First global contest over innovative pedagogy

The first global competition for the "most innovative pedagogical approaches in higher education" was announced last week by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in the United States and London-based QS Quacquarelli Symonds, which publishes the QS World University Rankings.

Called "The Wharton-QS Stars Awards 2014 - Reimagine Education", the contest will provide all universities and enterprises around the world with opportunities to showcase innovation in e-learning, blended and classroom-based learning.

It is, said QS in a statement, a response to the "perfect storm" of increasingly demanding young students, learners of all ages, non-traditional programmes, new technologies, the rising cost of traditional higher education and fierce global competition, "which calls for new approaches and a profound transformation of the learning experience".

The new initiative is a partnership between QS and the SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management at Wharton, whose director Professor Jerry Wind said: "The time has come to reimagine higher education and to reinvent pedagogical approaches."

The collaboration's purpose was "to leverage the wisdom of informed experts in education - to identify innovation in e-learning and blended learning to enhance the experiences of students around the world and to help produce future leaders in every field of study".

An independent panel of judges comprising multidisciplinary e-learning and traditional learning experts from around the world will select the most innovative pedagogical experiments in e-learning, presence learning and blended e-learning in various fields.

The categories are: arts and humanities, engineering and technology, life sciences and medicine, natural sciences, social sciences, professional and executive education, and the overall most innovative pedagogical approach.

QS Managing Director Nunzio Quacquarelli, who obtained an MBA at Wharton after a masters at Cambridge, said QS had developed the World University Rankings in 2003-04 "with the mission of shining a light on excellence in research, employability, teaching and internationalisation of world-class universities".

However, "we have long felt that measuring quality in teaching goes beyond the scope of a rankings exercise".

The aim of the Reimagine Education awards was "to identify faculty genuinely involved in ground breaking innovation in teaching pedagogy. We hope the innovations highlighted by these inaugural awards will be of huge benefit to the next generation of learners."

Applications can be submitted to the award website with the deadline being 31 August 2014.

A three-day global conference to showcase pedagogical innovations will be held from 8-10 December in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. An e-book of all leading entries in the competition will be published in February 2015, alongside the QS World University Ranking by Subjects 2015.