Learning for Life
First Past the Post – Education for Adults in a Post-pandemic, Post-colonial, Post-modern Globalised Higher Education Sector View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rob Townsend
The Asia-Pacific is becoming the most expansive higher education region for adult based education services, ranging from New Zealand in the south to the border of the Russian Federation, and including the growth regions of China, India, and the Middle East. Professional education in the sciences, IT, health, social work, and wellbeing disciplines are expanding rapidly in this region and across the globe. The globalization of health and social issues is challenging professional education and accreditation processes to adjust to producing higher education graduates who are global professionals, that is, multi-lingual, culturally responsive, able to work at diverse community contexts and network with local and global organizations and resources to create social and economic change. This paper outlines the development of new curriculum frameworks for post-modern, post-colonial, and now post-pandemic international education sector that attempts to meet the challenges of intercultural learning and skills development for this new plurilingual context. The ethnographic study reveals that in the Asia-Pacific region, education organizations and educators are developing globalized, internationalized curriculum when motivated and supported to do so. The COVID-19 pandemic has facilitated a new level of understanding, motivation, and context to designing globalized curriculum for adult-based lifelong learning content, processes, and outcomes in higher education.
In Search of Creativity Through Teaching and Learning Liberal Arts in Interactive Design in Higher Education
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jing Zhou
The first section of this paper presents a decade long exploration of implementing a liberal arts approach to interactive design pedagogy in higher education. College students in recent decades have been shunning liberal arts and the decreasing number of undergraduates pursuing bachelor’s degrees in liberal arts has led to the weakening of liberal arts in Undergraduate General Education curriculum. As academic prioritization promoted more job-oriented disciplines, this known practice of integrating liberal arts component into technological-focused courses has been applied. Furthermore, it was in this teaching experience that I, a design educator, also became educated through persistent learning and searching for wisdom. Not only does this gradual intellectual transformation helped my students to reach better learning outcomes, but also inspired me to embark on an unexpected journey of creating two award-winning projects—Jiang Jian and Cradlr. The second section consists of case studies of the two interconnected projects. On the one hand, it unveils the forgotten story of an extraordinary woman Jiang Jian and the Mothers’ Movement in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. On the other hand, it presents Cradlr: An Interaction Design for Refugee Children, which is a human-centered digital product and network concept designed to keep displaced children—a vulnerable population without cell phones—connected with their families, resources, and heritage on a global scale. Cradlr was inspired by the Mothers' Movement in China and the Women's Voluntary Service (WVS) in the UK during World War II, in search of a humanitarian solution for a complex ongoing social challenge.
Skills Development and Assessment In Business Education: Are Students Missing Out and What Can We Do About It? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Angelito Calma, Miriam Edwards
Business schools with Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditation engage in an assurance of learning (AoL) process to evidence achievement of program-level learning outcomes. This continuous improvement process aims to ensure that business students develop the key business skills and competencies needed for their studies and future careers. The main criticisms of AoL, however, include its inability to identify and clearly understand the key discipline-specific dimensions or performance traits associated with each of these skills (e.g., critical thinking, problem-solving, communication). For example, critical thinking in economics may require different performance traits than critical thinking in marketing (e.g., using evidence; making judgments). In AoL, it is often performed in practice that a skills-based rubric applies to student assessments irrespective of their disciplines. This can pose issues, not only on the validity of the rubric and the results but also in missing out on the opportunity to improve a program and its units of study due to the inadequate feedback the rubrics provide academics and program directors. This, in turn, inhibits the re-examination of suitable traits specific to the discipline that students should develop as part of their business major. This paper showcases an ongoing thematic analysis study in assessing data collected from AoL over five years, examining a range of skills in undergraduate and graduate business programs. Once specific performance traits are identified, this has implications for teaching, learning and assessment (re)design and program development, thereby improving quality and accountability.
