The formulation of a sense of community (SOC) among students has received significant attention in the literature in recent years. However, digitally enhanced learning and COVID-19 have amplified the challenges vis-à-vis connecting students and making them feel involved and recognized in virtual learning ecologies for higher educational…

Faculty development is essential to promote pedagogical innovation and the transformation of teaching practices. The faculty development model presented in this study was guided by three research questions about how scholars engage in institutionally held training opportunities for professional development; how scholars engage with and collaborate…

This Projects With Promise case study offers insights for addressing tensions between universities and communities in building partnerships and collectively rethinking "the field" of community engagement. We explore moving beyond a solely place-based understanding of "the field" into an ethos based on human interactions and…

Restorative practices can serve as a proactive approach to address behavior in a way that not only repairs harm and restores relationships, but also creates stronger communities. Using a circle-style conversation to elicit our perceptions of the potential of these practices to support and advance liberatory principles, we sought to uncover the…

Responding to an ongoing disconnect between higher education institutions (HEIs) and contemporary challenges communities face worldwide, universities can become a driving force to strengthen communities' capacity toward innovative solutions to the challenges they face. This article introduces an analytical framework that provides a roadmap to…

Open Networked Learning (ONL) is a collaborative open online course for higher education educators worldwide, focusing on open education, collaborative learning, and course design. The interorganizational course welcomes both institutional and open learners from around 30 nations. Delivered 17 times since 2014 with up to 120 participants in each…

This article examines issues of local community development in Rwanda, building on the triple helix model proposed by Henry Etzkowitz and Loet Leydesdorff in the 1990s to draw insights from international perspectives. The authors favour an expanded quadruple helix model which includes the local community as a unit of analysis, alongside higher…

Purpose: This study aims at understanding how higher education institutions (HEIs) can contribute to sustainable development, by designing their programmes for bringing about a transformative impact on communities and students, and also to examine what alternative pedagogical approaches could be used for that. In the past decades, HEIs have…

Theatre for Development is one of the most dynamic and controversial theatre movements on the global South. Emerging in Southern Africa in the 1970s to address social and economic problems using theatrical techniques, today it is taught in theatre departments across sub-Saharan Africa and employed in numerous contexts from health care to…

Purpose: This study aims to explore the contribution of Enactus sustainability initiatives to youth empowerment and community development, thus analysing how South African higher education institutions can increase student involvement in Enactus projects across all faculties. Design/methodology/approach: Using a systematic literature review…

This article examines the role creative and cultural higher education plays in the top-down development of Astana -- the new capital of Kazakhstan. Drawing on a mapping of higher education institutions in Kazakhstan's old (Almaty) and new capital cities as well as qualitative interview data with creative and cultural practitioners, academics and…

The COVID-19 pandemic led universities to transform the traditional teaching methodologies into distance education. Therefore, social media has become progressively prominent as teaching and learning resources in universities. Several studies have been conducted for the development of social media as a learning tool. However, there is limited…

Can verse mediate between the educational institution and the wider community of which it is a part? Utilising a case study of a specific taught module, this essay considers whether the performance of poetry as an experiential learning activity has a role to play in the emerging concept of the university as an anchor institution, a term that…

Over the past 50 years, colleges and universities have taken on increasingly important roles as anchor institutions in U.S. cities, partnering with local communities to promote development and well-being. Such community-campus partnerships rely on the work of community engagement professionals (CEPs), staff tasked with administering, coordinating,…

Anchor movements rest on the premise that people- and place-based initiatives can be mutually reinforcing. The community development movement, however, has been haunted for years by the people-place dilemma -- the idea that efforts to help people harm efforts to uplift places and vice versa. Most of the literature on the anchor strategy has…