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by main author: Baird, Jeanette Banta, Trudy Barge, Scott Barry, Damian Beerkens, Eric Beerkens, Maarja Bélanger, Charles Bielecki, Piotr Bischof, Lukas Björnermark, Maria Borden, Victor Bumblauskas, Alfredas Burley, Keith Burquel, Nadine Cai, Yuzhuo Cano, Elena de Boer, Harry Dedze, Indra Deeg, Jürgen Delaney, Anne Marie Dikcius, Gintaras Geber, Hilary Harvey, Lee Hillman, Nicholas Horta, Hugo Huisman, Jeroen Huyghe, Steven Hyppönen, Kari Irwin, Tracy Kahn, Susan Kaiser, Frans Kane, David Knight, William Kohtamäki, Vuokko Krempkow, Rene Lahti, Irina Lazibat, Tonæi Leisyte, Liudvika Li, Dong Lindberg-Sand, Åsa Maguire, Linda Cox McNicoll, Yolande Milišiunaite, Inga Mpeli, Moliehi Oosthuizen, Martin Panina, Ludmila Papadimitriou, Antigoni Pritchard, Rosalind Rauhvargers, Andrejs Renton, Ross Saari, Seppo Sagu, Satya Säkkinen, Maria Salminen, Ari Scholder, Tara Schutte, Rienke Sheppard, Charles Shumilova, Yulia Stensaker, Bjørn Temple, Paul Trilokekar, Roopa Välimaa, Jussi van Andel, Jeroen Van der Westhuizen, Louis Verhesschen, Piet Vitkiene, Elena Voets, Annemieke Vuori, Johanna Westerheijden, Don Whitchurch, Celia White, Ian Williams, James Wilson, Lesley Yokoyama, Keiko

Fighting for Harmony - students, society and the academy in tune
EAIR Forum Vilnius 2009, Vilnius, Lithuania, 23-26 August 2009

The EAIR Forum is about meeting and listening to each other. The Forum is constructed around a daily plenary and parallel sessions organised in eight tracks and poster presentations, all connected to the main theme of the Forum. They will take place in Old campus of Vilnius University.

Schedule of all parallel sessions (The final version will be handed over to you upon registration in Vilnius. The page numbers refer to the page in the Final Programme brochure, were title/author(s) and abstract of the presentation can be found. You will find this brochure in your Forum bag, which you will also receive upon registration in Vilnius):

• Monday - 24 August
• Tuesday - 25 August
• Wednesday - 26 August

Abstracts and Outlines
On this webpage you can find an index of the names of Authors and Co-Authors who will present a paper in Vilnius at the Forum. You will find the title of their presentation and the abstract and outline for all to read.

Full Articles
After the Forum, full articles as background to the presentations will be published on the webpage Full articles. These articles are free for all participants attending the EAIR Forum and accessible by using a participant's password.

Keywords & Categories
Presenters were asked to add 'keywords' and 'categories' in their proposal describing the content and character of their paper in order to help participants to identify the presentations. These keywords and categories are added to the abstracts in the final Forum Programme. They will also be posted on the EAIR website.

Poster Presentations
During the entire Forum posters will be on display, giving succinct descriptions of higher education problems and case studies.

Tracks
Some of the tracks will run in parallel at the same room (track 3 and track 8; track 5 and track 7) each one half a day. Please notice that Track 5 and Track 7 will have a joint session as well.

Track 1 - Quality culture: looking beyond the current models
Place: Aula Parva
Track Chair: Jon Haakstad • Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT) • Oslo • Norway

Systematic quality assurance in higher education has come of age with the establishing of QA agencies in the European countries and the adoption of the European Standards and Guidelines. As the Track title indicates, there are, however, still questions to be asked and problems to be investigated, one of these being whether European quality assurance is now becoming too standardised; too ritualised and bureaucratised?

Is the overall concern with securing acceptable standards replacing the motivation to improve from within? What is the proper level of external control with autonomous institutions? How well do current QA procedures actually support efforts to improve the learning (and teaching) processes that take place inside the "black box" of the classroom and auditorium? External QA has moved from using peers to using experts, although presumably they are the same people. What does this signify, and what are the consequences?

Track 2 - Where does the power of governance reside?
Place: Senate Hall
Track Chair: Dennis Farrington • South East European University • Republic of Macedonia

Issues of governance are centred to ongoing debate about change in higher education. At the heart of this debate are questions of academic freedom, institutional autonomy and accountability to governments or other stakeholders. Relationships between state and university are evolving and are also subject to influence by trans-national organisations. Within higher education institutions, new models of governance are emerging. Forms of leadership and management are changing, normally in response to external pressures, with significant consequences for decision-making and responsibility within institutions. This track will focus on approaches to governance and questions of power, at all levels, international, national and within institutions.

Track 3 - Leadership and Administration
Place: Seminar Room 238 (shares with track 8)
Track Chair: Saulius Vengris • Vilnius Academy of Arts • Lithuania

Due to the gap between the present state of the higher education institutions and the present and future expectations of society regarding them, development of leadership qualities is topical. Track 3 intends to discuss general problems of leadership development, including determination of a competence profile of administrators, selection of potential administrators, continuous training of intended leaders, keeping leadership sustainable. Special attention should be paid to potential obstacles developing future leaders. For example, possible dangers may originate if a group of university leaders pursue their own interests rather than the interest of the academic society or the society in general.

Track 3 encompasses cultural change due to the leadership development as well. To this end, it is essential to receive reliable feedback on whether the undertaken development of leadership has resulted in behavioural changes in the organisations.

Track 4 - Expectations: students - higher education institutions - society
Place: Theatre Hall
Track Chair: Sakari Ahola • University of Turku • Finland

Higher education institutions face ever growing expectations. Students coming from varied backgrounds and having a wide range of experiences have high, diverse and even contradictory expectations. The trends towards marketisation and academic capitalism emphasise the role of students as customers, and the spreading of fees boosts thinking in terms of value-for-money. Is there any room for expectations of HEIs towards students, and what might they be?

On the other hand, the society at large, governments and national policy makers demand accessibility, transparency and accountability. Globalisation of the higher education market and the escalating quest for "world class" university generates institutional convergence while development in the knowledge-based society and the labour markets presupposes diversified forms of curricula and delivery. Is this emphasis on quality and top performance challenging the traditional ideas of equality? Track 4 explores the ways to meet, to cope with and even to master these expectations.

Track 5 - Navigating the jungle of learning "paradigms"
Place: Faculty of History 218
Track Chair: Richard Thorn • Institutes of Technology Ireland • Dublin • Ireland

In half a generation a whole new lexicon, and accompanying acronyms, has appeared in higher education institutions to replace the simple notion of "lecturing". Discussions on TLA (teaching, learning and assessment), S and M (semesterisation and modularisation) and VLE's (virtual learning environments) have accompanied an increasing emphasis on learning outcomes rather than detailed syllabus contents. In turn, flexible delivery, on-line learning, blended learning and e-learning approaches to programme delivery have resulted in a student cohort that is increasingly fragmented and distanced from the lecture hall.

This Track will explore the issues surrounding these radical transformations, in particular as they have affected the teaching and learning process as it affects students. Contributions should consider these changes in the context of the initial design of the programmes, and whether, given the inexorable march of modularisation, coherent programmes do indeed exist any longer, through delivery design and ultimately evaluation of performance of students.

Please notice that tracks 5 and 7 will have a joint session as well.

Track joint 5/7 - Learning outcomes
Place: Faculty of History 211 (shares with track 7)
Track Chairs: Richard Thorn • Institutes of Technology Ireland • Dublin • Ireland / Johanna Witte • Bavarian State Institute for HE Research & Planning • Munich • Germany

Track 6 - Research management in higher education
Place: Seminar Room 239
Track Chair: Liudvika Leisyte • University of Twente • the Netherlands/Lithuania

In knowledge societies, research is considered crucially important for society's well-being. In a rapidly changing competitive world the European Union, national governments and higher education institutions are strategically rethinking their research policies. Over the last few years, the policies have emphasized excellence, relevance and innovation. Higher levels of research productivity, continued high-level discoveries on the frontiers of knowledge, and better applicability of existing knowledge are expected but must be realised under harsh conditions such as restricted budgets and high levels of accountability of higher education institutions. The institutions have in turn strengthened their research management capacities in part due to the policies geared towards efficiency and effectiveness. This has often meant introducing institutional research management mechanisms and new roles of academics. In this multi-level context the "management of knowledge" becomes increasingly complex and multi-layered. While the stakes are high, the challenges are manifold.

Track 7 - The Bermuda triangle in Bologna implementation
Place: Faculty of History 211 (shares with track joint 5/7)
Track Chair: Johanna Witte • Bavarian State Institute for HE Research & Planning • Munich • Germany

Something seems to have gone lost - or at least profoundly changed - in the Bologna process on the way from the European vision to national policy formulation, from there to institutional policies and ultimately to implementation within departments. Perceptions of the process vary widely between different stakeholders, as becomes visible e.g. when comparing the stocktaking results and reports such as "Bologna with student eyes".

This Track provides a forum for exploring issues of transformation and translation, misunderstanding and reinterpretation, dispute and questioning, critique and reformulation of the Bologna process at all levels from the European to the departmental. It wants to make visible the existing diversity of national and institutional interpretations of the Bologna process and search for answers how the process can move ahead beyond 2010 in light of this diversity. It also asks for examples - good and bad practices - how national legislation influences implementation at institutional level, and how conflicts between the various levels are being dealt with.

Please notice that tracks 5 and 7 will have a joint session as well.

Track 8 - Ethics in higher education
Place: Seminar Room 238 (shares with track 3)
Track Chair: Nynke Jo Smit • Institute of Social Studies • The Hague • the Netherlands

Ethics in higher education is a new Track in the EAIR-Forum, although it is very much in the heart of our every day work. Ethics is often associated with the "false notes" in the harmony: fraud, plagiarism, corruption, diploma mills, pressure to adjust data. We should not disregard them; especially as modern technology (mobile phones, internet) has enlarged the possibilities for fraud and cheating.

We welcome contributions ranging from practical and innovative solutions to deal with these issues, as well as theoretical discussions on the place of research ethics in the curriculum and examples of 'practice what you preach'.