This paper examines the proposition that the quality of university teaching in the research-intensive university is affected by various compliance demands on academic work that are meant to either enhance or be complementary to teaching. These include holding academics to account for the quality of both research and teaching. Our research aims to…

"New" vocational disciplines often struggle for acceptance in the academy. The marginalising of these disciplines impacts on their teaching and learning environment often to the detriment of staff and students. This study focuses both on the role academic writing plays in this marginalisation and how the teaching of such writing is…

Teaching approaches in higher education are at the general level well researched and have identified not only the two broad categories of content-focused and learning-focused approaches to teaching but also consonance and dissonance between the aspects of teaching. Consonance means that theoretically coherent teaching practices are employed, but…

Using Giddens' theory of structuration as a theoretical framework, this paper outlines how five prominent United Kingdom universities aimed to integrate top-down and bottom-up approaches to the adoption and diffusion of e-learning. The aim of this paper is to examine the major challenges that arise from the convergence of bottom-up perspectives…

Medical microbiology presents a challenge to undergraduate students, mostly due to its extensive content and complexity of unfamiliar terminology. In addition to a narrative review of the literature, we report findings on students' motivation for and approach to learning in the Infections module of an undergraduate medical curriculum, and their…

The internationalization of higher education has resulted in the growth of English-medium instruction (EMI) practices and research. The existing EMI research has documented learners' favorable attitudes toward EMI but not necessarily its practices. Learners' dissatisfaction has not been viewed as a form of resistance. Through the notion of learner…

This paper reports on the results of an embedded, multiple case study that investigated the views of both lecturers and students on written staff-student feedback in three postgraduate programmes at one UK university. The study sought to uncover how "quality written feedback" is perceived in the higher education environment under…

This paper reports on a collective case study of three blended courses taught by different instructors in a higher education institution, with the purpose of identifying the different types of blend and how the blend supports student learning. Based on the instructors' and students' interviews, and document analysis of course outlines, two major…

This paper uses the notion of perspectives, derived from Activity Systems Theory as a lens through which to examine the process of change in one UK university. It argues that change is a multidimensional phenomenon and so examines the drivers and barriers towards change in teaching practices through the differing and at times conflicting…

This study addresses the challenges concerning the internationalisation of higher education, with a particular focus on designing new international programmes. It presents a case study of a novel international study programme: the MA in Media Education at the Faculty of Education at the University of Lapland, Finland. The study looks into its…

In order to design two distinct engineering qualification levels for an existing University of Technology programme, empirical evidence based on the current diploma is necessary to illuminate the nature of and the relationship between the "contextual" and "conceptual" elements underpinning a multidisciplinary engineering…

Writing a thesis is one of the most challenging activities that a doctoral student must undertake and can represent a barrier to timely completion. This is relevant in light of current and widespread concerns regarding doctoral completion rates. This study explored thesis writing approaches of students post or near Ph.D. completion through…

This article draws on the findings of a longitudinal case study, which investigated the writing experiences of five students who spoke English as an additional language (EAL). The major interest was in examining what it was like to be an EAL writer and what changes occurred in EAL students' perceptions of academic writing and of themselves as…