International Journal for Academic Development, 2014
The seminal idea underlying this IJAD special issue came into being at the Amsterdam EARLI confer... more The seminal idea underlying this IJAD special issue came into being at the Amsterdam EARLI conference in 2009, when one of the co-editors presented on the idea of compliance and resistance in academic development. Some of the colleagues who were present at the session showed much enthusiasm for the concepts highlighted. They felt these were central to the work and identity of academic developers, as we try to interface our value systems and beliefs about (higher) education with institutional, national, and international imperatives in complex power dynamics. Some of these colleagues subsequently made contact to ensure that a follow-up to the conference presentation would take place. Eventually, a number of us, as a team, further presented on the same topic at the Barcelona ICED conference in 2010. At that event, during a very festive lunch break, plans for this special issue were firmed up. At that stage, the project took a life of its own and this issue is the result of all the thinking, reflections, and scholarly endeavours that have derived from the ongoing dialogue among several of us. Without repeating what is clearly stated in the introductory article by Roberto Di Napoli, this special issue is concerned with the mediating strategies that academic developers use in current higher education systems, where discourses about efficiency and effectiveness in higher education, as created in and by contexts imbued with marketability and accountability, mingle and struggle with those about the ‘goodness’ of education, as driven by principles of collegiality, empowerment, inclusivity, complexity, and larger time frames for dialogue about reform and innovation. We wish to clarify at this early stage that the conceptual lever for this issue is not inspired by antagonism between the two sets of discourses highlighted above. We have tried to avoid reification, as higher education realities are much too fuzzy and complex these days to allow for this. Discourses mingle, overlap, and impact on each other in ways that may be virtuous at certain times and pernicious on other occasions. The intention was to promote a healthy and helpful debate about the ethical standing of academic developers in current higher education systems. We wanted to look at emerging and evolving contextual forms of synthesis between compliance and resistance towards productive forms of collaboration between managers, academics, and academic developers; we wanted to focus on, in the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s own words, ‘the stability of dynamic development’ (Žižek in Young-june Park, p. 8) in our professional field. This unstable stability, so to speak, is investigated and reflected upon throughout the three sections of this special issue. The first section presents a number of international case studies that range from Scandinavia to Belgium to Poland. While these are to be considered illustrative of academic development in a particular time and specific contexts, they contribute, in
Parallel to the regular coursework, all first year engineering students at K.U.Leuven take the pr... more Parallel to the regular coursework, all first year engineering students at K.U.Leuven take the project based course 'Problem Solving and Engineering Design' that introduces them into real engineering practice and teamwork. The concept of this course is to integrate basic principles of the regular scientific courses while working in small groups on design projects. Through the increasing complexity of the assignments, the students are gradually confronted with technical and social skills like information and simulation tools, experimental work, systematic approach to problem solving and engineering design, teamwork and communication skills, critical attitude and creativity. A lot of attention goes to the guidance of the students. The teamwork is facilitated by a tutor who has several responsibilities: answering content-related questions, guiding the problem solving process, providing information about the objectives and deliverables, giving feedback and assessing the students...
International Journal for Academic Development, 2014
The seminal idea underlying this IJAD special issue came into being at the Amsterdam EARLI confer... more The seminal idea underlying this IJAD special issue came into being at the Amsterdam EARLI conference in 2009, when one of the co-editors presented on the idea of compliance and resistance in academic development. Some of the colleagues who were present at the session showed much enthusiasm for the concepts highlighted. They felt these were central to the work and identity of academic developers, as we try to interface our value systems and beliefs about (higher) education with institutional, national, and international imperatives in complex power dynamics. Some of these colleagues subsequently made contact to ensure that a follow-up to the conference presentation would take place. Eventually, a number of us, as a team, further presented on the same topic at the Barcelona ICED conference in 2010. At that event, during a very festive lunch break, plans for this special issue were firmed up. At that stage, the project took a life of its own and this issue is the result of all the thinking, reflections, and scholarly endeavours that have derived from the ongoing dialogue among several of us. Without repeating what is clearly stated in the introductory article by Roberto Di Napoli, this special issue is concerned with the mediating strategies that academic developers use in current higher education systems, where discourses about efficiency and effectiveness in higher education, as created in and by contexts imbued with marketability and accountability, mingle and struggle with those about the ‘goodness’ of education, as driven by principles of collegiality, empowerment, inclusivity, complexity, and larger time frames for dialogue about reform and innovation. We wish to clarify at this early stage that the conceptual lever for this issue is not inspired by antagonism between the two sets of discourses highlighted above. We have tried to avoid reification, as higher education realities are much too fuzzy and complex these days to allow for this. Discourses mingle, overlap, and impact on each other in ways that may be virtuous at certain times and pernicious on other occasions. The intention was to promote a healthy and helpful debate about the ethical standing of academic developers in current higher education systems. We wanted to look at emerging and evolving contextual forms of synthesis between compliance and resistance towards productive forms of collaboration between managers, academics, and academic developers; we wanted to focus on, in the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s own words, ‘the stability of dynamic development’ (Žižek in Young-june Park, p. 8) in our professional field. This unstable stability, so to speak, is investigated and reflected upon throughout the three sections of this special issue. The first section presents a number of international case studies that range from Scandinavia to Belgium to Poland. While these are to be considered illustrative of academic development in a particular time and specific contexts, they contribute, in
Parallel to the regular coursework, all first year engineering students at K.U.Leuven take the pr... more Parallel to the regular coursework, all first year engineering students at K.U.Leuven take the project based course 'Problem Solving and Engineering Design' that introduces them into real engineering practice and teamwork. The concept of this course is to integrate basic principles of the regular scientific courses while working in small groups on design projects. Through the increasing complexity of the assignments, the students are gradually confronted with technical and social skills like information and simulation tools, experimental work, systematic approach to problem solving and engineering design, teamwork and communication skills, critical attitude and creativity. A lot of attention goes to the guidance of the students. The teamwork is facilitated by a tutor who has several responsibilities: answering content-related questions, guiding the problem solving process, providing information about the objectives and deliverables, giving feedback and assessing the students...
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