Books on the topic 'University confidence'

At Fault: James Joyce and the Crisis of the Modern University argues that American universities have lost their way and that the works of James Joyce will put them back on the scent. In American university education today, an excess of caution has led to a serious error in our education system. To be “at fault” is to have lost one’s path: the university’s current crisis in confidence can be addressed by attending to the lessons that Joyce teaches us. Joyce models risk-taking in all three areas of the academic enterprise: research, teaching, and service. His texts go out of bounds, resisting the end, pushing beyond themselves. Joyce writes in an outlaw language, and the acknowledgment of failure is written into every right action. At stake is the enterprise of humanism: without an appreciation of error, and an understanding of infinite possibility, the university will calcify and lose its right to lead the nations of the world. The book draws upon the author’s thirty years of teaching experience to demonstrate what works in the classroom when teaching Joyce and makes a powerful contribution to debates on interdisciplinarity and university teaching. There are chapters on centrifugal motion, gramophones, elephants, fox-hunting, philately, brain mapping, and baseball: a compendium of approaches befitting the ever-expanding world of James Joyce.

The Japan that the world admired during the 2019 Rugby World Cup is a model of social stability, resilience, and efficiency. But it carries important vulnerabilities, rooted in its ageing demography and a population shrinking by 500,000 a year, made much worse by a declining marriage rate and low fertility, both of which have their source in a combination of growing financial insecurity, severe gender inequality, and poor use of human capital. Over the three decades since its 1990 financial crisis it has seen a deep divide emerge in labour markets both for men and for women between the 60 per cent of ‘regular’ workers who benefit from training and security, and the 40 per cent of ‘non-regular’ workers who have a precarious, untrained, lowly paid existence. To overcome its vulnerabilities will require reforms to improve the use of the country’s superbly educated human capital, by reducing insecurity for both men and women, and by greatly narrowing the gender gap. An opportunity is presenting itself thanks to a big rise in female entry to university education during the 1990s and 2000s and to the emergence of a wide range of role models able to give inspiration and confidence to the next generation. Japan is already becoming a place with more female leaders in politics and even business, but that rise is from a very low base. If that process can be accelerated by both public policy and private action, Japan could achieve much greater social justice and sustainable prosperity in the decades to come.

Entering the 1960s, the University of Illinois typified “Middle America,” with its midwestern campus, middle-class enrollment, and midcentury quiescence—the unlikeliest of settings for protest, rebellion, and riots in the streets. But all of that came to pass. Born of free-speech issues in the Red Scare era and nourished by anger with an unpopular war, protests grew into a general antiestablishment frustration, climaxing in a student strike and days-long violent disturbances that shut down one of the nation’s largest land-grant universities. How could this happen, here? The story is one of self-important legislators, well-intentioned administrators, a conservative citizenry, and “outside agitators,” but mostly of a minority of confident, determined, somewhat naïve students. Virtually all white, relatively privileged, raised in a postwar economic boom, believers in and embodiment of American exceptionalism, they would confront moral questions around race, justice, war, life, and death that became existential as the body count rose in Vietnam. This is the story of how those Illini students responded. No one could have predicted rebellion would happen here. But it did. These young people helped bring down one president, shamed a second, and helped lead the nation to end a wretched war. By their agency they changed history. And if such a movement could happen in such an unlikely place, who is to say that another, equally unlikely, might not happen again?

Written by twenty expert women in philosophy and representing a diverse and pluralistic approach to philosophy as a discipline, this book engages girls and women ages sixteen to twenty-four, as well as university and high school educators and students who want a change from standard anthologies that include few or no women. The book is divided into four sections that correspond to major fields in philosophy—metaphysics, epistemology, social and political philosophy, and ethics—but the chapters within those sections provide fresh ways of understanding those fields.Every chapter begins with a lively anecdote about a girl or woman in literature, myth, history, science, or art. Chapters are dominated by women’s voices, with nearly all primary and secondary sources used coming from women in the history of philosophy and a diverse set of contemporary women philosophers. All chapters offer the authors’ distinct philosophical perspectives written in their own voices and styles, representing diverse training, backgrounds, and interests. The introduction and prologue explicitly invite the book’s readers to engage in philosophical conversation and reflection, thus setting the stage for continued contemplation and dialogue beyond the book itself. The result is a rigorous yet accessible entry point into serious philosophical contemplation designed to embolden and strengthen its readers’ own senses of philosophical inquiry and competence. The book’s readers will feel confident in knowing that expert women affirm an equitable and just intellectual landscape for all and thus have lovingly collaborated to write this book.

These Guidelines are one of the results of the four-year research project “Open Online Learning for Digital and Networked Society” (2017-2021). The project objective was to enable university teachers to design open and online learning through open and online learning curriculum and environment applying learning analytics as a metacognitive tool and creating open and online learning assessment and recognition practices, responding to the needs of digital and networked society. The research of the project resulted in 10 scientific publications and 2 studies prepared by Vytautas Magnus university Institute of Innovative Studies research team in collaboration with their international research partners from Germany, Spain and Portugal. The final stage of the research attempted creating open and online learning assessment and recognition practices, responding to the learner needs in contemporary digital and networked society. The need for open learning recognition has been increasing during the recent decade while the developments of open learning related to the Covid 19 pandemics have dramatically increased the need for systematic and high-quality assessment and recognition of learning acquired online. The given time also relates to the increased need to offer micro-credentials to learners, as well as a rising need for universities to prepare for micro-credentialization and issue new digital credentials to learners who are regular students, as well as adult learners joining for single courses. The increased need of all labour - market participants for frequent and fast renewal of competences requires a well working and easy to use system of open learning assessment and recognition. For learners, it is critical that the micro-credentials are well linked to national and European qualification frameworks, as well as European digital credential infrastructures (e.g., Europass and similar). For employers, it is important to receive requested quality information that is encrypted in the metadata of the credential. While for universities, there is the need to properly prepare institutional digital infrastructure, organizational procedures, descriptions of open learning opportunities and virtual learning environments to share, import and export the meta-data easily and seamlessly through European Digital Hub service infrastructures, as well as ensure that academic and administrative staff has digital competencies to design, issue and recognise open learning through digital and micro-credentials. The first chapter of the Guidelines provides a background view of the European Qualification Framework and National Qualification frameworks for the further system of gaining, stacking and modelling further qualifications through open online learning. The second chapter suggests the review of current European policy papers and consultations on the establishment of micro-credentials in European higher education. The findings of the report of micro-credentials higher education consultation group “European Approach to Micro-credentials” is shortly introduced, as well as important policy discussions taking place. Responding to the Rome Bologna Comunique 2020, where the ministers responsible for higher education agreed to support lifelong learning through issuing micro-credentials, a joint endeavour of DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion and DG Research and Innovation resulted in one of the most important political documents highlighting the potential of micro-credentials towards economic, social and education innovations. The consultation group of experts from the Member States defined the approach to micro-credentials to facilitate their validation, recognition and portability, as well as to foster a larger uptake to support individual learning in any subject area and at any stage of life or career. The Consultation Group also suggested further urgent topics to be discussed, including the storage, data exchange, portability, and data standards of micro-credentials and proposed EU Standard of constitutive elements of micro-credentials. The third chapter is devoted to the institutional readiness to issue and to recognize digital and micro-credentials. Universities need strategic decisions and procedures ready to be enacted for assessment of open learning and issuing micro-credentials. The administrative and academic staff needs to be aware and confident to follow these procedures while keeping the quality assurance procedures in place, as well. The process needs to include increasing teacher awareness in the processes of open learning assessment and the role of micro-credentials for the competitiveness of lifelong learners in general. When the strategic documents and procedures to assess open learning are in place and the staff is ready and well aware of the processes, the description of the courses and the virtual learning environment needs to be prepared to provide the necessary metadata for the assessment of open learning and issuing of micro-credentials. Different innovation-driven projects offer solutions: OEPass developed a pilot Learning Passport, based on European Diploma Supplement, MicroHE developed a portal Credentify for displaying, verifying and sharing micro-credential data. Credentify platform is using Blockchain technology and is developed to comply with European Qualifications Framework. Institutions, willing to join Credentify platform, should make strategic discussions to apply micro-credential metadata standards. The ECCOE project building on outcomes of OEPass and MicroHE offers an all-encompassing set of quality descriptors for credentials and the descriptions of learning opportunities in higher education. The third chapter also describes the requirements for university structures to interact with the Europass digital credentials infrastructure. In 2020, European Commission launched a new Europass platform with Digital Credential Infrastructure in place. Higher education institutions issuing micro-credentials linked to Europass digital credentials infrastructure may offer added value for the learners and can increase reliability and fraud-resistant information for the employers. However, before using Europass Digital Credentials, universities should fulfil the necessary preconditions that include obtaining a qualified electronic seal, installing additional software and preparing the necessary data templates. Moreover, the virtual learning environment needs to be prepared to export learning outcomes to a digital credential, maintaining and securing learner authentication. Open learning opportunity descriptions also need to be adjusted to transfer and match information for the credential meta-data. The Fourth chapter illustrates how digital badges as a type of micro-credentials in open online learning assessment may be used in higher education to create added value for the learners and employers. An adequately provided metadata allows using digital badges as a valuable tool for recognition in all learning settings, including formal, non-formal and informal.