Digital resilience in higher education

Higher education institutions face a number of opportunities and challenges as the result of the digital revolution. The institutions perform a number of scholarship functions which can be affected by new technologies, and the desire is to retain these functions where appropriate, whilst the form they take may change. Much of the reaction to technological change comes from those with a vested interest in either wholesale change or maintaining the status quo. Taking the resilience metaphor from ecology, the authors propose a framework for analysing an institution’s ability to adapt to digital challenges. This framework is examined at two institutions (the UK Open University and Canada’s Athabasca University) using two current digital challenges, namely Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and Open Access publishing

The Changing Nature of Faculty Employment

[Excerpt] The last two decades of the twentieth century saw a significant growth in the shares of faculty members in American colleges and universities that are part-time or are full-time without tenure-track status. Growing student enrollments faced by academic institutions during tight financial times and growing differentials between the salaries of part-time and full-time non-tenure track faculty on the one hand, and tenured and tenure-track faculty on the other hand are among the explanations given for these trends. However, there have been few econometric studies that seek to test these hypotheses. Our paper begins by presenting information, broken down by form of control (public/private) and 1994 Carnegie Category, on how the proportions of full-time faculty at 4-year American colleges and universities that are tenured and on tenure tracks and that are not on tenure tracks have changed since 1989, using information for a consistent sample of institutions from the annual IPEDS Faculty Salary Surveysand the biennial IPEDS Fall Staff Surveys. The latter source also permits us to present similar estimates of the proportions of faculty that are employed part-time and the share of new full-time faculty appointments that are not on tenure tracks. To analyze the role that economic variables play in causing changes in faculty employment across categories, we conduct two types of econometric analyses. First, in section III, we use panel data to estimate demand functions for tenure and tenure-track faculty on the one hand and full-time non tenure-track faculty on the other hand to learn how changes in revenues per student and the average salaries of different types of full-time faculty influence the distribution of faculty across categories of full-time faculty. We do this using both equilibrium models that assume instantaneous adjustments to changes in revenues and faculty salaries and lagged adjustment models that permit partial adjustments to equilibrium each year. Second, in section IV, we estimate models that seek to explain the flow of new hires of each type of faculty member (rather than the levels of faculty employment) using data on new hires that are available from the IPEDS Fall Staff Surveys. To explain new hires, in addition to information on changes in revenues per student, changes in enrollment, and the levels of faculty salaries, we require information on the number of vacant positions that are available to be potentially filled. We construct information on the latter using data on the number of continuing full-time faculty members at an institution each year that the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) collects (but does not publish) as part of its annual salary survey. Continuing faculty members in a rank are defined as the number of faculty members in a rank one year, who also are on the payroll of the institution in the next year, regardless of their rank in the second year. Summing up an institution’s continuing faculty members across ranks in a year and subtracting that number from the institution’s total faculty employment in the previous year provides us with an estimate of the number of full-time faculty vacancies that an institution could have filled in a year if it had replaced each of its departing full-time faculty members. A brief concluding section summarizes our findings and discusses their implications for American colleges and universities and their students

Creatively Financed Legal Education In A Marketized Environment: How Faculty Leveraged Buyouts Can Maximize Law Schools’ Stakeholder Values

“This [financial aid] money is not necessarily going to educate more students or to improve education. It’s a scholarship ultimately going into profits.”

Redesigning Information Resources for Digital Natives

The influx of Digital Natives into higher education, combined with the introduction of virtual learning environments as the primary means of interaction between students and universities, will have a transformational effect on learning and on library services. This paper examines the e-book market-place and the main UK responses to it (the Southern Universities Purchasing Consortium’s tender and the JISC E-Books Observatory project). Within this context the innovative measures already taken by Bournemouth University are discussed, as are plans to develop innovative pedagogic frameworks and an e-reading strategy through a Higher Education Academy-funded pathfinder project, Innovative E-Learning with E-Resources (eRes)

Visual mapping approaches for considering the strategic rationale for the implementation of OER in higher education institutions

Open educational resources (OER) have become a significant part of the general discourse around higher education and a number of institutions and governments have implemented initiatives to develop and use OER on the basis that they will help transform educational practice within and between higher educational institutions (HEIs). Nevertheless there has also been considerable comment and concern by many involved in higher education that OER are not sustainable financially and unlikely to be truly transformative of policy and practices in higher education. This paper reviews the existing published evidence and argues that all institutions need to properly consider whether and how OER fit in to their strategic plans and that this can usefully be done through the help of visual methods. Visual methods such as paper or computer based mapping techniques enable users to capture as much information as possible through a mediated conversation around the holistic representation of their collective views. This need for undertaking strategic reviews is mainly illustrated through the work of the EADTU led Multilingual Open Resources for Independent Learning (MORIL) project where workshop participants from HEIs used Kurt Lewin’s Force Field Framework to examine both intra institutional and inter institutional factors that were driving or restraining them in the implementation of OER. A major outcome of this work is that OER are another valued factor in the evolution of higher education policy and practice and that progress will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary

The e-revolution and post-compulsory education: using e-business models to deliver quality education

The best practices of e-business are revolutionising not just technology itself but the whole process through which services are provided; and from which important lessons can be learnt by post-compulsory educational institutions. This book aims to move debates about ICT and higher education beyond a simple focus on e-learning by considering the provision of post-compulsory education as a whole. It considers what we mean by e-business, why e-business approaches are relevant to universities and colleges and the key issues this raises for post-secondary education

Post-traditional Learners and the Transformation of Postsecondary Education: A Manifesto for College Leaders

Our traditional system of two- and four-year colleges and universities is not well-suited to educate post-traditional learners, writes Louis Soares. Postsecondary education leaders need to be challenged to embrace a future of innovation that may put their current institutional, instructional, and financial models at risk. This paper includes a brief primer on innovation, a profile of post-traditional learners, a look at the U.S. investment in postsecondary education and training, and concludes with three principles to "catalyze a manifesto for college leaders on how to proceed.