The question arises of what should we – any member of the higher ed community – do now to ensure a healthy future for academic librarianship? There’s a range of answers. Hopefully, we learned some things during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read More
Amid uncertainty, COVID-19 has ushered in a period of reflection and call for change as the social and behavioral sciences (SBS) continue to expose opportunities for growth within society, organizations, and individuals across the world. Looking ahead, how can we effectively use this time to examine the structures, methods, and habits within ourselves and our cultures to create lasting progress in our communities? This guide of freely accessible SBS research compiled from SAGE’s Coronavirus Research webpage provides insight regarding what COVID-19 has revealed these past months and how we can utilize these lessons moving forward.
Read MoreThe summer exam results season in England has seen controversy over assessment unlike any year in living memory. The press, politicians and the education world have pontificated at length over a challenging and complex situation, handled imperfectly, that affects the future aspirations of millions of young people. Such discussions have focused on both the specifics of the A-level results fiasco, the algorithmic grade allocation and inconstant political and policymaker decision-making, and also broader questions about assessment and the role of summative examinations in general. Underneath all of these takes, of various temperatures, lies a basic question: is this fair?
Read More
Around the world, higher education faculty and students have been grappling with the mammoth task of flipping from face-to-face teaching to online learning, practically overnight. As teaching faculty scramble to figure out how to use Zoom for online learning and the debate continues as to whether universities should cancel exams or switch to home-based open book or open Google exams, it’s becoming clear that the impact of COVID-19 on academic research could be just as profound as the impact on teaching. In-person lab experiments, face-to-face interviews, focus groups, fieldwork and other data collection may be impossible for much of 2020. Where possible, researchers will switch modes from face-to-face to virtual or telephone data collection, and where that’s not possible or desirable for practical or methodological reasons, university research offices and funders are issuing guidance for academics who need to delay their data collection or fieldwork.
Read More