Projects In Higher Education

This open access book critiques real world learning across both the curriculum and extracurricular activities. Drawing on disciplines as diverse as business, health, fashion, sociology and geography, the editors and authors employ a cross-disciplinary approach to examine how this concept is being applied in higher education. Divided into three parts, the authors and contributors analyse broader applications of real world learning, student experience of practicing in a real world setting, and how learning strategies can be employed to engage students in real world learning. The editors and contributors provide up-to-date, cross-disciplinary and international insights into how real world learning could be integrated into the higher education curriculum to support effective, relevant and life-long learning for 21st century students.

Student Success in College describes policies, programs, and practices that a diverse set of institutions have used to enhance student achievement. This book clearly shows the benefits of student learning and educational effectiveness that can be realized when these conditions are present. Based on the Documenting Effective Educational Practice (DEEP) project from the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University, this book provides concrete examples from twenty institutions that other colleges and universities can learn from and adapt to help create a success-oriented campus culture and learning environment.

The book is divided into five parts representing five key issues discussed at the workshop, with the call for contributions to this book framed around the following topic areas: 1. Organisation - team size and composition, supporting with sessions such as lectures and tutorials, sourcing projects, ways in which tutors monitor progress and provide guidance. 2. Management – strategies and tools for teams to use for project management, and ways in which students manage their project progress. 3. Assessment - issues of individual participation, how to assess learning, skills and personal development. Assessment of process and/or product, and fairness in group assessing. 4. Development of skills - using team projects to provide opportunities, getting students to recognise them, and reflection on learning and self development. 5. Differences from the workplace – preparing students for global team working.

This book has arisen from a Higher Education Academy funded workshop, held in October 2012, to bring together academics who regularly use team projects in their teaching in higher education. The attendees at the workshop were all devoted to using team projects in some form or other, and at the event they shared best practice. In closing the workshop there was agreement that the reported good practice and ideas could be shared more widely, so the concept of this book was born. Many ideas in the book may not be new, but this is the first time descriptions of a wide range of activities and effective practice has been put together in one volume, together with discussion of the issues that commonly arise, to offer suggestions for avoiding or reducing the impact of difficulties for learners. In making the volume free to read online, we hope to reach a wider readership, including those short of resources, who may obtain ideas and insights into the practice of using team projects in their discipline, from which they can develop new activities, with some justification. Contributions were sought from further afield than the workshop attendees to also allow for effective practice to be shared from those unable to attend the workshop. Many of us in higher education use team projects in our teaching, with varying degrees of success, in that the many issues that may arise often prevent the activity from being completely successful. Professionals in Higher Education, who teach or who support learning, often achieve success in some areas and can be said to be applying effective practice; it is by bringing together cases that present good or effective practice, that potential solutions to issues arising in others’ implementations may be found.

How to rebuild higher education from the ground up for the twenty-first century. Higher education is in crisis. It is too expensive, ineffective, and impractical for many of the world's students. But how would you reinvent it for the twenty-first century—how would you build it from the ground up? Many have speculated about changing higher education, but Minerva has actually created a new kind of university program. Its founders raised the funding, assembled the team, devised the curriculum and pedagogy, recruited the students, hired the faculty, and implemented a bold vision of a new and improved higher education. This book explains that vision and how it is being realized. The Minerva curriculum focuses on “practical knowledge” (knowledge students can use to adapt to a changing world); its pedagogy is based on scientific research on learning; it uses a novel technology platform to deliver small seminars in real time; and it offers a hybrid residential model where students live together, rotating through seven cities around the world. Minerva equips students with the cognitive tools they need to succeed in the world after graduation, building the core competencies of critical thinking, creative thinking, effective communication, and effective interaction. The book offers readers both the story of this grand and sweeping idea and a blueprint for transforming higher education.