Cambridge undergraduates have regular active-learning opportunities in small-group tutorials, in which they solve problems and discuss ideas based on course material. Would they see any value in performing similar tasks in flipped-classroom settings, or would they regard the introduction of a second active-learning modality as redundant? Following…

Ongoing concern about poor learner performance in mathematics has led to wide-ranging research on the subject, globally and in South Africa. Among the remedies identified is the reformation of pre-service teacher (PST) education programmes in a way that supports the acquisition of professional skills for pre-service teachers. Developing PSTs'…

Incivility has been reported as having an adverse impact on student learning, faculty staff retention and student commitment within Higher Education. As such this behaviour has the potential to reduce student achievement and could have a financial impact. The aim of this research was to examine the impact of teaching context (lecture versus…

Drawing on data from five large enrolment introductory courses in a public university, we compared students' perceptions of blended learning on design, interaction, learning, and satisfaction in four different blended models. The models, which were the result of a course redesign initiative, had different combinations of face-to-face lectures,…

A detailed study of learning and teaching (L&T) of chemical engineering distillation to a mixed-ability small class of 13 students who are ordinarily full-time in-house employees in industry is reported. The course consisted of 9 × 2-h lectures (18 hours) and 9 × 2-h tutorials (18 hours). It was delivered over nine business days "in…

Recent work on student perceptions of skills development and engagement with different teaching and learning approaches have provided useful evidence bases for practitioners aiming to enhance the student learning experience. Although there has been some useful research on student expectations in non-STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and…

Due to the empirical nature of the discipline, psychology students, during the course of their degree, are required to become proficient with a range of quantitative methods. Unfortunately many of these students experience high levels of maths anxiety, which can have a damaging effect on this aspect of their educational development. The first…

Tutorials are a common complementary method of achieving student engagement with material covered in lectures, as students achieve deeper understanding by being involved in small group discussions. However, in an attempt to provide students with a taste of everything the industry has to offer, the Centre for Forensic Science at the University of…

The art of teaching freshmen students is undergoing a rapid paradigm change. Classical forms of teaching are not applicable any more and an unmanageable offer of new multimedia tools and concepts is glutting the market. Moreover, compared to previous courses, the class size triples. In view of these challenges, we implemented a new teaching…

Despite a culture with cooperation as a core value, (Nagao, Takashi, & Okuda, 2011) Japanese higher education generally uses rigid lecture-test teaching models that neither support nor condone small-group learning methods in the classroom. As a result, Japanese college students usually work outside the classroom to develop the collaborative…

The internationalisation of universities often means that the language of learning and teaching needs to be changed -- at present most commonly to English. Apart from English-speaking countries, then, most European universities offer their degree programmes in a language that is not the first language of either the students or the teachers. This…

We describe and analyse the action research process carried out by us as teachers in a general didactics course in the University of Malaga (Spain). The course methodology combined lectures to the whole class and small-group work. We were in charge of guiding small-group work. In the small groups, students researched on an educational innovation…

This research explores "teaching excellence" by examining the perceptions of geography academics and students at Brunel University as to what makes a lecture "unmissable". The findings from 10 interviews with lecturers and five focus groups with undergraduate students suggest that whilst there is probably no such thing as an…

Technology is increasingly used to aid the teaching of statistics. Personal Response Systems (PRS) involve equipping students with a handset allowing them to send responses to questions put to them by a lecturer. PRS allows lectures to be more interactive and can help reinforce material. It can also allow the lecturer to monitor students'…

This paper presents an action research approach to exploring methods of improving the learning styles and outcomes of first year university students within large class environments. The genesis of this project stemmed from an observation that entire tutorial groups were often lethargic in their approach to learning. Following a survey of learning…