal and economic challenges, this paper proposes to reconsider the role of the university in the innovation system. More particularly, we introduce the idea of a business model for the entrepreneurial university of the future and develop nine conceptual theses. The theses are based on four elements of a business model concept: value proposition, creation, delivery and capture. With the help of the nine theses, we aim to trigger new discussions regarding policy implications for the future university in Europe.

How do European higher education institutions internationalize?

ABSTRACTThis article explores how higher education institutions (HEIs) internationalize, employing information on the internationalization activities (IA), context and organizational characteristics of 431 HEIs from 33 European countries. A latent cluster analysis identifies three distinct clusters of HEIs with distinct portfolios of IA: basic, academic and entrepreneurial. The basic portfolio includes the most common IA, whereas IA requiring larger organizational capacity are rare. The entrepreneurial portfolio distinguishes from the academic portfolio as it also includes IA aimed to attract resources. We explore what contextual and organizational traits characterize HEIs with different IA portfolios. Small HEIs tend to display a basic portfolio, without national variations. On the contrary, strong national variations exist in the frequency of academic and entrepreneurial portfolios, which strongly relate to the actual and potential importance of tuition fees as a source of revenues.

Impact of Electronic Competence Based Teaching in Higher Education

In the beginning of Bologna’s process and creation of European Higher Education Area (EHEA), great importance has been to the transparency, increase of quality and concurrency between institutions of higher education. Nowadays, hot topic in higher education institutions in Europe are real-time learning outcomes, they are analyzed, projected and are evaluated today in all Europe and abroad. Traditional models and methods of success expression in learning and the degree of qualification is substituted with modern online systems. This paper proposes best practices for competence based teaching in higher education by using eCompetence software. The way these competences are organized, activities which are related to these competences and course contents which will help us to continuously evaluate students and prepare them for the labor market. Our results suggest that by implementing competence based teaching system in university evaluation and competence gaining would be more productive and would better prepare students for labor market. Consequently, this paper draws attention on provision of implementation of such a system in higher education by providing competence matrix, a competence software, and evaluation process.

СТРАТЕГІЧНІ НАПРЯМИ РОЗВИТКУ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНО-КОМУНІКАЦІЙНИХ ТЕХНОЛОГІЙ У ВИЩІЙ ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКІЙ ШКОЛІ НА ПОЧАТКУ ХХІ СТОЛІТТЯ

The article deals with the main strategic aspects of the development of information and communication technologies in the European higher education institutions. The Council of Europe documents on strategy issues have been analyzed. The ways of implementation of information and communication technologies at the national and international levels have been determined which will ensure the competitiveness of the knowledge and competences of prospective specialists who should contribute to innovation in order to successfully enter the European labor market. It has been emphasized that the basis of modern information environment of the University is the provision of all types of support (technical, software, informational, methodological, organizational) that promotes learners’ interaction, implementation of pedagogical technologies and algorithms for managing the educational process, preconditions for innovation and research activities. The strategic trends of ICT implementation in Slovenian universities have been defined: the development and testing of innovative pedagogical approaches, models and strategies of training; creation of ICT open platform, electronic content, services, pedagogical concepts and approaches, models of motivational mechanisms, cloud technologies in educational space, updating of educational network, creation of synergistic and interdisciplinary environment for partnership of all interested parties; ensuring a high level of digital competence and the use of ICTs within the entire education system; promoting the enhancement of the key competencies in general, higher education and adult education: the introduction of e-learning in higher education as a way of achieving the objectives of formal education, expanding e-learning in non-formal education; ensuring the efficiency of the ICT implementation strategy on the basis of regular measurement and evaluation, analysis of indicators of the impact of ICT on education at the national level, and its comparative analysis at the international level, ensuring the implementation of international standards of quality and comparability of ICT indicators in education.

Social Media as a Marketing Tool for European and North American Universities and Colleges

Abstract Objective: The purpose of the following study is to examine the approach to social media of European and North American higher education institutions ranked in the Top100 on the 2017 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). Data regarding the number of publications and the number of followers of each social media were analysed. Methodology: The present study is quantitative in nature. The sample consisted of the European and North American universities and colleges listed in the Top 100 of the ARWU 2017: in total, 48 institutions in the United States and 35 in Europe were identified. To analyse the official social media sites used by each higher education institution, the links presented on the Homepage of the universities’ website were followed. Data was collected between the 27nd of August and the 2nd of September 2018. Two different types of variable groups were defined: 1) the number and type of Universities’ publications, and 2) the number of followers on each social media. For benefit of the research the authors considered Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Weibo and VKontakte as social networking sites; Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr and Snapchat, as photo sharing platforms; Youtube, and Vimeo as video sharing platforms, and finally Twitter and Tumblr as microblogs. Findings: European and North American universities and colleges invest in marketing activities in social media. Regarding the number of social networking sites, content sharing and microblogging platforms no significant differences were found between means of the two independent samples. The most popular social media used are Facebook and Twitter ex-aequo, followed by Youtube, Instagram and LinkedIn. Concerning the number of publications on these media, significant differences by region are present for the variable number of photos and videos on Facebook, number of Instagram posts, and tweets. Furthermore, on all the prominent social media, North American universities and colleges benefit from a substantial higher number of followers than their counterpart. European users favour Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and only then Instagram. Participation in G+ is marginal. In the United States the preferred social media are Facebook, LinkedIn, G+, Twitter, and Instagram. Regarding user engagement, measured by the number of followers, equality of means between the two independent samples were found for Facebook, Pinterest, Flickr and Youtube. Differences exist for the social media: LinkedIn, G+, Instagram, and Twitter. G+ is quite popular in the United States, but not in Europe, and Twitter attracts visibly more followers too. Value Added: The contribution of this research paper consists in better understanding, from a quantitative point of view, differences between the use of social media as a marketing tool by the European and North American higher education institutions listed in the Top100 of the ARWU 2017. Regional differences exist, even though universities and colleges compete on a worldwide basis. Recommendations: From an academic perspective, a qualitative study approach is advised to better understand the concurrence of the number of publications and followers on the different social media, since significant Pearson correlations between variables were identified. As practical implications, marketers from the European higher education institutions should invest more in posts, uploads and tweets. For both regions, the social networking site LinkedIn has been neglected, despite the high number of followers.

A Comprehensive Methodology for Assessing the Quality of Landscape Architecture Study Programmes in European Higher Education Institutions

A Comprehensive Methodology for Assessing the Quality of Landscape Architecture Study Programmes in European Higher Education Institutions

Which US and European Higher Education Institutions are visible in ResearchGate and what affects their RG score?

While ResearchGate has become the most popular academic social networking site in terms of regular users, not all institutions have joined and the scores it assigns to academics and institutions are controversial. This paper assesses the presence in ResearchGate of higher education institutions in Europe and the US in 2017, and the extent to which institutional ResearchGate Scores reflect institutional academic impact. Most of the 2258 European and 4355 US higher educational institutions included in the sample had an institutional ResearchGate profile, with near universal coverage for PhD-awarding institutions found in the Web of Science (WoS). For non-PhD awarding institutions that did not publish, size (number of staff members) was most associated with presence in ResearchGate. For PhD-awarding institutions in WoS, presence in RG was strongly related to the number of WoS publications. In conclusion, a) institutional RG scores reflect research volume more than visibility and b) this indicator is highly correlated to the number of WoS publications. Hence, the value of RG Scores for institutional comparisons is limited.

Editorial: Civic Engagement in Higher Education Institutions in Europe

Editorial: Civic Engagement in Higher Education Institutions in Europe