Peer mentoring works! How peer mentoring enhances student success in Higher Education:evaluation toolkit

This toolkit, published by the HEA, provides colleagues across the Sector with the practical and methodological tools to empirically evaluate peer mentoring and tutoring. This evaluation kit provides two data collection tools that may be adopted and adapted to meet institutional requirements. The first of these is a survey, developed out of the original survey used in the Peer Mentoring Works Project. Some questions have been added as a result of reflexive application of colleagues and students input as the project has progressed. The second part of the toolkit comprises a qualitative interview guide. This guide is similar to the one used in the research, but again it has been further developed as a result of the project. It may be adapted for use in focus groups or one-to-one interviews. The final document within the kit is a sample consent form.

Critical writing in higher education:an empirical strategy

A critical discussion of the issues around academic writing

Peer mentoring in higher education:a literature review

A review of the literature in the area of peer mentoring.

Multiple criteria decision-making techniques in higher education

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review the literature which focuses on four major higher education decision problems. These are: resource allocation; performance measurement; budgeting; and scheduling. Design/methodology/approach: Related articles appearing in the international journals from 1996 to 2005 are gathered and analyzed so that the following three questions can be answered: "What kind of decision problems were paid most attention to?"; "Were the multiple criteria decision-making techniques prevalently adopted?"; and "What are the inadequacies of these approaches?" Findings: Based on the inadequacies, some improvements and possible future work are recommended, and a comprehensive resource allocation model is developed taking account of these factors. Finally, a new knowledge-based goal programming technique which integrates some operations of analytic hierarchy process is proposed to tackle the model intelligently. Originality/value: Higher education has faced the problem of budget cuts or constrained budgets for the past 30 years. Managing the process of the higher education system is, therefore, a crucial and urgent task for the decision makers of universities in order to improve their performance or competitiveness. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Involving the family in higher education:do they really matter?

In an ever-changing higher education (HE) environment, institutions are seeing the involvement of parents in students' education increasing. This may partly be due to tuition fees and the introduction of deferred variable tuition fees ("top-up fees") from 2006, and also because of the increased number of students choosing to remain in the family home for the duration of their studies. Many students see their families as the most important source of motivation and advice right through from school age to when they make decisions about HE. In the light of this increase in involvement, institutions need to provide information about, and access to, university to ensure that families are fully prepared and able to support their children throughout the university experience. In recognition of the vital role parents play, the Involving the Family project focuses on parents or key family members from groups currently under-represented in HE in order to increase their awareness and understanding of HE. This article evaluates research undertaken to investigate the views, perceptions and key concerns held by minority ethnic parents with regards to their children and participation in HE. The article then details how these results were utilised in the development of the Involving the Family project.

Is Bologna working? Employer and graduate reflections of the quality, value and relevance of business and management education in four European Union countries

This article focuses on the relevance of undergraduate business and management higher education from the perspectives of recent graduates and graduate employers in four European countries. Drawing upon the findings of an empirical qualitative study in which data was collated and analysed using grounded theory research techniques, the paper draws attention to graduates' and employers' perceptions of the value of higher education in equipping students with discipline-specific skills and knowledge as well as softer 'generic' skills. It also highlights the importance of formal 'work-based' learning within undergraduate curricula in providing students with the skills and experiences required by employers operating within a global workplace. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Who is really in charge of contemporary education? People and technologies in, against and beyond the neoliberal university

This article reflects on the position of people in, against and beyond information and communication technologies. Firstly, using Jandrić and Kuzmanić’s work on digital postcolonialism, Raymond Williams's work on residual and emergent cultures, and Deleuze and Guattari's insights into the dynamics between territorialization, de-territorialization and re-territorialization, it develops a theoretical framework for inquiry into the hybrid identity of the contemporary university. Then, through critical discourse analysis (CDA), the article moves on to analyse the ways in which technology discourse resides in the dominating ideology of technological determinism and co-opts with neoliberal agendas by omitting humans from explicit mention in UK policy documents. It shows that true counter-hegemonic practice against dominating social practices is possible only through reinvigorating the central position of human beings in regards to information and communication technologies. Within the developed theoretical framework, it seeks openings to intervene subversively into current relationships between technologies, people, and (higher) education, and to identify opportunities for building a non-determinist identity of the contemporary university that reaches beyond the single-minded logic of techno-scientific development. In the process, it situates Paulo Freire's insights into critical pedagogy in the context of the network society, and places the relationships between human beings, language and information and communication technologies amongst central questions of today's (higher) education and society at large.

What can higher education contribute to improving social mobility in the UK?

At a time when the UK may slowly be emerging out of what, for many in higher education, has been a period of ‘unprecedented change’ (Universities UK, 2012) in which institutions have found themselves having to balance increases in student expectations and demands against decreases in funding and resources, this special edition focuses on an issue that is becoming ever-more important – that of the relationship between social mobility and higher education. Drawing upon the findings of the Higher Education Academy’s March 2013 Conference: What can higher education contribute to improving social mobility in the UK?, the six papers gathered here give between them a clear indication of the proactive and synergetic manner in which the sector is responding to the resource and funding challenges which it currently faces.

Professionalism in higher education:important not only for lawyers

This article considers how, in light of the changing legal profession and higher education, academia could address professionalism training. The authors put forward an argument that, if professionalism is to be understood as a set of skills, values and attitudes required for any lawyer, it is now a good time to consider how these could be taught and assessed in law and non-law degrees. The formation of professional values and attitudes is a long process that continues throughout a person’s life. The earlier students are exposed to professional values, attitudes and skills, the better the quality of service these future lawyers will provide to the public. Taking into account the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) recommendations, the article suggests some practical ways as to how professionalism could be developed in higher education.

Distance Learning Education of Software Engineering: Principles and Experiences

Whether distance learning spells the end of traditional campuses, as some maintain, or whether distance learning instead represents a powerful addition to a growing array of delivery options for higher education, its impact on higher education is great and growing. Distance learning is creating alternative models of teaching and learning, new job descriptions for faculty, and new types of higher education providers. The advent of Distance and Distributed Learning has raised numerous questions about quality and quality assurance: ² How do established distance learning institutions ensure quality? ² What more needs to be done? ² How do quality assurance agencies view the distinction between on- and off-campus teaching and learning? This talk discusses these issues from the viewpoints of funding organisa- tion, quality assurance agencies and the learners.

Sustainability in higher education:stories and strategies for transformation

Book review of Peggy F. Bartlett and Geoffrey W. Chase (eds.), Sustainability in Higher Education: Stories and Strategies for Transformation

Assessing learning in Higher Education

Assessing Learning in Higher Education addresses what is probably the most time-consuming part of the work of staff in higher education, and something to the complexity of which many of the recent developments in higher education have added. Getting assessment ‘right’– that is, designing and implementing appropriate models and methods, can determine the future lives and careers of students. But, as Professor Phil Race comments in his excellent and thought-provoking foreword, students entering higher education often have little idea about how exactly assessment will work, and often find that the process is very different from anything they have previously encountered. Assessing Learning in Higher Education contains innovative approaches to assessment drawn from many different cultures and disciplines. The chapter authors argue the need for changing assessment and feedback processes so that they embrace online collaboration and discussion between students as well as between ‘students’ and ‘faculty’. The chapters demonstrate that at some points there is a need to be able to measure individual achievement, and to do this in ways that are valid, transparent, authentic – and above all fair. Assessment and feedback processes need to ensure that students are well prepared for this individual assessment, but also to take account of collaboration and interaction. The respective chapters of Assessing Learning in Higher Education all of which are complete in themselves, but with very useful links to ideas in other chapters, provide numerous illustrations of how this can be achieved.

An enhanced Servqual approach to measure service quality in higher education

This paper explores the factors of service quality in higher education and how they contribute to the overall satisfaction and behavioral intentions of students. Our research has three facets. The first is a conceptual issue: using different instrument for the measurement of academic and administrative quality as opposed to an overall assessment of quality. The second is a measurement issue: measuring directly disconfirmation instead of separately measuring perception and expectation. The third issue concerns the concept of minimum service quality level versus an ideal one (zone of tolerance), and their inferences with the disconfirmation concept.

Central European Higher Education Cooperation Conference Proceedings

This volume comprises of selected papers that were originally presented at the first Central European Higher Education Cooperation (CEHEC) conference held in Budapest from 28-29 January 2015. The CEHEC was the first of a series of conferences organized at the initiative of the Center of International Higher Education Studies (CIHES) at Corvinus University of Budapest and Central European University (CEU), in collaboration with partners from the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia.