Category: Teaching

Why getting the university digital experience right will attract more international students

“Students expect their university’s digital experiences to be as good as services like Facebook, Amazon or Netflix”

Historically a strong university brand has to a certain extent guaranteed student numbers and in turn high National Student Survey scores, but for the current TikTok generation of students who expect high-quality and personalised digital experiences in every aspect of their lives, their education is no exception.

Yet despite the Covid pandemic accelerating the move to digital, most UK universities are still not offering what students would regard as ‘state of the art’ digital experiences. The result – a digital experience gap between what students expect from their universities and what is being offered.

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Reimagining university life: how operational leaders are creating the post-Covid campus

“University chief operating officers had an opportunity to rapidly transform operations and find new ways to partner with their executive peers”

Across the globe, universities are planning for a post-pandemic future. Many university chief operating officers are thinking about what the bricks-and-mortar campus should look like if hybrid teaching becomes the norm.

If students are hesitant to return to packed lectures in large theatres and staff are unwilling to commute five days a week, how should universities use their campuses? And how can operational leaders support faculty and students as they research, teach and learn in new ways?

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Schools wanting to compete for top international faculty need robust integration strategies

“Faculty willing to migrate to work for you are usually happy to relocate to work for your competitors”

Growing diversity has been a key objective in the business world for a few decades now, as international corporations realise bringing a mix of people to the table introduces fresh ideas and allows for continuous innovation.

It’s been no stranger to the higher education sector either, especially for institutions that teach business and management. From the executive level down to bachelor courses, having a diverse cohort of students and participants has been (rightly) deemed an important issue.

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Environmental awareness, just like mathematics, can’t be learned in a day

“A new generation of civically and scientifically minded environmental population and experts will need to address environmental issues”

California wildfires emitted more carbon dioxide last year than in any other summer in nearly two decades, devastating both animal habitats and human dwellings. With this year’s Earth Day taking place during the American Education Research Association annual meeting, it is important to reflect on how investing in environmental education can help to “Invest In Our Planet”.

“Have you not observed that opinions divorced from knowledge are ugly things? The best of them are blind,” observed Plato more than two millennia ago in The Republic. The same holds true today, for how can we discuss environmental issues without knowing the science behind them?

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Why we must champion innovation and invention-based learning

“Providing students with the opportunity to step outside the comfort zone of a classroom and work on inventions with a trial-and-error approach encourages them to take risks”

Providing students with engaging opportunities to explore, discover and grow is something all educators aspire to achieve. Yet, this is often difficult when the majority of teaching is done in traditional classroom environments, says Aysha Al-Mudahka from Qatar Foundation.

For STEM learning in particular, it cannot be neglected. It is essential that schools equip the next generations with engaging experiences that teach practical STEM skills if we are to encourage and prepare students to pursue careers in science and engineering-led industries.

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The new international university aiming to promote women in STEM

“Through my work, I hope I can create opportunities for women”

Like many countries in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Europe, Georgia has conservative socio-cultural norms and gender stereotypes. Change comes slowly in this environment, but we have made significant progress in creating a more enabling environment for gender integration and equality in recent years.

There are no longer any legislative barriers to gender equality in Georgia, but the statistics for school enrolment reveal cultural mindsets that maintain the status quo.

There is parity in enrolment rates among boys and girls at primary and secondary school levels but gender norms and prejudices kick in strongly after school. Kutaisi International University (KIU) Chancellor Magda Magradze explains.

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Will online education outlast the Covid pandemic?

“Workplaces are changing, and the classroom is starting to catch up.”

Whisper it quietly, “there might be an end in sight”.

Increasingly, as I walk along the streets of London, I can see a sense of relief, even happiness, on the faces of those I encounter. It might be that the UK vaccination campaign, that was as ambitious as it has been impressive, is finally bringing the Covid pandemic towards its conclusion. In the summer months Boris Johnson has indicated that we might be able to return to pubs, clubs and hairdressers.

But if Zoom socials are on the way out, what does that mean for online education? Libra Education CEO Oscar Hardy explains.

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The campaign trying to make subtitles the default for kids’ TV

“If you suddenly found subtitles on your children’s Netflix account last year – that wasn’t a coincidence”

This story starts back in 2019, when Henry Warren had a conversation with Oli Barrett over coffee about a news article that Oli had read on how turning on subtitles on children’s TV content had a dramatic positive impact on their reading proficiency, writes Nina Hale from the Turn On The Subtitles campaign. 

Slightly sceptical but intrigued, the two sought out the academic who had conducted the study and took his research, along with a mountain of similar studies, to The National Literacy Trust to review.

Once validated, they set off on a quest to make sure this information reached every household with young children.

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Motivation: urgent for both students and teachers

“It is so important to develop strategies to increase both students’ and teachers’ motivation”

As someone who has worked in educational publishing for most of my career, I believe I have a good understanding of the challenges that teachers and learners face in the classroom. However, when, like millions of others, my children suddenly started remote lessons from home, I found myself confronting some of those challenges first hand.

One issue that stood out was the importance of maintaining engagement amidst the disruption of a pandemic and having to balance work, teaching, and domestic life under one roof.

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