Currently, various higher education (HE) institutes develop flexible curricula for various reasons, including promoting accessibility of HE, the societal need for more self-regulated professionals who engage in life-long learning, and the desire to increase motivation of students. Increasing flexibility in curricula allows students to choose for example what they learn, when they learn, how they learn, where they learn, and/or with whom. However, HE institutes raise the question of what preferences and needs different stakeholders have with regard to flexibility, so that suitable choices can be made in the design of policies, curricula, and student support programs. In this workshop, we focus on student preferences and share recent insights from research on HE students' preferences regarding flexible education. Moreover, we use participants’ expertise to identify new (research) questions to further explore what students’ needs imply for several domains, namely curriculum-design, student support that is provided by educators/staff, policy, management, and the professional field. Firstly, a conceptual framework on flexible education and student’s preferences will be presented. Secondly, participants reflect in groups on student personas. Then, discussion groups have a Delphi-based discussion to collect new ideas for research. Finally, participants share the outcomes on a ‘willing wall’ and a ‘wailing wall’.
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This is the editorial paper for the virtual special issue “Using Q methodology in higher education: Opportunities and challenges”, consisting of nine original research studies from different international contexts. In addition to presenting novel findings, contributors were invited to discuss the following two questions at the center of the special issue call: In what sense has Q methodology served as a fitting approach to investigate subjectivity in higher education? What methodological opportunities and challenges arise with Q methodology in higher education settings? This editorial provides an overview and discussion of the various justifications mentioned for Q methodology. Furthermore, it collates the opportunities and challenges contributors discuss in relation to their studies using this almost 90-year-old methodological approach. The editorial paper concludes with recommendations for future Q methodological studies in higher education and beyond.
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More than 25!years after Moore’s first introduction of the public value concept in 995, the concept is now widely used, but its operationalization is still considered difficult. This paper presents the empirical results of a study analyzing the application of the public value concept in Higher Education Institutions, thereby focusing on how to account for public value. The paper shows how Dutch universities of applied sciences operationalize the concept ‘public value’, and how they report on the outcome achievements. The official strategy plans and annual reports for FY2016 through FY2018 of the ten largest institutions were used. While we find that all the institutions selected aim to deliver public value, they still use performance indicators that have a more narrow orientation, and are primarily focused on processes, outputs, and service delivery quality. However, we also observe that they use narratives to show the public value they created. In this way this paper contributes to the literature on public value accounting.
Manual labour is an important cornerstone in manufacturing and considering human factors and ergonomics is a crucial field of action from both social and economic perspective. Diverse approaches are available in research and practice, ranging from guidelines, ergonomic assessment sheets over to digitally supported workplace design or hardware oriented support technologies like exoskeletons. However, in the end those technologies, methods and tools put the working task in focus and just aim to make manufacturing “less bad” with reducing ergonomic loads as much as possible. The proposed project “Human Centered Smart Factories: design for wellbeing for future manufacturing” wants to overcome this conventional paradigm and considers a more proactive and future oriented perspective. The underlying vision of the project is a workplace design for wellbeing that makes labor intensive manufacturing not just less bad but aims to provide positive contributions to physiological and mental health of workers. This shall be achieved through a human centered technology approach and utilizing advanced opportunities of smart industry technologies and methods within a cyber physical system setup. Finally, the goal is to develop smart, shape-changing workstations that self-adapt to the unique and personal, physical and cognitive needs of a worker. The workstations are responsive, they interact in real time, and promote dynamic activities and varying physical exertion through understanding the context of work. Consequently, the project follows a clear interdisciplinary approach and brings together disciplines like production engineering, human interaction design, creative design techniques and social impact assessment. Developments take place in an industrial scale test bed at the University of Twente but also within an industrial manufacturing factory. Through the human centered design of adaptive workplaces, the project contributes to a more inclusive and healthier society. This has also positive effects from both national (e.g. relieve of health system) as well as individual company perspective (e.g. less costs due to worker illness, higher motivation and productivity). Even more, the proposal offers new business opportunities through selling products and/or services related to the developed approach. To tap those potentials, an appropriate utilization of the results is a key concern . The involved manufacturing company van Raam will be the prototypical implementation partner and serve as critical proof of concept partner. Given their openness, connections and broad range of processes they are also an ideal role model for further manufacturing companies. ErgoS and Ergo Design are involved as methodological/technological partners that deal with industrial engineering and ergonomic design of workplace on a daily base. Thus, they are crucial to critically reflect wider applicability and innovativeness of the developed solutions. Both companies also serve as multiplicator while utilizing promising technologies and methods in their work. Universities and universities of applied sciences utilize results through scientific publications and as base for further research. They also ensure the transfer to education as an important leverage to inspire and train future engineers towards wellbeing design of workplaces.
In an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world, traditional disciplinary approaches to the framing and resolution of social and economic problems deliver ever diminishing returns.Discussions abound, therefore, about how best to educate and prepare graduates for the fresh challenges of the 21st century.Knowledge Alliances between Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and enterprises which aim to foster innovation, entrepreneurship, creativity, employability, knowledge exchange and/or multidisciplinary teaching and learning are therefore becoming increasingly necessary and relevant. The challenge is to determine what we should teach in the future and how it should be taught. The changing nature of contemporary society highlights that social issues are often highly complex and multifaceted.The aim of this Action is to demonstrate, through the adoption of Multi-Disciplinary Innovation (MDI) methods, how we can respond to social problems with a design-led approach which has a problem-oriented ethos, supporting positive social change and the development of international public policy discourse. It will be achieved through the establishment of a Pan-European Public Sector Innovation (ePSI) lab. It will prepare students for roles in employment by integrating education programmes into the lab’s operations and it will support agencies that have a role in responding to and developing public policy.COST action on social innovation in labs
Despite the vast potential drone technologies have, their integration to our society has been slow due to restricting regulations. Recently, a new EU-wide drone regulation has been published. This regulation is intended to harmonize the non-uniform national regulations across EU. It also relaxes the existing restrictions and allows previously prohibited operations that have significant socio-economic and technological impacts, such as autonomous BVLOS flights even over populated areas. However, there are challenges with regard to specifics and accessibilities of the required technological & procedural prerequisite this regulation entails. There is, therefore, a demand from SMEs for practical knowledge on technological and procedural aspects of a safe, robust and BVLOS operable security drone with short and long-term autonomy that fully complies to the new drone regulation. The required drone technologies include robust obstacle avoidance, intelligence failsafe for robust, reliable and safe autonomous flights with long-term autonomy capabilities. The operational procedures include SORA, pre/in/post-flight analysis and ROC/LUC permissions. In this project, these two aspects will be addressed in an integral manner. The consortium recognizes that developing such advanced security drone in two years is ambitious. Yet, they firmly believe that it is realizable due to the complementary expertise of the consortium and their commitment for the success of the project. With this project, the knowledge institutes will enrich their practical knowledge in the area of autonomous and BVLOS capable drones, operational procedures, risk analysis and mitigations. The partner companies will be equipped with the necessary technologies, operation permission and knowledge on optimal operation procedures to be at the forefront and benefit from the exploding market opportunities when the new regulation is fully implemented in July 2022. Moreover, this project will also make a demonstrable contribution to the renewal of higher professional education.
