Making sense of higher education: students as consumers and the value of the university experience

In the global university sector competitive funding models are progressively becoming the norm, and institutions/courses are frequently now subject to the same kind of consumerist pressures typical of a highly marketised environment. In the United Kingdom, for example, students are increasingly demonstrating customer-like behaviour and are now demanding even more ‘value’ from institutions. Value, though, is a slippery concept and has proven problematic both in terms of its conceptualisation and measurement. This article explores the relationship between student value and higher education and, via study in one United Kingdom business school, suggests how this might be better understood and operationalised. Adopting a combined qualitative/quantitative approach, this article also looks to identify which of the key value drivers has most practical meaning and, coincidentally, identifies a value-related difference between home and international students

What makes an efficient theme for a creativity session?

International audienceDespite literature has widely investigated the logics of ideation, at early stages of innovation and product development processes (Bjork and Magnusson, 2009; Boeddrich, 2004; Girotra et al., 2010), very few contributions deal with the very starting point of the ideation process, i.e. the initial theme given to workshops participants. Nevertheless, scholars' works on the nature of stimuli and examples (Smith et al.,1993; Ward et al., 2004) underlined they could generate heterogeneous effects on the efficiency of the ideation stage. Moreover, whereas efficiency criteria for creativity sessions are well known (fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration), creativity techniques focus on the improvement and monitoring of ideation management: the problem of designing the initial theme is seldom included in the design parameters of creativity sessions, as if it was not considered as an issue in research on creativity management. Yet, one consequence of the above mentioned literature results is that it should be a key efficiency factor: the formulation could play a key role in conditioning cognitive involvement of individuals and managerial goals achievement. This paper focuses on this specific problem of formulating an efficient theme for a creativity session and its implications on cognitive involvement of facilitators and participants, and the achievement of managerial goals of the session. Based on a single case study led through collaborative action research with the French postal service operator, our research analyses the impacts of the formulation in three innovative-oriented creativity workshops the authors have organized and steered from May to October 2013. The three workshops themes were built to experiment the impact of the theme formulation on: 1/ creativity techniques efficiency according traditional criteria and facilitators' cognitive involvement; and 2/ participants' satisfaction assessed through their ability to link the theme, thus the generated ideas, to the company's innovation strategy. The exploratory study confirms that the formulation of the theme has important consequences, both cognitive and managerial. A first set of results suggests two main dimensions to describe the nature and structure of a theme naming: the accuracy level of the formulation and the degree of conceptual tension. A second set of results is about concrete reasoning when designing the theme and implementing in the formulation links to the firm's strategy. A third set of results is about consequences of theme formulation on the way the creativity session is designed and steered. Key dimensions include: 1/ The degree of cognitive implication of facilitators; 2/ The nature of stimuli and idea generation techniques used during the session (generic versus custom-made); 3/ The degree of commitment of the actors (designers of the theme, facilitators and participants) to the organization's strategy, i.e. to what gives value to the output of the creativity session

A BEME systematic review of the effects of interprofessional education : BEME Guide No. 39

BACKGROUND: Interprofessional education (IPE) aims to bring together different professionals to learn with, from, and about one another in order to collaborate more effectively in the delivery of safe, high-quality care for patients/clients. Given its potential for improving collaboration and care delivery, there have been repeated calls for the wider-scale implementation of IPE across education and clinical settings. Increasingly, a range of IPE initiatives are being implemented and evaluated which are adding to the growth of evidence for this form of education. AIM: The overall aim of this review is to update a previous BEME review published in 2007. In doing so, this update sought to synthesize the evolving nature of the IPE evidence. METHODS: Medline, CINAHL, BEI, and ASSIA were searched from May 2005 to June 2014. Also, journal hand searches were undertaken. All potential abstracts and papers were screened by pairs of reviewers to determine inclusion. All included papers were assessed for methodological quality and those deemed as "high quality" were included. The presage-process-product (3P) model and a modified Kirkpatrick model were employed to analyze and synthesize the included studies. RESULTS: Twenty-five new IPE studies were included in this update. These studies were added to the 21 studies from the previous review to form a complete data set of 46 high-quality IPE studies. In relation to the 3P model, overall the updated review found that most of the presage and process factors identified from the previous review were further supported in the newer studies. In regard to the products (outcomes) reported, the results from this review continue to show far more positive than neutral or mixed outcomes reported in the included studies. Based on the modified Kirkpatrick model, the included studies suggest that learners respond well to IPE, their attitudes and perceptions of one another improve, and they report increases in collaborative knowledge and skills. There is more limited, but growing, evidence related to changes in behavior, organizational practice, and benefits to patients/clients. CONCLUSIONS: This updated review found that key context (presage) and process factors reported in the previous review continue to have resonance on the delivery of IPE. In addition, the newer studies have provided further evidence for the effects on IPE related to a number of different outcomes. Based on these conclusions, a series of key implications for the development of IPE are offered

IDR : a participatory methodology for interdisciplinary design in technology enhanced learning

One of the important themes that emerged from the CAL’07 conference was the failure of technology to bring about the expected disruptive effect to learning and teaching. We identify one of the causes as an inherent weakness in prevalent development methodologies. While the problem of designing technology for learning is irreducibly multi-dimensional, design processes often lack true interdisciplinarity. To address this problem we present IDR, a participatory methodology for interdisciplinary techno-pedagogical design, drawing on the design patterns tradition (Alexander, Silverstein & Ishikawa, 1977) and the design research paradigm (DiSessa & Cobb, 2004). We discuss the iterative development and use of our methodology by a pan-European project team of educational researchers, software developers and teachers. We reflect on our experiences of the participatory nature of pattern design and discuss how, as a distributed team, we developed a set of over 120 design patterns, created using our freely available open source web toolkit. Furthermore, we detail how our methodology is applicable to the wider community through a workshop model, which has been run and iteratively refined at five major international conferences, involving over 200 participants

ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge