Higher Education Research and Development

Please share - call for papers: #MeToo and Higher Education Special Issue Editors: Professor Denise Cuthbert & Associate Professor Ceridwen Spark Manuscript deadline: 25 April 2025 More information: https://lnkd.in/ggjZR_jY

"The great challenges of the modern age, such as climate change or global inequality, are complex problems that transcend disciplinary boundaries. Multidisciplinary teamwork is needed to bring together disciplinary insights and to create a more comprehensive understanding of these problems. Higher education should prepare students for working in multidisciplinary teams, but relatively little is known about how students interact in multidisciplinary student teams (MSTs). This study analysed teamwork behaviour of students in MSTs, using observational data. Our findings show that tendencies vary across different teams, but that general trends can be identified across teams. Students struggle to have structured #meetings in which they work together on one task, have in-depth integrative discussions and reach quality decisions. They shy away from addressing suboptimal team processes and frustrations, but spend much time on task division, planning, uncertainty reduction and distractions during meetings."

"Despite the recognised importance of feedback in enhancing student learning, feedback practices in higher education have not achieved the expected effects. A primary issue lies in student disengagement, exacerbated by contextual constraints such as large classes and limited curriculum space and time. The advent of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) may help overcome these contextual constraints. However, GenAI also poses substantial challenges and ethical dilemmas during the feedback process. Meanwhile, it is essential to recognise that the feedback environment created by GenAI inevitably interacts with students’ personal factors, especially their feedback literacy, to jointly influence feedback engagement. Therefore, a question remains whether GenAI can be an effective enabler of student feedback engagement. To answer the question, based on a literature review and theoretical synthesis, we scrutinise student engagement with #GenAI in three stages of the feedback process and discuss the interplay of student feedback literacy and the GenAI context. We suggest that the extent to which students are engaged with feedback depends on their degree of feedback literacy as orchestrated in the GenAI context. Finally, we propose a cyclical feedback framework consisting of feedback forethought, feedback control and feedback retrospect to enable student feedback engagement in a GenAI world."

Thought-provoking post on both the need to not always go down the 'all or nothing' AI approach in assessment, but also reminder that with a well thought out approach detection of AI absolutely is possible, to a useful and meaningful degree.

"Concerns have been raised about the dearth of methodological plurality and risk-taking in contemporary journal publications on higher education. This paper offers a counter-narrative by exploring the operationalisation of ‘the visual’ for the study of the university during significant transitions since the cessation of the Cold War. It is informed by a systematised critical review of 208 journal articles, which were published in Englishes from 1992 to 2023, positing ‘the visual’ as subject, method, methodology or mode of enquiry. Mapping by journal, author(s), date and the contexts studied, revealed growth across 54 countries. Initially produced within and about the Minority World (most prominently the USA), visual study has expanded to the Majority World (most prominently South Africa). Emerging trajectories and patterns are narrativised across the decades, with consideration of contexts, foci, topics, interests served, and methodological choices in the generation, collection and evocation of imagery. This review demonstrates the scope of Visual University Studies for exploring and experimenting with the temporal (social, cultural, political and spatial strife, and change) and the multimodal (analogue and digital sources, methods and spaces) to express, document, critique, reclaim and commemorate that which is elusive or hidden within representations of the university ecology."

My PhD student Marloes Vreekamp just had her second article as part of her PhD trajectory published in Higher Education Research and Development. She studied the role of collaboration activities on learning outcomes of teachers in university professional development trajectories (UTQs), in the context of the 4 TU's in the Netherlands. The study was sponsored by the 4TU Centre for Engineering Education. The supervision team of Marloes consists of myself, Judith Gulikers and Piety Runhaar. URL: https://lnkd.in/eX8DiFu6

Visual university studies since the Cold War: mapping journal articles published in Englishes from 1992 to 2023 Dina Zoe Belluigi Open access → https://lnkd.in/g75vkYzf #HigherEd #VisualStudies #Universities #ColdWar

A really thoughtful piece from Guy Curtis about the limitations of the two lane approach, and why we need a Lane 3 - some use. In my own teaching of commencing undergrads - this middle road of Some (🟠 in a traffic light 🚦 system) is how we approached the integration of GenAI into their first big individual written assessment task (more on that another day!) https://lnkd.in/gAh6K8Xf

🚀 We’re excited to share that our colleague Amber Mers has just published her new article: ‘Uncovering design considerations for embedding transdisciplinarity in higher education – an empirical exploration of a transdisciplinary global health program’ in the Journal of Higher Education Research and Development ! 🎉📖 🌍 The world is faced with a complex set of global health issues that are multidimensional and interconnected. We know that tackling these complex issues requires a transdisciplinary approach. But how do we effectively train students in these skills? Our study examines a transdisciplinary global health program to uncover the design considerations and practical challenges of transdisciplinary education. 🔎 Our analysis highlighted two distinct yet interwoven learning cycles: ➡️ Transdisciplinary co-learning of participants (students, teachers and community partners) ➡️ The ongoing learning process on how to design and implement transdisciplinary programs ⭐ We found that ultimately transitioning to transdisciplinary education necessitates a shift in roles and mindsets for all participants, highlighting the importance of providing support and effective management strategies. Empirical explorations like this one are essential for understanding this transition, the challenges encountered, and strategies for overcoming them. 🔗 Curious to learn more about our findings and its implications for designing and implementing transdisciplinary education? Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/g7eQq5cn full/10.1080/07294360.2025.2463515#abstract #TransdisciplinaryEducation #HigherEdResearch #GlobalHealth #Collaboration #EducationInnovation #ResearchMatters

"A ‘two-lane’ (All-or-None) approach to the use of generative artificial intelligence (#genAI) is the idea that there should be two categories of assessments in higher education: Lane 1/None: where the use of genAI is prohibited, and Lane 2/All: where any use of genAI is permitted. This idea has been thoughtfully detailed and continues to be debated. Although this idea is generally well-intentioned, in this comment piece I argue that, if implemented, it will promote an impoverished approach to education and educational assessment. One argument often invoked in favour of an All-or-None approach is that genAI use may sometimes be undetectable. Contract cheating (e.g., students outsourcing assessments to ghostwriters) is sometimes undetectable, yet an argument that there should be an All-or-None approach permitting #contractcheating in some assessments is clearly absurd. An All-or-None approach to genAI and assessment is also absurd. A middle lane, where genAI use in assessments is allowed with some limitations, is essential."