Building Better Universities

<p><em>Building Better Universities</em> provides a wide-ranging summary and critical review of the increasing number of groundbreaking initiatives undertaken by universities and colleges around the world. It suggests that we have reached a key moment for the higher education sector in which the services, location, scale, ownership, and distinctiveness of education are being altered dramatically, whether universities and colleges want it or not. These shifts are affecting traditional assumptions about both the future ‘shape’ of higher education institutions, and the roles of—and relationships between—learners, teachers, researchers, managers, businesses, communities and other stakeholders.</p><p>Building Better Universities aims to bridge the gap between educational ideas about what the university is, or should be ‘for’, and its day-to-day practices and organisation. It roams across strategic, operational, and institutional issues; space planning and building design; and technological change, in order to bring together issues that are often dealt with separately. By analysing the many challenges faced by higher education in the contemporary period, and exploring the various ways universities and colleges are responding, this powerful book aims to support a ‘step-change’ in debates over the future of higher education, and to enable senior managers and faculty to develop more strategic and creative ways of enabling effective twenty-first-century learning in their own institutions.</p> <p>List of Figures</p><p>List of Textboxes</p><p>Introduction: the shifting boundaries of higher education</p><p>Chapter 1: Re-shaping universities and colleges </p><p>Theme 1.1: Alternative universities?</p><p>Theme 1.2: Radical restructuring</p><p>Theme 1.3 Enhancing the student offer</p><p>Chapter 2: New patterns of public and private competition and collaboration </p><p>Theme 2.1: Hybrid non-profit and for-profit entities</p><p>Theme 2.2: Social enterprise and civic engagement</p><p>Theme 2.3: Widening participation</p><p>Theme 2.4: Improving student performance</p><p>Chapter 3: Responding to internationalization</p><p>Theme 3.1: International collaborations</p><p>Theme 3.2: International networks</p><p>Theme 3.3: Developing global citizens</p><p>Chapter 4: Changing learning spaces</p><p>Theme 4.1: Comprehensive campus re-design</p><p>Theme 4.2: Re-designing processes</p><p>Theme 4.3: Creating hybrid spaces</p><p>Chapter 5: Beyond virtual learning environments</p><p>Theme 5.1: The massification of eLearning</p><p>Theme 5.2: Seamless virtual and physical integration</p><p>Theme 5.3: Increasing digital literacy</p><p>Theme 5.4: Using big data</p><p>Theme 5.5: Open badging</p><p>Chapter 6: The implications of new technologies for learning </p><p>Theme 6.1: Changing learning and teaching methods?</p><p>Theme 6.2: Open sourcing and sharing</p><p>Theme 6.3: Embodied learning</p><p>Conclusion: Learning in a post-university world?</p>