Frames of Higher Education (Asynchronous Session)
Making the Case for the Doctor of Arts Degree in Music
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Linda Pohly
The Doctor of Arts (DA) degree was launched in the 1960s as a degree that prepared students for university teaching careers. Within the DA, teacher preparation is centralized through coursework built into every student’s curriculum (including a teaching internship and externship under the supervision of a master teacher). Features of the DA degree have elicited discussion over the years, and it remains absent from the list of degrees in the National Association of Schools of Music handbook. Falling under the heading, Degrees with Unique Orientation, it has been approved and accredited. Two universities offer the DA in music in the United States: the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, and Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. These programs are of similar size (about 400 students each), but they are not identical in degree requirements or in areas of academic focus. This paper pays special attention to the program at Ball State while offering some comparisons with UNC. Information about the structure and content, applicability and usefulness of the DA degree in the 21st century is a primary goal. Of particular interest is the revision of some other school's doctoral degrees to include features of the DA. BSU’s graduate music program of approximately 90 students includes about 25% international students from several counties. The strengths of the DA degree allow our students to be better prepared for college and university teaching in a global environment, and to learn from one another. Information about our successful placements, post graduation, are shared.
Impact of COVID 19 on Higher Education Institutions in South Africa: Responses and Lessons Learnt View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Naziema Begum Jappie
The COVID-19 experience is changing the educational experience of over 200 million students in higher education at the more than 20,000 higher education institutions in the world. In light of COVID-19, universities in South Africa took various actions in order to secure the well-being of their students and staff, as well as members of their communities and save the academic programme. This pandemic represents an unprecedented occasion for higher education to evaluate the technical preparedness for new changes, galvanizing us into reflection and action, for instance, regarding how we can tap into the digital technologies and other creative ways to better serve the needs of higher education and address latent disruptors like Covid-19. Whilst inequalities existed on campuses before the pandemic, these manifested in different forms from gender to race/ethnicity, to socioeconomic status, to access to technology and internet speed. Many tertiary institutions and systems are working to develop and implement policies and programs to advance equity, access, diversity and inclusion on their campuses. Yet, the COVID-19 experiences are bringing to light that the gaps in equity, access, diversity and inclusion may be greater than we had realized. The objective of this paper was based on courses of action that academic institutions are implementing in South Africa. While it is understood that the reality of each institution is unique, the aim is to highlight issues equity, access, diversity and inclusion, governance and management during these times as we all continue to learn while the COVID-19 situation unfolds.
Decolonizing the Canon: Implementing a Community College Open Resource Great Books Composition Curriculum View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Susan Lago, Ilse Schrynemakers, Alison Cimino
This paper shares a community college, composition curriculum that decolonizes the Canon: an open resource (OER) “Great Books” initiative that is inclusive of LGBT, racism, feminism, and environmentalism. Planning for this initiative started in Spring 2017 with four members of an ad hoc committee who developed course materials and syllabi that included readings by Sappho, W.E.B. DuBois, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Henry David Thoreau and took in consideration critical pedagogies advanced by Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and Asao Inoue. In Spring 2019, we received a State OER Scale Up Grant to develop our materials into an OER format, which would allow participating courses to receive a “zero textbook cost” designation. CUNY / Queensborough Community College’s diverse population of students, who already enter the composition classroom with a range of experiences specific to their own intersecting identities, now have an opportunity to see those identities reflected in rigorous texts that include them in a wider academic discourse. This opportunity is especially important in a time when universities across the world have had to move from face-to-face instruction to distance learning. As learners—and faculty—struggle with digital literacy as well as access to the technological tools they need for online instruction, this initiative can be integrated into a course’s online interface at no cost to the learner. Thus, while this curriculum challenges learners with its vocabulary and ideas, it also serves a diverse, multicultural student population by fostering learning opportunities that help learners think critically about timeless issues while improving reading and writing skills.
What Motivates University Students to Be in a Mentoring Relationship? : Discovering Motivations using the Organismic Integration Theory through Hermeneutic Phenomenology View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session James Lactao, Grace Shangkuan Koo
Mentees report that mentoring has been beneficial to their life as a university student. Their mentors can give sound, informed, and appropriate pieces of advice that they appreciate and eventually integrate in their lives. Using hermeneutic phenomenology, this research looks into the motivations to be mentored of 12 university students who are in a formal mentoring program offered by their university. Based on the Organismic Integration Theory under Self-determination Theory, the motivations of these students are primarily identification, and secondly integration. Identification, a type of internalization where there is more relative autonomy and conscious endorsement of values and regulations, is evidenced when the students identify the things they get from their mentors as personally valuable and important for them. They experience greater autonomy and have a more internal perceived locus of causality. Secondly, integrated regulation results from bringing a value or regulation into congruence with the other aspects of the person, such as certain religious practices, valuing of family, studies, friends, and life choices. Implications of these findings and further research are presented.
Social Learning as a Means to Stimulate Idea Generation for Collective Intelligence among Higher Education Students View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Daniel Shen, Paulina Wong
Due to the rapid adoption of communication technologies, social networks in particular, social learning's significance has increased in the recent decades. Nonetheless, use of social learning in higher education is still in nascent stages, suggesting the need for scalable and sustainable strategies for its adoption. In this context, studies linking social learning to collective intelligence may provide some solutions. In particular, the ability to crowdsource educational content shared by peers on social media platforms may benefit participating students. Yet, little is known about factors involved in fostering high levels of discourse participation among students, particularly those pursuing higher education. This gap in extant knowledge has motivated the present study, as a part of which the use of a purpose-built social learning mobile application (Soqqle) for sharing student-generated content and peer-to-peer communication is analyzed. For this purpose, as a part of semester-long courses, students from universities in Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Indonesia were required to partake in video-based activities through Soqqle and receive feedback from both instructors and peers via its social engagement features. Their perspectives on the app’s utility were examined in post-course focus groups, where the majority of students concurred that the social learning experience facilitated by Soqqle promoted idea generation as well as increased creativity and attention due to enhanced peer- and self-evaluations. These findings indicate that online platforms have the capacity to promote social learning, which is of particular importance at the time when, due to COVID-19 pandemic, most educational institutions have adopted distance learning measures.
Artistic Disciplines and Pre-Service Teacher Education in Europe View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sara Fernández-Aguayo, María José González Ojea, Rut Martinez-López de Castro
Society is advancing, changing, and transforming faster and faster. Teaching should advance and adapt to social changes and for this, teachers must be prepared. This reality demands that pre-service teacher education should develop in students competencies that enable them to adapt. On the other hand, more and more studies are presenting art as a means for development and a pedagogical tool capable of creating spaces that allow theory to be put into practice in safe environments that are close to reality. Moreover, in schools, artistic competence is part of the curriculum and teachers are responsible for teaching artistic subjects, as well as promoting and guiding the development of artistic competence in students. Because of this situation, the following research question arises: Does the pre-service teacher education contemplate artistic education and provide teachers with tools that allow them to teach artistic subjects, as well as to use the different arts as tools to favor the development of artistic competence in their students? To answer this question, a comparative analysis is carried out to know the training that teachers receive in the different artistic disciplines, as well as in the use of these as a pedagogical resource in different countries of the European Union. Based on the results, improvements, lines of action, and solutions to the needs detected are presented.
