Staff–student collaboration: student learning from working together to enhance educational practice in higher education

The association of research and teaching, and the roles and responsibilities of students and academic staff and the nature of their interrelationship are important issues in higher education. This article presents six undergraduate student researchers’ reports of their learning from collaborating with academic staff to design, undertake and evaluate enquiries into aspects of learning and teaching at a UK University. The students’ reflections suggest that they identified learning in relation to employability skills and graduate attributes and more importantly in relation to their perceptions of themselves as learners and their role in their own learning and that of others. This article draws attention to the potential of staff–student collaborative, collective settings for developing pedagogic practice and the opportunities they can provide for individual student's learning on their journey through higher education.     

The personal tutor–student relationship: student expectations and experiences of personal tutoring in higher education

The personal tutor plays a key role in the student experience at university, and personal tutoring embodies the student relationship with the university, suggesting that it has the potential to provide insights beyond that specific relationship to the institution and higher education context. A focus session with first year undergraduate students explored expectations and experiences of personal tutoring from the student perspective. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to explore students’ lived experiences, and identified superordinate themes of expectations, experiences and relationships, with cluster themes including independence and authenticity. Developing a positive and genuine relationship with the personal tutor was found to ‘buffer’ against some of the first year challenges and contribute towards a sense of belonging. Importantly, this study provides evidence that experiencing poor personal tutoring is worse than not having a personal tutor at all, as this can lead to students experiencing strong negative emotions and re-evaluating their decision to go to university. Implications of these findings in the current higher education context of fee-paying students and competing institutional demands are discussed.     

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.     

Contesting the neoliberalisation of higher education through student–faculty partnership

Student–faculty partnership has been researched by contemporary academic developers, particularly its outcomes and challenges. However, theoretical discussions linking it with larger social–educational–political discourses are still lacking. This reflection aims to help fill the gap by analysing how student–faculty partnership might contest the neoliberalisation of higher education. It argues that, by positioning partnership as the basis for learning, student–faculty partnership provides an alternative discourse to contest the marketisation and corporatisation of higher education, the (re)production of learners as competitive and self-interested, and the standardisation and mechanisation of learning.     

The new student loan system in Chile’s higher education

Chile’s higher education system stands out as being one of the most privatized and open to the market in the world. Recently, the Chilean Congress passed Law # 20.027 of 2005, which provides the legal framework for the creation of a student loan system guaranteed both by the State and by higher education institutions (HEIs), financed by the private capital market through the securitization of the loans. The system operated for the first time in 2006, where approximately 21,000 students were able to access financing of their higher education for the remainder of their careers. It is expected that as the system matures, more and better information will be available, which will benefit the students and the HEIs; and it is highly likely that the current number of financed students could grow significantly in the next few years. The purpose of this article is to describe the outstanding characteristics of this system, explain its conceptual basis and analyze the public policy choices available in its design.

University–school partnerships: student teachers’ evaluations across nine partnerships in Israel

This article presents and discusses the findings of a study which focused on student teachers’ evaluation of their practice teaching in the context of a university–school partnership model integrated for the first time into the academic programme of a university teacher education department in Israel. A questionnaire was developed to examine the contribution of the major curricular components of the partnership for student teachers’ experience of learning to teach, as evaluated by the student teachers themselves. The questionnaire was delivered to 119 student teachers placed in 9 selected school–university partnerships. The findings of the study underscore the added value of supporting different kinds of mentoring frameworks within university–school partnerships. The international significance of the study is discussed with a focus on implications for emergent tensions, dilemmas and connections between local and global forms of university–school partnerships.     

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.     

Politics and higher education in Brazil: 1964–1986

Brazilian education, and higher education in particular, were transformed by the coup of 1964 and the two decades of military government that followed. In this article the political ideology of the military governments is described together with the concepts of national political security and national economic development. The implications of these concepts being translated into policy, especially in the context of the relationship between Brazil and the U.S.A., are considered with reference to the role education should have within modernisation. In conclusion, a counterargument is presented in respect of how higher education should now be conceptualized, organised and operated in post-military Brazil.     

The contribution of non-formal learning in higher education to student teachers’ professional competence

This article reports a mixed methods study on the contribution of various aspects of pre-service student teachers’ learning in initial teacher education (ITE) to their professional competence in a Five-year Bachelor of Education Programme in Hong Kong. Special attention is given to how student teachers’ non-formal learning in higher education contributes to their professional competence, an under-researched area in teacher education. A total of 282 student teachers participated in the quantitative survey, 18 of whom were interviewed. Although  Undergraduate Learning Experience: Formal Learning and Non-formal Learning was not the most highly rated factor, multiple regression indicated that it was the only ITE professional learning factor that significantly predicted all dimensions of professional competence. This supports the hypothesis that non-formal learning as a part of learning in higher education makes a significant contribution to student teachers’ professional competence. The qualitative findings showed that non-formal learning provided opportunities for service learning, co-curricular activities, and student exchange programmes with different objects of engagement. Student teachers constructed pedagogical content knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge, and knowledge of context through hands-on experiences, professional dialogue with practitioners, and observations of others’ practice. Such knowledge contributed to their competence in classroom teaching and to work in schools. Implications for ITE are discussed.     

Are contextual and designed student–student interaction treatments equally effective in distance education?

This systematic review draws from and builds upon the results of a meta-analysis of the achievement effects of three types of interaction treatments in distance education: student–student, student–teacher, and student–content (Bernard et al., Review of Educational Research, 79(3), 1243–1289, 2009). This follow-up study considers two forms of student–student interaction treatments, contextual interaction and designed interaction. Typical contextual interaction treatments contain the necessary conditions for student–student interaction to occur, but are not intentionally designed to create collaborative learning environments. By contrast, designed interaction treatments are intentionally implemented collaborative instructional conditions for increasing student learning. Our meta-analysis compared the effect of these two types of interaction treatments on student achievement outcomes. The results favored designed interaction treatments over contextual interaction treatments. Examples of designed interaction treatments and a discussion of study results and their potential implications for research and instruction in distance education and online learning are presented.     

Student–student mentoring for retention and engagement in distance education

This article argues that in the drive to develop e‐learning initiatives in distance learning, simpler ways of supporting students for retention may be overlooked; for example, the linking of students in the form of mentoring and peer support networks. The article reports on three mentoring projects, in the United Kingdom, Korea and New Zealand, and shows that apparent retention gains of up to 20% with a return on investment of the order of magnitude of several hundred per cent may be possible. Whilst accepting the limitations of these studies, the article argues that there needs to be a clearer understanding of the benefits of such initiatives when deciding to invest time and funding in distance education support. It suggests that there is still much mileage to be made out of mentoring and ‘study dating’.     

Teacher–student interpersonal relationships in Indonesian lower secondary education: Teacher and student perceptions

This study investigated firstly the reliability and validity of an Indonesian version of the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI). Second, perceptions of Indonesian secondary school teachers?? interpersonal behaviour as perceived by students and teachers were studied with the QTI. Third, differences between students?? and teachers?? perceptions regarding interpersonal teacher behaviour were compared. The QTI itself is based on the Model of Interpersonal Behaviour which maps teacher behaviour in terms of Influence (Dominance?CSubmission) and Proximity (Cooperation?COpposition). In this study, an Indonesian version of the QTI was constructed and distributed to 2,380 students of 69 teachers from 85 classes (grade 7?C9) from 12 public lower secondary schools in Indonesia. The results showed high reliability and validity for the instrument. Students?? and teachers?? average ratings on Influence were similar, while teacher??s ratings of Proximity were higher than those of students.     

Staff appraisal in higher education — a study of performance review at Nene College,Northampton

This paper describes a study of staff appraisal in Higher Education and, in particular, of the appraisal system—called Performance Review—at Nene College, Northampton.The study comprised a review of the recent literature describing some experiences of appraisal systems in a number of British universities and a survey of the opinions of appraisees, appraisers and senior Nene College management with regard to various aspects of the Performance Review system.In the survey, most appraisees and appraisers thought that appraisers should be line managers rather than peers and that classroom observations should be part of the appraisal system. The opportunity for staff to air views and raise issues during the appraisal interviews was identified as a particular advantage of appraisal for staff. Comparison of the survey findings with the experiences of appraisal in other institutions confirmed that major issues of concern include the importance of organisational commitment; the provision of adequate resources; the effects on the role of heads of departments; the setting and communication of clear, limited goals; consistency of good practice; the provision of adequate follow-up to appraisal interviews and the costs incurred in the operation of appraisal systems.     

‘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.     

Formative computer‐based assessment in higher education: the effectiveness of feedback in supporting student learning

A formative computer‐based assessment (CBA) was one of three instruments used for assessment in a Bachelor of Education course at Queen’s University (Ontario, Canada) with an enrolment of approximately 700 students. The formative framework fostered a self‐regulated learning environment whereby feedback on the CBA was used to support rather than measure student learning. The four types of feedback embedded in the CBA included: (a) directing students to a resource, (b) rephrasing a question, (c) providing additional information and (d) providing the correct answer. Although students originally reported positive experiences with the formative CBA, two follow‐up surveys revealed that they found the four types of feedback to be moderately effective in supporting their learning.     

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.