The severity of the global economic crisis has put the spotlight firmly on measuring academic and research performance and productivity and assessing its contribution, value, impact and benefit. While, traditionally, research output and impact were measured by peer-publications and citations, there is increased emphasis on a "market-driven…

This article focuses on the phenomenon of "rupture" identified in student narratives of uncertainty and scholarship experienced during the course of Fine Art research degrees in two Australian universities. Rupture captures the phenomenon of severe disruption or discontinuity in existing knowledge and typically signifies epistemological rift for…

Despite reading being recognized as a core academic skill, surprisingly little research has been undertaken into university lecture reading requirements. This article reports on the trial and evaluation of a minimalist reading model developed for students in arts and education subjects. Comprising annotated extracts from full texts…

This paper presents an examination of the learning of pre-service Visual Arts teachers through dialogic pedagogy. Dialogic education gives students the power to speak in their own voices, and through the interactions which take place between them, relationships, identities and ideologies are constructed. The dialogic process examined in this paper…

This article reports on the results of a project which used a social network site to support students on a year abroad and foster informal learning, particularly in the area of intercultural communication. The project employed a peer-mentoring structure to solve the problem of role conflict, in which users of these sites may feel some tension as…

This article reviews the development of integrative learning and argues that it has an important role to play in broader conceptions of the undergraduate curriculum recently advanced in the UK. It suggests that such a focus might also provide arts and humanities educators with a hopeful prospect in difficult times: a means by which the distinctive…

This article reports the outcomes of an exploratory small-scale study to compare lecturer and student conceptions of critical reading at a research-intensive UK institution. Analysis of lecturer and student interviews in four humanities subjects suggests differences in the way lecturers and students conceptualize and articulate the practices of…

Performing arts courses within the university sector retain a necessarily strong practical focus as they prepare graduates for work within a highly competitive environment. However, the reality for graduates is a world in which performance is only one component of the myriad activities required to build a sustainable career. This article reports…

This article considers the transition from school to university in Music and Music Technology, continuing the discussion of transitional issues which began in Volume 2 of "Arts and Humanities in Higher Education". The focus of the article is a survey of undergraduates, examining areas that were key to their first experience of studying for a…

In recent years, digital storytelling has emerged as an alternative medium of knowledge production for students in American studies. A growing number of faculty are creating assignments which combine methodological markers of American studies and reinvented notions of critical pedagogy in a multimedia learning environment. Based on an analysis of…

This article reports the results of an investigation into the issues encountered by undergraduate language students while engaging in "the Grammar Project"--a collaborative assessment task for the module Academic and Professional Skills for Language Learning--and shows how encouraging students to take ownership of their learning process with the…

This article feeds into the discussion of transitional issues begun in Volume 2 of "Arts and Humanities in Higher Education." It draws on research into A-level students' expectations of university English and how these compare to the experiences of first-year students, university lecturers and A-level teachers. The data presented are drawn from…

For over a decade, practice-based research degrees in art and design have formed part of the United Kingdom research degree education portfolio, with a relatively rapid expansion in recent years. This route to the PhD still constitutes an innovative, and on occasion a disputed, form of research study and students embarking upon the practice-based…