Higher education curricula are regularly transformed to stay abreast of the diverse societal, technological, and domain-specific developments. To aid students’ learning, teachers use a wide range... Show moreHigher education curricula are regularly transformed to stay abreast of the diverse societal, technological, and domain-specific developments. To aid students’ learning, teachers use a wide range of resources to prepare students for this changing world. Nowadays, many educational resources are available online with open licenses, better known as open educational resources (OER). Yet, despite the opportunities OER can have to contribute to high quality and accessible education, reuse appears to remain low in higher education. Numerous OER initiatives have been initiated across the globe, but many tamp out after the project funding ends. Sustainable practices with OER are still constrained and limited empirical research has been undertaken to investigate how structural adoption of OER in higher education can be enhanced. This dissertation aimed to examine the challenges of OER adoption in higher education to contribute to insights into sustainability issues many OER initiatives encounter. Four studies were designed: (1) teachers’ current practices with OER and their need for support to foster OER adoption, (2) teachers’ assessments of OERs on quality, (3) the role of brokers in cultivating an inter-institutional community on OER, and (4) teachers’ perceived value of an inter-institutional community. Recommendations for future research and OER practices are presented. Show less
In higher education, group learning activities (GLAs) are frequently implemented in online, blended or face-to-face educational contexts. A major problem for the design and implementation... Show more In higher education, group learning activities (GLAs) are frequently implemented in online, blended or face-to-face educational contexts. A major problem for the design and implementation of good quality GLAs that lead to the desired learning outcomes is that many approaches to GLAs have been studied, but with different terminology and with various components of the design of GLAs. The central aim of this thesis was to provide insight into how teachers in higher education can be supported in the design, implementation, and evaluation of GLAs by developing a theoretically and empirically underpinned framework for the design of GLAs. In the first study, the beliefs and practices of teachers in higher education regarding collaborative learning were explored to establish whether there is a need for support in the design and implementation. In the other three studies, a framework was developed for the design, implementation and evaluation of GLAs, its empirical validity was examined and its usefulness for understanding the relation between GLA design and perceived learning outcomes was explored. Show less
Central in this thesis are the various forms the research-teaching nexus can take in the university, especially in the Faculty of Humanities. The importance of a strong relation between research... Show moreCentral in this thesis are the various forms the research-teaching nexus can take in the university, especially in the Faculty of Humanities. The importance of a strong relation between research and teaching is advocated by many academics, but debate is going on about the forms this strenghtened relation can take. In this research project various categorisations are developed to describe the various forms of the research-teaching nexus. A categorisation based on ideal images distinghuishes the following five profiles: teach research results, make research known, show what it means to be a researcher, help to conduct research, and provide research experience. In the debate on the nexus we need, among others, to clarify what kind of research we are talking about, what roles we expect the students to have, and what purpose the nexus has. Furthermore, the research project showed that academics__ conceptions of teaching are related to their views on the research-teaching nexus. The disciplinary background, and conceptions of research and knowledge are less important. Regarding the students__ learning experiences in a research-intensive environment, the students primarily reported an acquisition of an academic disposition and an understanding of what research entails. Show less
This dissertation describes several studies concerning the research-teaching nexus in the sciences. General, it is recognized that a strong nexus exist between research and teaching at university... Show moreThis dissertation describes several studies concerning the research-teaching nexus in the sciences. General, it is recognized that a strong nexus exist between research and teaching at university education, but it was not always clear in which ways this relation could be implemented to positively influence student learning. Connections between teachers__ intentions, teaching practice, and scientific research dispositions were studied in this dissertation. Associations between these factors and suggestions for teaching practice in higher education were described in the context of the nexus of research and teaching in bachelor science courses. The findings show that scientific research dispositions of academics can be characterized by six qualitatively different aspects, namely the inclination to understand, to achieve, to share, to be critical, to be innovative, and to know. Furthermore, it became clear that teachers__ intentions not always correspond to students__ perceptions of research activities during the courses. Teachers__ intentions on tangible elements of the nexus were relatively more congruent with the students__ perceptions, than teachers__ intentions about intangible elements. The results suggest at that intangible elements of the research-teaching nexus, such as the stimulation of a critical disposition or the creation of an innovative atmosphere, need to be emphasized, if we want that students develop realistic conceptions about the nature of scientific research. Show less
