Developing Educational Quality in a Digital Age

Author(s):

Toril Aagaard(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 09 C,

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-24

13:30-15:00

Room:

K5.09

Chair:

Jaakko Kauko

Contribution

The recent years, European governments and higher education institutions have shown increased interest in the quality and excellence of teaching and learning and in developing instruments to achieve high quality teaching. (Kottmann, A., Huisman, J. et.al., 2016). This is also the case in Norway. Spring 2016, the Norwegian Minister of Education and Research invited Higher Universities and Colleges and other relevant institutions to describe educational quality work and recommend how excellent educational practices can be promoted by governmental and local initiatives. The minister needed the information to prepare a White Paper about Quality in Higher Education that is published January 27^th 2017.

In this paper, I write as a member of an expert group affiliated with Norwegian Agency for Digital Learning in Higher Education. This group has a special responsibility for issues concerning educational quality, digitalization and active learning. Our point of departure is that people who work with quality in higher education need to think about how educational institutions can take advantage of digital technologies in their pedagogical work and prepare young people to deal with developments and challenges that emerge in technology rich societies.

The European Commission’s High Level Group about Modernization of Higher Education, clearly points at digitization as a change driver for quality development of higher education, writing that “new and emerging technologies are already starting to have a transformative effect on higher education provision. There is every reason to harness the potential of these developments in the service of high quality higher education. But to do that effectively we need to both widen and deepen our understanding of how these new technologies and pedagogical tools can be an integral part of the way higher education is delivered, and identify what measures can be taken to further stimulate, facilitate and advance it.” (p.14)

Not only do students live in a digital time, they shall also work in, contribute to, and relate to the fact that our digitalized society and work life changes. In five, ten, twenty years many of our current jobs will not exist anymore and new jobs or societal structures need to be created. It is a task for higher education to equip our graduates to succeed in such a context. This calls for authorities and policymakers that, in a coordinated manner, highlight that implementing and exploring the educational potentials of digital technologies is associated with educational quality. In its Trend Report (2015), European University Association (EAU) lists digitization, internationalization and demographics as the three main trends that European higher education must adhere to.To get insight into how different institutions describe the relation between digitalization and educational quality, as well as the development processes and -plans of higher educational institutions, we have analyzed 21 answers to the Minister’s invitation to investigate

To what extent and in what ways do the institutions connect digitization to educational quality?
What do they describe that they already do to ensure that digitization promotes educational quality?
What further actions do they propose?
Who is given responsibility for the different proposed actions?

Method

The four questions guided our thematic analysis (Clarke & Braun, 2014) of 21 out of 91 answers to the Ministers invitation. We selected institutions that represent a large portion of the student population, included large and small universities and colleges, student organization, governmental support units and labor. Universities and colleges from different parts of Norway, of different sizes and with different disciplines were included, as well as institutions that are in merger and a private one. Our findings are not statistical generalizable, but we consider that the sample is representative and that our findings are of analytical interest.

Expected Outcomes

All institutions, except one, connect digitization to educational quality. However, they seldom operationalize this connection. They claim that digital technology allows for more student active learning methods and some highlights a need to explore technology supported education closer. Some are concerned that digitalization is important for workplace relevance and should be used more to make education accessible and flexible for students. Most Universities and Colleges mention that they offer their teachers pedagogical courses. Some describe how they, in addition, support their teachers through pedagogical development-units. Across institutions, many express a need to strengthen pedagogical courses and make it a career-option to develop as excellent educator on par with excellent researcher. A common suggestion is to develop merit systems to solve this challenge. A few claim that educational leadership needs to be strengthened. Many of the answers indicates that research based knowledge about what promotes quality in education is considered restricted, and needs to be strengthened to ensure that quality work in general and digitalization work in particular promotes educational quality. Damşa et al (2015) highlights that we need to understand the links between macro-level structures and activities and practices that are constituted on micro-level. Research on such links would help us to understand the complexity in the driving forces of institutional change. Based on the present analysis we claim that one driving force for Universities and Colleges to enhance educational quality, is national structures, as merit systems, that stimulates teachers to develop as educators, and investigate how different initiatives impact on educational quality. In particular, there is a need to explore and investigate the potentials of technology-mediated pedagogical practices more closely and provide leaders of quality work with up-dated research based knowledge that can guide their forthcoming strategies and decisions.

References

Clarke, V., & Braun, V. (2014). Thematic Analysis. In T. Teo (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology (pp. 1947-1952). New York: Springer. Damşa, C., de Lange, T., Elken, M., Esterhazy, R., Fossland, T., Frølich, N., ... & Stensaker, B. (2015). Quality in Norwegian Higher Education: A review of research on aspects affecting student learning (Oslo: NIFU). European commission (2014), High Level Group on the Modernisation of Higher Education Report to the European commission on New modes of learning and teaching in higher education, URL: http://ec.europa.eu/education/library/reports/modernisation-universities_en.pdf Kottmann, A., Huisman, J., Brockerhoff, L., Cremonini, L., & Mampaey, J. (2016). How Can One Create a Culture for Quality Enhancement?. Trends 2015: Learning and Teaching in European Universities, URL: http://www.eua.be/activities-services/news/newsitem/2015/05/07/Trends_2015_the_changing_context_of_European_higher_education.aspx

Author Information

Toril Aagaard (presenting / submitting)

University College of Southeast Norway

Kongsberg

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