Across higher education, increasing regulation and a focus on student satisfaction and experience have stimulated a proliferation of student engagement activities aimed at driving positive change. Nevertheless, we are not seeing the transformative changes we seek. We position this as a dual problem of focus and organisational learning. In…

The COVID-19 pandemic requires critical re-evaluation of the way Higher Education can help students maximise their learning to adjust and adapt to a new reality. This requires a holistic approach which extends beyond consideration of student learning in formal settings to understanding the role informal learning can play. Whilst research exists on…

What ethical and political considerations does zine-making raise in teaching and learning across knowledge systems and artful expression? This question guides the critical dialogue about a research project on teaching sustainability through traditional proverbs from Malaysia and Kazakhstan within a zine-making workshop in a UK university. Merging…

How can we make use of image-based social media to develop students' critical engagement with concepts like equality and diversity? In this paper, I draw on bell hooks' description of liberatory theorising to discuss findings from a project that involved 60 2nd year BA education students taking and sharing photographs through Instagram as part of…

While written and audio feedback have been well-examined by researchers, video feedback has received less attention. This review establishes the current state of research into video feedback encompassing three formats: talking head, screencast and combination screencast. Existing research shows that video feedback has a high level of acceptability…

Fostering critical thinking abilities amongst students is one component of preparing them to navigate uncertain and complex social lives and employment circumstances. One conceptualisation of critical thinking, valuable in higher education, draws from critical theory to promote social justice and redress power inequities. This study explored how…

The global rise of 'neo-populism', culminating in the election of the populist Republican candidate Donald Trump to the US presidency, has been accompanied by a notable backlash and resistance to what has been categorised as governing/dominating 'elites', including HE academic institutions. Populist critiques centre on a perceived climate of…

The "deep/surface approach to learning" framework is widely used in higher education. Its perceived strength is that it is regarded as having two functions: both being (1) a useful metaphor for development of teaching and learning in higher education and (2) a valid concept for researchers. In this paper, I present a critical review of…

The aim of the study is to explore how students' experiences of enhancing and impeding factors and approaches to learning are related to students' study progress. A total of 93 students from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities participated in the study by answering a Learn-questionnaire regarding their experiences of the enhancing and impeding…

The paper describes a collaborative curriculum development project implemented over 3 years at 2 universities in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. The project involved a short module in which students in their fourth year of study interacted and learnt collaboratively across the boundaries of institution, discipline, race and social…

This paper proposes a human capabilities approach for evaluating student learning and the social and pedagogical arrangements that support equality in capabilities for all students. It outlines the focus on valuable beings and doings in the capability approach developed by Amartya Sen, and Martha Nussbaum's capabilities focus on human flourishing.…

This paper argues that the widespread approach to enhancing student learning through separate study skills courses is ineffective, and that the term "study skills" itself has misleading implications, which are counterproductive to learning. The main argument is that learning how to study effectively at university cannot be separated from…

Describes the evolution of a partnership model to be applied to the teaching and learning process in a university setting. Surveys and focus groups of faculty and students were used to gain insight into teaching/learning processes; clips from the focus groups were then used to stimulate discussion in student and faculty workshops. Themes emerging…

A four-phase study identified factors in teaching excellence, compared the teaching strategies of university faculty across disciplines, and compared these with the learning processes of students in their first and third years. Results suggest excellent professors prefer a deep approach to teaching, incongruent with students' more common surface…