Growing Number Of Students Research Articles

The ‘hinterland’ issue in European higher education policymaking

ABSTRACT The article addresses the issues surrounding the importance and impact of ‘hinterlands’ in the construction of European higher education systems and in the formation of sectoral policy. It draws on studies of Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Norway, Portugal and the United Kingdom to illustrate different policy approaches and shows how in some countries ‘hinterland’ issues have been the major factor in the reconstruction of national higher education systems. It draws a distinction between the past, where policies were essentially based on the growth of student numbers, and the present, where the drivers are much more related to regional social and economic factors and, in some countries, to public good policies on equalising opportunities between deprived and affluent areas. It suggests that ‘hinterland’ issues are now central to how higher education systems are constructed. As a result, systems will become more complex to manage but that regional and institutional ‘bottom up’ determination may offer better prospects for innovation and flexibility in the face of societal change.

Evaluating Bus Transit System for Efficient Last Mile Transportation in Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Shah Alam

As the leading example in sustainable transportation, universities should have an optimal and precedent system. Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) campus provides bus transportation for students. However, with the vast coverage of the campus area, the bus stops should be distributed evenly. This research aims to evaluate the bus stop position to find the optimal last mile distance concerning the principle of Universal Design, precisely the aspect of low physical effort. This research uses the method of space syntax to analyse the spatial arrangement of urban environments, including transportation systems. It is based on the idea that the spatial structure of an environment affects its usability and accessibility and that the arrangement of elements can be optimised to improve accessibility and reduce physical effort. As a result, this research finds that UiTM's current bus stop distribution needs to be improved. It should have filled the demand for several spots, such as dormitories, sports centers, and faculties. Adding bus stops or bus volume is the appropriate solution to this finding, considering the growth of student numbers and the upcoming LRT station development. This research has proven a new depth perspective by combining topologic, angular, and metriclogic. The findings of this research are beneficial in planning bus stops that carefully consider the universal design for all users wherever they live and work.

A History of the Humanities in Australian Universities, 1945–2000

This article investigates the history of the disciplines increasingly described in Australian universities in the second half of the twentieth century as ‘the humanities’. Studying the internal and external forces that shaped them, it provides an account of what humanities subjects were taught over this period, how they were positioned in universities and what brought various disciplines together as the humanities over time and in different contexts. It focuses on government intervention through committees, reports and policies; patterns of student enrolments and the haphazard development of arts faculties in response to the growth in student numbers; the establishment of new universities and the new ideas that guided their formation; changes to how knowledge was organised in universities; early challenges to the European heritage that had been assumed as central to the humanities; and international intellectual developments.

Alleviating cross-cultural challenges of Indian subcontinent students: University staff perspectives

The growth in student numbers from the Indian subcontinent countries has increased exponentially in the Australian higher education system over the past decade. Unfortunately, this growth has not been accompanied by initiatives to address the distinctive cross-cultural challenges faced by this cohort. This paper seeks to identify academic and professional staff perceptions of how they can help alleviate the social and academic challenges faced by subcontinent students. Thematic analysis of multiple focus group interviews established a range of simple initiatives that university staff and decision-makers could introduce to alleviate these challenges. Academic and professional staff should clearly and repeatedly articulate course, assessment and integrity expectations and make use of pre-arrival and orientation interactions. The pedagogic environment should be customised to subcontinent students in the classroom, and written teaching materials should be supplemented with engaging videos, ideally subtitled. The introduction of cross-cultural awareness training for academic and professional staff would improve the learning experience of subcontinent students. Adequate resourcing of academic skills and English language support and mental health support services also emerged as valuable initiatives. The cross-cultural awareness training for academic and professional staff should also be customised to their specific roles.

Námsframvinda nemenda í meistaranámi við Háskólann á Akureyri

Greinin fjallar um niðurstöður tilviksrannsóknar þar sem leitast var við að greina hvaða þættir styðja og hverjir hamla námsframvindu nemenda í meistaranámi við Háskólann á Akureyri. Tekin voru viðtöl við þrettán útskrifaða meistaranemendur af öllum fræðasviðum sem lokið höfðu námi á tímabilinu 2010 til 2016. Meginniðurstöðurnar eru þær að reglubundnar staðlotur í náminu opnuðu nemendum tækifæri til náms sem ekki hefðu gefist annars. Búsetutengdir þættir hömluðu aðeins að litlu leyti framvindu námsins þó að margir nemendur ættu um langan veg að fara í staðlotur. Konur gátu þess fremur en karlar að þær hefðu þurft að gera sérstakar ráðstafanir vegna fjarveru frá fjölskyldu meðan loturnar stóðu yfir. Nemendur töldu verkefnavinnu og hópavinnu styðja betur námsframvindu sína en fyrirlestra og próf. Einnig kom fram í máli nokkurra viðmælenda að kvenkyns kennarar legðu meiri áherslu á skipuleg vinnubrögð í kennslu og áætlunum en karlkennarar. Í máli allra viðmælenda mátti greina að tengslanetið sem þeir byggðu upp á námstímanum hefði haft jákvæð áhrif á námsframvinduna. Rannsóknin varpar ljósi á mikilvæga þætti tengda umgjörð, skipulagi og stoðþjónustu í háskólanámi sem gagnast geta við þróun einstakra námsleiða, sem og almennt í gæðastarfi háskólastofnana.

Stepwise refinement in block-based programming

With the popularity of block-based programming in CS0 courses, a growing number of students will learn a block language in their first exposure to programming. Studies indicate that blocks make it ...

Borrowing against the future: the response to the public consultation on the NHS bursary.

This paper discusses the UK Government's public consultation into the NHS bursary and the response from the Nursing and Midwifery Council. A public consultation stipulated that the current arrangements for funding, by the State, were not to be considered for discussion. Instead, the consultation only appraised views that would lead to the successful introduction of student finance loans for NHS professional education. Testimonies from nurses, midwives and nursing students expressed concern that the new funding arrangements were unaffordable, dis-incentivising and biased towards the marketisation of student loans in the UK, yet the changes went ahead. The changes to NHS bursary funding resulted from the UK Government's desire for growth in student numbers (and ostensibly not growth in financial figures), and the fact that nursing (and other healthcare) students will become more fiscally indebted, despite society's moral obligation to them.

A 10-year case study on the changing determinants of university student satisfaction in the UK.

Higher Education (HE), once the prerogative of a tiny elite, is now accessible to larger numbers of people around the world than ever before yet despite the fact that an understanding of student satisfaction has never been more important for today’s universities, the concept remains poorly understood. Here we use published data from the UK’s National Student Survey (NSS), representing data from 2.3 million full-time students collected from 2007 to 2016, as a case study of the benefits and limitations of measuring student satisfaction that might have applicability for other countries, particularly those that, like the UK, have experienced significant growth in student numbers. The analyses showed that the factor structure of the NSS remained generally stable and that the ability of the NSS to discriminate between different subjects at different universities actually improved over the ten-year sample period. The best predictors of overall satisfaction were ‘Teaching Quality’ and ‘Organisation & Management’, with ‘Assessment & Feedback’ having relatively weak predictive ability, despite the sector’s tangible efforts to improve on this metric. The tripling of student fees in 2012 for English students (but not the rest of the UK) was used as a ‘natural experiment’ to investigate the sensitivity of student satisfaction ratings to the real economic costs of HE. The tuition fee increase had no identifiable negative effect, with student satisfaction steadily improving throughout the decade. Although the NSS was never designed to measure perceived value-for-money, its insensitivity to major changes in the economic costs of HE to the individual suggest that the conventional concept of student satisfaction is incomplete. As such we propose that the concept of student satisfaction: (i) needs to be widened to take into account the broader economic benefits to the individual student by including measures of perceived value-for-money and (ii) should measure students’ level of satisfaction in the years post-graduation, by which time they may have a greater appreciation of the value of their degree in the workplace.

UK policy discourses and international student mobility: the deterrence and subjectification of international students

ABSTRACTPolicies on international student mobility (ISM) have the capacity to structure both flows of students and the representations of globally mobile students through discourse. This paper draws on a text-based analysis of British policy discourses and secondary analysis of published statistics. It uses problematisation analysis to examine how problems and students are represented as social subjects. Growth in student numbers, particularly in high ranking institutions, has coincided with proactive policies over the last 20 years, suggesting that policy discourses are linked to mobility. But policy targets were not met and growth has fallen since the 2010 tightening of migration policy. Nor was the target of diversifying source countries met, meaning the UK remains dependent on student demand from a few nations. This mixed success suggests that student mobility is easily deterred by migration policy, but other policies have little impact on the nature of demand. In interaction with multiple, contradictory media and institutional discourses, policy discourses construct international students as sources of income, immigrants of doubtful value, consumers, and ‘other’. These representations may be internalised by students, who learn to subjectify themselves. I call for an approach to ISM which puts statistics in dialogue with discourse.

India: World-Class Universities?

India’s higher education and research sectors have been generallyunderfunded, especially in view of the tremendous growth in numbers ofstudents. Compared to the other BRIC countries, the percentage spent oneducation, 4.1 percent of GDP, is second to Brazil. This article explores the Indian higher education system with respect to its potential to create world-class universities.

India: World-Class Universities?

India’s higher education and research sectors have been generallyunderfunded, especially in view of the tremendous growth in numbers ofstudents. Compared to the other BRIC countries, the percentage spent oneducation, 4.1 percent of GDP, is second to Brazil. This article explores the Indian higher education system with respect to its potential to create world-class universities.

Tensions in the New Millennium: Inclusion Ideology and Education Policy in the Finnish Comprehensive School

This article examines the discrepancy between the ideology of inclusive education and the national education policy in the Finnish comprehensive school education. The study covers twenty years and is based on observations that indicate that the change in comprehensive school education, grounded in inclusive education ideals, has been slow. This has been the case, even though Finnish education policy has, on principle, committed to many international statements that promote inclusion ideology. The data consists primarily of statistics indicating the number of students in special education and national and international research on the subject. It confirms our supposition, but also the fact that statistics are not merely challenging but also capable of distorting reality. While examining the changes in student quantities over the last twenty years, we came to the conclusion that the fluctuation does not result from any real growth in student numbers. Changes in statistical methods, terminology in the field of study, norms, education systems or even social phenomena can also cause distortion.

Innovative outdoor fieldwork pedagogies in the higher education sector: Optimising the use of technology

Outdoor fieldwork has been a long-standing pedagogy in the higher education sector, across a range of disciplines. Based on a review of the literature, this paper explores the use of outdoor fieldwork in the 21st century university with particular reference to the way technology contributes to student learning. Research has indicated that fieldwork enhances student engagement, links theory and practice, and assists students with the development of professional expertise. Many of the challenges for outdoor fieldwork, such as budget cuts, risk management concerns, and workload demands on staff, have been exacerbated by massification pressures in universities, such as the growth in student numbers and a more diverse student cohort. The increased use of technology on outdoor field trips both solves and creates problems, and technology use in outdoor education has been described as a double-edged sword (Cuthbertson, Socha, & Potter, 2004). It can be difficult for teachers to judge whether the benefits to student-learning outcomes created by introducing technology outweigh any negative impacts. Koehler and Mishra’s (2009) concept of technological pedagogical content knowledge suggests that teachers need to develop a very specific kind of knowledge to make informed decisions about the use of technology. The substitution, augmentation, modification, redefinition (SAMR) ladder (Puentedura, 2006) can contribute to this teacher knowledge by focusing on how the use of technology can transform student learning rather than just replace, or augment, existing teaching tools and strategies. Some examples of how technology is used at the different levels of the SAMR model in outdoor education are provided.

STUDENTS’ AWARENESS OF AND ADHERENCE TO ENERGY MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN SELECTED STUDENTS' HALLS OF RESIDENCE AT KWAME NKRUMAH UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, GHANA

Energy management is one of the current policy directions of the Ghana government given the increasing challenges associated with energy generation to cope with the growing demand. A conscious attempt at adopting practices aimed at conserving energy is considered a sinequanon to coping with the current energy challenges in Ghana. However, an assessment of the awareness level of energy management practices is yet to be rigorously pursued as an agenda towards energy conservation in institutions and agencies perceived to be high energy consumers. Currently, the increasing growth in student numbers in the universities in Ghana and the high energy demands against the low level of energy generation to cope with these demands needs urgent attention. Consequently, adherence to effective energy management practices among students in these universities is considered a prima-facie in coping with the energy challenges in the country. The aim of this study was to assess the awareness and adherence levels of energy management practices of students in tertiary institutions in Ghana. Using KNUST as a case study, a questionnaire survey was carried out amongst students in residential accommodation on the campus. Subsequently, mean score and one sample t-test analyses were employed to analyze the empirical data elicited. The findings revealed a generally low awareness and adherence level to the critical energy management practices amongst students. These findings have implications for energy policy formulation and innovations towards conservation and management. Keywords: Energy management; Ghana; Hostels; Students

The role of knowledge visualisation in supporting postgraduate dissertation assessment

AbstractThere has been a worldwide increase in the number of postgraduate students over the last few years and therefore some examiners struggle to maintain high standards of consistency, accuracy and fairness. This is especially true in developing countries where the increase is supervision capacity is not on a par with the growth in student numbers. The aim of this research is to deploy freely available technology in order to find a way to help examiners to cope with this extra pressure, while maintaining the rigour of the assessment process. In terms of methodology, we commenced by mining the literature to ascertain exactly what criteria dissertation examiners were assessing, and how they went about doing this. We discovered that examiners tend first to gain an initial impression of a dissertation by reading the summary sections of the report: the abstract, introduction and conclusion. This delivers a helpful overview that eases the subsequent thorough examination of the dissertation, where they work their way through each chapter. This “overview then zoom” practice is reminiscent of the primary information visualisation mantra. This led us to consider whether knowledge visualisation could be the ameliorative mechanism we were looking for. We then carried out a systematic literature overview in order to determine whether knowledge visualisation had been used in this context. This revealed a surprising lack of research on the use of knowledge visualisation for assessment. We thus commenced to study extant use of visualisations. A case study approach was employed to study extant use of visualisations, in terms of how adequately they provided evidence of students having satisfied the previously identified assessment criteria. A number of experienced supervisors were then surveyed to gather their opinions about the role of knowledge visualisations in dissertations. Our findings indicate that knowledge visualisations can indeed provide evidence that particular criteria have been satisfied within a dissertation, and they do this more efficiently than text. Given the advances in technology, all postgraduate students are now able easily to produce computer‐generated visualisations, so requiring their inclusion would be no great impediment. We conclude that knowledge visualisations demonstrate promise in terms of supporting assessment of postgraduate dissertations. Our recommendations are that the deliberate deployment of knowledge visualisations in this context be investigated further to determine whether this initial promise can be realised in actual practice.A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y7mcF2ZBNT8

The emergence of contesting motives for student feedback-based evaluation in Australian higher education

ABSTRACTStudent feedback-based evaluation performs a significant social role in framing perceptions of the quality of teaching in contemporary Australian higher education. Yet its emergence is a relatively recent phenomenon, having only been in widespread application since the mid-1980s. The early manifestations of student feedback-based evaluation came with newly emerging academic development units with a motive to enhance the quality of local teaching and to afford student retention. However, new motives for assailing student feedback evolved with the rapid growth in student numbers, the introduction of student fees and heightened levels of inter-institutional competition for students. As a result, student feedback-based evaluation progressively became also a powerful proxy measure of teaching and curricula quality assurance at an individual, institutional and sectoral level [Blackmore, J. (2009). Academic pedagogies, quality logics and performative universities: Evaluating teaching and what students want. Studies in Higher Education, 34(8), 857–872. doi:10.1080/03075070902898664]. This generated critical tensions between the seminal motive of student feedback around quality improvement, and the rising quality assurances discourses, academic performance management demands and institutional marketing. In this paper, the complex social origins of these competing motives for student feedback-based evaluation in Australian higher education will be explored and analysed. It is argued this provides an important means of understanding the polarising effects of student feedback-based evaluation in Australian universities.

Mobile professional learning for the legal profession in Ireland – a student-centred approach

There is a danger that technology in education is implemented for technology’s sake, and that not enough thought is given to designing courses that use it to facilitate more effective ways of learning that are student centred. Drawing on the Law Society Diploma Centre’s experience and on student feedback over the last four years, this article will outline how we have adapted the provision of continuing professional education to include the use of blended learning, iPads, a customised webcasting facility, an app and a “massive open online course” or MOOC. Legal professionals are using a proliferating number of mobile devices to integrate personal and professional information. As a result, accessibility to content “on the move” is one of the key factors in providing post-qualification and continuing professional development courses for busy practitioners who work full time. The blended learning design draws on Garrison’s Community of Inquiry Model, and caters for the particular learning needs of solicitors and trainees who have busy careers, and who would benefit from having flexible options in terms of engaging with their learning.The outcomes have included positive student feedback and growth in student numbers from outside Dublin. Increased student interaction has resulted in courses where there is continuous and strong evidence of “virtual handholding”, with mandatory marks awarded for participation. However, there are challenges for Course Leaders in fostering online engagement, and interactivity is not necessarily a given on mobile devices such as tablets. The implementation of the Law Society’s tailored webcasting facility as part of a technology-enhanced learning methodology has ensured the sustainability and growth of continuing professional education and provides a student centred learning approach for solicitors and trainees.

India: World-Class Universities?

India’s higher education and research sectors have been generally underfunded, especially in view of the tremendous growth in numbers of students. Compared to the other BRIC countries, the percentage spent on education, 4.1 percent of GDP, is second to Brazil. This article explores the Indian higher education system with respect to its potential to create world-class universities.

Student usage of a learning management system at an open distance learning institute: A case study in electrical engineering

Growth in student numbers and heavy teaching workloads may negatively influence the quality of teaching and learning in higher education. Various strategies have been introduced to try and address these concerns. One specific strategy involves the use of learning management systems to enhance the interaction between students and academics. The purpose of this article is to highlight student usage of a learning management system in electrical engineering at an open distance learning institute in South Africa, correlating it to the student’s academic achievement. The lack of 100% student engagement suggests that not all students have access to the Internet. A relationship was established between the pass rates of the modules and the student usage of the learning management system and student support given via the learning management system. Final grade results suggest that students who fully engaged with the learning management system are more likely to succeed in an open distance learning environment.

Importance of a Network of Online Labs in Magrebian Countries

Due to global economic factors, in Maghreb, there started short time ago and in the coming period will also continue a very high demand for technicians and engineers. In order to respond to this demand, the initial step is going to be to increase the capacity to train students in institutions of higher education in these countries. But at the same time an incompatibility between growth in numbers of students and quality of courses offered can appear. For this reason an innovative pedagogical approach, complementary to face-to-face pedagogy should be the solution. Integrating eLearning tools to develop a network of remote labs and online learning to build, sustain and share new training subjects in the purpose of providing high qualified students represents a success for the working market.