Dated: March 01, 2019
Executive Summary
Nowadays, globalization poses new challenges to universities. Bethlehem University is aware of the challenges especially in the presence of the disabling factors (acts) that delay progress and development. One of the main reasons why I want to participate in developing the Human Resources Development course is to develop research and innovation strategies for smart specialization, with special focus on developing knowledge in the methodologies of teaching, training and coaching. Taking advantage from applying to the LaSallian Community, will improve my competences and capacity as a lecturer, and facilitating the spread of experience and knowledge across academia. In additional, training Human Resources Course internationally with special focus on adults improved my management skills and the quality in the preparation, implementation, monitoring and follow up with technical skills, all part of applying internationalization best practices. By applying to the LaSallian, I will be able to get broader understanding of policies, systems and best practices in the Human Resource Development scheme. All lead towards increase our opportunities as Palestinians for professional and career development. Consequently, Bethlehem University and other Palestinian Universities will receive higher quality sample of academics as contribution to the Palestinian economy to become both more capable and more inclined to follow the latest educational and best qualities and practices trends. Bethlehem University will further achieve, within deep impact, through this call:
Partnership level
- promote collaborative academic research initiatives;
- enhance pedagogy and teaching and training methodologies in areas that involve practicums type of framework;
- establish active exchange between faculty members to promote academic linkages;
- enrich the understanding of the other cultures and exchange mobility.
Academic level
- imbed entrepreneurial mind sets within academic staff and students;
- develop relationships and collaborations between local and international University with adult sector and private sector organizations;
- provide academic staff with the opportunity to practically apply entrepreneurship, both in the classroom and in a cross disciplinary way outside of the classroom;
- empower our research skills among faculty members.
Personal level
- To acquire knowledge and specific know-how from good practice abroad
- To develop my own competences in my field and increase the relevance of my teaching
- To increase knowledge of social, linguistic and/or cultural matters
- To gain practical skills relevant for my current job and professional development
- To increase my job satisfaction
- To build up new contacts/expand my professional network
- To build up cooperation with the labour market
- To create spin-off effects like curriculum development, development of joint courses or modules, academic networks, research collaboration etc.
- To experiment and develop new learning practices and teaching methods
- To share my own knowledge and skills with students, teachers and trainers
- To increase my future employment and career opportunities
Please find attached down below summary of research proposal outline:
|
Title |
The Development of E-learning Pedagogues within “Open Educational Resources” for Human Resources Development Course. |
|
Vision |
Reinforcing Bethlehem University Internationalization Scheme Through shifting Current Teaching Methods from a “Teacher-Centered Approach to a Learner-Center Approach. |
|
Mission |
Applying Interactive Teaching Stimulation Methodologies (ITSM) for the 21st century in Palestine. |
|
Duration |
3 semesters (2019-2021) |
|
Target Group |
Human Resources Management Lecturers and continuous education centres (in-service training) in Palestine and Jordan. |
|
Problem addressed |
Universities in Palestine who still teach in traditional ways resulting in a low quality education and therefore in low employability. This problem is coupled with the low innovation capacity and low international exposure of the academic communities in the field of higher education in the country. |
|
Dissemination: |
Bethlehem University took the lead with partner universities to share the idea of curriculum review in the Human Resources Management course, including the use of 21st century inclusive pedagogues and critical learning approaches that will enable future lecturers to be critical examples for tomorrow’s Palestinian citizens and workers essential for the development of the country as part of long-term approach to supporting inclusive and innovative quality higher education in Palestine and creating the first accessible Think-Tank Model in Palestine. |
|
Course to be upgraded |
Human Resources Management |
|
Domain |
Business & Hospitality School |
|
Adaptation |
Open for all. § Applying: Synergy in Higher Education § Applying: Vocation in Higher Education § Applying : Adults in Higher Education |
|
Overall Outcome |
Bethlehem University Strategic Goal # 6 under the title: Equipping Palestinian Students in Higher Education for Global Citizenship through / Develop programmes that enhance student and graduate employability, entrepreneurship and good citizenship. |
|
Specific Outcome |
§ Presentation of the techniques used in e-learning. § Empower students' imaginations and enhance creativity § Analysis of applications and methods used in the lectures. § Virtual environments and applications used for distance education. § Use of serious games and simulations in e-learning. § The use of virtual tools and devices to create technical courses. § Using advance techniques like augmented reality with IT virtual tools in non-scientific course. § Develop virtual tools as MOOC. |
|
Overall Objective
|
Modernise higher education in Palestine by restructuring the curriculum of Human Resources Management Course through the promotion of innovative, inclusive and critical lecturing approaches. |
|
Specific Objectives
|
§ Prepare the ground for modern lecturing innovation, by building a knowledge base of best innovative teaching strategies (covering design, resources, pedagogy and assessment) and about success cases of innovative lecturing universities for example with De La Salle College of Saint Benilde in Philippine, followed with Leipzig University of Applied Sciences and Aalborg University Copenhagen in Europe. § Build innovation capacity, by developing capacity of university lecturers (working with Human Resources Development Course) of using innovative teaching strategies with focus on inclusive and critical pedagogies. § Design innovation, by restructuring the curriculum of Human Resources Development Course starting with 3 Palestinian universities. § Sustain innovation, by piloting the redesigned course, with attention to local specificities and to replication potential. |
|
Results (outputs/outcomes) |
- Upgraded curriculum - Piloted course with all participating universities - National committee for advanced and comprehensive lecturing - Lessons learnt report to transfer the experience to other universities in Palestine and to other countries. |
|
Work Packages 1-7 |
Applying Interactive Teaching Stimulation Methodologies (ITSM) contains a systematic build-up of activities and is the result of an extensive consultation process among the partners. It is structured in seven work packages, four of which deal with the preparation and development, and three with cross-cutting aspects such as quality assurance, dissemination and exploitation, management. 1) Knowledge base and competency framework Leader: Bethlehem University Aim: to capture and map teaching methodologies for the Human Resources Management course and define a position paper on innovative lecturing strategies in relevance to the course in Palestine. Collection and analysis of existing teaching applied strategies that will result in a report, a competencies framework, and in a set of recommendations for the following work packages. Deliverable: Position paper on innovative lecturing strategies related to teaching Human Resources Management course and competency framework. 2) Training Lab on inclusive and innovative pedagogous Leader: De La Salle College of Saint Benilde School in Manila, Philippine. Building capacity on inclusive and critical pedagogous (based on self-assessment, design thinking workshops). Tasks: 2.1: Co-design of the training framework (training labs and peer-support) 2.2: Participatory development and redesign of the course curricula Deliverables: 2.1 Training framework 2.2 Projects/activities for curriculum innovations 3) Content development and production Co-Leaders: Leipzig University of Applied Sciences and Aalborg University Copenhagen in Europe. Focussing on developing Human Resources Management contents for the restructured course curriculum. The course content will include learning outcomes, learning content/resources to support activities. Contents will be developed collaboratively with academic staff, students, public and private sector and will be made available through an open source. Tasks 3.1: Human Resources Management Course content development (design workshop with An-Najah National University, Palestine Polytechnic University, Arab American University, and Birzeit University. 3.2: Design and implementation of the online platform/bank 3.3: Orientation workshops for faculty members and to boost curriculum redesign to other courses Deliverables: 3.1: Redesigned content of 1 course to be jointly used in 3 Palestinian universities 3.2: Shared knowledge bank on inclusive and critical pedagogies 3.3: Orientation workshops 4) Pilot delivery of the re-designed course Leader: Bethlehem University Focussed on piloting the restructured course, by using the program developed by the IT, and gaining some lessons for future transferability and multiplication. Tasks 4.1: Delivery of the redesigned course with lecturers (for all partner Palestinian universities) 4.2: Analysis of pilot and lessons learnt 4.3: National transferability workshop Deliverables: 4.1: Report on the pilot delivery 4.2: Recommendations 4.3: National Committee for innovative and inclusive Human Resources Management teaching 5) Quality Assurance Leader: Bethlehem University 6) Dissemination, outreach and exploitation Leader: Bethlehem University 7) Management Leader: Bethlehem University Outreach and share experience with the University of Jordan. |
|
Duration (Research based) |
Three executive weeks (Summer 2018-2019) at De La Salle College of Saint Benilde School in Manila, Philippine. |
|
Execution |
Three (3) continuous semesters |
|
Plan of Action |
The research will start with an analysis and agreement-building component (Work Packages 1) that is highly necessary to set a shared vision and capture the collective mind. The Position Paper guides the research in terms of principles and lines of actions. Based on this agreement, the research capacity building core will start through one Learning Lab (mobility) at the De La Salle College of Saint Benilde School in Manila, Philippine. A community of motivated educational lecturers and professors from Palestine will be exposed to ways of integrating a number of critical 21st century pedagogies, which embrace innovative, creative and inclusive ways to develop higher education teaching methods and visionary leadership to ensure equitable quality education delivery. These four primary partner universities will work in collaboration with Bethlehem University in order to co-develop one course on how the curriculum of their respective Human Resources Development course can be designed or restructured / transformed (for existing course). The agreement will represent the starting point for the course content development phase, and it will represent a meaningful active learning opportunity for the participating universities that will actually produce Open Educational Resources and will integrate them in the OER Think-Tank (Knowledge Bank). The restructured course will then be run in all the participating universities, and the results of the pilot experience will be shared internally and with the National Stakeholders Community for Innovative and Inclusive Teaching. The work plan outlined is compact, linear and feasible in three (3) academic semesters 2019-2021, and at the same time guarantees a number of repetitions and self-improvement opportunities. Corrective actions can be put in place, due to the continuous work of Work Package 5 Quality and Evaluation, to improve processes and results. |
|
Tangible results |
The following main research results will be achieved: •Position Paper on existing best innovative teaching strategies and capabilities framework related to the Human Resources Management course. •Palestinian teachers upskilled on the use of inclusive critical 21st century teaching strategies •Upgraded curriculum of one course in three Palestinian universities •Set of OER (Open Educational Resources) content to accompany the new curriculum •Lessons learnt report to transfer the experience to other universities in Palestine and to other countries Thanks to these results, the research will have an important milestone in all the participating Palestinian universities, both in terms of tangible results and of internal capacity building. |
|
Conclusion |
At the end of the application cycle, the involved universities will have 1 central model course in their faculties of education restructured following the highest international standards in terms of pedagogic approach, use of ICT ad innovative methods, and available content. And all of this will have been done by the universities themselves, thanks to the “push” received by ZAMALA and especially through a rather extraordinary collaboration effort. It is in fact very common in Palestine that Palestinian universities commit to work together with an open-minded approach to rethink their educational strategies and restructure a course and to produce the underlying contents. This renovated course, that is compulsory for all students of higher education in Palestine, will stably improve the educational offer of the country in the area of higher education, and will have significant contribution on the Palestinian population for many years to come. Further, the fact that all the process through the documentation of research documents that will be made available for any other university, has the potential to guarantee a force effect with a much broader impact of the research in the medium term. Further, the teachers /professors that will participate in the research Learning Labs will strengthen their capabilities, both in technical terms and in behavioural and attitudinal terms. Finally, one important outcome of the research have been planned with the aim to reach beyond the partner universities in Palestine is to transfer the experience to other universities to organize our inception activities, specifically to enlarge the research impact at the individual, institutional, and higher education system levels. |
|
Publication |
http://thisweekinpalestine.com/methods/ |
