Keynote leacture delivered as part of duties of Visiting Professorship in National Changhua University of Education, Taiwan, in March 2016.

1. NCUE Global Learning
Keynote 4
Program evaluation & critical
reflection:
Added value in Global Learning
Dr. Alan Bruce
ULS Dublin
Visiting Professor
NCUE
Changhua
17 March 2016

2. Overview themes
• Changing role of the University in global learning
• Assessing the impact of Global Learning initiatives
• Evaluating impact of change
• Leadership and critical reflection
• Assessing quality in global learning
• International dimensions and evaluation
• Evaluating university/corporate/community
partnerships
• Planning for sustainability

3. Policy Environment
• Continued restriction in most economies on public
spending
• Increased competition between and within higher
education
• Defined targets for commercialization and practical
application
• Doing more with less
• Universities as agents or as independent drivers
• Valuing independent critical analysis

4. Global Learning and Higher
Education
• Pressure of comparative ranking tables
• Competition for resources and students
• Outsourcing, amalgamation and rationalization
• Changing impact of knowledge economy
• Recruitment and retention of graduate students
• Impact of ICT – distance learning, access and MOOCs
• Linkage to industry, enterprise and for-profit sector
• Linkage to government priorities

5. Business and community
development
• Less than 10% of SMEs in developing countries well prepared
for new conditions and increased competition in global
markets.
• An emerging opportunity to reap potential benefits of global
trade is establishment of business linkages between SMEs
and transnational corporations (TNCs).
• These linkages represent one of the best ways for SMEs to
enhance competitiveness and acquire a series of critical
missing assets: access to international markets, finance,
technology, management skills and specialized knowledge
• However, specific linkages promotion programs only have a
chance to succeed if a conducive policy environment is set
up.
• UNCTAD Information Economy Report, 2006

6. Authentic global learning
• Creates shared meaning in uncertain times
• Provides support and inclusion
• Values difference as a critical advantage
• Maintains creative and innovative focus
• Demonstrates research capacity
• Breaks limits and boundaries
• Shapes futures not reacts to them
• Multilingual and multicultural

7. Evaluation

8. Standards and evaluation

9. Kinds of evaluation

10. Uses of evaluation
TO GAIN INSIGHT:
• Identify barriers to use of the program
• Learn how to best describe and measure program activities
TO IMPROVE HOW THINGS GET DONE:
• Determine the extent to which plans were implemented
• Make mid-course adjustments/Clarify communication
TO DETERMINE THE EFFECTS OF THE PROGRAM:
• Assess skills development by program participants
• Compare changes in behavior over time
• Document level of success in accomplishing objectives
TO AFFECT PARTICIPANTS:
• Stimulate dialogue and raise awareness
• Broaden consensus about program goals
• Support organizational change and improvement

11. Education: from Newman
to Kerr
John Henry Newman (1873) The Idea of the University
1. Primary purpose of a University is intellectual and pedagogical
2. Range of teaching within University is universal; it encompasses all
branches of knowledge, and is inconsistent with restrictions of any kind.
3. The University prepares students by allowing them to learn about "the
ways and principles and maxims" of the world
4. True education requires personal influence of teachers on students.
Clark Kerr (1963) The Uses of the University
1. Modern university is diversified – a multiversity
2. Serves needs of society, economic and cultural
3. Think tank – essential to progress
4. Master Plan for Higher Education (1960) in California

12. ICT and re-imagining access
• Contradictory and paradoxical process
• Never greater potential - side by side with
increasing disparities of access
• What we think:
• Citizens
• Shared knowledge
• Participative engagement
• What we have:
• Consumers
• Increasing exclusion
• Significant problems with equitable access

13. Education as business
• Terry Eagleton: The Slow Death of the University (April
2015)
• Packaging knowledge
• Destroying arts and the humanities
• Teaching less vital than research – research brings in he
money
• Vast increase in bureaucracy, occasioned by the flourishing
of a managerial ideology and the relentless demands of the
state assessment exercise
• Professors are transformed into managers, as students are
converted into consumers

14. Purposive learning in an age of
uncertainty
• End of linear models of learning
• Cognitive dissonance: what is needed is not
being provided
• Alienation and anomie in a changing world
• Labor market flux and the loss of autonomy
• Adaptability and innovation as norm, not
exception
• Globalized paradigms/fractured community
• Elephants in the room: power and ownership

15. Planning for results
• Purpose and mission
• Meaning and motivation
• Commitment and competence
• Team learning
• Performance and outcomes

16. Towards Global Citizenship
Education must fully assume its central role in
helping people to forge more just, peaceful,
tolerant and inclusive societies. It must give
people the understanding, skills and values
they need to cooperate in resolving the
interconnected challenges of the 21st century.
United Nations: Global Education First
Initiative (2012)

17. Contested citizenship
• Membership of a political community
• Belonging and engagement
• Rights and entitlements
• Duties and responsibilities
• Constrained by legacy of nation-state
• Cultural minorities and migrants
• Disputed access

18. Post-national citizenship
• Shaped by globalizing process
• Greater access to knowledge, information and
values
• Digital media
• Mobility and migration
• Climate change
• International governance bodies
• Accelerated interdependence
• Respect for pluralism and diversity

19. UN Thematic Learning Outcomes
• Awareness of the wider world and a sense of own role
both as a citizen with rights and responsibilities, and as
a member of the global human community.
• Valuation of the diversity of cultures and of their
languages, arts, religions and philosophies as
components the common heritage of humanity.
• Commitment to sustainable development and sense of
environmental responsibility.
• Commitment to social justice and sense of social
responsibility.
• Willingness to challenge injustice, discrimination,
inequality and exclusion at the local/national and global
level in order to make the world a more just place.

20. Universities at the crossroads
A review of evidence from the perspective of knowledge-seeking
firms and knowledge-generating universities reveals a striking
asymmetry:
• Companies presently seek mainly public science outputs
• Universities pursue proprietary science opportunities more
heavily in their dealings with business and industry.
At the same time:
• Knowledge flows are being promoted more aggressively
• Universities are being totally restructured, harmonized and
decentralized regarding governance and accountability.
Together, these momentous events may pose potentially divisive
pressures within universities among their various faculties and
individual members.

21. Universities: changing roles
• Stakeholders expect universities to respond to needs
beyond classic education, teaching and research
• Strengthening the knowledge economy
• Restructuring basic institutions
• Assimilating new populations
• Democratization, access, social mobility, critical thinking
and sustainability
• Embedding the complexity of modern societies in a
dynamic socio-economic-learning matrix
• Industry/corporate linkage occurs in this context
• Best practice is multidimensional depending on these
needs

22. Responding to change
• Flexibility
• Digital learning
• Learning outcomes, added value
• Sustainability
• Sugata Mitra:
Comprehension/Communication/Computation
• Social capital and inclusion
• Visions of excellence

23. Crisis impact: system change

24. Innovation and knowledge
• How does learning sustain innovation?
• Necessary focus on inherited structures and
delivery mechanisms
• Access and validation of knowledge have
become central concerns
• Focus on mediation role, hierarchy and control
• What is now the role of the University?

25. Incremental innovation
• Addresses core of what already exists
• Airplanes that fly farther
• Batteries that last longer
• Computers that process faster

26. Disruptive innovation
• Evolves very rapidly
• Replaces traditional solutions
• Rooted in simple applications
• Personal computer
• Internet
• Mobile technologies

27. Policy opportunities for Global
Learning
• Engaging with diverse communities
• Developing massive outreach to sectors
• Community empowerment
• Outreach, access and validation
• Legislative foundations
• New technologies – mobile telephony
• Shared learning and linkage to other
universities

28. Conclusions
• Education at crossroads: both structure and process
• Global learning focus is on mobility, skills and
innovation
• Leadership critical
• Leadership requires planning and clear goals
• Transnational action is the only method in a globalized
world
• Depends on vision and understanding for community
needs
• Innovative learning demands imagination and risk
taking

29. 謝謝
Dr. Alan Bruce
ULS Dublin
abruce@ulsystems.com
Associate Offices: BARCELONA - HELSINKI - SÃO PAULO - CHICAGO