Pedagogical competence development programs in universities are gaining in importance across national contexts. In response to the demand for better teaching in higher education, Scandinavian universities have made the programs a standard part of the application for full employment and qualification for a professorship. Though pedagogical…

In honours programmes, teachers face the task of designing courses in which students feel challenged and learn from accomplishing demanding assignments. The aim of this study was to investigate students' and teachers' perceptions of challenge and learning in an honours programme. From 2016 to 2019, students and teachers rated the learning…

This article argues that students' attitudes and dispositions can be important enablers or blockers to effective internationalization of the curriculum in higher education. Using a case study of teaching African studies at a Dutch Liberal Arts and Sciences college, this article shows that students have mixed explicit attitudes toward the subject…

Intercultural competence in foreign language teaching has gained importance in recent times. Although current work has highlighted the advantages of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) for intercultural development, little is known about its potential for teaching literature in secondary schools. Treating literature itself as an art…

This paper examines the impact of a structured, multi-dimensional reflection track of a 16-week pilot programme in experimental pedagogics (XP) in The Netherlands. XP is an elective undergraduate programme in which students investigate socially relevant educational problems in local communities and design educational interventions to address these…

Aim/Purpose: Academics are often requested to create and teach courses for emerging technologies with perhaps no experience or guidance on how to do so. Background: A Framework to develop IT courses for emerging technologies was created and tested to assist academics; the framework was then tested by developing an IoT course. Methodology: A…

For decades, self-report instruments -- which rely heavily on students' perceptions and beliefs -- have been the dominant way of measuring motivation and strategy use. Event-based measures based on online trace data arguably has the potential to remove analytical restrictions of self-report measures. The purpose of this study is therefore to…

Even though the flipped classroom is an increasingly popular method in education, a literature search shows a gap in research on this method in higher education. This article describes an experiment with two central questions: (1) How do students and lecturers assess the effectiveness of the FC method? And (2) What are crucial design elements? To…

This paper uses data gathered from 953 students to investigate how far individuals' preferences for a particular learning style are associated with the perceived usefulness of e-learning. Our findings reveal the effect of individuals' learning styles as well as their gender and professional experience on the perceived usefulness of different forms…

This article explores levels of proficiency in Chinese with reference to the new HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi) Chinese Proficiency Test and the "Common European Framework of Reference for Languages" (CEFR). Special attention is given to learning and teaching the writing of Chinese characters and the use of Pinyin, a phonetic Romanization…

Higher education institutions should provide adequate training for teachers in order to increase their awareness of the complex interplay between technology, pedagogy and the cognitive knowledge in their disciplines. However, research has shown that providing effective staff development from teacher educators to support these teachers' skills is…

Background: The match between students' perceptions of a learning environment and their preferences about its design influences students' learning behaviour and by consequence the effectiveness of education. Therefore, the students' perspective deserves a more prominent place in the educational design process. Having an adequate picture of the…

This article reports our findings on using WebCEF as a CEFR familiarization and self-assessment tool for oral proficiency. Furthermore, we outline how we have implemented Skype as a tool for telecollaboration in our language programmes. The primary purpose of our study was to explore how students and teachers would perceive the potential benefits…

There is a growing interest in the use of simulations and games in Dutch higher education. This development is based on the perception that students belong to the "gamer generation" or "net generation": a generation that has grown up with computer games and other technology affecting their preferred learning styles, social…

Background: Teachers have limited insight in students' perspectives on education, although these perspectives influence quality of learning. As students' and teachers' perspectives differ considerably, there is a need for teachers to learn more about students' experiences and ideas about education. Participatory design might be a good strategy for…