In response to challenges emerging in society, universities are searching for ways to innovate their courses through novel institutional educational policies and practices. Those efforts, however, are often not informed by knowledge about course innovation characteristics university-wide, and are often not supported by processes of reflection…

Leadership in higher can influence the structurally embedding of educational technologies in higher education institutions. However, HEIs are complex pluralistic organizational environments with loosely coupled systems, diffused power and goal ambiguity which makes governance of educational innovations a wicked problem in which they have to…

There are worries about the quality of scientific research, the validity of the knowledge it produces and the integrity of academics. What is lacking in the debate is what scientists have to say and what they do to create and safeguard what they see as 'good science'. Using Dutch academia as a case, we show that the academics' understandings of…

Lecturers who are actively engaged in shaping their teaching and teaching practices demonstrate agency. Teacher agency has increasingly been described as a key factor in educational development at universities. Lecturers are expected to innovatively develop courses and continuously improve their teaching practices to respond to, for example,…

From 2017-2020, 15 universities collaborated to create and share OER for a bachelor nursing program. A study was undertaken to analyse the impact of the project activities leading to the commitment to work towards sustaining the initiative. The project was described using the ESH model (Weggeman, 2000). Two sub-studies provided the results on the…

Changes, improvements and innovations in university organisations regularly end up in sluggish processes and get stuck 'somewhere' in the organisation. It is argued that cooperation and mutual influencing of work processes between academic and professional employees of different departments can have a positive effect on these innovations. Because…

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are more critical than ever to help societies respond to the complex challenges of our times. Recognising that these challenges require HEIs to adopt holistic innovations in teaching, research and collaboration activities, the European Commission (EC) and the OECD have developed the HEInnovate guiding…

University-based living labs serve as open innovation platforms that foster collaborative research and experimentation across various disciplines. These labs bring together academics, citizens, community organisations, companies, and other entities to collectively address complex contemporary issues. The labs' managers are expected to adopt…

Opportunities for academic libraries to enrich their products and services through facilitating open education (OE) in higher education are presented in an overview of good practices. A case study of open textbook publishing was performed at TU Delft to study how these products and services could stimulate educators to adopt OE. A simplified user…

This report and the accompanying online repository (https://sfdora.org/dora-case-studies/) bring together and analyse case studies in responsible academic career assessment. The case studies are intended to serve as inspiration for institutions planning to become or already engaged in a complex review process, and to provide potential pathways of…

The "Innovative Leadership and Change Management in Higher Education" (NEWLEAD, 2020-2023) focused on capacity building of university leaders to steer change and address new priorities on the institutional transformation agenda. Findings from the NEWLEAD project demonstrate that leading and transforming universities is a complex…

In the context of globalising higher education (HE) policies, there is an increasing interest among scholars in detecting patterns of policy change, including the rate and magnitude of policy change and the direction of change (convergence or divergence) This paper adds to that literature by comparing the pattern of policy change and by providing…

Human capital is indispensable for regional innovation and economic growth, and PhD graduates (PhDs) play an important role in these processes. This is the first study describing the geographic origin and current work location of PhDs from Dutch universities, which are located in a densely populated area with a high concentration of basic science…

This article presents the results of scientific-pedagogical research, which consisted in analyzing the American experience of the Dalton plan in the schooling of the Netherlands, the ranking surveys according to strict criteria, and the implementation of an adapted version of the original American pedagogical model of the Dalton Plan in the…

As global industries change and technology advances, traditional education systems might no longer be able to supply companies with graduates who possess an appropriate mix of skills and experience. The recent increased interest in Design Thinking as an approach to innovation has resulted in its adoption by non-design-trained professionals. This…