Delivering an appropriate student workload is important for quality higher education, especially for curriculum design, student well-being and success in studies. Academic credit systems are being increasingly used to determine workload for higher education studies. However, they rely on presumptions about workload, which educational theory and…

This article draws on a multi-phase study of collaboration in tertiary education programmes. This commenced with a survey of 111 students in Engineering and Creative Arts, contrasting their experiences of the teaching of collaboration in different faculties. This led to an iterative action research cycle, in which the conceptual boundaries that…

Constructive alignment (CA) has become internationally established as an educational approach linking strategic planning and corporate policy to discipline and course teaching and learning practice. The literature to date has focused predominantly on either single institutional or specific discipline settings and curriculum level initiatives. This…

The constructive alignment (CA) of university teaching has received considerable attention from a policy-making perspective, but much less so from a student perspective. Against this background, we explored the relationships between CA and student motivation, and between CA and perceived learning demands. Fifty-six students from two second-year…

While China has emerged as a leading host country for international students, it reinforces its determination to build a global knowledge system by integrating Chinese and Western epistemological traditions in teaching and learning to promote epistemic justice. The study aims to explore international students' challenges to current approaches to…

Globally there is recognition that doctoral programmes need to offer the opportunity for career pathways beyond academia, as PhD graduates are entering a range of careers. Consequently, some doctoral programmes now provide opportunities to develop a broader skill set. However, most PhD programmes in the United Kingdom and Australasia still…

In relation to teaching and learning approaches that improve student learning outcomes, threshold concepts have generated substantial interest in higher education. They have been described as "portals" that lead to a transformed way of understanding or thinking, enabling learners to progress, and have been enthusiastically adopted to…

This research explores faculty development through the lens of academic division as an important, career defining characteristic of the professoriate. Relying on data from a longitudinal, mixed-methods study, the authors examined faculty development trends and needed supports in a consortium of 13 liberal arts colleges (LACs). As part of this…

This paper demonstrates that while ideals of close linkages between research and teaching are widely embraced in research-oriented universities, a practice of division of labour between teaching-oriented and research-oriented staff persists. In an investigation of how the research-teaching nexus is managed at three Swedish universities, we…

This paper provides insights into both the educational design of textbooks and interdisciplinary education. The author introduces two educational principles for textbook design--instructional alignment and balancing diversity and meaningful guidance for readers--and applies them to writing his own textbook chapter for being interdisciplinary. The…

Universities in many countries are developing strategies to enhance the student experience. This focus has never been so important since the development of rankings and the use of student experience measures in institutional performance assessment. Australian government policies to link student experience measures to performance funding were a key…

The conventional lecture has significant limitations in the higher education context, often leading to a passive learning experience for students. This paper reports a process of transforming teaching and learning with active learning strategies in a research-intensive educational context across a faculty of 45 academic staff and more than 1,000…

Peer review of teaching is recognized increasingly as one strategy for academic development even though historically peer review of teaching is often unsupported by policy, action and culture in many Australian universities. Higher education leaders report that academics generally do not engage with peer review of teaching in a systematic or…

This paper presents an example of constructive alignment in practice. Integrated technology supports were deployed to increase the consistency between learning objectives, activities and assessment and to foster student-centred, higher-order learning processes in the unit. Modifications took place over nine iterations of a second-year Marketing…

The current business landscape has created the impetus to develop management graduates with capabilities that foster responsible leadership and sustainability. Through the lens of Gitsham's 3C Model (Complexity, Context and Connection) of graduate capabilities, this paper discusses the experience of implementing the United Nations Principles for…