2. What is the essence of Modern Higher Education?

Modern Higher Education (MHE): a short characterisation by different authors

Hattie and Donoghue

Modern Higher Education learning outcomes in modern higher education represent the pertinent knowledge that students have gained within a particular discipline.
Students can apply this knowledge to solve problems or carry out tasks in a new discipline.
More generally, students learn how to tackle academic and professional problems.
Learning is the outcome of moving from surface to deep learning and applying the knowledge in new situations (transfer).

Van der Rijst, 2024

Learning involves students building knowledge through interactions with peers, academic subjects, different situations, contexts, and their existing knowledge.
Effective teaching strategies aim to foster students’ knowledge, attitudes, and skills, which are essential for encouraging academic freedom, cognitive autonomy and self-direction within a specific field or area of knowledge.
The role of higher education is to foster and guide the learning process, which deepens the comprehension of academic freedom. The discussion should focus on the learning pathways within our curriculum, the ways we bolster extra-curricular forums and the support we provide to our faculty to nurture our students into genuine free thinkers and high achievers in academia.

Lodewijks (1993)

He gives a practical description of the core aim of modern higher education.

Professional knowledge and thinking strategies are taught and learnt in conjunction. The primary purposes are to acquire, adapt and use that knowledge.
During the study, the intuitive views of students are replaced by theories and models from the field.

The most important characteristics in modern higher education of a good learning environment are as follows:

Conditions in education are as much as possible following later use, including real-life work situations;
The students are encouraged to obtain work actively;
The teacher is a coach and an expert on the subject matter;
Modern higher education (lecturer, fellow students and the study material) provides impulses to work and think independently. The students are given increasing responsibility for learning;
The students develop a sense of competence.

There are many evidence-based pedagogical options for modern higher education available to university teachers.

The importance of research evidence is universally recognized, but its full potential is often not actualized within higher education curricula. It is important to acknowledge that integrating such pedagogical methods is a complex process.. Research evidence is often communicated in technical language, which may not readily translate into practical educational strategies.

To promote the integration of evidence-based insights, this research must be articulated in terms that are accessible and workable to academic teachers. This can be realised with the help of the concept of design tools.

The website offers the teacher designers a toolbox with design tools as an asset for the course design and development process.

Next to this is a list of available design tools.

The hyperlinks provide some design tools. Other course design tools can be found in basic books of higher education. Nedermeijer (2023) describes the design tools.

1. Overview of evidence-based design principles for MHE; (see below)
2. The necessary elements of the learning environment;

1. Overview of evidence-based design principles and IT pedagogical options;
2. Active verbs for learning objectives;

1. Examples of selected types of assignments and educational methods;

1. Possible sequences in a course;

1. Examples of blended learning course models;

1. Diamond Diagram, Route map and Blueprint

1. Instructional planning and building principles to be realised in your course;

1. Checklist for the design of a good assignments and checklist for a series of assignments.
2. other learning materials;

1. Overview of educational methods;

1. Formative and summative testing options;

1. Examples of requirements and qualities;

1. Elements of the course or module book.

1. Examples of course design and development processes.

1. Brainstorm techniques.

1. ….

1. ….

Design Principles for Modern Higher Education are evidence-based (or evidence-informed)

Chickering and Gamson (1987) formulated one of the first set of design principles for Modern Higher Education. Other descriptions are given by Theelen and van Breukelen (2021), Parker and Hankins (2002), Sixteen design principles (Visscher -Voerman (1999), Agostinho, 2011, Reilly and Reeves (2022), Wals, Wesselink and Mulder (2017). Picciano (2017) gives a valuable description. These authors describe the design principles in these articles as an abstract summary of the evidence-based research results.

Besides the general design principles for modern higher education, the concept of design principles has been researched for specific pedagogical situations. DPs are formulated for the benefit of designing, developing and evaluating hybrid learning (Cremers et al., 2017), DPs about oral presentation (Ginkel, Gulikers, Mulder, & Biemans, 2015), project-based learning (Guo et al., 2020), the principles of authentic eLearning (Reilly and Reeves, 2022), teacher design teams (Post et al., (2022) and more.

Design principles are not meant to give ready-to-use recipes (Theelen and van Breukelen, 2021). They give you the best possible insight into the possibilities for designing effective modern higher education. The design principles indicate which pedagogical approaches can be used successfully. There is no guarantee of success.

Frequently, the design principles articulated in scientific articles are robust from a scientific standpoint but not practical for teacher designers. This necessitates that educational researchers present their recommendations in an actionable manner for teacher designers in their design endeavours. Maybe as an annexe or a separate article.

But, it is vital for teacher designers to understand learning theories and have mastered the art of integrating research findings with their personal experiences. With this they can apply the research in the course design.

One of the Insights Merrienboer has formulated in his Farwell lecture (2023)
‘We need empirically supported theories that help us understand teaching and learning processes and make sound design decisions that optimize learning in simulated or real environments”.
‘As a result, there are no instructional methods that do or do not work; that is to say, everything works somewhere, nothing works everywhere. Research should be aimed at increasing our knowledge.’

A design principle is an intelligent summary of related results of educational research and its application. Design principles summarise many evidence-based results from research in modern higher education, especially in blended learning.

The aim is to make the available research results from scientific articles transparent and usable for teacher designers. They help them make well-considered choices when organising their education, following ideas about modern higher education.

The essential quality of a design principle description is that it should be appealing, understandable, and valuable for university teachers in general, and teachers should be able to translate these design principles into ideas for their courses.

A useful tool to shape your teaching plan for the course

An example of a helpful design tool is the set of eight pedagogical design principles of MHE (=DP), as shown in the Figure. These principles will play a role in the design of most courses in higher education. Sometimes, a DP has an essential and central role, and sometimes a subordinate role. If you ‘forget’ a design principle, it often turns out that the course does not meet the five quality requirements of being effective, efficient, valued, well-liked, and feasible.

A detailed description of an example of a design principle is explained below.

A detailed description of all the eight design principles and related pedagogical options of MHE can be found here.

The Interactive Assignment Modern Higher Education can help you select relevant pedagogical options.

An example of a design principle: '2. Description Issues and problems from the professional field are central'.

Learning is an active process. Students study actively in the classroom, in groups or in self-study to master the learning objectives instead of just listening passively. This enables complex learning. The students learn to apply their knowledge in the assignments in the classroom or in self-study. The assignments are focused on learning tasks relevant to the learning objectives. The students will get feedback after finishing the assignments. The complexity and size of the assignments increases during the study years.
The course book transparently explains the teacher’s expectations concerning the student’s learning.
The course’s learning objectives are logically related to the other courses in the curriculum and the learning tracks.
Teachers and/or tutors support students’ self-study. During their studies, students will have to study increasingly independently. You should arrange for proper scaffolding.
A practical principle is Time-on-task. More hours of meaningful studying result in more learning. The design task for teachers is to find meaningful learning activities that stimulate the students to study regularly instead of waiting until just before the test.

The pedagogical options for DP 2 in Modern Higher Education

Necessary focus points

It does require pedagogical preparation

Another step to modernise your course

How to apply DPs in Modern Higher Education?

You choose from the design principles and the pedagogical options, the pedagogical options from which you expect the most success. Then, you translate the combination of the chosen pedagogical options into concrete learning activities, materials and suitable learning paths(s). In this translation, the teaching experience of the designer teacher is decisive.
Evaluation of the new design is crucial: the quality of the new education must correspond to the quality requirements set. During the design process, you must evaluate the design carefully. For example, you check if the teacher and the students can function in the designed learning situation if the design elements are consistent, and if the faculty is able and willing to support the implementation. You evaluate new parts of your design in small pilot experiments, and finally, you evaluate your new course during and immediately after the course’s implementation.
Because of the messiness of DPs, Hanghoj, Handel, Visgaard, and Gundersen (2022) stress the importance of discussing design principles with teachers or in a project group. This discussion about DPs should be combined with teacher training activities on how to use these design principles. The teachers discuss how to interpret and apply them in their course (or curriculum) as a teacher designer. The result must be written down as an essential input for the design process.

Ensure that your course comprehensively covers all eight design principles and characteristics.

Sometimes, one or two DPs dominate your design. This does not mean you can forget those ‘other’ DPs. They play their role in the background. If you do not give these DPs the right place, the quality of your course will decrease. For example, project education without lectures in which the teacher reflects with the students on the applied knowledge and, where necessary, additional knowledge presented.