Strategic plans are valuable tools for colleges seeking to cast vision and provide focused guidance for leadership and faculty, but it is not clear how these plans address student success. This study analyzed plans from 55 of the 58 community colleges in North Carolina. First, we analyzed the plans using a 10-step strategic planning framework to…

Purpose: This paper aims to summarize four decades of research into organizational adaptation, learning and unlearning. Design/methodology/approach: The most important contributions to this stream of research have been case studies of organizations struggling to survive serious crises. Findings: Very diverse kinds of organizations run into serious…

Amidst the international movement toward establishing more rigorous external quality assurance, the recent quality assurance reform within the Ontario public university sector involves a shift of focus from external to internal quality assurance. This paper explores to what extent organisational learning was occurring at three comprehensive…

Faculty are increasingly interested in engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) across disciplines, necessitating educational development support. While many institutions utilize one-time workshops and faculty communities offering professional development funding, the case study presented in this article takes a different…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the types of learning engendered by internal mobility (IM) by referring to the principles elaborated by Bateson (1972). Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative methodology is followed with interviews among 50 professionals working at four large French firms. Findings: A system of classification for IM is…

For the past 20 years, numerous reports have called for change and reform of undergraduate education to improve student learning, persistence, and graduation rates for students in STEM. Many change efforts have been started but few have reached the transformational level of entire programs, departments, or colleges in the STEM disciplines. In…

This paper proposes a training model for raters, with the goal to improve the intra- and inter-consistency of evaluation quality for higher education curricula. The model, termed the learning, behaviour and reaction (LBR) circular training model, is an interdisciplinary application from the business and organisational training domain. The…

Despite a commonly held assumption that our environment shapes what we do, a review of the literature reveals a paucity of empirical research exploring "how" the designed environment can be said to influence learning activity. Accompanied by an attendant lack of theory and methods, this results in missed opportunities to support learning…

As the evolution of information ecosystems has accelerated across higher education, learning commons have become iconic places celebrating the changing nature of student learning. These places have become important symbolic centres in higher education today, combining the goals of equitable education together with access to unprecedented layers of…

This article describes an innovative approach to professional development designed to challenge teachers' pedagogic practice and assumptions about educational technologies such as social media. Developing effective technology-related professional development for teachers can be a challenge for institutions and facilitators who provide this…

"How to Create the Conditions for Learning" shows how the conditions for continuously improving instruction can be created at every level--from the classroom to the school to the central office. More Ann Jaquith presents a framework for understanding and building instructional capacity, based on her original research in schools and…

Postgraduate taught education in universities is under-researched compared to research on undergraduate learning and teaching. This results in two missed opportunities: making evidence-informed improvements to postgraduate taught education and integrating such improvements into thinking and practice. A commitment to evidence-informed improvement…

Empirical data on learners' conceptual progression is required to design curricula and guide students. In this paper, we present the Reference Map Change Coding (RMCC) method for revealing students' progression at a fine-grained level. The method has been developed and tested through the analysis of successive versions of the productions of eight…

In this article, we discuss the importance of theory driven program development and present the empowerment framework using two case studies at a center for teaching and learning (CTL). We describe the empowerment framework, offer programmatic examples aligned with this framework, and make specific recommendations for those wishing to pursue this…

Improvisatory processes are considered synonymous with play, offering only second-best solutions to art and design problems. The role of improvisation in visual art processes is not widely discussed academically. This paper draws on a case study situated in Namibian art worlds to reflect on the role of improvisation in fluid and complex design and…