Professional learning for higher education teaching

An extensive literature exists that explores expertise in a wide range of fields and professions. Although the specific details of what expertise looks like will vary from domain to domain, there are a number of common features that can be identified which offer a framework for exploring how expertise might be characterised for teaching in higher education. These features can be categorised into three main elements. This chapter briefly introduces these generic elements and suggests how they might be manifest for teaching in higher education. The model of expertise presented includes pedagogical content knowledge, artistry of teaching and professional learning, and these headings are used to form the structure of the book as a whole. It is proposed that educational development should be mindful of all of these elements when considering support for those new to teaching and those with more experience. It is also noted that the professional learning aspect of expertise is ignored in institutional output measures of expertise or excellence, but that it is a defining feature distinguishing individuals who have expertise from those with experience. If higher education institutions are to achieve their missions of excellence in education, then they must also foster and enable a culture of professional learning for teaching. Without this active institutional-level commitment, expertise in teaching will only ever be a subculture of the few.

<p>Despite the increase in massive open online courses (MOOCs), evidence about the pedagogy of learning in MOOCs remains limited. This paper reports on an investigation into the pedagogy in one MOOC - Oxford Brookes University’s ‘First Steps in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education’ MOOC (FSLT12).</p><p>FSLT12 was an open and free professional development opportunity for people moving into HE teaching. It was a small course (200 participants registered from 24 countries) which was focused on introducing HE teaching skills, and, uniquely, to deliberately integrate open academic practice as a vital part of professional development for HE teachers. A qualitative, case-study approach was used in the research, based on surveys, interviews, and social media, to provide evidence about how people learned in this course and consider wider implications for teaching and learning in higher education.</p><p>The evidence shows that participants who completed the course were able to learn autonomously and navigate the distributed platforms and environments. The most challenging issues were acceptance of open academic practice and difficulty in establishing an academic identity in an unpredictable virtual environment. An interesting and significant feature of the course was the support for learners from a number of MOOC ‘veterans’ who served as role models and guides for less experienced MOOC learners.</p><p>The research shows that small task-oriented MOOCs can effectively support professional development of open academic practice.</p>

Continuing professional learning and development (CPLD) in higher education is critical for improving the quality of teaching. Major change or crisis events often bring to light the need to upskill teaching staff to manage successful transition through those periods. When the COVID-19 pandemic caused our institution to pivot to emergency online teaching and learning, we identified a need to provide additional support to academic staff as they moved to online teaching. We introduced an approach called Share Sessions, where staff presented their innovative online teaching practice in a Zoom session. In this chapter, we introduce the Share Sessions as an informal cross-disciplinary approach to CPLD. We report the results of in-depth interviews with ten academics who presented in the Share Sessions. By employing hermeneutic phenomenology as an overarching research methodology, we thematically analysed the interviews and categorised the data into three broad categories: academics as connected learners, community of practice, and sense-making of informal sharing. Suggestions are provided for implementing this approach with a three-step process of planning for before, during, and following the Share Sessions.KeywordsContinuing Professional Learning and DevelopmentOnline teachingHigher educationCOVID-19ZoomCommunity of practice

Among all of the activity and commentary about the impact of technology on higher education, there is, unfortunately, not a high proportion of this work that could be described as rigorous or logically sound. There is a tendency for scholars and commentators to take either an overwhelmingly positive position or a skeptical position on the use of teaching technologies, either seeing them as a silver bullet to solve all educational problems, or as a direct route to a hellish, dystopian future. The focus of this bibliography is the subset of journals, books, and articles that are based on sound evidence, are well argued, and are therefore of high quality and high possible utility. As such, the emphasis is on what is known, rather than on conjectures about the utopian or dystopian versions of the future of higher education. The primary focus is on the role and impact of technologies on teaching and student learning. The bibliography is aimed at providing a high-level overview of teaching technologies in higher education from the perspective of sound, evidence-informed pedagogy. The entries in this bibliography also only include those from peer-reviewed outlets (with one key exception). As grey literature tends toward baseless claims and is based more on opinion and conjecture than sound evidence, it has been left out of this bibliography. Also left out are high-level, sensationalist publications written by former university presidents, consulting firms, or star economists and management professors (again with one exception). As these well-known publications tend to make gross generalizations based on little evidence about how teaching and learning actually work, they are of no real use and have therefore not been included. Looking across all the entries provided here, it is evident that many of the key issues that currently occupy those involved in the conceptualization, research, and implementation of technology in teaching in higher education have been of interest for some time. Many of the seminal articles and topics were published a decade or more ago. While there is probably a case for fresh, systematic reviews and possible reconceptualizations of the role technologies are playing in university teaching, the long-established theories still provide a solid basis for understanding current issues. There has, in fact, possibly been a tendency to ignore these theories in favor of the latest trend or tool. So while it may appear that many of the sources cited in this bibliography are out of date, that is far from the case. It is not the new, shiny technologies that should drive innovation in university teaching, but rather the rigorous and scholarly contributions that have stood the test of time. It is those contributions that make up much of the literature included here.

When the Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice — JUTLP as we have come to know it — was established in 2004, it was to fill a perceived gap in publications related to teaching and learning practice in higher education, with practice being the operative word (Carter, 2004). While other higher education journals existed, they were mainly the purview of academic developers and the most prodigious of disciplinary academics researching their teaching. In contrast, JUTLP was to be built as open-access and its readership as ‘practitioners looking for good ideas based soundly on a body of accessible theory and research’ (McInnes, 2004, n.p.). JUTLP was established in the Australian context at a time when promoting excellence in teaching and learning was regarded as an important government agenda to improve the student experience, and not accidentally, coincided with the creation of the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (later the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, and later again the Office for Learning and Teaching). The Carrick Institute supported national cross-institutional grants and fellowship schemes, and promoted national networks of educational research into practice to support the mission of the then Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) to ensure all ‘Australian higher education institutions provide high quality teaching and learning for all students’ (Carrick, 2009). How times have changed.

<span>This paper examines the possible influence of podcasting on the traditional lecture in higher education. Firstly, it explores some of the benefits and limitations of the lecture as one of the dominant forms of teaching in higher education. The review then moves to explore the emergence of podcasting in education and the purpose of its use, before examining recent relevant literature about podcasting for supporting, enhancing, and indeed replacing the traditional lecture. The review identifies three broad types of use of podcasting: substitutional, supplementary and creative use. Podcasting appears to be most commonly used to provide recordings of past lectures to students for the purposes of review and revision (substitutional use). The second most common use was in providing additional material, often in the form of study guides and summary notes, to broaden and deepen students' understanding (supplementary use). The third and least common use reported in the literature involved the creation of student generated podcasts (creative use). The review examines three key questions: What are the educational uses of podcasting in teaching and learning in higher education? Can podcasting facilitate more flexible and mobile learning? In what ways will podcasting influence the traditional lecture? These questions are discussed in the final section of the paper, with reference to future policies and practices.</span>

The purpose of this case study was to investigate the perception and experience of ten new faculty member participants in paired teaching. Along with providing evidence for paired teaching as an avenue for professional development in higher education, the study provides experiential narratives of paired teaching relationships as an illustration of the process. Key outcomes of the study include: the value of peer-to-peer engagement for prompting reflection on practice and facilitation of instructor use of active learning approaches within the classroom.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic that spread globally in 2020, higher education courses were subsequently offered in fully remote, online formats. A plethora of primary studies began investigating a range of topics exploring teaching and learning in higher education, particularly during the initial semester. In order to provide an overview and initial understanding of this emerging research field, a systematic mapping review was conducted that collates and describes the characteristics of 282 primary empirical studies. Findings reveal that research was carried out mostly descriptively and cross-sectionally, focusing predominantly on undergraduate students and their perceptions of teaching and learning during the pandemic. Studies originate from a broad range of countries, are overwhelmingly published open access, and largely focused on the fields of Health & Welfare and Natural Sciences, Mathematics & Statistics. Educational technology used for emergency remote teaching are most often synchronous collaborative tools, used in combination with text-based tools. The findings are discussed against pre-pandemic research on educational technology use in higher education teaching and learning, and perspectives for further research are provided.

This paper considers some implications for teaching in higher education of quality assurance demands made in circumstances of financial restraint. The paper suggests that responses must be anchored in improvement in student learning. This has implications for university teaching, for the evaluation of its effectiveness and for leadership in universities. The paper commences with a discussion of an understanding of the nature of the relationship between teaching and learning in higher education resulting from an Australian investigation of student perceptions of university teaching. The understanding arising from this study suggests that, given that the environment is an educational one, both evaluation of teaching and educational leadership should be in harmony with effective approaches to learning and teaching.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the higher education sector, which is a critical determinant of a country's economic future. The aim is to compare the views of teachers and students on inclusive digital teaching in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The meaning of “inclusive digital teaching” and “view” are studied. The empirical study was carried out in September-November 2020. Forty respondents from Germany, Latvia, India, Ukraine, and South Africa participated in the study. The data were collected via a semi-structural interview. The theoretical findings allow defining inclusive digital teaching and its criteria and indicators. The positive views on inclusive digital teaching in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic were expressed by the university teachers. The students' views were more negative. The novel contribution of this chapter is the implications on inclusive digital teaching in higher education. Directions of further research are formulated.

This study explores the perceptions of four visual art teacher educators of what constitutes good visual art teaching in a Malaysian higher education setting. The aim of this study is to deepen our understanding of the characteristic features of good visual art teaching in a higher education setting. The study explores the beliefs, values, and life shaping factors that underpin and inform the teaching practice of these visual art teacher educators. What constitutes good visual teaching in higher education has intrigued and challenged those concerned with this sector for many decades and is subject to on-going inquiry and debate. Perspectives of what constitutes good visual art teaching practices are shaped by individual, social and cultural factors, including those pathways taken through visual art education and training. Consequently there is little consensus about what good visual art teaching really looks like. Whilst the characteristic features of good teaching in higher education have been the subject of recent inquiry, the literature concerning good visual art teaching in higher education is limited. This study aims to address this gap. This study adopts a qualitative case study approach and draws on the principles and practices of narrative inquiry. In this study, four visual art teacher educators who have different backgrounds and areas of specialisation from the Art Department of the 'University of Education Malaysia' were interviewed and observed. Each visual art teacher educator participated in a series of three interviews in order to interrogate their beliefs, values and experiences, and access their accounts of good visual art teaching. Observations of each visual art teacher educator's teaching served to triangulate the data generated through interview. In order to obtain a better understanding of the phenomenon, 12 student teachers consisting of six pre-service and six in-service final year student teachers from the same department were interviewed using individual and group interview. Narrative analysis and analysis of narrative techniques were employed in the examination of the data. From this analysis four narrative accounts of these visual art teacher educators' perception of good visual art teaching in a higher education setting were developed. Findings suggest that teaching is shaped by prior experiences as learners in school, community, and tertiary settings, and understandings of the professional teaching situation. For these participants the personal and professional are connected in their lives. This connection is illustrated through the distinctive ways that each visual art teacher educator approaches their teaching and the different beliefs and values they hold. For those participants whose education and/or current practice is studio-based, mastery of art skills and knowledge is of primary importance in good visual art teaching. For these participants good visual art teaching is a specialised area which requires specific knowledge and skills. For those participants whose education and/or current practice is theory based, good visual art teaching is not only about mastery of art skills and knowledge but also involves mastery of pedagogical content knowledge and practical knowledge. Despite these apparent differences in beliefs and practices, concern for pedagogical content knowledge is a feature of the work of all four participants. For all visual art teacher educator participants, lifelong learning through self-reflection, inquiry, peer reviewing, involvement in on-going professional development and continuing education is a hallmark of good visual art teaching. In addition all visual art teacher educator participants view good visual art teaching as a relational activity. This study provides us with insights into the complexity of good visual art teaching from the perspective of the visual art teacher educator. This study has developed ways to listen to visual art teacher educators' voices and to hear them in their own terms, to observe them, to enter their realities, and to see the world from their perspectives. This is deemed as important because in the Malaysian experience, more often than not, visual art teacher educators' teaching practice and their lives have been largely unexamined and taken for granted. The worldviews, stories, and teaching practices we enact are cultural constructions that have become part of the fabric of our everyday lives. Through this study an understanding of the beliefs, values and life-shaping factors that underpin and inform these visual art teacher educators' teaching practices provides us with new understandings of their work in Malaysian teacher education.

The technological revolution of the past two decades has changed global higher education, particularly with the impact of social media. There are two primary functions of social media in higher education: instruction and marketing. Social media offers higher education students an array of options to socialize, network, stay informed, and connected, but technology proficiency may not be the same for instructors. As social media use by students becomes more established, educators in higher education pursue methods to parlay expertise in instruction into increased opportunities to advertise and market higher education institutions. Social media's impact of instruction in higher education is undeniable. The next major focus is on social media as a robust recruiting instrument to increase enrollment in global higher education.

Digital technology can be observed in every aspect of our today’s society. It serves as the primary instrument needed in building knowledge societies for quality education. Although, excellent teaching in higher education requires the sound knowledge of the subject and a right way of imparting the experience to the students. Economics teachers often face the problems of the best ways to help students understand the fundamental economic phenomena and the application of relevant economics terms to real-life situations. However, to overcome such issues calls for the need to discover new and appropriate teaching methods which should be in alignment with the needs and possibilities of economics students in higher education. To this effect, an appropriate pedagogical model is designed for the enhancement of teaching and learning of economics in higher education, especially in this era of the new-normal brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic which has disorganised the entire globe with unanticipated changes in every aspect of the society, including the educational sector in which the need/impact of digital technology cannot be overemphasised. The pedagogical model would lead to active, creative, collaborative, and highly engaged digital experiences for economic students in higher education. Keywords: Economics, Digital technology, Teaching, Learning, Inclusivity, Pedagogical model DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-9-13 Publication date: March 31 st 2021

Research related to human resource development models in the world of education is very important, because the world of education is one of the determinants of the quality of HR assets. This research aims to find the HR model that best suits the development of Human Resources (HR) in higher education. The research uses qualitative methods. The type of research used is R&D (Research & Development). In the first year using the Analysis and Design approach from the ADDIE model (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation). Data collection was carried out through a literature review study of 90 articles indexed by Scopus, Sinta 1, Sinta 2, and interviews with 15 experts from the academic and professional world. This research was analyzed using the SWOT Analysis and FGD approach. The results of this research found a prototype tree-based HR model and important variables that were mapped to the tree structure, namely root variables, stem variables, and fruit/leaf variables. This research is used to improve the quality of higher education human resources. This has implications for improving the quality of lecturers both in self-development and teaching in higher education, which has an impact on the quality of students and Indonesia's human resource assets.

Few instructors in higher education have completed a formal teaching program and, therefore, rely on informal professional development opportunities to enhance their teaching practice. Micro-credentialing in the form of digital badges is one way in which instructors can document their non-credit learning and accomplishments. This mixed methods research study was conducted to gauge participants’ perceptions and anticipated uses of digital badges. Results of the study indicated that many participants had positive perceptions of the badges, finding them authentic and innovative. Some participants had negative or mediocre perceptions of digital badges, finding them less prestigious than a certificate of completion. Badge appearance may have had an impact on perceived credibility. Participants intended on using their digital badges in a variety of ways, such as sharing on social media and job searches. Many found the badges motivating and persevered to complete a program; however, they did not do this solely to earn a badge.