To promote student learning and bolster student success, higher education institutions are increasingly creating large active learning classrooms to replace traditional lecture halls. Although there have been many efforts to examine the effects of those classrooms on learning outcomes, there is paucity of research that can inform the design and…

Current forms of marketisation in university systems create pressures towards purely ends-focused expectations among students and have implications for learning and assessment processes. The potential harm that these trends have on "learning" should be resisted by educators and students alike. Critical Pedagogy approaches offer one way…

In the UK, the USA and Australia, there have been calls for an increase in the number of engineering graduates to meet the needs of current global challenges. Universities around the world have been grappling with how to both attract more engineering students and to then retain them. Attrition from engineering programmes is disturbingly high. This…

The move towards a market-driven HE system in the UK and active policy promotion of students as consumers has generated much commentary on the ways in which students' expectations and experiences have been transformed. This article introduces and develops a conceptualization of contemporary higher students' views of their relationship to higher…

This paper responds to the need for a greater integration of energy and environment themes in the higher education curriculum. We explore the practical implications of empowering students towards the implementation of individual action research projects focused on investigating and addressing insufficient or wasteful energy consumption among…

Emotions are fundamental to understanding many phenomena in psychology; however, there are currently no emotion-specific evidence-based teaching practices. The current study evaluates an innovative new active learning-based teaching activity, designed to provide a structure for discussions around emotion. Small groups of third-year psychology…

Existing literature examining the teaching of research methods highlights difficulties students face when developing research competencies. Studies of student-centred teaching approaches have found increased student performance and improved confidence in undertaking research projects. To develop a student-centred approach, it could be beneficial…

The study looks at issues around the power of the hidden curriculum of assessment and its effects on student behaviour. The assessment regime at school level has an impact on study approaches at university level, and if we are to help students to make the transition from school to university, then it is important that we understand the beliefs and…

This mixed-methods study describes classroom characteristics and student outcomes from university mathematics courses that are based in mathematics departments, targeted to future pre-tertiary teachers, and taught with inquiry-based learning (IBL) approaches. The study focused on three two-term sequences taught at two research universities,…

While research surrounding ePortfolios abounds, few studies make explicit the pedagogical underpinnings of their use. Some suggest that the decision to use new technologies, like ePortfolios, is often made in ignorance of pedagogic evidence. Developed over the course of a two-year national study on the implementation of ePortfolios, this paper…

This article is based on an action-oriented study of 13 community-engaged courses at 11 institutions of higher education in Israel. These courses were not part of peace education programs but rather accredited academic courses in various disciplines, all of which included practice and theory. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how these…

Feedback has been lauded as a key pedagogical tool in higher education. Unfortunately, the value of feedback falls short when being carried out in large classrooms. In this study, strategies for sustaining feedback in large classroom based on peer learning are explored. All the characteristics identified within the concept of peer learning were…

Young would-be artists flock to art schools to learn from masters and immerse themselves in a study of the aesthetic histories, techniques, and theories that will inform their practices. However, the emergence of community-partnered project-based (CP) studio courses at many independent art colleges signals a fundamental shift in art and design…

The present paper aims to detail the experience developed in a classroom of English Studies from the Spanish University of Málaga, where an alternative project-based learning methodology has been implemented. Such methodology is inspired by scrum sessions widely extended in technological companies where staff members work in teams and are assigned…

The first year of college is critical to the growth and retention of the freshman college student. Students enter college with a wide range of backgrounds, skills and dispositions and it is the responsibility of the institution to do all it can to assist students in achieving their education goals. The purpose of this mixed methods research design…