Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Higher education consortia'

Thesis advisor: Philip G. Altbach
This case study examines the experiences of the government and academic personnel in the United States-Brazil Higher Education Consortia Program. It addresses the overall question, "What factors influence the successful implementation of international higher education collaborations?" The participants include representatives from the two government sponsoring agencies and one four-institution consortium project. The findings reveal that there were certain conditions that facilitated the successful implementation of the consortium project. These conditions are categorized into six themes: partner equality and mutuality, partner characteristics, partner relationship, finances, strategies, and staffing. The findings also reveal that the participants did not consider national culture to be a significant factor in the implementation and collaboration experience. This research is particularly relevant to the international higher education community because it focuses on the project director rather than the student perspective, addresses implementation factors rather than discipline-specific matters or student outcomes, and directly impacts an institution's ability to conceptualize and implement international collaborative initiatives
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009
Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education
Discipline: Educational Administration and Higher Education

The purpose of this study was to determine if a statutory higher education consortium possesses the attributes generally associated with effective voluntary higher education consortia. Also, the research attempted to discover if there are other attributes which would contribute to the effectiveness of statutory higher education consortia.;A review of the literature on voluntary consortia revealed that voluntary higher education consortia regarded as effective generally (1) have clear, concise goals; (2) have an open, two-way communication system; (3) are supported by the presidents of the member institutions; (4) engage in incremental planning; (5) have an effective administrator/director; and (6) are perceived as useful by the members.;Using case study methodology, one Virginia Consortium for Continuing Higher Education was examined to determine if the effectiveness attributes of voluntary consortia were present in this statutory higher education consortium and to determine if other attributes might also be essential for statutory consortium effectiveness. Interviews were held with the key people associated with the consortium under study. Consortium documents located at each interview site were examined. The data were evaluated through triangulation techniques.;This statutory consortium did have a clear, concise mission and did have an open, two-way communication system. Presidential support was found to be limited and the consortium's usefulness to its members are restricted to secondary factors. The consortium leadership was viewed as effective although within a more narrow conception of leadership than that generally found in an effective voluntary consortium. Finally, evidence indicated that the consortium had no incremental planning process.;This research suggests that, to encourage the effectiveness of a statutory higher education consortium, the establishing agency should insure that several criteria are satisfied: (1) institutions must want to cooperate, (2) the reasons for cooperation must be clear, (3) incentives for cooperation must be provided, (4) all members must share equitably in the cooperative endeavor, (5) communication must be open and two-way, (6) the member institution presidents must support the consortium, (7) a planning process must be put in place, (8) the consortium administrator must be an effective leader, and (9) the external population the consortium plans to serve must be encouraged to use the consortium's services.

In instances where many universities offer off-campus programs in a single locale, a supplier network exists. These supplier networks, or higher education centers (HECs) are beneficial to students and regions where the programs are delivered (Baus, 2007; Peterson, 2007). Few empirical studies have focused on consortium educational environments, such as HECs and most studies of off-campus education have taken an outsider-looking-in approach. One window into the world of HECs is to examine the professional lives of administrators who work in the HEC environment. Professional life can be explored by eliciting data about work, relationships and rewards (Hirt, 2006; Hirt et al., 2006; Hirt et al., 2004).The purpose of this case study was to examine the professional lives of administrators who work at a HEC. Data collection included engaging the participants in four exercises where they created social artifacts. Diagrams, graphs, concept maps and drawings are complementary additions to the traditional interview and encourage contributions from interviewees that might not otherwise be obtained (Crilly, Blackwell, & Clarkson, 2006; Enger, 1998). Data from the social artifacts were used to customize the semi-structured interview protocol. Findings indicate that those who work at HECs define their work, in large part, by those who benefit from that work: students, communities, and member institutions. The organizational dynamics that drive the work of HEC administrators are competition, collaboration and balance. HEC professionals view their primary role as being the face of their institution or the Center in the local community. They describe their work as a culminating experience that is both rewarding and challenging. At the core of this work are the relationships that HEC professionals establish and sustain with others. These relationships are defined by resource coordination, advocacy, and appreciation. Findings suggest that institutions would benefit from engaging in greater reciprocity with HEC professionals to include expertise reciprocity, relationship reciprocity, and resource reciprocity. In general, professional life at HECs is rich, varied, challenging, but rewarding.
Ph. D.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD
South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy necessitated transformation within all sectors to ensure their appropriateness for the new democratic era. In line with the national transformation agenda and the transformation and restructuring of the higher education sector, the Minister of Education in 2002 announced that the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) would be the only enrolling institutions for undergraduate nursing education in the Western Cape. This decision meant that the University of Stellenbosch and the University Cape Town would no longer enrol undergraduate nurses, but would combine their strengths in a collaborative manner with UWC to train nurses for the region. The Cape Higher Education Consortium (CHEC), however, proposed the establishment of a Common Teaching Platform (CTP) for undergraduate nursing education in the region, requiring collaboration between all higher education institutions in the Western Cape. The Common Teaching Platform came into effect in 2005. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the regional collaboration on the Common Teaching Platform for B Cur Nursing in the Western Cape. An evaluation research design using qualitative methods was adopted for the study. Stufflebeam’s decision-oriented evaluation model, which caters for the evaluation of the context, input, process and product components of programmes, was used to guide the research process. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and a record review were used to collect data from the Chief Executive Officers of CHEC; Deputy Vice-Chancellors of the participating universities; Deans of the Health Science Faculties; Heads of Departments, Lecturers and Students of the Nursing Departments of the participating universities. The study adopted an inductive approach to data analysis. The inductive analysis procedure described by Thomas (2003) was adapted and used. The results evinced a general lack of application of the basic tenets of change management and a systems approach to the planning and implementation of the Common Teaching Platform. Transformation of nursing education in the Western Cape, according to the results, was in line with the national transformation agenda. Participants, however, felt that people were not yet ready to collaborate and needed enough time to accept the change, given that transformation was relatively new in the country. A critical finding was that important stakeholders were excluded from the planning phase, which led to challenges during the implementation of the Common Teaching Platform. The results further highlighted that a top-down approach was adopted. Numerous challenges with regards to the implementation of the Common Teaching Platform, including inter alia, poor communication, lack of commitment to the collaboration process, lack of adequate resources and challenges with the delivery of the curriculum, were shared by all the participants. Despite all these challenges the results showed that the student throughput rates were not compromised, and that the number of reported complaints from lecturers and students decreased over the years. On the whole, however, participants felt that the goals of the collaboration were not met due to the unresolved challenges which included inadequate resources, lack of sharing of resources and expertise across institutions, lack of commitment to participation on the CTP and failure to produce sufficient graduates to address the nurse shortage in the province.
National Research Foundation (NRF) and The Atlantic Philanthropies

Conferencia realizado del 12 al 14 de setiembre en Lima, Peru del 2012 en el marco del 15º Simposio Internacional de Tesis y Disertaciones Electrónicas (ETD 2012). Evento aupiciado por la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM) y la Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC).
Objective: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the progress so far made by Uugandan universities in establishing Institutional Repositories (IRs) Methods: A questionnaire was designed and distributed among the member institutions of the Consortium of Uganda Uuniversity Librarries (CUUL). Data received from the questionnaires was augmented by osite visits, discussions and interviews with the university libraries. Results: Despite numerous benefits associated with IRs, few institutions have established IRs in Uganda due to certain barriers. This paper argues that although these imbalances are manifested, opportunities still exists for the establishment of IRs for national development. Recommendations: The paper emphasizes the need for partnerships with the different stakeholders in the planning and developing institutional repositories. Conclusions: Insitutional repositories should be considered as principal benchmarks of digital scholarship. Originality/value – It is believed that higher institutions of learning and communities would benefit substantially from establishing IRs. However, it can only be possible with well developed infrastructure, increased funding, coordination and advocacy.

A large agency of the Federal Government, three public institutions of higher learning, and two agents of State Government in the Commonwealth of Virginia launched a federally funded research and education consortium in 1962. The Virginia Associated Research Center (VARC) promised great success. The University of Virginia, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and The College of William and Mary joined forces to provide the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Langley Research Center with a scientific research base and a graduate education program. The Commonwealth initially provided enthusiastic support from the Governor's office and from the State Council for Higher Education.;The three colleges agreed to cooperatively manage and operate the NASA Space Radiation Effects Laboratory on the Virginia Lower Peninsula. NASA funded the costs of operating the laboratory, gave the colleges research time for experiments and provided the colleges with large multidisciplinary grants. In return, the colleges were to set up graduate education programs for NASA employees. These graduate programs were to grant degrees from the respective institutions for course work taken at the VARC site on the Peninsula. The research function of the consortium proved to be more productive than the education function.;Certain criteria for successful and unsuccessful consortia were ascertained from the literature. VARC's characteristics were analyzed according to these specific criteria. The three institutions could not agree on how to operate the facility. Inherently weak governance structures in the consortium led to the failure of the venture; after only five years, the consortium dissolved. The Governor of Virginia placed the Center under the auspices of the college nearest the Peninsula, The College of William and Mary. Though unsuccessful as a consortium, VARC became a means to achievement for the three colleges. Each of the three gained stronger, more reputable physics departments and two of the institutions achieved modern university status. A qualitative analysis emerges as the consortium's operation and characteristics unfold through oral history. The study details circumstances which led to VARC's demise and simultaneously describes a key transitional period for The College of William and Mary in its three hundred year history.

Beginning in 2000 and continuing today, the University of North Carolina (UNC) German Consortium offers online German courses to undergraduate students across sixteen of the seventeen UNC public universities. The delivery of online classes differs per faculty member and little previous research investigated the UNC German Consortium's learning technologies. This dissertation investigates the evolution of learning technologies within the UNC German Consortium over the last sixteen years among German faculty from different UNC public universities. Seven faculty and one administrator shared their experiences through interviews. The methodology for this research was hermeneutic phenomenology. Interviewees shared their experiences with learning technology and teaching in the UNC German Consortium including how learning technologies changed over time. Interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed to deduce themes. Themes included the importance of the North Carolina Research Education Network (NC REN) for teaching German online, an asynchronous versus synchronous debate, how professors taught in synchronous courses, the importance of learning management systems (LMS) systems, the resilient characteristics of UNC German Consortium faculty, and the need for continual learning as an instructor.

This study examined the extent to which each computer literacy objective domain, each specific mode of instruction, and each type of question were treated in Thai high school computer literacy text materials. Two textbooks and their accompanying teachers' manuals were examined using three analytical schemes as frameworks for the examinations. The Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) computer literacy objectives were used to classify the content in the text materials in order to determine the degree of emphasis on each computer literacy objective domain. The Hawaii state Department of Education (HSDE) instructional modes were used to classify the content in the text materials in order to determine the degree of emphasis on each mode of instruction. Bloom's taxonomy of education, cognitive domain, was used to classify the review questions and exercises in the text materials in order to determine the degree of emphasis on each cognitive level. Detailed findings are given as numerals, percentages, and decimal values. Perspectives are offered on the need for textbooks which reflect the values and feelings objectives. Conclusions were that (a) text materials focus most on the programming/algorithms objectives and tend to exclude the values and feelings objectives; (b) text materials use only three modes of instruction, focusing first on the topic mode, second on the tutee mode, and last on the tool mode; (c) text material questions focus more on higher cognitive than on lower cognitive levels.

In a world that is becoming increasingly globalized, a change in the nature of higher education is leading to increased collaboration across borders. In a sector once dominated by developed countries, developing countries are becoming larger players in providing education to their countries and expanding into the field of providing education for others. This partnership began in 1992 when Manitoba was experiencing reduced government funding, frozen tuition rates and declining student numbers while Malaysia was building the capacity of their higher education system. An inter-institutional partnership was established to create a mutually beneficial relationship between the Faculty of Engineering, University of Manitoba, and University College Sedaya International (UCSI) in Malaysia. This partnership was established with clear cut benefits to both parties and developed over time with close personal ties between the institutions. However, the partnership has been declining since 2003 when UCSI was permitted to grant degrees. The lifecycle of the partnership is examined in light of this structural change. Organization models of episodic change and punctuated equilibrium, and transformative learning theory are used to explain the status of the partnership and the options for its sustainability.

Mozambique academic libraries are quite vulnerable in hybrid collection development for various reasons. In the process of collection development, physical collections have dominated the Mozambican libraries’ scene because they can acquire printed materials relatively easily. Digital materials, on the other hand, have caused difficulties due to the costs of subscribing to databases and poor technological infrastructure generated by insufficient resources. This work aims to understand the strategies followed by the libraries of Mozambican higher education institutions for the development of their hybrid collections, and to highlight the acquisition patterns, trends of integration of the collections and general challenges they face in this area. To answer the research questions, we have conducted the literature review and collected empirical data from university library documents and through semi-structured interviews with librarians responsible for collection development in three universities. The research adopted a qualitative study method and investigated three university libraries in Mozambique. As a result, we have identified collection development strategies used for the development of hybrid collections. These are partly overlapping as they must help to solve similar problems, and some strategies are specific to a university, because of different conditions and opportunities. It was also realized that, despite the efforts of those university libraries, there is a general weakness in state funding. The influence of external investment proved to be a great positive differential in the working areas of the affected libraries. It was also found out that university libraries participate and use the potential of the Mozambican library consortium AMOBAP unequally and the integration of institutional repositories is not on the same stage among the libraries.