There is a distinct lack of research that has considered university staff use of and attitudes towards Facebook. The aim of this study was to gain an understanding of how teaching staff at one UK university use Facebook, and their attitudes towards Facebook and online professionalism, in terms of the student-staff relationship. An online survey…

Much has been written about student and faculty opinions on academic integrity in testing. Currently, concerns appear to focus more narrowly on online testing, generally based on anecdotal assumptions that online students are more likely to engage in academic dishonesty in testing than students in traditional on-campus courses. To address such…

Many academic development initiatives build on community-based approaches, such as communities of practice or learning communities. While these initiatives are largely successful for the individual academics involved, low participation rates prevent wide-reaching impact on learning about teaching. The research discussed in this article aims at…

This article revisits the notion that to facilitate quality learning requires teachers in higher education to have pedagogical content knowledge. It constructs pedagogical content knowledge as a teaching and learning space that brings content and pedagogy together. On the content knowledge side, it suggests that threshold concepts, akin to a…

Educators and researchers are increasingly calling for the processes of writing and knowledge construction to be an integral part of disciplinary learning. This article contributes to the literature by presenting an empirical analysis of a programme that was designed to expose students to the complexities of academic practices in conjunction with…

Assessment of oral presentation skills is an underexplored area. The study described here focuses on the agreement between professional assessment and self- and peer assessment of oral presentation skills and explores student perceptions about peer assessment. The study has the merit of paying attention to the inter-rater reliability of the…

This article explores the relationship between the lack of visible attention to formative assessment in degree specifications and its marginalization in practice. Degree specification documents form part of the quality apparatus emphasizing the accountability and certification duties of assessment. Ironically, a framework designed to assure…

Appropriate use of instructional technology can be an elusive quest for many faculty members. The iTouch is one of the latest technologies available to us, yet there is little literature on its use and effectiveness to support learners in their learning. Six new faculty members from various disciplines elected to integrate the device in their own…

A Center for Teaching and Learning provided Flip camcorders to a group of 10 new faculty members, who were asked to use this teaching tool in their classroom instruction. The classes included mathematics, political science, computer engineering, psychology, business, music and dance. The qualitative results indicate that all faculty members and…

As digital natives from the "wired" Net Generation permeate today's classrooms, and educators adapt to students' digital expectations, exploring the pedagogical use of educational technology is essential for today's faculty. Student competency in oral communication and presentation skills transcends disciplines in higher education, as does the…

This study aimed to evaluate the implementation of a same-year peer-assisted learning (PAL) scheme, introduced in the first year of an undergraduate degree. The students participated in voluntary timetabled PAL sessions which encouraged a cooperative approach through student-directed activities. An action research design was used, and evaluation…

This research explores the experiences of a group of academics learning to teach with problem-based learning (PBL) and how a community of practice (COP) supported this transition. An action-research project evaluated both PBL experiences and group processes. Teachers were enthusiastic about PBL but experienced a variety of problems during the…

Students and faculty often have different goals for the first day of class. While teaching advice books recommend actively engaging students in the course from the start, students often "shop" for classes and report being primarily concerned with gathering practical information. The aim of this article is to introduce a reciprocal interview…

Assessment is critically important to education both for accreditation and to support learning. Yet the literature dealing with formative and summative assessment definitions and terminology is not aligned. This article reports an empirical small-scale study of lecturers in Education at an English university. The research posits that these…

The purpose of this project was to determine the validity of peer and self-evaluations of class participation compared to professors' class participation grades. Students (N = 96) evaluated themselves and their classmates on class participation on a four-point scale and students were required to assign grades in a normalized distribution. Relative…