This edition of IETI has articles from Singapore, Sarawak, Spain, Hong Kong, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, the USA, Finland, the Netherlands and South Africa and, as ever, many articles derive from joint research and practice, partnerships which cross the world. Contributors consider a wide range of topical and ongoing issues and original practices with a focus on Masters students and taught postgraduates, flipped classrooms, in service learning, doctoral thesis acknowledgements, threshold concepts, peer learning and mediated performance. Overlooked cohorts and concepts are a feature of this range of articles.
Lisa Coneyworth and colleagues from the University of Nottingham consider ‘The overlooked cohort? – Improving the taught postgraduate student experience in Higher Education’. They argue that taught postgraduates are an overlooked cohort, and discuss both a new experience survey aiming to capture a holistic view of taught postgraduate student feedback including self-reported challenges and describe the development of a new collaborative support programme in response to student feedback.
Masters students are the subject of work by Kalypso Filippou from the University of Turku, Finland in ‘Identifying Thesis Supervisors’ Attitudes: Indications of Responsiveness in International Master’s Degree Programmes’. She reports on a study of thesis supervisors’ attitudes on initiating discussions on students’ expectations and prior thesis writing experiences in international master’s degree programmes, identifying supportive practices including diagnosing and adjusting supervision, and resisting and relying on students’ initiative.
Considering ‘The effects of acknowledgements in doctoral theses on examiners’, Vijay Kumar and Lara J. Sanderson from the University of Otago, New Zealand, explore whether examiners are influenced by doctoral acknowledgements and note that while some do not read them, those who do could be biased by such acknowledgements. This has pedagogical implications for how doctoral supervisors and doctoral candidates understand and structure acknowledgements to meet the requirements of examiners.
In ‘Bounded – the neglected threshold concept characteristic’ Sarah Barradell, Swinburne University of Technology and Tracy Fortune, La Trobe University, Australia, recover and explore the bounded concept in threshold concepts arguing it frames the unique knowledge of a discipline and reflects its particular world-view and suggesting that ways of thinking and practising may help bring it into focus.
Innovations are the focus of several articles including work on innovative classroom and assessment practices, flipped classrooms, service learning, peer learning and communities of practice.
Flipped classrooms are familiar in our universities but little work has focussed on EFL students in university writing classes. In ‘Tracing EFL students’ flipped classroom journey in a writing class: Lessons from Malaysia’ Rebecca Lee Su Ping from Swinburne University of Technology, Malaysia, and colleagues from Melbourne, Australia, and Singapore Institute of Technology, reveal that while flipped classrooms could lead to boredom and were time consuming, positive experiences in university EFL classes include good use of preparation time, increased practice, engagement, interaction, motivation and immediate feedback during class and a higher level of self-efficacy.
Amber J. Hammons et al. from California State University and US universities in Illinois, Chicago and Indiana consider innovative approaches in the classroom to increase student preparedness to deal with complex contemporary social problems and use a case study in obesity education to focus on ‘Increasing undergraduate interdisciplinary exposure through an interdisciplinary web-based video series’.
In their article ‘A questionnaire to assess students’ beliefs about peer-feedback’, Bart Huisman and colleagues from the Regional Court of Audit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and other Netherlands universities developed a questionnaire which considers (1) peer-feedback as an instructional method, (2) students’ confidence in the quality and helpfulness of the feedback they provide to a peer, (3) their confidence in the quality and helpfulness of the feedback they receive from their peers and (4) the extent to which students regard peer-feedback as an important skill considering the practical insights it may offer higher education teaching staff.
Communities of practice are the focus of the article by Maria Jakovljevic and Adéle Da Veiga from the University of South Africa, ‘An integrated academic community of practice model (ACoPM)’. They report on developing an integrated ACoP model and consider external and internal support structures for innovation through such academic communities of practice. The key findings indicate the crucial role of the ACoP core group management and fundraising as well as overcoming multiple barriers to innovation.
In ’Assessing individual contribution in collaborative learning through self- and peer-assessment in the context of China’, Zhiqiang Ma of Jiangnan University, China; Xuejing Yan and Qiyun Wang, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, look at collaborative learning using self-assessment and peer-assessment (SAPA) and evaluate individual contributions during the process and of the products in a collaborative learning environment in China. Contrary to some beliefs about self and peer assessment, they reveal the SAPA method used helped students divide individual responsibilities more specifically and facilitate group members to perform a fair share of group tasks.
Paul Vinod Khiatani, City University of Hong Kong, and Jacky Ka Kei Liu, University of Calgary, Canada, consider ways of enhancing service learning with ‘Reciprocal learning in service-learning? Measuring bidirectional outcomes of college students and service recipients in tutor-based services in Hong Kong’, investigating bidirectional benefits of college students and their partners in four tutor-based service contexts. Their work shows a reciprocal relationship between college students and their paired service recipients at the end of the service-learning programme, in terms of interpersonal skills and personal responsibility.
Maria Carmen Pérez-López and María Pilar Ibarrondo-Dávila from the University of Granada, Spain, focus on Accounting studies in ‘Key variables for academic performance in university accounting studies. A mediation model’, showing that academic achievement is directly related, positively and significantly, to students’ prior interest in the course, their perceptions of the usefulness of the course, their level of class participation, their prior academic achievement and their age.