Higher education is a globally competitive market and institutions with a high rank can claim exceptionalism that brings in students and funding, acknowledges our Michelle Stack. But are rankings genuinely useful for students or for research?
The never-ending audit makes a crucial point about the ways in which power structures have shifted within universities, argues our Daniel Nehring. In effect, it suggests the death of the ideal of the autonomous scholar-researcher-teacher.
Alice Dreger says shecan see clearly that universities in which the majority of the faculty feel unsafe in terms of job security become places where no one feels safe to do anything that might risk upsetting someone.
A culture of bad science can evolve as a result of institutional incentives that prioritize simple quantitative metrics as measures of success, argues Paul Smaldino. But, he adds, not all is lost as new initiatives such as open data and replication are making a positive difference.
Craig Brandist compares aspects of British higher education to the old Soviet Union, with a similar tendency towards stagnation and strategies that workers adopt to absorb managerial pressure.
We likely all remember the maxim about statistics and lies. Statistical data do not allow for lies so much as semantic manipulation, explains Jonathan Goodman. In short, numbers drive the misuse of words.
Since the heyday of the student movement in the late 1960s policy decisions in the United Kingdom have mostly pushed universities into neoliberal boxes that ill-fit the needs of students and the society at large, argues Hugo Radice.
To help celebrate Peer Review Week 2016, the steering committee for the commemoration asked the 20+ organisations on the group to tell us how they #recognizereview and what more they hope to do in future. Their responses show a clear understanding of the importance of peer review and a firm commitment to supporting more recognition for review in future.
“We are, as a species, addicted to story,” says English professor Jonathan Gottschall in his book, The Storytelling Animal. “Even when the […] Tom Burns, whose combination of play — and plays – with teaching in higher education added a light, collaborative and engaging model […] The creation of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) has led to a heated debate on the balance between peer review and evaluative metrics in research assessment regimes. Luciana Balboa, Elizabeth Gadd, Eva Mendez, Janne Pölönen, Karen Stroobants, Erzsebet Toth Cithra and the CoARA Steering Board address these arguments and state CoARA’s commitment to finding ways in which peer review and bibliometrics can be used together responsibly. “We are, as a species, addicted to story,” says English professor Jonathan Gottschall in his book, The Storytelling Animal. “Even when the […] The interactional skill of large language models enables them to carry out qualitative research interviews at speed and scale. Demonstrating the ability of these new techniques in a range of qualitative enquiries, Friedrich Geiecke and Xavier Jaravel, present a new open source platform to support this new form of qualitative research. Title of course: Space/Power/Species What prompted the idea for the course? A few years ago, I came across the architect Joyce Hwang’s […]
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Impact
Canada’s Storytellers Challenge Seeks Compelling Narratives About Student Research
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Tom Burns, 1959-2024: A Pioneer in Learning Development
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Research Assessment, Scientometrics, and Qualitative v. Quantitative Measures
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Innovation
Canada’s Storytellers Challenge Seeks Compelling Narratives About Student Research
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Our Open-Source Tool Allows AI-Assisted Qualitative Research at Scale
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This Anthropology Course Looks at Built Environment From Animal Perspective
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