Economic and cultural globalisation has ushered in a new era in higher education. Higher education was always more internationally open than most sectors because of its immersion in knowledge, which never showed much respect for juridical boundaries. In global knowledge economies, higher education institutions are more important than ever as mediums for a wide range of cross-border relationships and continuous global flows of people, information, knowledge, technologies, products and financial capital. Even as they share in the reinvention of the world around them, higher education institutions, and the
policies that produce and support them, are also being reinvented. For the first time in history every research university is part of a single world-wide network and the world leaders in the field have an unprecedented global visibility and power. Research is more internationalised than before and the mobility of doctoral students and faculty has increased. The specifically global element in academic labour markets has gained weight, especially since the advent of global university rankings. This working paper explores the issues for national policy and for individual institutions. Part I provides an overview of globalisation and higher education and the global responses of national systems and individual institutions of higher education. Part II is focused on certain areas of policy with a strong multilateral dimension: Europeanisation, institutional rankings and typologies and cross-border mobility.

/pdf/globalisation-and-higher-education-4ab22xfa5e.pdf

Globalisation and Higher Education

intelligence, but it is actually the result of an interaction between intelligence (capacity to learn) and situation (opportunity to learn), so is more socially-constructed than intelligence. Knowledge includes theory and concepts and tacit knowledge gained as a result of the experience of performing certain tasks. Understanding refers to more holistic knowledge of processes and contexts and may be distinguished as know-why, as opposed know-that. A distinction is often made between general knowledge, which is essential irrespective of any occupational context or so fundamental as to be considered basic life knowledge, and knowledge that is specific to a sector or particular group of occupations and only likely to be encountered in such context. Weinert (1999, p. 24), for example, distinguishes: general world knowledge (generally measured by vocabulary tests that are part of many intelligence measurements, and overlapping considerably with what is defined as crystallised intelligence), and more arbitrary specialised knowledge. This specialised knowledge is necessary for meeting content specific demands and solving content-specific tasks. In contrast to general intellectual abilities, one can consider arbitrary knowledge as a demandspecific competence. 01_2005_9377-txt-EN.indd 25 28-06-2006 12:23:26 Process CyanProcess MagentaProcess YellowProcess BlackPANTONE 5415 C Typology of knowledge, skills and competences: clarification of the concept and prototype 26 Collin (1997, p. 297) cites Gardner’s association of know-how with tacit knowledge and know-that with propositional knowledge. Another way of expressing this distinction is between declarative knowledge (knowing what), and procedural knowledge (knowing how). From this perspective, it is often argued that acquiring declarative knowledge (explicit factual knowledge) must precede developing procedural knowledge, which relates to utilising knowledge in context. Gagne’s (1962) model of hierarchical knowledge fits with this approach, identifying the knowledge set necessary for understanding, learning and performing well on a criterion task. This is then traced back to each subordinate set of psychological knowledge, providing a description of knowledge that is increasingly elementary and general. Each knowledge and learning hierarchy therefore rests on primary mental abilities, with the implicit assumption of a general learning transfer capacity and logic of knowledge acquisition. In all domains there is some logic that acquiring and comprehending new knowledge demands facilitating cognitive prerequisites and specific knowledge and skills. Given this interaction between knowledge and skills, their separation in a typology is not easy. Indeed, for Klieme et al. (2004, p. 70), higher competency levels are characterised by the increasing proceduralisation of knowledge, so ‘at higher levels, knowledge is converted to skills’.

/pdf/typology-of-knowledge-skills-and-competences-clarification-59vebb9xes.pdf

Typology of knowledge, skills and competences : clarification of the concept and prototype

Preface The present publication, Quality Assurance and Accreditation: Glossary of Basic Terms and Definitions, is the result of a UNESCO-CEPES initiative undertaken for the particular occasion of the Invitational Roundtable on “Indicators for Institutional and Programme Accreditation in Higher Education/ Tertiary Education” (Bucharest, Romania, 3-8 April 2003), that was organized in the framework of the UNESCO-CEPES project on Strategic Indicators for Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century1. The need to improve the quantitative assessment of higher education at system and institutional levels, the main objective of the project, has been complemented by this effort to gather and to organize the information and the mixtures of meanings surrounding the field of quality assurance and accreditation in higher education. This glossary is, in a way, a compilation of a set of definitions associated with the various terms applied in the fields of quality assurance and accreditation. It may be used as a reference tool to better understand the connotations of the terms in circulation and to compare existing models of quality assurance and accreditation, while also offering opportunities for an increased consistency of their conceptual framework. This publication will also be made available on the UNESCO-CEPES Webpage, allowing it thus to be updated and supplemented with information, on a regular basis. This project being the result of teamwork, I would like to thank all the UNESCO-CEPES staff members who have contributed to its realization, particularly, Lazar Vlasceanu, Laura Grunberg, and Dan Pârlea. It is our expectation that this publication will be found to be useful and will facilitate a better understanding of a very complex, but increasingly pertinent problem, that of quality assurance and accreditation, which is one of the underlying principles of the Bologna Process2. Jan Sadlak Director of UNESCO-CEPES Introduction There has always been an individual and social need to improve the quality of life of people, including the quality of what they learn over many years of organized schooling, how they learn it, and why they learn it. Concerns about the quality of higher education are also not recent, being an intrinsic part of any discussion on the subject. Over the years, various developments have taken place relative to the assessment, monitoring, and improvement of the quality of different components of higher education (its governance, its contents, its forms of pedagogy, the services offered, etc.). What is new refers to those developments which are related to quality assurance and its management. Such concepts as “quality assessment”, “quality evaluation”, and “quality assurance” are widely and regularly used nowadays within the wider processes of managing quality. Frequently used, these concepts are also frequently misused. It is for the latter reason that UNESCO-CEPES took the initiative to produce this glossary of quality assurance and accreditation terms and definitions. Many other attempts have been made to prepare such glossaries, as the references listed for the present glossary indicate. Among these, most are national, sub-national, or regional, with only a few having worldwide relevance. To propose a glossary which is meant to include a more universal set of meanings has thus been a challenging and risky task. We, nevertheless, embarked on such an endeavour being convinced of the need to assemble not so much a diversity but a commonality of meanings. The implication was that of observing how specific meanings are shared and how they operate in different contexts. We have encountered many expected and unexpected difficulties in producing this glossary that contains thirty key terms and fifty-two associated terms related to the latter. As the attempt proved to be quite tricky and as we discovered many contradictions and paradoxes in the literature surveyed

/pdf/quality-assurance-and-accreditation-a-glossary-of-basic-2cuu1hd22o.pdf

Quality Assurance and Accreditation: A Glossary of Basic Terms and Definitions

In a period of harmonisation of the higher education system in Europe, a question is if also learning about sustainability at the universities is converging and what advantages this may have. This paper is an effort to present and advance the work on describing desired sustainability competences for engineering Bachelor graduates in three technical universities (Chalmers in Sweden, DUT in The Netherlands and UPC-Barcelona in Spain) using the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) descriptors. The paper also sheds light on whether there is conformity or not in desired sustainability competences (or in how sustainable development (SD) competences are handled) at the three universities. For universities outside the EHEA, this paper gives hints on the type of sustainability competences that will be required from their first-cycle graduates should they want to continue with second-cycle studies within the EHEA. The results show that the three universities follow a similar pattern in the classification of the competences (Knowledge and understanding, Skills and abilities, and Attitudes) and that there are minor divergences with respect to the list of competences and the levels of learning that Bachelor students should have when graduating. Definition of competences is an area that needs development, and this paper is part of a learning process for the three universities. This study shows that there is improvement potential for all three universities when it comes to being explicit and exact in the description of the desired SD learning.

/pdf/what-has-to-be-learnt-for-sustainability-a-comparison-of-42onq6fhjk.pdf

What has to be learnt for sustainability? A comparison of bachelor engineering education competences at three European universities

A major change has occurred in the way Web technology is being used in society. The change is grounded in user empowerment using Web 2.0 tools and processes. Students are already sophisticated users of these tools and processes, but outside of the mainstream instructional practices in higher education. In this reflection, the educational potential of Web 2.0 tools and processes is discussed, followed by three sets of perspectives relating to the potential quality of such practices in higher education course settings. For each perspective an analysis of key factors affecting the perceived value of Web 2.0 tools and processes is given, followed by suggestions for overcoming predictable barriers to uptake in mainstream instructional practice. Les outils et les processus d’Internet 2.0 dans l’enseignement superieur : une perspective de qualite Un changement tres important s’est produit dans la facon d’utiliser les technologies du Web dans la societe. Ce changement repose sur la capacite qu’ont les utilisateur...

Web 2.0 Tools and Processes in Higher Education: Quality Perspectives.

The Paris Conference of European Ministers Responsible for Higher Education 24-25 May 2018 adopted the revised overarching framework for qualifications in the EHEA, implementing the commitment in the Yerevan Communiqué. The revised overarching framework for qualifications in the EHEA comprises the short cycle, the first cycle, the second cycle and the third cycle generic descriptors for each cycle based on learning outcomes and competences, and credit ranges in the short cycle, first and second cycles. Ministers committed themselves to elaborating national frameworks for qualifications compatible with the overarching framework for qualifications in the EHEA. While recognising that each country decides whether and how to incorporate short cycle qualifications within its own national framework, the Paris Communiqué underlined the role ECTS-based short cycle qualifications play in preparing students for employment and further studies as well as in improving social cohesion.

/pdf/the-framework-for-qualifications-of-the-european-higher-9drupcwwgi.pdf

Mogens Berg

Papers

The Framework for Qualifications of the European Higher Education Area