Higher Ed Links
Asynchronous Session
Online Learning in Higher Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case in Kosovo View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dorinë Rakaj
The study examines professors’ perceptions of online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study is based on distributing an online questionnaire to random professors and assistants at the University of Prizren. The data is analyzed using frequency and percentage. The findings of the study, indicating professors and assistants have negative and positive perceptions regarding online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic, are discussed.
Breaking the Ceiling Glass : Higher Education as a Lever for Struggling with Poverty and Low Esteem View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Raviv Anat
The research examines the effects of higher education intervention programs on social and occupational mobility of single women in Israel. Single-parent households are much more likely to suffer from poverty than two-headed households. Among these, single mothers are at a much bigger risk of poverty than single fathers. This shapes not only the present life of the members of these households but also their and their descendant's future. For these families, poverty reduction and promoting social mobility are especially important policy goals. Social mobility is a key topic in current political discourse and improving social policy has become the stated aim of significant parts of the welfare system. Much of the effort of promoting mobility is centered on ladder programs. These intervention programs promote social and occupational mobility by improving individuals’ human capital and self-esteem through higher education. This paper examines the Maskila program, a ladder program that focuses on Israeli single mothers. The effects of the program are examined and analyzed through both qualitative and quantitative methods. From the analysis, an ambivalent picture arises that the limits of such intervention programs, do have a positive effect on the individual's lives and self-esteem. Improvements are limited and their effect on social mobility is stunted as they are unable to mitigate structural barriers that prevent mobility. From this analysis, it is clear that policies that intend to promote mobility of single mothers must incorporate elements that improve human capital but also consider and address structural elements which inhibit mobility.
Supporting the Learning Experience of International Students: Cross-team Collaboration and Integrated Practice View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chinny Nzekwe Excel
Learning entails building upon and advancing the learning experience of different categories of students through adequate involvement of the ‘learner’ and the ‘teacher’. Such involvement can be more challenging to navigate for international students, who are primarily faced with the dilemma of meeting both institutional standards and cultural obligations. Therefore, institutions of higher education in advanced countries are ‘tasked’ with the responsibility to develop initiatives, which are focussed on areas that will enrich scholarship in international students learning experience as well as improve the institutions’ practice. This study explores how teaching and professional services staff can be more integrated and closely linked together so as to adequately embrace and promote equality of educational opportunity for a diverse international students’ population.
Understanding the Epistemology and Metaphysics of Student Plagiarism: It's Much Less An Ethical Issue Than You Think View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kirk Mc Dermid
Student plagiarism is generally misunderstood as a primarily ethical issue. In this study, I present a view that student plagiarism is instead primarily an epistemic issue, and that properly appreciating the nature of student plagiarism as distinct from other kinds of plagiarism reveals that the difficulties it causes are of a significantly different nature than typically conceived. This misconception of the nature of student plagiarism leads to inappropriate and unconstructive policies and reactions from educators, and distracts from more useful ways to address it. A discussion of specific examples of typical academic-integrity policies and whether they fruitfully address plagiarism, or are inadvertently unproductive, is also included.
Insights from a Virtual Study Abroad to Ireland, Jamaica and Aotearoa/New Zealand: Growing Intercultural Knowledge during a Global Pandemic View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kristine Dreaver Charles, Michael Cottrell
This paper emerges from our work at a Canadian university where local and global imperatives have resulted in Indigenization and internationalization being identified as leading institutional priorities. We explore the potential for greater collaboration between these disciplinary and programmatic imperatives for mutual benefit, which the shift to virtual learning during the global pandemic enabled. In particular, we seek to consider how virtual study abroad can prepare educators with the tools necessary for intercultural knowledge to better respond to students’ heterogeneity and complexity, from a pedagogical and curricular perspective, as a means of promoting social justice and multicultural understanding within Higher Education. Emerging from our collaborative efforts as an Indigenous instructional designer and a non-Indigenous faculty member, we share our work to design with distance, open, and critical digital pedagogies as a foundation for inclusive student engagement while focusing on educational systems in Ireland, Jamaica, and New Zealand. Study Abroad is often inaccessible for many students, especially those from marginalized backgrounds, leaving invaluable learning and international perspectives unexplored. Virtual Study Abroad offers students immersive experiences and learning equity, during the pandemic and beyond. We document our efforts to synthesize Indigenous and Western pedagogies to conceive innovative curriculum consistent with the negotiation of epistemological third spaces. Our efforts to decolonize assessment practices by combining a traditional academic rubric, with a self-administered Intercultural Competence Framework, and an assessment framework based on an Indigenous Medicine Wheel model, is also discussed. Ultimately our study highlights strategies which promote equity, diversity and inclusion within higher education.
