Best Practices in Higher Education

Best practices in higher education today must include the goal of the college/university and must not loose sight of the "pursuit, sharing, integration, and application of knowledge" (Diamond, Gardiner, & Wheeler, 2002; Theall, 2002, p. 237). Best practices must include approaches that consider the culture, strengths, and priorities of all stakeholders (Guskin & Marcy, 2002; Theall, 2002). Today's diverse university requires strategies that identify resistance to change, communicate with those involved, and includes quality control measures (Diamond, 2002; Srikanthan & Dalrymple, 2003; Theall, 2002). Theall reported that best practices must be defended and supported with quality evaluation measures.

Examples of best practices include the use of expert opinion and advice, hiring of qualified staff with faculty evaluation, regular analysis of data for decision-making, use of local examples of success for modeling, use of pilot tests prior to implementation of procedures, establishment of a grievance procedure, the building of a database of institutional information to serve the needs of all stakeholders, and regular evaluation of the evaluation system and e

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he technology must be considered in detail with wide and deep issues. For example, will all faculties be required to use e-mail addresses to communicate with students and what should the turn around time for answering e-mail be? What types of telecommunications will be used in courses and classrooms? In addition educational goals to be achieved with the use of technology must be identified along with the roles of adjuncts and professional support and services, the legal and ethical issues, and how to reconcile conflicting goals. To reach goals, it is suggested that new collaborations between programs and institutions be developed and data be collected and used to compare patterns with national patterns. Best Practices Versus Innovative Excellence The best practices recommended for today's colleges and universities provide valuable information regarding what must be achieved and how to achieve it. However, these practices would not be placed in the category of innovative excellence, since they are more reflective of solutions to existing problems based on past mistakes. In other words, methods that have failed in the past have been studied, analyzed, and improved and research findings have been utilized to recommend
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