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Background: Learning Analytics (LA) is an emerging field concerned with measuring, collecting, and analysing data about learners and their contexts to gain insights into learning processes. As the technology of Learning Analytics is evolving, many systems are being implemented. In this context, it is essential to understand stakeholders' expectations of LA across Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) for large‐scale implementations that take their needs into account. Objectives: This study aims to contribute to knowledge about individual LA expectations of European higher education students. It may facilitate the strategy of stakeholder buy‐in, the transfer of LA insights across HEIs, and the development of international best practices and guidelines. Methods: To this end, the study employs a 'Student Expectations of Learning Analytics Questionnaire' (SELAQ) survey of 417 students at the Goethe University Frankfurt (Germany) Based on this data, Multiple Linear Regressions are applied to determine how these students position themselves compared to students from Madrid (Spain), Edinburgh (United Kingdom) and the Netherlands, where SELAQ had already been implemented at HEIs. Results and Conclusions: The results show that students' expectations at Goethe University Frankfurt are rather homogeneous regarding 'LA Ethics and Privacy' and 'LA Service Features'. Furthermore, we found that European students generally show a consistent pattern of expectations of LA with a high degree of similarity across the HEIs examined. European HEIs face challenges more similar than anticipated. The HEI experience with implementing LA can be more easily transferred to other HEIs, suggesting standardized LA rather than tailor‐made solutions designed from scratch. Lay Description: What is currently known about this topic: Implementing Learning Analytics is a promising but challenging task.SELAQ is a questionnaire that can be used to determine students' expectations of Learning Analytics.Several institutions in Europe applied SELAQ to implement Learning Analytics that meet the needs of their students. What this paper adds to this: This study applies SELAQ for the first time at a German university and compares the results to studies from the UK, Spain, and the Netherlands.The participating students at the German university show relatively homogeneous expectations of Learning Analytics.The expectations towards Learning Analytics of students across Europe are comparable. The implications of study findings for practitioners: Learning Analytics systems should be shared across institutions rather than being implemented separately as tailored solutions.More standardized or modular Learning Analytics systems are reasonable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing body of scholarship on how students see themselves, and also on how they are conceptualised by other social actors. However, what has been less explored is how students believe they are seen by others, and how this impacts them. Drawing on focus groups with students across Europe – and particularly plasticine models students made to depict how they felt they were seen by relevant others – this paper will illustrate how the four most common ways in which students felt they were constructed were as hedonistic and lazy; useless and a burden; clever, hardworking, and successful; and a resource to be exploited. It will argue that such stereotypes had significant material impact on students' lives and how they experienced being a student. Finally, it will analyse how specific national contexts accounted for a range of variations in how students articulated these constructions. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2021.2007358. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of open education in Europe, focusing on higher education. It begins by considering how the notion of 'contemporary open education' has evolved over time. It then reviews the various open education-related initiatives that have been promoted by the European Commission, from the institution of an open education framework to the current development of education policies. It also reports on specigc initiatives and makes a series of recommendations about policy design oriented to opening up education. It analyses the relationship between open education and the open science movement, specigcally the manner in which open education can be contextualised in the emergent paradigm of open science. Finally, the paper considers how academic libraries should be supporting open education and examines the inluence that information professionals can bring to bear in this geld. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research within this paper compares the positioning of students and corporate branding features on higher education institution websites within the higher education systems of Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Spain and Poland. The selection of countries reflects among other things different governance regimes. The paper first outlines the analytical framework used for content analysis of the extent to which evidence of the marketization of higher education is present on higher education institutions' websites—especially with regard to the positioning and construction of student applicants. Secondly, it uses MANOVA to explain the variance by country and institutional type in relation to the presence (or absence) of different website features. Analysis of higher education institutions' websites confirms the initial expectations about the link between market-driven higher education governance structures and constructions of students as customers. Nevertheless, the variance in these overall trends is high. Despite the presence of corporate-style features on the higher education institution websites and the linked understanding of students as customers, the between-country and within-country differences reveal also sometimes even more dominant alternative understandings of students and student applicants. In the systems with more academic self-governance or with a state-centred mode of governance (usually mixed together like in Germany, Spain or the state sector in Poland), students are seen either as novices in the academic community or recipients of public service. The empirical findings presented in this article suggest that there is considerable diversity in the portrayal of student applicants on higher education institution websites in Europe, rather than a common construction as only consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the stylised facts of over-education among European graduates over time (1998–2013), paying special attention to the measurement issues.Design/methodology/approach The authors use two different sources, the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies 2012, and the European Union Labour Force Survey 1998–2013, with two different aims. The authors employ the first one to make a detailed analysis of the different forms of measuring over-education and its implications in terms of the result obtained. The analysis of the second one responds to studying the evolution and characteristics of over-education in Europe.Findings In the first place, the paper provides evidence of the high level of sensitivity of the level of measured over-education to the type of methodology used. Such difference is even higher when the authors focus on skills vs educational mismatch. The work also shows how with all their shortcomings, the measures of over-education used in the analysis point to the existence of convergence in over-education levels among the European countries of the sample (only interrupted by the crisis), in a context of reduction of over-education rates in many countries.Practical implications Researchers should be particularly careful when estimating over-education, because of the strong implications in terms of the so different results obtained when choosing between competing methods.Originality/value The analysis abounds in the implications of the use of different methodologies of estimating over-education in terms of both size and ranking among European countries. The production of long-run and updated estimates of over-education for a large sample of countries is done using a homogenous database and different estimation methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the initiation of the Erasmus programme in 1987, intra-European student exchanges in higher education are expected to promote a sense of European identity and citizenship among European exchange students. Panel studies grasping students' identification before and after participating in an exchange programme, however, remain remarkably scarce today. Moreover, the few existing studies report conflicting results. This paper adds to this debate, presenting the results of a survey conducted in 2009 and 2010 among non-exchange and exchange students from thirteen European countries, based on a pretest - posttest nonequivalent groups design (n = 400). My analyses did not find any statistically significant differences over time within and between the groups of exchange and non-exchange students, and neither between students with similar identification scores at wave 1. Finally, an analysis of the relationship between social network types and identification patterns did also not yield any significant results. Altogether, these findings suggest the impact of European exchange programmes on European citizenship and a sense of European identity is relatively limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and discusses an arts-based project, carried out by the first-year students in the classroom, at the Department of Social Work, in Athens, Greece. The project was designed for raising ethical awareness and knowledge of the 2015 Europe's refugee crisis among social work students. The purpose of this project was three-fold: (1) to help students to better understand the refugee crisis as an emerging problem in Europe and in the rest of the world; (2) to help students raise their ethical awareness about the plight of refugees and to learn how to avoid discrimination and racism and (3) to improve student's abilities to work effectively with refugee populations. The project used art-based activities (drawing, writing, photos, etc.) as a powerful pedagogical tool for teaching students and supporting their learning in the classroom. As the literature has shown, the use of arts in social work education helps student to learn through an artistic and creative way and provides a secure base, from which they can explore real-life situations and try to give meaning to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue on “Employability of higher education graduates in europe” from the perspective of global changes. Design/methodology/approach – The empirically based papers of the special issue address six main areas related to the transition of graduates from education to the labour market: employment and employability, job (mis)match, development of particular areas of competency, new certificates of higher education, along with the disciplinarity and status of the self-perceived role of academics in supporting graduates’ careers. Findings – This issue provides empirical findings relevant to various stakeholders of higher education systems which are essential for strategic development in the area. Originality/value – The selection of papers proposes an interdisciplinary scientific approach in the areas of bridging (higher) education with the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Benchmarking, a method for quality assurance has not been very commonly used in higher education with regard to e-learning. Today, e-learning is an integral part of higher education, and so should also be an integral part of quality assurance systems. However, quality indicators, benchmarks and critical success factors on e-learning have not been taken seriously into consideration, nor incorporated in ordinary national or international quality assurance systems. The purpose of this paper is to describe how The European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) initiated and developed E-xcellence+, a quality benchmarking assessment method and tool. Design/methodology/approach – This paper, which is part of a larger research project on European benchmarking, focuses on experiences from universities taking part in the E-xcellence+ valorization process. Findings – The results showed that benchmarking is a powerful tool to support improved governance and management in higher education, in alignment with national and international quality agencies. The tool can serve for quality improvements in teaching and learning. Additionally, the results showed critical success issues for e-learning. Originality/value – This original paper reports on a Europe-wide study examining benchmarking of e-learning and presents suggestions for tackling quality issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the view of many students, business and engineering education in Europe today do not sufficiently take into account complex problems, tendencies of chaos and uncontrollable business behaviour, and the lack of mutual trust in business transactions. Additionally, universities seem to fail in creating leaders, instead focusing on educating future managers. Therefore, the student-run international organisation the European Students of Industrial Engineering and Management (ESTIEM) offers a whole series of educational activities and programmes in parallel to their own university courses. It is based on the concept of experiential learning. Through ESTIEM, we, students of Industrial Engineering Management, learn and practise working in teams with shared and rotating leadership among ourselves. These experiences are to be described in the paper in some more detail, as a model for university education in industrial engineering and management. Furthermore, the following questions will be tackled: What does leadership mean today? How are problems handled by leaders and managers in industry nowadays? How can leadership to solve complex problems be taught in the university? As a consequence, it is suggested to develop out of the ESTIEM programmes, a series of university-equivalent ESTIEM courses. In the long term, the goal might be to realise the vision of a genuine Europe-wide 'ESTIEM University' in its own right, similar to normal universities which will help in shaping new leadership generation in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International student mobility amongst and between countries has become increasingly common and forms a central feature of the global higher education system. This paper examines the key learning experiences relating to the student mobility component of the Canadian-European Initiative for Health Promotion Advanced Learning (CEIHPAL) project. CEIHPAL was a unique and innovative project that fostered advanced intercontinental education and learning in health promotion from 2005–2008. With co-funding from the European Commission and the Canadian Government, the project facilitated institutional, student and faculty cooperation, by developing a high level of international communication. In particular, this paper focuses on the student mobility component and experiences of the CEIHPAL programme, a central part of the project activities. Feedback from both Canadian and European students themselves is used to document their participation in the programme, including the benefits derived from taking part as well as the problems and difficulties they encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The project of the Bologna process to create a 'European Higher Education Area' (EHEA) has established the necessary conditions for the emergence of a new sociopolitical space of higher education in Europe. This space has become a cooperation/competition area that changes the European and national balance of power: the relations the countries maintain both between them and with the European Commission are situated in a cooperation/competition game. The European Commission plays a central role in this area, alongside actor organisations who see themselves forced to discuss issues that had previously divided them and to modify their relationships at a national level. This article can be seen as a contribution to the analysis of international strategy in a global knowledge economy, especially to the two-level game theory of Putnam for which international agreements are negotiated with success only if they lead to national advantages. In particular, it studies the role of the European Commission in this sociopolitical area and the mechanism by which it has taken the piloting of the Bologna process, which was launched in a field of national competency, to make it an instrument for the realisation of the Lisbon strategy aimed at making the European Union the most competitive economy in the world. This paper is based on data sources provided by the analysis of papers produced by the actors of the process and on 50 interviews of these actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the relationship between open access and academic institutions, as well as the initiatives that spring from this relationship with a mainly European geographical focus. Design/methodology/approach - The paper describes the main European initiatives and collaborations in the area of open access that have been university-driven so far. Findings - The strength of many universities is in leading many national European initiatives, and collaborations by universities that aim to provide open access to research output, scientific publications and student theses and dissertations. Individual university efforts are the ones that pioneer in software and application development. International agreements and declarations are also signed by university representatives in order to promote open access and the close bond between higher education and open access. Originality/value - The paper describes the latest developments regarding the promotion of open access in European universities and the collaborations that they form. Smaller countries can benefit from these examples. E-theses projects are estimated to lead the next pan-European projects related to open access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After integrating the main lines of argumentation developed in the special issue, this paper makes a balance of the question on the public role of the university. Furthermore, the paper focuses on the discussion underlying the articles collected in the issue. A distinction is made between “comprehending” the past and present of the university on the one hand and “justifying” the university and its public role on the other hand. In view of this distinction, it is argued that the question concerning the value of a (normative) idea of the university and its public role is related to the question of democracy. The question is, however, not only whether we live in a democracy, but whether we may still speak of a “commitment to democracy”. An inquiry into the meaningfulness of a (normative) “idea” of the university arises directly from this question. At this point, the viewpoint of Derrida is introduced to discuss the question of the democracy and university of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although universities are asked to play a role in the European knowledge society, the precise scope and meaning of this role is still under discussion. A major issue in this debate is the trend to adapt universities to economic needs and demands of society. In view of taking a critical stance against a one-sided economic interpretation of activities and functions of universities, their so-called “public” role is increasingly stressed in the debate as a crucial responsibility of universities that should not be marginalized and therefore deserves our attention. In this paper, which is the introduction to a special issue on the public role of the university, we want to stress the importance of addressing the question of “the role of universities in the Europe of knowledge” in an open way and thus, without prejudices against or in favour of possible answers. It is our contention that a critical view of what is happening in universities today cannot simply rely on authoritative ideas or principles that are vaguely reminiscent of our university traditions. Consequently, this introductory paper pleas for a firmer argumentative and a richer empirical basis that takes account of the fact that our background (horizon) has thoroughly changed in comparison to traditions that still implicitly inform our judgement of what universities can do, should do or should not do. Finally, we will discuss the way in which the articles collected in this issue are intended stimulating and supporting the debate on the public role of the university in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on experiences with international learning and teaching in a European (ERASMUS) programme on geography and gender during the period 1990–1998. This programme forms an example of collaborative work in which the author and colleagues experimented with an array of models to bring geography students and teachers of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds together. International learning and teaching is a confrontation with diversity. Diversity in language, in the mastery of English and the resulting hierarchies, in learning and teaching cultures and in defining geography form both challenges and opportunities to profit. In this paper the author will expound on the different strategies to deal with linguistic and cultural differences and to break down hierarchies. Furthermore the opportunities to "use" the differences as learning and teaching contexts will be discussed. Geography is a discipline concerning diversity. Direct contact between persons with different cultural backgrounds can form an efficient, effective and stimulating method to learn about differences in geographies and in teaching methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines international student mobility between member states of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), a group of 47 countries that committed to reforming their higher education systems to improve the comparability and compatibility of degrees. While increased student mobility is a key goal in its official documents, little research has empirically investigated student mobility patterns in respect to the EHEA. The analysis employs multivariate techniques to identify trends in student mobility between 1999 and 2009, using a spatial approach to visualise the relationships between member states as constituted through student mobility flows. Results show that within the analysis timeframe student flows in the EHEA became more even in their distribution, but that in terms of the relationships between states, the EHEA became more centralised and segmented, meaning that key actors mediated exchanges between peripheral states and the region was more easily divided into self-contained clusters. These trends indicate a need to critically reconsider the nature of the EHEA and its role in the globalisation of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following Spolsky's definition of language policy, this introductory paper offers a brief reflection on the three main lines of research that are represented in this special issue regarding the relationship between internationalisation and language policies in higher education: management and planning, practices, and beliefs. In the first part, we comment on Englishisation and the establishment of multilingual policies as responses to the globalisation of higher education. The attitudes deriving from the interaction between English and local languages as a consequence of internationalisation are presented in the second part. Finally, the third part points at the interest of studying how the members of the academic community accomplish the management of language diversity in specific settings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past two decades regional agreements have become more significant in educational and training. This paper situates and analyses the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the Bologna Process and the Lisbon Strategy and explores their influence on the integration of higher education systems in Mercosur (the Southern Common Market of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela). Mercosur is still a customs union, and the project of integrating higher education is at an early stage. Lacking organically established regional bodies, coordination of integration in Mercosur has focused on summits and meetings of officials. However, in a context of unequal maturity in regional integration, there is emerging evidence that the EHEA project is influencing the reforms of national systems of higher education and even Mercosur’s model for a regional area of higher education. A nascent Europeanization of higher education systems in the Mercosur region is emerging, by-passing Mercosur’s regional structures. The formulation of policies has been permeated by policy transfer from Europe to national territories within Mercosur. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose – The author conducted a survey with regard to the situation of audiovisual media in European higher education, with regard to quantities, storage conditions, digitisation, and digital preservation of audiovisual media, and attitudes towards these topics. This paper aims to document the findings. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 226 of around 800 addressed institutions in 33 European states filled in an online questionnaire. Findings – The picture that presents itself is a very diverse one with a variety of content lifecycle stages, types of content and data carriers, and attitudes. Information regarding collections is often fragmentary: there were even contradictory statements from the same organisations, and only 50 percent of the responding institutions had detailed information on their collections. A correlation between lack of information and state of collections could be found: institutions that had thoroughly surveyed their collections often had repositories and dedicated considerable effort to digitisation and preservation. Practical implications – A definite need for digitisation and preservation could be confirmed. Extrapolating from the figures that were the outcome of the present survey, the hours of content existing in European higher education institutions can be expected to run well into the millions. In general, the field of digitisation and digital preservation of multimedia content in higher education could be found to be one that is still in a state of flux and more than superficial awareness of it is lower than could be expected in the information age. Originality/value – This is the first study on such a large scale to have been conducted on the subject of the preservation, management, and use of audiovisual media in European higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bologna Declaration focuses on skill acquisition as a means of improving student employability and fieldwork is considered to be a pivotal teaching method for geography students to obtain such skills. This paper presents results from a major substantive survey of European geography academics and students which investigated their perspectives with regard to the role of geography fieldwork in the gaining of transferable employability skills. Results are compared with past research in the wake of the European Commission's geography ‘TUNING’ project, which provided a set of subject-specific and generic skills attained through fieldwork. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Designing political institutions is a balancing act between upholding democratic ideals and accommodating constraints. Advocates of deliberative governance in the European Union live this tension in a particularly polarized manner, torn between the deliberative ideal of consensual decision-making and the reality of power politics. To which extent does deliberative governance provide a suitable conceptual framework as well as a mode of governance in its own right for European policy-making? This paper applies five features of deliberative governance suggested by Teague (2001) in his study of European social policy to the genesis of the Bologna Process and subsequent domestic reforms. The Bologna Process has, since the Sorbonne declaration of 25 May 1998, aimed at creating a European Higher Education Area. This study concludes that deliberative governance has the potential to start a long-term process of progressive domestic policy change and therefore deserves further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While it is common to claim that university reforms are based on universal and standardised ideas about 'modernising' the university, few studies have examined in a more coherent way how the combined external pressure for change with respect to the areas of education, research and innovation has affected the university. In this paper it is argued that one can identify three different sets of logics concerning the current external reform agenda, and that these logics together create new challenges as to how knowledge is created, diffused and governed by the university. In the conclusion, it is discussed whether the current pressure for reform might change the university as we know it, or whether new institutional translations might emerge from the process renewing the university while maintaining its identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of an academic degree and field of study on short and longterm unemployment across Europe (EU15). Labour Force Survey (LFS) data on over half a million individuals are utilised for that purpose. The harmonized LFS classification of level of education and field of study overcomes past problems of comparability across Europe. The study analyses (1) the effect of an academic degree at a European level, (2) the specific effect of 14 academic subjects and (3) country specific effects. The results indicate that an academic degree is more effective on reducing the likelihood of short-term than long-term unemployment. This general pattern even though it is observed for most of the academic subjects its levels show significant variation across disciplines and countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many parts of the world, higher education is viewed as a prime 'motor' for the development of a knowledge-based economy. Under the banner of this 'new economy', higher education policies, programmes and practices have been increasingly co-opted and shaped by wider geo-strategic political and economic interests. This paper explores three, interlinked, higher education policy spaces - in Europe, the United States, and Australia. It explores how the growing range of educational initiatives at the European level has affected - both directly and indirectly - American and Australian policymaking in higher education. The European higher education project, which is increasingly perceived as having some significance to the global economy, has set off a series of dynamic reactions in both Australia and the United States, which is leading to multiple new logics and new imaginaries about the global higher education landscape. Through this, a more integrated and relational global system of higher education is emerging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context The Bologna Declaration of 1999 has led to the initiation of profound changes within the European Higher Education Area. Methods This paper gives an overview of the Bologna Process, reviews the developments within European dental education that have arisen as a result of the Process, and describes the impact of the continuation of the Process on health science education in the UK. Conclusions The Bologna Process has led to the establishment of the European Higher Education Area, which is committed to implementing a series of action lines by 2010. Currently, we are just over halfway to 2010, and the importance of UK higher education institutions engaging with the Bologna Process is stressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short paper recognises the growth in emphasis in work-based learning as Europe moves forward on economically driven life-long learning. We support such a move and point to issues which still need to be resolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]