Editorial

As regular readers of this journal will know, we aim to offer an eclectic selection of papers written by scholars from around the world. This issue is no different in that we welcome voices from a diverse collection of backgrounds and contexts. The papers in this issue fall into several themes. We continue our focus on the use of technology to enhance teaching in post-secondary education but remind readers that technology is not the only means for innovation. Indeed, our first authors, Hadie, Hassan, Mohd Ismail, Ismail, Talip, and Abdul Rahim, ask us to consider the traditional lecture and the cognitive load experienced by students. They offer guidance in designing lectures that lead to more effective learning.

French takes this argument further in her defence of ‘failing better’. She extorts us to reframe the student experience, particularly in the first year, away form the deficit model to one of development and improvement. Rather than see the early struggles of students new to academic writing as failures we need to support them through the process as they become better writers.

Writing and its role in development continues as a theme in the next paper. Chatterjee-Padmanabhan and Nielsen extol the benefit of a writing group in their case study of two doctoral students who were helped over the final hurdle of their doctorate journey through this experience.

Research is at the centre of two papers on undergraduate students. In the case of Vereijken, van der Rijst, de Beaufort, van Driel and Dekker, first year medical students were asked about their perceptions of research. The authors conclude that educators need to do a better job of integrating research into undergraduate teaching and learning. Voelkel, Mello and Varga-Atkins turn our attention to student research, as they explore the use of video-recorded summaries to aid reflection by students engaged in their own research projects.

Napiersky and Woods discuss self-leadership as used in business, and the correlation of typical behaviours associated with self-leadership and the correlation with grades. The more students exhibit behaviours such as goal setting, self-motivation and self-regulation, the higher their grades.

Park, Lee, and Kim demonstrate that students are receptive to the use of mobile learning provided they can see the benefits and there are not too many barriers in place when trying to access the technology. This is an observation supported and built on by Chiu, Chen, Huang, Liu, Liu, and Shen, as they describe a method for annotating videos. Their project enables students to annotate videos themselves, much as one might annotate a traditional paper text. Wu’s study gives further support for the efficacy of gamification and the use of mobile learning to engage students and help them to learn effectively.

Finally, we have two papers that explore the use of portfolios. The first, by Clarke and Boud, advocates for the use of portfolios in a programme wide approach, rather than limiting the use to final assessment applications. In the second, Deneen, Lumsden Brown and Carless encourage us to consider the use of portfolios as their research indicates that those students who feel positively about the use of e-portofolios tended to achieve higher grades compared with the average.

Celia Popovic
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