Archives: Publications

InclusiPHE Mapping Report: Needs assessment for student engagement of non- traditional students in PHE

This report is the first step and the basis for addressing the related challenges in making Professional Higher Education more inclusive. It is the result of an iterative and multi-approach research conducted in the first half of the year 2021 and providing the basis for the next steps of the InclusiPHE project. The objectives of the research undertaken are summarized in the following figure.

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Evolving Diversity: An overview of equitable access to Higher Education in Europe

The report gives a general overview of the access to Higher Education in Europe, including entry into Higher Education, equity as defined by socioeconomic background, income and expenditure of students in HE and the effect of work on studies.
The report also uses this data to make insights on perceptions of equity from European policymakers, consider the validity of different ways of measuring equity and the validity of current policy-initiatives.

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Realising the Scope of Open Education through Credentialisation

The goal of this paper is to conceptualise the effect of open education recognition on the overall higher education landscape by creating a future history i.e., the evolution from present conditions to one of several futures. These scenarios are the result of a combination of qualitative approaches including diligent desk research and outcomes from discussions during two expert workshops. The workshops focused on future foresight and scenario development exercises among experts and stakeholders from the field of education as well as educational technology from all across Europe. The results of this study are firstly, identification of key driving forces that affect the future of open education through credentialization and secondly, a forecast of five potential future scenarios, including predicting their probability, defining and projecting key measures that can have a great impact, and finally, mapping them to policy recommendations.

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Assuring the Quality of Credentials to support Learning Innovation

The credential-space is currently seeing significant innovation, driven by twin priorities, namely the unbundling of learning, and the drive to digitise credentials as prioritised by the Bologna Digital Agenda and the EU’s Digital Education Action Plan. While traditionally students could depend on recognition of widely understood signals of experience and expertise such as university degrees, the same cannot be said for the creatures of MOOCS such as ‘nanodegrees’ and ‘specialisations’.

While it is clear that degrees from accredited HEIs form the gold standard in terms of their recognition and portability, no clear set of comprehensive criteria exists to assess the quality of new forms of credentials, nor for standards and technologies which are applied to credentials. The authors therefore propose a framework for such analysis in the form of a set of quality characteristics for credentials, based on work conducted by the OEPass project.

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Effective Approaches to Enhancing the Social Dimension of Higher Education

Despite all intentions in the course of the Bologna Process and decades of investment into improving the social dimension, results in many national and international studies show that inequity remains stubbornly persistent, and that inequity based on socio-economic status, parental education, gender, country-of-origin, rural background and more continues to prevail in our Higher Education systems and at the labour market. While improvement has been shown, extrapolation of the gains of the last 40 years in the field show that it could take over 100 years for disadvantaged groups to catch up with their more advantaged peers, should the current rate of improvement be maintained.

Many of the traditional approaches to improving equity have also necessitated large-scale public investments, in the form of direct support to underrepresented groups. In an age of austerity, many countries in Europe are finding it necessary to revisit and scale down these policies, so as to accommodate other priorities, such as balanced budgets or dealing
with an aging population. An analysis of the current situation indicates that the time is ripe for disruptive innovations to mobilise the cause forward by leaps and bounds, instead of through
incrementalist approaches.

There is very little evidence as to the causal link between programmes, methodologies for their use and increases/improvements in equity in institutions. This creates a significant
information gap for institutions and public authorities seeking for indicators to allocate limited resources to equity improving initiatives, without adequate evidence of effectiveness. The publication aims at addressing and improving this information gap.

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ECCOE at EDEN2020 G4 Synergy Session

In June 2020, the ECCOE project was presented in the Synergy session at the online EDEN Annual Conference. This was a great opportunity not only to give a short overview of ECCOE, but also to get to know what other projects are doing and to identify ways in which the session participants can engage in mutually beneficial collaboration. A detailed summary of the outcomes is available here.

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Apprenticeship Quality Toolkit

The Apprenticeship Quality Toolkit follows a quality management system style approach as defined by ISO. It is designed considering the need to control eight critical processes within professional Higher Education and SMEs. It Includes sections on:

For Professional Higher Education Institutions:

Setting the learning objectives of the overall programme
Identifying and recruiting placements
Negotiating the agreement
Monitoring of apprenticeships
Assessment of apprenticeships

For Small and Medium Enterprises

Creating positions for apprentices
Negotiating the agreement
Managing the apprenticeship

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The Digitisation of TVET and Skills Systems

The affordances of digital technologies are such that when deployed in a context of stakeholders with a propensity for change, they will facilitate new opportunities and also create challenges for the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sector.
This report provides a global, high-level snapshot of the digitalization of TVET and skills systems in a set of countries and international organizations. The primary data are derived from a set of semi-structured interviews with experts and practitioners in the TVET and education sectors, as well as a desktop literature review. The data provide insights into TVET and skills systems in Brazil, Ghana, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, New Zealand, Slovenia, Turkey and the United States. They also include the views of the labour market and representatives from global organizations such as the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

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