Does continuous assessment in higher education support student learning?

A distinction is often made in the literature about “assessment of learning” and “assessment for learning” attributing a formative function to the latter while the former takes a summative function. While there may be disagreements among researchers and educators about such categorical distinctions there is consensus that both types of assessment are often used concurrently in higher education institutions. A question that often arises when formative and summative assessment practices are used in continuous assessment is the extent to which student learning can be facilitated through feedback. The views and perceptions of students and academics from a discipline in the Humanities across seven higher education institutions were sought to examine the above question. A postal survey was completed by academics, along with a survey administered to a sample of undergraduate students and a semi-structured interview was conducted with key academics in each of the seven institutions. This comparative study highlights issues that concern both groups about the extent to which continuous assessment practices facilitate student learning and the challenges faced. The findings illustrate the need to consider more effective and efficient ways in which feedback can be better used to facilitate student learning.     

Change and innovation in higher education: a role for corporate strategy?

Conclusions In conclusion there are a number of points to be emphasised. Firstly, there are no definite answers to the problems of change and innovation in the management field. Admittedly there are plenty of ideas and models about strategic planning; but the trend over the last ten years or so has been away from the use of analytic techniques towards trying to manage the culture and values of the organisation directly. At the moment there is another reaction developing against this focus on culture (Barney, 1986; Thackray, 1986), but it is not yet clear what is being proposed in its place.So those in higher education should be suspicious of the management pundits who claim that they have the answer - especially if it simply involves copying management structures and systems that are believed to be commonplace in industry. Furthermore many of these systems are actually fraught with difficulty when used in industry. For example, many companies find they have to rethink their appraisal systems every four or five years, because the failure of the previous system usually becomes obvious to all about three years after its installation. In that area the current trend is towards self and peer assessment - which could conceivably be appropriate in higher education too.But there are still a number of ideas that may be gleaned from the management world, and these may eventually provide models of management and strategic change which are appropriate to higher education. Some of these ideas have been mentioned in this article. For example, there is a need to pay closer attention to the environment, especially the political one. Institutions need to think carefully about their distinctive strengths, and how they can fit best into their environments. The idea of universities as service organisations may have considerable power, and it may be as well to think of some of those services as having limited life.It is important to recognise the crucial role of those people at the lower levels of the organisation. Their contribution is not only in helping to determine the best direction to take; but their commitment to any direction is essential if it is to be implemented. Good strategies can't be rushed: it takes time for ideas to evolve. Hence the process of thinking through appropriate strategies probably needs to be fairly continuous; it certainly should not be merely an annual, or quinquennial, activity.Finally it is the values of staff and students that can be the greatest source of, and barrier to, change and innovation. Senior managers get easily excited at the possibilities of being able to manage the values of their organisations. But this is much more difficult than the popular text books would have us believe, and very dangerous. The danger is that if one simply attacks the existing values of an organisation - say those of scholarship, colleagueship and individual freedom - one runs the risk of destroying individuals' sense of purpose, and thus creating a highly demoralised organisation. If values are to be shifted, say towards a greater commercial orientation - then they must be done in a way which allows for retention of the original values in parallel. It is a kind of bridging idea that is needed. This will take time, and not a little creativity.     

Teaching circles: a way forward for part-time teachers in higher education?

Part-time teachers represent a growing challenge to universities' quality assurance and developmental processes. This paper describes an attempt to meet this challenge through the adoption of 'teaching circles' (TCs) in four contrasting case-study schools. Analysis of outcomes enables identification of the variables affecting the apparent success of TCs as a strategy, some of which are associated with the particularities of context. Underlying these particularities, however, the general question of how participants come to feel 'ownership' of change initiatives emerges as a central issue. Three inter-related processes are shown to be involved: leadership, attribution of causation and social integration. The paper concludes that this analysis has implications beyond the TC project and provides both key practical pointers and, potentially, a useful analytical tool for researchers studying programmes of organizational change.     

Vocational education and the binary higher education system in the Netherlands: higher education symbiosis or vocational education dichotomy?

The Netherlands has a binary higher education system in which academic education and higher professional education at EQF levels 5–8 co-exist. There is also secondary vocational education at EQF levels 1 up to 4. In this paper, I analyse policy documents resulting from the Bologna Process and argue that under neo-liberal conditions, higher professional education brings opportunities for both students and employers, but also creates a socio-economic tension in terms of employability. The gap between higher professional education and secondary vocational education adds to the formation of a labour market in which higher professional education graduates are prepared to an international labour market but employability pressure is being put on lower skilled employees, creating unequal employability opportunities for vocational education graduates.     

Improving higher education practice through student evaluation systems: is the student voice being heard?

Many higher education institutions use student evaluation systems as a way of highlighting course and lecturer strengths and areas for improvement. Globally, the student voice has been increasing in volume, and capitalising on student feedback has been proposed as a means to benefit teacher professional development. This paper examines the student evaluations at a university in Trinidad and Tobago in an effort to determine whether the student voice is being heard. The research focused on students’ responses to the question, ‘How do you think this course could be improved?’ Student evaluations were gathered from five purposefully selected courses taught at the university during 2011–2012 and then again one year later, in 2012–2013. This allowed for an analysis of the selected courses. Whilst the literature suggested that student evaluation systems are a valuable aid to lecturer improvement, this research found little evidence that these evaluations actually led to any real significant changes in lecturers’ practice.     

Remapping French higher education: towards a multi-tiered higher education system?

Tertiary Education and Management - The global trend of increasing participation rates, coupled with regional goals to increase participation in higher education, such as the...     

Podcasting in higher education: What are the implications for teaching and learning?

A podcast is any digital media file, or series of files, distributed over the Internet for playback on portable media players and personal computers. This study explored the attitudes, perceptions, and use of podcasting as reported by instructors and students at a large American Midwestern university. The results of two online surveys were examined, focusing specifically on items related to teaching and learning. Findings suggest that students use podcast materials largely for reviewing concepts and issues raised in lectures that they have previously attended. While instructors and students agree that podcasts help students learn, students are less sure about whether podcasts improve instructors' teaching. The authors argue that podcasts can help instructors change face-to-face instruction from traditional didactic lectures to more constructivist learning practices.     

How does national culture affect the teaching style in higher education and what are the implications for the student experience?

Tertiary Education and Management - One of the effects of globalization in Higher Education is that teachers in institutions and faculties increasingly come from diverse cultural backgrounds. This...     

Student ambassador experience in higher education: Skills and competencies for the future?

Lifelong learning, where individuals keep modifying, renewing and updating their existing skills and competencies, is an essential requirement in the knowledge economy. Yet research has shown that employers often find it hard to hire individuals who are equipped with sufficiently rounded competencies in areas such as commitment, enthusiasm and timekeeping. The Student Ambassador (SA) scheme offers university students the opportunity to undertake relatively well‐paid and flexible part‐time jobs around widening participation initiatives, which, in general, focus on raising aspiration and attainment of young people from more disadvantaged backgrounds. This article examines research evidence into the SA scheme in South‐East London and, in particular, focuses on analysing whether the scheme offers students an ideal part‐time job opportunity while in higher education. It will be seen that SAs not only gain complex transferable skills while earning money, but also engage in something that they perceive to be a highly rewarding and valuable experience.     

Stakeholders’ perceptions of IELTS as an entry requirement for higher education in the UK

This project explores stakeholders’ perceptions of the role of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) in the admissions processes of UK higher education (HE) institutions. The term ‘stakeholders’ here refers to HE academic and administrative staff responsible for the acceptance of students whose first language is not English onto academic programmes in UK HE institutions. It draws on two pieces of empirical study: a large-scale questionnaire survey of those responsible for admissions decisions in a range of HE institutions in the pre- and post-1992 sectors, and a smaller scale interview-based qualitative study of a subset of these participants. The empirical data gathered offers insights into the processes of standard-setting in various contexts, highlights tensions between standard-setting and a growing economic imperative to recruit, and identifies a niche for development opportunities in raising stakeholders’ awareness of the content and process of IELTS to enhance the quality of decision-making in this area. The study offers a number of recommendations for the designers/producers of IELTS and for HE institutions, and also highlights a number of directions for further complementary research.     

‘Time is not enough.’ Workload in higher education: a student perspective

Students' workload has been recognised as a major factor in the teaching and learning environment. This paper starts by structuring the different conceptualisations of workload described in the scientific literature. Besides the traditional distinction between objective and subjective or perceived workload, a distinction between conceptualisations focusing on the perception of quantitative and qualitative aspects of workload comes to the fore. This qualitative study investigates what workload means for students in higher education. Forty Civil Engineering and Educational Sciences Master's students were interviewed. The results show that ‘having time’ is a precondition for experiencing a manageable workload. When this precondition is fulfilled, the interest of a student and the ability to plan and set priorities play an important role in the perception of workload. Finally, the results show that several aspects of the learning environment can influence this interest and the perception of workload.     

What contemporary work are student ratings actually doing in higher education?

It is conventionally assumed that student ratings perform a significant function in driving improvement in pedagogical practices in higher education. As a result, this form of evaluation has gradually become institutionalised in recent decades as an essential proxy for understanding teaching and course quality in universities across the world. However, with the rise of market-based models in higher education and heightened expectations for accountability mechanisms, the role and functional purpose of ratings-based student evaluation have become increasingly confused. This rising ambiguity has created strong tensions between the seminal drive of student ratings as a tool of quality improvement, and the emerging demands for its use as a transparent accountability measure for the comparative assessment of academic performativity. So are student ratings now largely a tool of quality assurance or performance measurement, or do they remain a legitimate tool for pedagogical improvement? This paper reports on a study that responded to this critical question by considering the contemporary work of student ratings in a major Australian university. The outcomes of this research demonstrate that tension between improvement and accountability motives is causing considerable confusion and discord around the role and value of the student voice. It also reveals that academics are tending to discount the often critical insights of students on the implications of their pedagogical practices as a result of the elevating institutional role of student ratings as a proxy for teaching quality. In considering these outcomes, rising levels of academic dissonance around student ratings would suggest a necessity to consider broadened evaluative strategies that are able to more effectively capture the improvement potential offered by the student voice.     

Examining Chinese postgraduate students’ academic adjustment in the UK higher education sector: a process-based stage model

The current theories relating to international student transition have largely tended to concentrate on what is to be adapted. This research contributes to the pedagogic literature examining how the transition is made by international postgraduate students. Using data from 20 qualitative in-depth interviews in conjunction with observations of teaching sessions and the researchers’ field notes, we discovered a process-based stage model which identifies a step-by-step approach at a micro-level of academic transition. Our findings extended the prior stage modes to incorporate students’ pre-arrival experience and claim that the pre-departure stage plays a crucial role on Chinese students’ later academic adjustment in the UK. The finding of our four-stage-model helps not only higher education institutions increasing sensitivity to the design of study programmes and induction provision but provides practical implications for recruitment agents that attempt to engage students’ pre-arrival preparations in terms of enhancing their marketing strategy in the long term.