Groupwork assessments and international postgraduate students : reflections on practice

Groupwork is a common learning and assessment method in Business Schools throughout the UK. It has recognised pedagogic benefits, increases active or deep learning of a subject and, although it often appears to be unpopular amongst students, for these reasons it is popular among academic staff in Business Schools. The cultural diversity of a particular cohort of students (especially those who have received no previous education in the UK) arguably has an impact on teaching method and assessment methods. It brings another dimension to the debate of ‘traditional’ versus ‘innovative’ teaching approaches and is worth further examination, particularly as the increasingly multicultural aspect of the present UK higher education environment is not a well researched field. The impact of the increasing numbers of international students dictates that issues relating to the appropriateness of teaching and learning methods must be considered within a multicultural perspective. The preference of certain international students, particularly those from the Far East, is for the more traditional teaching methods; groupwork is unpopular (Bamford et al 2002). This adds weight to the argument for maintaining traditional methods in the multinational classroom. The issue is explored here through a case study on the use of a group assessment with a cohort of international students at postgraduate level

Joint degrees and engaging with a Europe of Knowledge: lessons from a UK perspective of a challenging collaborative endeavour

International joint degrees offer the possibility of internationalising the curriculum, enhancing intercultural skills for both staff and students and enhancing global job opportunities. This paper examines the challenges for staff and institutions engaging in developing a ‘Europe of Knowledge’ by offering a suite of international joint degree programmes in the business area. This case study of staff perspectives and quality assurance assessment of joint degrees offers insights into the challenges and the lessons that can be learned and the lived reality of this type of international curriculum development from the practitioner perspective.Keywords: international joint degrees, international collaboration, Bologna Process, international quality assuranc

Developing relationality and student belonging: the need for building cosmopolitan engagement in undergraduate communities

This paper addresses evidence that developing a sense of belonging for students from different ethnic groups impacts on their engagement. It notes previous findings that in universities habits of coexistence may present barriers to the development of relationships and the sense of student belonging. The paper proposes that cosmopolitan engagement offers a frame for considering the experience of cultural difference in the classroom. It stresses the importance of relationality and communication. The research, involving students undertaking business and science programmes in two culturally similar post-92 London universities, sought to develop a better understanding of how students in London engage with higher education, their learning and with cultural others and the impact on their learning of differing communication patterns. The study finds that students often feel distant from their tutors and afraid to ask for further explanation. Instead, they rely on a circle of friends to provide support and clarification. Students identified the development of agency through engaging with others from different cultures. Engagement in practical collective tasks such as forensic lab work seems to have the potential to encourage communication across cultures, but observation suggested that the students tended to self-segregate. The article concludes that there cannot be a presumption of cosmopolitan engagement. Rather universities need to develop strategies for improving communication between students and staff and between students of different cultural backgrounds

"I'll do this no matter if I have to fight the world!"

Purpose The purpose of the paper was to explore students’ learning experiences in culturally diverse urban higher education environments. Design/methodology/approach The project used an action research method approach with a mixed-method collection of data. The data consist of a survey of undergraduate students from the two different faculties, business and science, in two London institutions (n = 393) and ten focus groups (consisting of 92 students) as well as participant observations. The survey was based on an adapted version of the National Survey on Student Engagement (NSSE) developed in the USA. The authors also piloted the use of Facebook as a learning tool and monitored the effects on communication between students and between lecturers. Findings The authors identified statistical significance in the items that addressed the development of students’ relationships with others and found that there was a link with specific students’ profiles, that is those students who were non-native speakers of English who were less likely to engage with “others” and the learning environment. Focus groups highlighted the importance of communities of practice and that these communities aided students in developing what can be seen as resilience outcomes. Originality/value The findings from the research indicated that resilience can be seen as key to increasing engagement and communication for students. The piloting of social media across a module at each research site indicated that such a tool can be useful in addressing issues of communication, but the introduction of such tools needs to be generated through the students

Will we ever go back to normal? An international exploration of the impact of Covid-19 on tourism teaching in 5 countries

The Covid-19 pandemic imposed an online teaching and learning environment around the world which impacted lecturers and students alike. Both had to navigate uncertain waters to deliver higher education which appeared to be a forgotten sector by governments, as well as dealing with life during the pandemic and changes to lifestyle not witnessed in this generation. Tourism lecturers also faced the near devastation of ‘their’ industry, while students saw their chances of employment in the industry dwindle. The research project used a mixed methods to gather data from 5 countries during the pandemic and from 19 countries following the pandemic. The data included surveys of staff and students during the pandemic including 26 staff interviews, student videos and focus groups that were undertaken in the early stages of the pandemic, as well as following the return to ‘normal’ during the academic year 2021-22 and a survey with respondents from 19 countries. The methods sort to explore questions centred around how adaptations to the remote and to the hybrid learning environment were made by staff and students. The research team aimed to understand the differences to the learning environment and the impact on lockdowns in different countries. We sought to understand the impact of remote and hybrid teaching and learning and the possibilities for the future, following what was perceived as a return to normal in the academic year 2021-22. The paper offers insights into the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic, benefits and challenges of remote and hybrid delivery and reports on different institutional and country approaches taken, and the return to campus. In particular the research explores the concerns raised about increased workloads, isolation and diminished motivation, as well as some of the benefits for students such as the increased flexibility of the learning environment

Dealing with difference : developing an understanding of international postgraduate joint degree programmes in business in London and France

This thesis examines the student experience of international higher education through a case study of joint Masters degrees in business taught in two countries. The thesis explored how the ‘joint degree’ experience impacts on the way students undertake their learning and intercultural ‘negotiations’. The focus on cultural interaction, international mobility, relationality between students and the way students experience the learning environment as dimensions of their experience furthers an understanding of international higher education. The exploration of the individual students’ ‘lived reality’ demonstrates the complexity and limitations of such programmes of study as well as the importance of culture, being the fabric of meaning for individuals (Geertz, 1973) in relation to and as part of the educational experience of a joint degree. This overarching dimension of culture is given prominence in this work, not only in terms of the culture of the institutions that the students study in, but also in terms of the different national education systems, of which those institutions are part and more generally in terms of the different cultures that students have to negotiate as part of their experience. The research approach was through a case study method, relying on the use of mixed methods for data collection to provide a ‘thick’ description of the experiences of joint degrees and a triangulation of the findings for each data set. The thematic analysis of the data focussed on individuals’ construction of their reality in order to gain an understanding of that reality. The concept of ‘relationality’ is introduced to refer to the learning that occurs as a result of the recognition of the ‘other’. It denotes a learning environment where students learn with and from other students and as a result of their country mobility. As a consequence they develop their intercultural awareness. This relationality is seen as a cornerstone of the experience of joint degrees and is significant to the achievement of inter-cultural learning

The relationship of leadership roles to the improvement of the student experience: international perspectives

This paper explores the ways in which key academic roles operate in higher education, bridging space, a ‘third space’ (Whitchurch, 2008) between the academic and the administrative, that frames the activities of academic staff engaging in projects that improve the student experience. We argue that such roles are the focus for implementing and designing change management projects that can promote innovation in pedagogic practice. Data was gathered through undertaking 21 interviews both in the UK and overseas with interviewees from Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands. The data provides insights into the ways in which academic staff acting in academic leadership roles, both here and overseas, engage in such projects. The paper draws from a chapter in the authors’ recently published book, Understanding and Improving the Student Experience in Higher Education: navigating the third space. Through the voices of practitioners in UK and international settings, the importance of understanding the role of third space professionals and the importance of leadership is brought to the fore. The paper considers the ways in which third space professionals act as educational leaders from the perspective of their agency, the fluid spaces that they operate within, their creativity and the metrics discourse

Enhancing student wellbeing and student belonging in university through a gamification approach to rewarding and recognising extracurricular activities

Increasingly public health issues around poor mental wellbeing of university students is gaining international attention (Johnson & Crenna-Jennings, 2018; Baik et al., 2019), further highlighting the need for early interventions to reduce/prevent the development of mental illness in university students (Stallman, 2010, Laracombe et al. 2016, Anon, 2018; Heugh et al., 2019a). The case study example discussed here is a work in progress. Its focus is a post-92 urban institution where the student body is culturally diverse with 69% falling into the Office for Students (OfS) defined Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) category and two-thirds of students are from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, falling into the bottom two centiles of the Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) (QS, 2018). The case study chimes with those that underline the importance of developing student belonging and the need for managing challenges to wellbeing presented by a crisis such as Covid-19

Galaxy Zoo: The large-scale spin statistics of spiral galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

We re-examine the evidence for a violation of large-scale statistical isotropy in the distribution of projected spin vectors of spiral galaxies. We have a sample of $\sim 37,000$ spiral galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, with their line of sight spin direction confidently classified by members of the public through the online project Galaxy Zoo. After establishing and correcting for a certain level of bias in our handedness results we find the winding sense of the galaxies to be consistent with statistical isotropy. In particular we find no significant dipole signal, and thus no evidence for overall preferred handedness of the Universe. We compare this result to those of other authors and conclude that these may also be affected and explained by a bias effect.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 8 pages, 5 figure

Improving professional practice in the disclosure of a diagnosis of dementia : a modeling experiment to evaluate a theory-based intervention

The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com.Peer reviewedPostprin