Challenges and Prospects of Implementing ISO 9001:2015 in Lebanese Higher Education Institutions

Over the past three decades, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has been promoting and advocating the standardization of quality management systems and their requirements for almost all of the technology and business fields. Recently, ISO has been expanding its activities into other topics related to social and environmental policy. ISO 9001 is one of the most well-known and widely implemented international standards of quality. Since its first inception in 1987, ISO 9001 has been modified four times in order to cover a wider variety of sectors. Through its evolution till 2015, ISO 9001 has been considered as a standard that may be suitable to meet higher educational organizations needs and requirements. Consequently, a significant number of higher education institutions induced the confidence of their stakeholders by implementing ISO 9001 into their systems. However, the contribution of the Lebanese educational institutions is still limited and exclusive to a small number of universities. The aim of this paper is to investigate the challenges of implementing ISO 9001:2015 into the Lebanese higher education institutions, shed the light on the importance of having its compliance to the quality management system requirements, and propose a solution to address these challenges. Keywords: ISO 9001:2015, higher education institutions, quality management systems, standards.

Open courseware as an example for user-centric innovation in higher education – towards a new social role of the university

The use of information and communication technology (ICT) in education has been touted as the solution to many of the challenges faced by higher education. ICTs were expected to revolutionise the way we teach and learn, increase access to higher education for all, and improve quality – while greatly reducing cost. As a result public and private institutions have been under pressure to integrate ICTs in their activities, and new virtual institutions were created to offer online teaching and degrees.Peer Reviewe

Fostering quality in MOOCs: a european approach

Societal, educationaland personal changes have brought Open (Online) Education in the forefront of the global learning setting. One of the most significant challenges behind the EU Modernization Agenda is for education to respond to the characteristics of future students and to new needs in society. According to the Europe 2020 agenda, 40% of young people should complete higher education studies by 2020. The entire European university sector witnesses an increase of student numbers. Conventional learning methods are suboptimalsolutions for these massive student numbers. Thus, important questions and issues arise: How can we anticipate increasing student numbers combined with the likelihood of lower funding? How should we combine online and traditional formats to devise sustainable university business-models? In order to address these challenges Europe is investing in flexible educational solutions as this is embraced by the EC in its Open Educational Resource (OER) agenda. During the last years Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) became very popular: Since the year 2008, when the first MOOC was provided, the number of MOOCs is constantly increasing. The year 2012 was considered as the "Year of the MOOCs". However, MOOCs and OER are a good solution as long as they retain a certain level of quality. So far, experience and practice are leading to an increasing debate about their quality as an educational tool. The high drop-out rates of MOOCs that are typically measured in traditional distance education courses as well as in all formal education settings are discussed causing requests for rebooting MOOCs and the research on them and their quality. This article addresses the open issue of integration of quality approaches and mechanisms into the design of MOOCs through the development of a European MOOC Quality Reference Framework (QRF). The MOOC QRF provides a generic, organisation-wide system to help Higher Education Institutions and external stakeholders to design, develop, monitor, evaluate and improve the effectiveness of MOOCs along with the quality management practices. Based on flexible, configurable quality criteria and indicative descriptors, monitoring and reporting is adapted to organisational needs. The article presents the structure and quality dimensions of the MOOC QRF.It is based on the first international quality standard ISO/IEC 40180 and currently submitted to the European and international standardization committee (CEN TC 353 and ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36) for approval as first quality standard for MOOCs. The MOOC QRF is practical to encompass a wide range of approaches to quality assurance emphasizing that it is the quality of the outcomes that matters most in the design of MOOCs, thus leading to a new era of learning experiences in Europe.This article is supported by MOOQ, the European Alliance for Quality of Massive Open Online Courses (www.MOOC-quality.eu). The vision of MOOQ is to foster and improve quality in MOOCs leading to a new era of learning experiences. MOOQ is partly funded bythe European Commission under the following project number: 2015-1-NL01-KA203-008950.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

ACHIEVING THE NEW SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS: THE ROLE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES

This paper examines achieving the new sustainable development goals, the role of scientific research in Nigerian universities. Development in any sector can only be achieved when challenges facing such sector are located and tackled. Sustainable development goals are birthed to address every problematic area of human life. Researches, especially scientific researches, fits into all these areas are medium through which solution can be preferred. This study examines the nature, classification, types and approaches of scientific research. It also laid bare the sustainable development goals, the importance and the roles scientific researches play in the achievement of the goals. Academics and professionals must know that education and research are explicitly recognized in all of the SDGs and that universities/tertiary institutions have a direct role in addressing the challenges therein. Higher education institutions (with academics and professionals on the driving seat) have a critical role to play in implementing and driving sustainable development initiatives through their institutional policies and practices. The government and non-governmental organisations needs to make good policy that will aimed at training and retraining of researchers to developed good and quality research skills in implementing the new sustainable development goals. Article visualizations

Fostering quality in MOOCs: a european approach

Societal, educationaland personal changes have brought Open (Online) Education in the forefront of the global learning setting. One of the most significant challenges behind the EU Modernization Agenda is for education to respond to the characteristics of future students and to new needs in society. According to the Europe 2020 agenda, 40% of young people should complete higher education studies by 2020. The entire European university sector witnesses an increase of student numbers. Conventional learning methods are suboptimalsolutions for these massive student numbers. Thus, important questions and issues arise: How can we anticipate increasing student numbers combined with the likelihood of lower funding? How should we combine online and traditional formats to devise sustainable university business-models? In order to address these challenges Europe is investing in flexible educational solutions as this is embraced by the EC in its Open Educational Resource (OER) agenda. During the last years Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) became very popular: Since the year 2008, when the first MOOC was provided, the number of MOOCs is constantly increasing. The year 2012 was considered as the "Year of the MOOCs". However, MOOCs and OER are a good solution as long as they retain a certain level of quality. So far, experience and practice are leading to an increasing debate about their quality as an educational tool. The high drop-out rates of MOOCs that are typically measured in traditional distance education courses as well as in all formal education settings are discussed causing requests for rebooting MOOCs and the research on them and their quality. This article addresses the open issue of integration of quality approaches and mechanisms into the design of MOOCs through the development of a European MOOC Quality Reference Framework (QRF). The MOOC QRF provides a generic, organisation-wide system to help Higher Education Institutions and external stakeholders to design, develop, monitor, evaluate and improve the effectiveness of MOOCs along with the quality management practices. Based on flexible, configurable quality criteria and indicative descriptors, monitoring and reporting is adapted to organisational needs. The article presents the structure and quality dimensions of the MOOC QRF.It is based on the first international quality standard ISO/IEC 40180 and currently submitted to the European and international standardization committee (CEN TC 353 and ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36) for approval as first quality standard for MOOCs. The MOOC QRF is practical to encompass a wide range of approaches to quality assurance emphasizing that it is the quality of the outcomes that matters most in the design of MOOCs, thus leading to a new era of learning experiences in Europe.This article is supported by MOOQ, the European Alliance for Quality of Massive Open Online Courses (www.MOOC-quality.eu). The vision of MOOQ is to foster and improve quality in MOOCs leading to a new era of learning experiences. MOOQ is partly funded bythe European Commission under the following project number: 2015-1-NL01-KA203-008950.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Perceptions of Blended Learning in Saudi Universities

Saudi Higher Education has started to move with the international trend towards blending face-to-face with online instruction when developing new educational processes. As a contribution to the innovations in Saudi Higher Education, this study explores the perceptions of Saudi female lecturers and undergraduate students towards blended learning from their experience as participants in blended courses. The advantage of blended learning was recognized by the Ministry of Saudi Higher Education as a solution to the challenge of providing college education to the rapidly growing student population. As the move to a blended learning model represents a radical shift in the Saudi educational system, this study shows how Saudi students and lecturers reacted to this change and how it affected the quality of their learning and teaching experience. The objective of the study is to identify Saudi female undergraduate students’ and lecturers’ perceptions of the advantages, challenges and future of blended learning. Consequently, the key factors that influence the lecturers’ and students’ views are discussed, and recommendations for future research, strategy and practice are provided. Qualitative methods were used to obtain rich descriptive data to facilitate the exploration of the phenomena. Based on interpretative philosophy, the data was analysed in the form of explanation and interpretation of the participants’ perceptions of blended learning. The study concludes that blended learning has the potential to offer a successful learning experience in Saudi Arabia. As there are always challenges of adaptation when a new approach is employed, this research provides insight into how the challenges of implementing blended learning in Saudi Higher Education could be addressed. A theoretical blended learning framework is introduced to provide the factors that influence the implementation of blended learning. One of the major conclusions is that a blended learning environment offers Saudi females the flexibility to continue their higher education while maintaining their own cultural values and traditions

Enhancing Experiential Learning Opportunities Through the Integration of Continuous Improvement Practices

Experiential learning (EL) in higher education has become a prominent academic curriculum component. Recent provincial guidelines emphasize that post-secondary institutions provide students EL opportunities, outlining criteria as to what counts as an EL activity. While these guidelines provide instruction on what an EL opportunity should contain, it does not detail how post-secondary institutions should develop and implement these activities responsive to their unique student population needs. This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) aims to determine how an Ontario university can provide meaningful, student-focused EL opportunities through a centralized, theoretically-informed EL implementation framework. It centers around a Problem of Practice (PoP) at Gordon University (GU), where the absence of formal internal practices on how to develop and implement EL has created an imbalance in current offerings. Throughout the OIP, a distributed-adaptive hybrid leadership approach combined with the change path model (Cawsey et al., 2016) creates a pathway to propel identified change practices forward. An organizational analysis identifies key change areas, determining the scope and type of change needed. Using Starratt’s (1991, 1996) ethics of care, justice and critique reveals the ethical considerations and challenges a chosen solution needs to address. The result is a proposed solution to the PoP that focuses on organizational learning using Kolb’s (2015) EL theory. Embedding this organizational learning in GU’s existing quality assurance academic review framework will formalize the process. The model for improvement (Langley et al., 1994; Langley et al., 2009; Moen & Norman, 2009) guides the implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and communication plans to ensure continuous improvement of the chosen solution. Keywords: Experiential learning, Continuous improvement, Quality assurance, Distributed-adaptive leadershi

Successful delivery of an online higher education course: a quantitative management framework

South Africa has been experiencing several challenges regarding access to higher education, quality of higher education, effectiveness of higher education course delivery, and funding for higher education. In the higher education sector, the bulk of the burden is placed on traditional higher education institutions, most notably universities, in providing higher education to a growing youth base in dire need of education that supports their individual learning needs. With these challenges facing traditional universities, online higher education provided by both public sector higher education institutions and private sector education providers can act as a valuable alternative and solution to access for some of the population. Online education and face-to-face education differ considerably in how they deliver courses to students. Many have argued that these differences are in some cases attributable to strengths in face-to-face education and drawbacks or limitations in online education, large enough that they should serve as the criteria for selecting the former over the latter as the better mode of delivery. While there have been examples of online programmes that have failed to deliver courses successfully by underutilising or misusing the tools and techniques available, there are positive examples where these programmes perform equally as well as face-to-face courses. The defining difference is ultimately and often the management of these courses’ resources, activities, people, processes, and practices. Considering the above, and with examination of the available literature, a conceptual and theoretical framework was constructed and a quantitative research study was undertaken to prove the significant correlational relationships between elements of course delivery and a management framework to govern those elements. The sample consisted of 115 students from a postgraduate degree programme presented in two formats, online and on-campus. The findings provide evidence of significant relationships between the core functions of management as well as between aspects of course delivery, such as opportunities for interaction, opportunities for feedback, and course content in achieving learning outcomes for students and contributing to engagement. The findings also indicate positive perceptions from students in relation to the delivery of the courses

Concept of training future specialists in the field of special education to professional activities in the inclusive educational environment

У статті висвітлено концепцію підготовки майбутніх фахівців у галузі спеціальної освіти до професійної діяльності в інклюзивному освітньому середовищі, розроблення і реалізація якої обумовлені соціальними замовленнями суспільства на педагога, здатного забезпечити якісну підтримку дітей з особливими освітніми потребами, їхніх батьків та педагогів в інклюзивних навчальних закладах.В статье рассматривается концепция подготовки будущих специалистов в области специального образования к профессиональной деятельности в инклюзивной образовательной среде, разработка и реализация которой обусловлены социальным заказом общества на педагога, способного обеспечить качественную поддержку детей с особыми образовательными потребностями, их родителей и педагогов в инклюзивных учебных заведениях.The article deals with the concept of training future specialists in” the field of special educa: professional activities in the inclusive educational space, the development and implementation of which stipulated by social orders of a society for a teacher capable of providing quality support for children with special educational needs, their parents and teachers in inclusive educational institutions. The content of the concept is disclosed in accordance with the following components: meaningful fragments of objective reality in their historical development; agreed terms that became key in developi , concept; revealed the most significant contradiction, the solution of which is aimed at the concept; the general idea of the concept; general terms of the concept; methodological principles of the concept; ways of set tasks within the framework of the concept implementation. The concept of training a special teacher for inclusive education of children with special educational needs, presented in the article, was created in order to respond to the challenges that today faced by Ukrainian higher education institutions that are training specialists in the specialty 016 Special Education

Enhancing Mathematics Learning Through Peer Assessment Using Mobile Tablet Based Solutions

Higher education is facing unprecedented challenges with an increasing demand for high quality education, driven by tougher global competition. Student numbers are fast growing at most universities, whereas the sources of funding are not proportionally increasing. Subsequently, the teaching staff’s workload gets higher and higher hence putting the quality standards at risk. As class sizes increase, it becomes more difficult to learn in a highly teacher-controlled environment, since the teacher cannot sufficiently address individual student’s needs. Therefore, a teacher should be conceptually seen as a facilitator for students, who provides them with guidance and opportunities to explore and make sense of their subjects of study. Sustainable quality education requires novel approaches to teaching and learning, to provide the best education with a minimum amount of resources. For instance, students should be encouraged to be more active in their learning rather than being passive receivers of the instruction. This study calls for a fundamental shift from instructionism (a teacher focussed educational practice) towards constructivism (a student focussed educational practice); keeping in mind that a combination of both practices may be needed in certain cases. In addition to adopting the appropriate educational praxis, innovations in educational technology can further enhance the learning experience. Mobile media tablets are gaining popularity with university students as technology matures. Besides communication and digital media consumption as their primary functions, the latest mobile media tablets can also be used for data production and processing in teaching and learning contexts. This work revisits the practice of peer assessment as a means of formative assessment. Based on user centred design principles, engineering students at the University of Agder (Norway) and Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (Rwanda) were involved in developing a media tablet technology supported peer assessment system. The students’ role in system development is reported as well as their active learning through peer assessment of mathematics assignments. Results of the experimental study generally showed improvements in the technical usability of the system throughout the development cycle. Analysis of the pedagogical usability criteria suggests that there are possible learning gains of using such a system. The findings indicate that peer feedback has a potential to improve students’ learning achievement and that media tablets hold a promising solution in learning mathematics and related subjects. Furthermore, the challenges of implementing effective peer assessment systems supported by new information and communication technology are discussed