Massification is a reality facing universities around the world. While increased access to higher education has significant social and economic benefits, rapid growth in class sizes challenges institutions to maintain quality standards while teaching at scale, amidst ongoing cost pressure. This paper analyses this issue within the Australian…

This paper provides an analysis of the literature on transnational education to identify the key challenges and success factors for the sustainable operation of transnational higher education (TNE) programmes as perceived by key stakeholders. Probing the stakeholders' perspectives and applying a systematic approach, this study analyses 227…

In this paper, we report on an attempt to systematically discover reliable and high-quality evidence on teaching practices that have an impact on student learning. We adopted an innovative approach that was modelled on some of the practices of a systematic review. Papers that met certain quality criteria (population generalisability, ecological…

Transnational education (TNE) has grown significantly in developing countries but providing quality and scaling to large student numbers is a challenge for universities. Blended learning offers a potential solution for scaling at high quality. A large-scale project delivering a blended learning programme for TNE students in South-East Asia was…

Developing leadership in students is part of the remit of higher education institutions. In recent decades, student leadership development programs have proliferated at universities worldwide. However, the contested understanding of the term 'leadership' has resulted in lack of clarity regarding how this may be 'developed' in higher education.…

Describes development and use of the Course Experience Questionnaire to measure perceived teaching quality in higher education, and construction of a new generic teaching skills scale. Evaluation with large multidisciplinary samples in Australia confirmed reliability and validity of both short and long forms. Criterion and discriminant validity…

This article describes the Course Experience Questionnaire, a student evaluation of teaching performance. The article discusses the instrument's theoretical basis, statistical qualities, and national trials in Australian higher education. The questionnaire is seen to offer a reliable, verifiable, and useful means of evaluating teaching quality in…

In a competitive higher education sector, large-scale curriculum reviews are common, and increasingly require alignment with broader graduate attributes. Outcomes-based reviews can be difficult in practice, especially in generalist degrees such as science and mathematics, where students' future career pathways are uncertain and varied. Working…

The use of external examiners in the doctoral assessment process is seen as a quality assurance process in most higher education systems. This article suggests that the selection of examiners is a critical aspect of that process. Interview analysis highlights the professional/academic considerations involved in selecting suitable examiners, as…

As transnational education collaborations increase so too do concerns about the quality of provision. To address these concerns, national codes of good practice have been written to guide exporting institutions on how to set up and manage international collaborations, so that academic standards and student experiences are not compromised. This…

The promise of higher education remains elusive for many Indigenous students in Australia. To date, institutional efforts to improve the persistence and retention of Indigenous students have been largely piecemeal, poorly integrated and designed to remediate skill deficits. Yet, market-led expansion of Australian higher education is driving…

With the Program for International Student Assessment and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study surveys, competency assessment became an important policy instrument in the school sector; only recently has international competency measurement gained attention in higher education with the Assessment of Higher Education Learning…

With the increasing adoption of work-integrated learning (WIL) as a feature of curricula, the idea of student satisfaction takes on a new dimension--students' experiences on placement are not routinely under the control of university academic staff, yet universities will ultimately be held responsible for the quality of students' placement…

Students as partners (SaP) is gaining momentum as both a practice and as a subject of analytic inquiry. This study draws on interviews to explore how formal, senior leaders responsible for teaching and learning conceptualise and imagine the implementation of SaP. While leaders saw SaP as occurring within a range of activities, the concept was…

A historically informed analysis of the academic board or senate in Australian universities, and in the wider higher education environment, particularly the UK, indicates that the role and function of academic boards has fundamentally changed in the past 30 years. Within the context of universities being repositioned to serve global knowledge…