The future of higher education is in crisis. Between falling undergraduate enrollment, rising student debt, program elimination, and widespread faculty burnout, families across America are left wondering: Is college worth it? In "The Conversation on Higher Ed," editor Mary Churchill explores the complicated landscape of academic life in…

Academic literacy skills are universally considered as a valuable and integral part of academic development in higher education, yet they often remain peripheral to or are completely absent from many qualifications. At the presently selected institution, there is little consensus on the most effective model to design for and implement as far as…

Europe needs more professionals with dedicated skills to drive the transition to a sustainable and circular bioeconomy, a core component of the Green Deal. A study was made to support the development of educational and training content, methods, tools and structures to achieve a mainstreaming of the bioeconomy in education and training. The…

This paper analyzes the role of the university research laboratory in university-industry interactions for technology transfer. Specifically, it examines how the laboratory research infrastructure, team qualification and local incentives influence knowledge and technology transfer in biotechnology. Despite the importance of the research laboratory…

The bioeconomy, as a catalyst for systemic change, tackles the economic, social and environmental aspects of the European Green Deal, seeking new ways of producing and consuming resources while respecting our planet's limits and moving away from a linear economy based on extensive use of fossil and mineral resources. As defined in the European…

This is the Final Report of the study on "Promoting education, training and skills across the bioeconomy" conducted by Deloitte, Empirica and Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini Srl SB (FGB), mandated by the European Commission's DG Research & innovation (DG RTD). The study assesses the current and future (2030 and 2050) needs for…

This case study is based on a digital storytelling project conducted with first year Biotechnology with French students at National University of Ireland, Galway. Working in small groups, the students created digital stories in French based on forensic cases in which DNA profiling was used. The study was conducted while they were learning about…

Situated in a context of higher education policy, this article examines the institutionalization of "innovation" as a national neoliberal economic strategy. As neoliberal capital has become increasingly financialized, this innovation strategy has come to be woven through biotechnological innovation as an economic strategy, and oriented…

This paper first reviews applications of multimedia in engineering education, especially in laboratory learning. It then illustrates a model and accreditation criteria adopted for developing a specific set of nanotechnology laboratory courseware and reports the design-based research approach used in designing and developing the e-learning…

The authors describe a collaborative group-testing strategy implemented and studied in undergraduate science classes. This project investigated how the assessment strategy relates to student performance and perceptions about collaboration and focused on two sections of an undergraduate biotechnology course taught in separate semesters.

Teaching and learning in the information age can be stressful. It seems only yesterday teachers were trying to imagine what the information age would be like. Now their brains are bombarded by billions of words every time they perform a "Google Search." There is a calm to the chaos when teachers focus on the foundation of their profession. Their…

The goal of this study was to explore how students debate with their peers within a designed context using a digital dialogue game, and whether their epistemic beliefs are significant to the outcomes. Epistemic beliefs are known to colour student interactions within argumentative discourse, leading some students to hold back from interactions. By…

Whether celebratory or critical, STS research on science-industry relations has focused on the blurring of boundaries and hybridization of codes and practices. However, the vocabulary of boundary and hybrid tends to reify science and industry as separate in the attempt to map their relation. Drawing on interviews with the head of a research center…

Community colleges have long been destination No. 1 for American workers looking to upgrade their skills in search of new opportunities. In this article, the authors highlight how partnerships in three industries--automotive, biotechnology, and energy--are buoying efforts to support local economies. They discuss how business and nonprofit partners…

Protein engineering is a powerful tool, which correlates protein structure with specific functions, both in applied biotechnology and in basic research. Here, we present a practical teaching course for engineering the green fluorescent protein (GFP) from "Aequorea victoria" by a random mutagenesis strategy using error-prone polymerase…