Legatum Institute's 'solution' for the Brexit border is highly problematic

Legatum Institute's ideas regarding the post-Brexit Irish border are highly problematic. Katy Hayward (Queen's University Belfast) and Maurice Campbell (Queen's University Belfast) write that these proposals are based on misperceptions of the border, Northern Ireland, as well as the fundamentals of European integration, international trade law and customs practice. The paper from the Legatum Institute's 'Special Trade Commission' on what it terms 'the Irish border issue' is to ..

Women Leading University-Community Engagement: Disruption, Resistance; Resilience

This paper explores the identity jolts and professional responses of female leaders of institutionalized university-community engagement in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia. Using a feminist narrative approach we explored the disorienting dilemmas, critical events and identity jolts related to women’s participation in the institutional leadership of social change initiatives, in particular university-community engagement (UCE). Themes of disruption, resistance and resilience in the neoliberal institutional cultures and practices in which university-community engagement (UCE) is situated are shared through participants’ stories of praxis. This paper is one of a series exploring sociocultural influences on the institutionalization of university-community engagement and the development of engaged and engagement scholarship as an intellectual domain in higher education

When Faculty Use Instructional Technologies: Using Clark's Delivery Model to Understand Gender Differences

Instructional and learning technologies are playing an increasingly important role in postsecondary education, but there is evidence that a number of differences exist in how females and males approach, perceive, and implement these technologies. As faculty start to offer more of their courses using flexible delivery methods such as Web-based conferencing, it is important to understand what gender differences may exist in faculty members' approaches to instructional and communications technologies so that this process may be better facilitated. This paper has three purposes: to highlight some of the major gender-related differences noted in the literature, including some from a feminist perspective; to present and discuss related findings found in an exploratory, post-hoc analysis of survey data collected from our institution; and finally, to suggest areas for future research. Richard Clark's (1994) model distinguishing between Instructional and Delivery Technologies provides a framework for this discussion.Les technologies d'instruction et d'apprentissage occupent un rôle de plus en plus important dans le domaine de l'enseignement post secondaire. Toutefois, certaines données suggèrent qu'il existe des différences dans la manière dont les femmes et les hommes abordent, perçoivent et utilisent ces technologies. Dans la mesure où le corps professoral offre de plus en plus de cours avec des méthodes flexibles, telles que les discussions en ligne, il est important de comprendre quelles sont les différences entre les sexes dans la manière dont les professeures et professeurs abordent les technologies d'instruction et de communication, dans le but de mieux faciliter ce processus. Cet article a trois objectifs : (1) de souligner quelques-unes des plus importantes différences entre les sexes rapportées dans la littérature, incluant certaines provenant d'une perspective feministe; (2) de présenter et discuter certains résultats connexes provenant d'une analyse exploratoire a posteriori, réalisée à partir de données recueillies dans notre institution; et (3) de suggérer quelques orientations pour des recherches futures. Le modèle de Richard Clark (1994), qui fait la distinction entre les technologies d'instruction et de diffusion, fournit un cadre de reférence pour cette discussion.reférence pour cette discussion

Faculty Adoption of Teaching and Learning Technologies: Contrasting Earlier Adopters and Mainstream Faculty

The adoption of teaching and learning technologies is an innovation that challenges the structure, culture and practice of modern research universities. This paper documents quantitatively and qualitatively the attitudes, skills and behavior of the faculty related to the use of instructional technology at a large Canadian research university. The data was gathered from a survey (n =557) of teaching faculty. The data is analyzed with respect to Roger's (1995) categories of adoption of innovation differentiating "Earlier Adopters" {EAs} from "Mainstream Faculty" (MF). The paper discusses four factors that have tended to create a "chasm" between these two groups and discusses strategies for reducing the chasm and providing support and incentive for all faculty in the adoption of instructional technologies

The Irish Border as a Customs Frontier after Brexit. CEPS Commentary, 11 July 2017

When the United Kingdom leaves the European Union, the status of its land border with the Republic of Ireland will inevitably change. The steady growth of trade and networks across this contested border over the past two decades have been largely attributable to their common EU membership and the peace process they have supported in Northern Ireland. Even aside from political sensitivities, any disruption to this integration will have an economic effect that Northern Ireland and the Irish border region can ill afford. As such, the European Council, European Commission and the UK government have repeatedly expressed a desire to avoid the return of a ‘hard border’ across the island of Ireland. Yet the practicalities of retaining such an open border after Brexit are highly complex, particularly as it looks set to become a customs border once again

Faculty Adoption of Teaching and Learning Technologies: Contrasting Earlier Adopters and Mainstream Faculty

The adoption of teaching and learning technologies is an innovation that challenges the structure, culture and practice of modern research universities. This paper documents quantitatively and qualitatively the attitudes, skills and behavior of the faculty related to the use of instructional technology at a large Canadian research university. The data was gathered from a survey (n = 557) of teaching faculty. The data is analyzed with respect to Roger's (1995) categories of adoption of innovation differentiating "Earlier Adopters" (EAs) from "Mainstream Faculty" (MF). The paper discusses four factors that have tended to create a "chasm" between these two groups and discusses strategies for reducing the chasm and providing support and incentive for all faculty in the adoption of instructional technologies.L'adoption de la technologie éducative à des fins pédagogiques constitue une innovation qui remet en question la structure, la culture et les pratiques des universités de recherche modernes. Cet article présente des données qualitatives et quantitatives sur les attitudes, les habitudes et le comportement de professeurs d'une grande université de recherche canadienne en ce qui a trait à l'utilisation de la technologie éducative. Les données ont été collectées au moyen d'un sondage mené auprès de 557 professeurs et analysées en fonction des deux catégories selon lesquelles Rogers (1995) fait, quant à l'adoption des innovations, une distinction entre les «adeptes précoces» et le courant majoritaire des professeurs. L'article énumère quatre facteurs qui tendraient à créer un «fossé» entre ces deux groupes. Il suggère aussi des moyens permenttant de combler ce fossé et de fournir de l'aide et de l'encouragement à tous les professeurs qui cherchent à intégrer les techonologies éducatives à leur enseignement

THE SCHOLARSHIP OF ENGAGEMENT AND UNIVERSITY EXTENSION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA

Katy Campbell tells us the meaning of ‘engagement scholarship’ in her context and discusses the university extension roles at the University of Alberta. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24317/2358-0399.2017v8i1.499

Instructional Designers Perceptions of Their Agency: Tales of Change and Community

In addition to the important role instructional designers play in the design and development of instructional products and programs, they also act in communities of practice as agents in changing the way traditional colleges and universities implement their missions. Designers work directly with faculty and clients to help them think more critically about the needs of all learners, issues of access, social and cultural implications of information technologies, alternative learning environments (e.g., workplace learning), and related policy development. As such, through reflexive practice, interpersonal agency and critical practice they are important participants in shaping interpersonal, institutional and societal agendas for change. This chapter will draw on the stories of instructional designers in higher education to highlight their interpretations of their own agency in each context. In essence, this chapter deviates from the understanding of a case study as occurring in a single setting in that it draws on the experiences of several instructional designers in several contexts. Rather, we accept Yin’s (2003) definition of case study as a research strategy, that is, as an empirical inquiry that “investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context” (p. 13) and view our study in this regard as a multiple-case design with the instructional designer as the unit of analysis. Taken as a group, these designers tell a strong story of struggle and agency in higher education contexts, and it is a story that portrays designers as active, moral, political and influential in activating change. So from their rich descriptions of practice, we attempt in this chapter to weave a composite case study of an instructional designer’s experience that is true to the collective narrative of the designers we’ve interviewed. Any single person’s story of agency is by necessity narrow and contextually bound, and these are both the greatest strengths and limitations of individual cases. We hope that by viewing the stories of instructional designers through the macro lens of narrative, we can better illustrate the scope of agency and community that instructional designers practice each day

Instructional Designers' Observations about Identity, Communities of Practice and Change Agency

We presume that models and theory in instructional design inform professional practice, but theory has not been consistently built from the professional experiences of instructional designers. This study draws on the observations of five instructional designers who discuss their professional identities, their communities of practice and their roles as agents of social and institutional change. This study is embedded in two theoretical positions: instructional design as a social construct that is expressed in professional communities of practice, and critical pedagogy, in which designers act as agents of social change

Agency of the Instructional Designer:Moral Coherence and Transformative Social Practice

In this paper we propose a view of instructional design practice in which the instructional designer is an agent of social change at the personal, relational, and institutional levels. In this view designers are not journeymen workers directed by management but act in purposeful, value-based ways with ethical knowledge, in social relationships and contexts that have consequences in and for action. The paper is drawn from the data set of a three-year study of the personal meaning that instructional designers make of their work, in a world where identities rely less on institutionally “ascribed status or place” than on the spaces that we make as actors in the social world. Through the voices of two instructional designers in this study, we begin to make the case for instructional design practice as ethical knowledge in action, and for how agency emerges from the designer’s validated sense of identity in institutions of higher learning