Understanding the process of initiation, design, implementation and embedding of educational innovations in higher education is necessary to develop better strategies for sustainable, large-scale educational innovation. Often early initiated educational innovation projects are not evaluated well enough, making it hard to identify lessons learned. The aim of this study is to investigate how project leaders of innovation projects in Dutch higher education institutions are coping with organizational challenges. To address this we analysed qualitative focus group data with innovators that run projects at Dutch higher education institutions through the lens of contextual coping theory. Results show that the innovators identified challenges (primary appraisal), proposed possible solutions (secondary appraisal) and also were able to take concrete steps (coping efforts) to overcome challenges to design and implement open online educational innovations. From these findings it can be concluded that bottom-up initiatives can create awareness and are capable of finding local resources to establish support for embedding innovations locally, yet, appropriate, synchronized and timely top-down action is needed in order to create a sustainable and institution wide support system for experimentation and embedding of educational innovations. These findings will contribute towards developing better strategies to develop innovative educational practices and quality education.@en

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 balance dynamic complex interactions while also setting out a clear vision and enacting this vision towards organizational goals. This paper analyses four qualitative case studies with a focus on the choices made by leaders in four Dutch universities that aim to contribute to organisational educational innovation. We investigated the data through the lens of complexity leadership theory in which three types of leadership play an important role: administrative leadership (i.e. top-down oriented), adaptive leadership (i.e. bottom-up oriented) and enabling leadership that emerges as a leadership type between administrative and adaptive leadership and contributes to governing innovation in complex environments. This study sheds light on how, in the case of HEIs as complex environments, leaders made strategic choices and followed up on them to enable the innovative potential of the organisation.@en

Inquiry-based Learning is increasingly suggested as an efficient approach for fostering learners' curiosity and motivation. It helps learners to develop their ability to work in complex and unpredictable environments making them more critical thinkers and agentic learners. Although mobile technology is a suitable support for this learning process, there is a lack of practical strategies for educational practitioners to enact the right balance between enabling agency and supporting the students through the mobile technology. Thus, we conducted a literature review that analyzed 62 studies on mobile inquiry-based learning. The analysis focused on the level of agency supported by mobile technology. This review study provided two main results. The first result is a two-layer classification –with five types and twelve subtypes– of the most common mobile activities used in inquiry-based learning. The types and subtypes are: 1) Direct instruction formed by 1a) location guidance, 1b) procedural guidance and 1c) metacognitive guidance, 2) Access to content formed by 2a) fixed and 2b) dynamic content, 3) Data collection that consists of 3a) cooperative and 3b) collaborative data collection, 4) Peer-to-peer communication formed by 4a) asynchronous and 4b) synchronous social communications and 5) Contextual support that includes 5a) augmented experience, 5b) immersive experience and 5c) adaptive feedback. The second result consists of an analytical framework –based on six dimensions– to assess the level of agency supported by the different types of mobile activities. The learners' agency dimensions are: 1) Goals, 2) Content, 3) Actions, 4) Strategies, 5) Reflection and 6) Monitoring. Finally, the review presents insights on how this analytical framework can be used by educational practitioners to identify mobile activities that effectively balance learners’ agency with mobile technology.@en

To address societal change, the authors highlight the need to incorporate new cross-cutting digital and physical spaces for learning – in and outside formal education systems – by embedding the concept of openness. They argue that this cannot be done without revisiting the global knowledge infrastructure.@en