Teaching and research in higher education is conducted in collaboration with foreign institutions, professors and researchers and in the presence of foreign students. Slovenian students, professors and other staff, and researchers learn, train, teach and conduct research at foreign institutions. By the end of this decade, the number of our professors going abroad for at least one year and foreign professors coming to Slovenia will increase, as the objective is to have at least 10% of foreign professors by the end of the decade. To achieve top quality, internationalization and international attractiveness of higher education institutions, the study programmes should be carried out in foreign languages. For this reason, we studied how many of our professors went abroad for a period of up to one year, how it was funded, and what the purpose of their stay was. Next, we investigated how many foreign professors and experts were involved in the Slovenian higher education system and in what way. Finally, we examined how many Slovenian study programmes and courses were offered in foreign languages and how many professors taught in foreign languages.
COBISS.SI-ID: 39220741
The Ministry of Education, Science and Sports established a so-called eVŠ system - Records and analytical information system for higher education (HE) in the Republic of Slovenia. eVŠ performs two roles - it is a tool for various HE stakeholders to rationalize their time and costs, and an analytical tool that facilitates evidencebased HE policy-making for further development of the HE system. This paper presents eVŠ records and particularly its analytical capabilities, together with its key impacts and further potential of its analytical capabilities.
COBISS.SI-ID: 38717189
Schooling remains one of the real foundations of modern society in the EU which enjoys a relatively high level of trust. This belief is attributed to the impact schools have on the lives of individuals and further development of society towards successful EU integration. The high quality of education system is nowadays in the focus of most education policies. This paper is based on the thesis that schools develop moral and intellectual excellence of individuals. In a contemporary and highly sophisticated societies, also referred as ‘risk societies’, goals are stated as being increasingly important. In the area of education, it is crucial to understand the competencies that individuals need to achieve in moral and intellectual excellence, especially for a successful integration into society and labour market. Despite varying views on skills in the 21st century, all discussions highlight the importance of ethics, values and virtues. The focus on the aforementioned raises several questions for educators; among which is the question of whether it is possible to teach virtues and how to define which virtues are necessary. This paper points to the urgency of learning virtues and outlines some of them. Defining virtues in education is one of the key tasks in realising the meaning of teaching, and subsequently, the development of individuals' moral and intellectual excellence.
COBISS.SI-ID: 38520325
Information and communication technology is dramatically changing the world we live in. Over recent years, open resources and open education have been part of different initiatives and projects. Nowadays, information can be easily reached from different sources and knowledge can be acquired outside of the traditional bricks-and-mortar institutions. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are challenging higher education, however the experts and researchers are yet to reach a consensus on whether MOOCs will change the nature of higher education. This paper analyses the issues of whether MOOCs pose a threat to higher education institutions, if they are a feasible replacement for payable study programs or whether they support people willing to learn in their lifelong learning process. These questions are analyzed from a business perspective rather than from the point of formal (higher) education. We are asking if the MOOCs present the opportunity for in-house company training.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1538572996
This study attempted to explore the impacts of attitudinal antecedents on students’ entrepreneurial intention. Comparisons between students of engineering and nonengineering backgrounds and gender groups were made. Total of 998 students from universities in Hong Kong were surveyed, leading to a number of highlights in the study. First, it is found that the learning motivation strongly correlates with innovativeness, which in return affects the entrepreneurship intention. Second, the educational measures designed for senior year students would be slightly different from those for junior year students, whilst the junior year students may need more facilitation to motivate their learning. Thirdly, the ‘innovativeness’ of engineering students is found significantly and strongly correlated to ‘self-efficacy’ and significantly to ‘attitude’. The ‘attitude’ of engineering students is found more significantly contributing to their ‘entrepreneurial intention’. The interesting results show that for engineering students, though perceiving higher levels of innovativeness, ‘attitudes’ and ‘entrepreneurial intention’, the critical attributes in determining ‘entrepreneurial intention’ are ‘attitudes’ and ‘self-efficacy’. Fourthly, attitudes seem a lot more influencing to the entrepreneurial intention among female students, whilst ‘innovation’ is the a lot more influencing among male students.
COBISS.SI-ID: 38712325
Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship are important for new wealth creation and economic development. Yet insufficient attention has been paid in entrepreneurship research to psychological characteristics such as the big five personality characteristics. In this study, we address this issue by investigating the psychological determinants of real-life entrepreneurial start-up decisions and intentions by contrasting entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs as regards the big five personality factors. We develop hypotheses linking the big five personality factors (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) with individual entrepreneurial activities. In addition, we investigate gender influences on the level of and the moderation effect on the personality-entrepreneurship relationship. Using data collected via face-to-face structured interviews with 546 individuals from Slovenia, we tested these hypotheses using MANOVA. As the findings of this study indicate, the openness personality factor may be the most important of the five factors for differentiating real-life entrepreneurs from other people. In addition, people who have no intention of starting up their own firms – non-entrepreneurs – tend to score lower on extraversion and somewhat higher on agreeableness than other people. Contrary to the expectations, gender was not found to be a moderator in the personality-entrepreneurship relationship.
COBISS.SI-ID: 22632678
Higher education institutions (HEIs, are ideally positioned to make a critical contribution to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) through their core academic functions of research and teaching. However, while sustainability research has accelerated in recent years, curriculum development has been limited in scope and impact, due to the complexities of ESD when applied within the existing academic structures and processes of HEIs. The field of ESD has the strategic aim of reorienting entire educational systems, which in HEIs means the challenging goal of achieving large-scale shifts of curriculum priorities, policy and pedagogy. The concept of ESD focuses on achieving human wellbeing and quality of life, pursued through the maintenance, care and equitable use of natural and cultural resources. Critical pedagogies oriented to futures and systems thinking, participatory and experiential learning, critical thinking, partnership working and values reflection, are all widely used in ESD. Two Slovenian cases of ESD good practice include one or more of the following innovative pedagogical approaches: changes to formal curriculum development processes and/or frameworks; actions to improve the graduate profile and student learning experiences; strategic enhancement activities to improve teaching and learning practice.
COBISS.SI-ID: 21570056
Integration of process and data models forms the foundation for improving knowledge management of higher education institutions. This paper describes that in order to improve knowledge management, HEIs should integrate their process and data models in conjunction with the knowledge management perspective.
COBISS.SI-ID: 12043681
A programme for the promotion of science and doctoral studies called the Young Researchers Training Programme has been developed in Slovenia. Since it began, the programme has been substantially funded and over 6,000 young people have participated in it. However, no evaluation of the programmes effectiveness has yet been conducted. In this study we identified young researchers motivation for entering the programme, their assessment of the training and links to knowledge transfer into practice as the principal idea behind the programme. Two training groups, university based young researchers and company based young researchers, are compared in order to assess whether the type of training affects knowledge transfer. The analyses show that young researchers in the economy are more involved in direct knowledge transfer and their motivation to do so is mainly intrinsic. On the other hand, university based young researchers need extrinsic incentives to cooperate in projects in economic sector, for their motivation is more oriented towards academic research. Implications for Slovenia, as well as for other countries higher education policies, are discussed.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1536149444
Higher Education in EU has been experiencing radical changes with the aim to make the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) more responsive to society and to stimulate the transfer of knowledge in the triangle of research, education and innovation. Key obstacles are limited available financial resources. Thus, distribution mechanisms are needed, which will encourage economical and cost-effective use of resources at HEIs and stimulate them to achieve national strategic objectives. Widely used mechanisms for the allocation of public funds is a formula structured with a combination of elements and based on tariff groups, which should reflect the costs of HE.
COBISS.SI-ID: 15658549