For the last 20 years Polish education faced turbulent changes, first experiencing a rapid increase in the number of students and the dynamic growth of educational institutions, and then facing the reverse trend of decreasing number of students and universities being closed down or facing serious financial problems. Furthermore, forecasts for the…

Both lecture delivery and Facebook use are ubiquitous aspects of higher education from staff and student points-of-view, respectively. An attempt was made to integrate the two by setting up a Facebook group and delivering contemporary news stories in preparation for in-lecture discussion in a large-scale (1,200 students across 5 sections)…

Marketisation, increased student mobility, the massification of Higher Education (HE) and stagnating staff numbers in universities have combined to cause a ripple effect of change both in the demography and size of university classes across the world. This has implications for the quality and equity of learning and the need to examine and to…

As in many universities, class sizes have increased more quickly than teaching and learning resources. A related challenge is the increasing diversity of the student body in terms of socio-economic background, learning styles, English language ability and preparedness. This paper explores ways in which traditional face-to-face teaching methods…

In this article we examine how students' accounts of the discipline of sociology change over the course of their undergraduate degrees. Based on a phenomenographic analysis of 86 interviews with 32 sociology and criminology students over the course of their undergraduate degrees, we constituted five different ways of accounting for sociology.…

Outdoor adventure education courses are used in higher education to develop transferable skills such as groupwork and problem-solving skills. There is a need for exploratory investigation into students' perceptions of this experience. This study aimed to develop an innovative qualitative data collection method, and to use it to explore…

With the relentless internationalization and marketization of higher education in the past decades, English has been increasingly adopted as a medium of instruction at universities across the world. Recent research, however, has shown that despite its various optimistically envisioned goals, English-medium instruction (EMI) is not without problems…

An investigation was undertaken into how a process involving peer review and observation of teaching can be used to enhance academics' teaching practices and inform professional development activities at an organization level. We describe an innovative and highly structured approach to gathering evidence of pedagogic practice from academic…

This paper considers how online, distance students enact the space of "the university", in the context of the rise of distance education within a traditional, "elite" institution. Aiming to provide insight into how students translate into distance the space of a university which has traditionally had its basis in conventional…

The introduction of the new tuition fee regime in the UK has resulted in growing concerns about the impact on students' expectations of their university experiences (e.g. Jones in "Perspectives" 14(2):44-48, 2010). This is coupled with reports from those such as the OIA (Office of the Independent Adjudicator (2012) Annual Report.…

University expansion in higher education has been hierarchically differentiated. There is some concentration of certain social profiles in some degrees of study, so social composition between degrees can vary considerably. This article describes in terms of social composition 10 degrees of four public universities in the metropolitan area of…

Student comments are routinely collected in university evaluation surveys for the purpose of improving teaching and learning. Whilst student comments provide valuable insights into their experiences, there is limited published research reporting the extent to which student comments are offensive and professional. The aim of this study was to…

The purpose of this study is to understand predictors of different learning outcomes among various student background characteristics, types of learning motivation and engagement behaviors. 178 junior students were surveyed at a 4-year research university in Taiwan. The scales of motivation, engagement and perceived learning outcomes were adapted…

In an era of unprecedented student mobility, increasingly diverse student populations in many national contexts, and globally interconnected environmental and social concerns, there is an urgent need to find new ways of thinking about teaching and learning. Static assumptions about so-called "Western" versus "non-Western"…

It is well documented that student-athletes underperform academically. Some researchers have suggested that this underperformance is because student-athletes lack motivation in academic endeavors. In contrast, we find that most student-athletes hold positive private attitudes towards academic achievement, but also believe that their peers do not.…