Editorial

As the landscape in higher education changes, so too do both beliefs about learning and teaching and also the practices and activities that go with them. Some of these beliefs are based on some misconceptions, such as the misconception that if someone, whether a student or anyone else, is sitting in, say, a classroom, saying and ‘doing nothing’, that no learning is or could be taking place. The word ‘active’ when used in association with learning does not mean that students have to be visibly speaking, moving or doing something physical or practical in order for learning to be taking place. Reflection, contemplation and introspection are essential when it comes to an individual’s thinking. There is no such thing as ‘group thinking’, although there may well be ‘what the group thinks of x or y’ or ‘what the group comes up with as a result of their sharing of their own individual thoughts’, but this is different. Learning is a mental activity not a visibly physical one, it is not something that someone else can see is happening, although it may well be the case that, as we do something practical, something that involves some physical ability of some sort, such as learning to touch type, we are, at the same time, learning. Whilst there are some practical, physical skills and abilities that we need to learn, such as learning to write academic text or carrying out a piece of research as part of a Masters degree, say, even much of those activities require mental processing of one sort or another. The idea that we need to be physically active in order to be able to learn is a misconception, and all the more so when it involves the higher levels of cognitive ability such as reasoning, thinking things through at a deep level and critical thinking. Although, naturally enough, something such as reading can perhaps be regarded as ‘physical activity’ of some sort and it is certainly the case that a great deal of learning is possible via reading. It must be, because we ask our students to do a great deal of it and as academics we, too, do a lot of reading! Much if not all of this we do alone, on our own. We think for ourselves, we process data ourselves, we assimilate knowledge ourselves; no one else can do that thinking, or learning, for us.

Reflection, contemplation and introspection are things that, normally, we do when we are entirely alone, when there is peace and quiet. Some human beings might well be equipped to ‘zone out’, to carry out this reflection, contemplation and introspection when surrounded by others and with a whole lot of background noise going on, but this likely applies to only very few. Human beings are, however, social animals; our very existence depends on our ability to interact with each other, to learn from each other, to come up with ways to deal with the challenges that, as either an individual or as a group or sub-group, we face. Another misconception in higher education is that if we do not make our students work in groups they are somehow going to lack the skills and abilities to interact with other human beings, either whilst at university or in the workplace. The ability to interact with each other, to learn from each other, to come up with ways to deal with the challenges that, as either an individual or as a group or sub-group, we face is inbuilt in us, as human beings. Unless we have been born with a mental condition that does not allow us to interact with others, we are interacting with others all the time, as part of the natural process of living, of working, of learning. We do not need to put students into groups ‘in order to help them to work as a team, as a group’; from the moment a baby is born, the ability to interact with other human beings is not only inherent in us but also essential to our survival.

That said, whilst no human being needs to be taught, formally, how to interact with other human beings, how to deal with the challenges that as either an individual or as a group or sub-group we face, it is certainly the case that there are formalities, conventions, ‘rules and regulations’ around such behaviours in a more formal setting. Behaviours such as whether to shake hands or bow, whether to open a door to someone senior or junior, whether or not to let the chair of a meeting speak ahead of someone else are all things that we have to learn; these are not innate, universal, ‘natural’. Anyone who has travelled to a country that is very different from their own likely knows to their cost that such conventions, if not followed, can cause upset and/or offence. So, for example, in many cultures it is perfectly acceptable to ask someone who you have just been introduced to how old they are or how much they earn. From other cultures, such as my own, this is not socially acceptable at all. So, whilst we do not have to be taught how to interact with other human beings (interacting with other human beings is innate, inbuilt), learning the social conventions that go with certain interactions, the social conventions that are group or culture specific, are those which most definitely need to be learned. The workplace is one such place where all of us need to learn the context-specific behaviours and conventions that apply there, and which may well vary from one workplace to another. The same is the case when we ask our students to work in groups, in teams. Whilst they do not need to learn ‘how to work with other human beings’ (this is innate) they need to learn the norms, the conventions, the behaviours that are and are not acceptable, workable or do-able. Unfortunately, however, unless that collaborative work, that team work, that group work, is done in classrooms where we, the educators, are present throughout, we have little if any opportunity to intervene, to teach, to educate, on the spot. Instead, whilst we do all that we can to explain it all, or to point them to reading all about collaborative work, team work, group work (there is so very much reading matter on this subject, after all), much of this activity is done outside the classroom, when we cannot see what is going on. Asking them to keep a log, or a diary, goes only a very little way to helping us to better understand their interactions, but it is far too little and it does not allow us to make much, if any, intervention along the way, should such be necessary.

Many extol the virtues of such collaborative work by saying that ‘our graduates will need to do this in the workplace, after graduation’. This is likely very much the case. However, social conventions that go with certain interactions, the social conventions that are group or culture specific, are likely very different in the university to those in a workplace, and they vary considerably from one workplace to another, too. It is therefore debateable that working in a group in a university setting can be said to replicate or be close to working in a group in the workplace. That said, we should, and do, ask our students to carry out collaborative work as part of their degree programme, whether undergraduate or postgraduate. However, as the first article attests, it can often be a painful, difficult experience for students, particularly those who are new to being at university. In the first article entitled ‘Group work and the change of obstacles over time: The influence of learning style and group composition‘, its authors Danny Soetanto and Matthew MacDonald raise the ever-complex decision that we, educators, need to make when asking our students to carry out collaborative work, that is, how those groups should be formed. We might perhaps allow students to self-select, or we ourselves might divide up a large class (over 300) into, say, 60 groups of five students, not taking into account any factors at all, that is, to allocate students to groups on a random basis. With a class of 300 or more, this is perhaps all the more likely given the work involved in making a different selection. In the article described here, the students were grouped according to learning styles. Or, rather, some students were placed in groups with those who shared a similar learning style (homogeneous group) and others were placed in a group who had a diverse learning style (heterogeneous group). The aim was to find out whether or not there was any difference in terms of the obstacles faced by each. Of note is that this was over a period of three years and not simply over the course of a short module/unit. As there are, indeed, considerable obstacles involved with asking students to carry out collaborative work, obstacles that have the potential to negatively impact their mental well being to a considerable extent in some cases, however much we extol its virtues, studies such as this into collaborative work are all the more welcome. Their review of the literature first looks at the considerable positive aspects of group work before turning to the issue of whether or not the known obstacles associated with this change over time. The obstacles, the problems, the challenges are many, but as the article tells us, they include dysfunctional groups, communication problems if group members are diverse and come from different backgrounds (or whether they do not, because communication problems can easily arise even if the group seems, on the surface, to comprise people who are ‘the same’), ‘free-riding’ members, the inability to deal with the management of conflict (because, inevitably, it will be a rare group of individuals which does not face conflict of one sort or another) and low (or no) participation.

Some educators seem to believe that merely the formation of groups and the setting of an interesting challenge, associated with marks for some aspect of this, will itself create high motivation, interest and, in turn, full effort and participation in every single member of the group. It will not. For various reasons, perhaps to do with their personal lives beyond the university which we are not necessarily aware of, certain students will just not be able to be as enthusiastic, motivated and similar as others in their group. If, say, a student is caring for a very ill parent or child, or has mental health issues of their own, although there are far more circumstances than these, it is not reasonable to expect such students to be able to turn up to every meeting on time (or at all), or to be as highly motivated or able to contribute as much as their fellow students. In addition, a minority of students will, at some point, either at the beginning, middle or end fall under that proverbial bus and not be able to take any part at all from that point onwards. This clearly affects the work of the others in the group and, somehow, we, educators, have to have a ‘plan B’ when (not ‘if’) this happens, particularly if marks are associated with any activity they have been asked to carry out. As the article rightly tells us, this is about the issue of workload equality, or lack of it, more to the point. There is also the issue of some students being forced to spend more time and effort into overcoming obstacles instead of actually dealing with task that they have been set to do, therefore impacting any learning in a cooperative way. Another not insignificant issue is that of what is known as social comparison, that is, some students can feel intimidated or bullied, or actually be so, feel less talented or less able to perform, and so may not actually perform as well as they might. Demographic factors such as age and ethnicity, we are told, may also impact how (or if) students work together. The authors rightly claim that our misconception about group work is that these obstacles are often seen as static and that they do not change over time, whereas in fact they may well do, as students develop and change over, say, a three-year course/programme, arguing that whilst the literature has focused on identifying the actual obstacles little attention has been devoted to how or in what ways students have experienced these obstacles over time and how or if they might be experienced differently depending on the formation of the group itself. In their review of the literature the authors also explore the positives and negatives associated with either heterogeneous or homogenous groups, groups where students self select and those where they do not, each of which experience obstacles (no grouping is free of obstacles), but different ones. The results and conclusions from this study make for very interesting reading indeed.

The theme of peer and group learning is continued in this editorial, as the second article also looks at the formation of groups, and whether or not, or how, students self sort according to aspects such as gender and academic characteristics. Entitled ‘Likes attract: Students self-sort in a classroom by gender, demography, and academic characteristics’, its authors Scott Freeman, Roddy Theobald, Alison J Crowe and Mary Pat Wenderoth, all from the University of University of Washington in the US, argue that whilst there is much literature that has looked at group work during class sessions and also its effectiveness, there is little if any data on which students are collaborating with which students in their group. We need to know this, they say, because this may shed light on whether students are self-sorting in ways that best support their learning. Explaining the underpinnings of what has led to the growth in asking students to undertake collaborative group work, their article then looks at the complexities involved in the formation, the composition, of groups. Rather than look at collaborative group work done outside the classroom, where arguably most work of this nature is undertaken, they instead look at the situation whereby students are allowed to form their groups, and in a classroom with open seating. Where they choose to sit, they say, has generated studies which show that whilst high-achieving students tend to sit at the front, this may not be the case in a classroom with large numbers and that in any case there is little to no literature on the subject of who students choose to work with. They rightly say that not only might their learning and performance on task be affected by who they work with but also that their sense of belonging and identity, along with other emotional and psychological aspects, may also be impacted. These are arguably even more important than the task and the learning given that these have far wider implications outside of merely studying and learning at university. As in the first article, they discuss issues such as threat due to gender or ethnicity and that not only do these and other factors impact the collaborative work done (or not done) but it affects persistence and retention, too.

Their article looks at the literature which talks about putting students into groups on the basis of their academic ability which, like putting students into groups on any other basis, or doing it purely on a random basis, also has its positive and negative effects, depending on context. They say that the two common approaches used are to put students into groups of like ability (homogenous groups), or to mix students from top, middle, and bottom tiers in heterogeneous groups. They rightly say that given that we are making more use of collaborative work, team work, group work, there is a need to better understand who, in the situation where students are free to sit anywhere, who they choose to work with in a classroom where there are large student numbers, by which they mean well over 500. Their article discusses and also explores by way of their study the issue of homophily, that is, that we tend to associate with, and thus network and/or work with, others who are similar to ourselves, although we have yet to find out whether or not this happens when students self-select in the classroom, in this case, in a classroom where there are large student numbers. Their article concludes by saying that the literature points to a particular collaboration as being optimal, that is, one that is free of aspects such as bias based on, say, gender, ethnicity, or language fluency. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as either a ‘perfect classroom’ or a ‘perfect society’ for that matter, and such is human behaviour that there never will be. Nonetheless, we, educators, can do what anyone else does, whether within or outside the university setting, and that is to see what we can do to design suitable interventions and, as the authors rightly say, to work towards both minimising any of the known negatives whilst at the same time helping to foster behaviours that maximise successful collaboration because, as they rightly conclude, “free, spirited, and respectful interchange of ideas is prized”, regardless of the context, a classroom or any other, or culture/country.

The exchange of ideas, however these might be conveyed, underpins the subject matter of the third article in this issue, in this case, via feedback given to students. As there is likely now no department or institution which does not use a blended learning environment of some sort, it is important to look at how feedback is dealt with online, and so it is good to see that this article looks not only at staff-to-student feedback in class and peer-to-peer feedback in class but also at peer-to-peer feedback online. Entitled ‘Enhancing feedback in higher education: students’ attitudes towards online and in class formative assessment feedback models’, the author of this study, Josh McCarthy, from The University of South Australia, looks at all three ways of providing feedback on work that is formative in nature. The article describes the benefits of formative assessment for students, and also for educators, although in class sizes of over 500 and the time associated with the marking of all of this, if not multiple-choice quizzes or similar where this might be done automatically, electronically, means that it is unlikely that, as claimed, educators can address any problems ‘immediately’ that our students are facing, particularly if, as here, feedback takes the form of detailed, written feedback on their work. As work is formative, and there are no marks/grades associated with it, there is also the issue of whether or not students choose to do it. It is claimed that, these days, students are for the most part only interested in doing work if, at the end of it, that work attracts a mark/grade. However, whether formative or summative, no one can or would disagree that feedback on performance is of critical importance, and it goes without saying that it should not only be of high quality but also returned to students in a timely manner, as this article attests. However, if educators are marking many hundreds of scripts, it cannot but take far longer to return such feedback, whatever the quality, within a far longer timescale than is the case in small or very small classes, which means that there are particular logistical difficulties for educators teaching large classes and, perhaps, students who are less happy in classes or in disciplines where this is the norm. All of this impacts on the scores that students give for the teaching quality of their department and/or university, which in turn may impact scores in national surveys about teaching quality, which are becoming increasingly more important as the higher education landscape changes, regardless of country. Nonetheless, regardless of the practicalities, this article describes at length the value and benefits of feedback, despite the fact that students often feel that they get it either too late or that the nature of the feedback is not helpful in the various ways described. Peer feedback, not peer assessment, is also described at length here, and whilst it has many advantages it, too, also suffers from disadvantages, in common with anything else, naturally enough. However, it is yet another useful approach, as the article attests.

As we are now all working in a blended learning environment, it is timely that the issue of formative feedback is explored at length in this article via the technology at our disposal, whether via what is called a more formal, structured learning environment, a learning management system such as Blackboard, say, or via more informal networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, now ubiquitous in the sector, the latter of which have particular, additional, benefits that cannot be found in the former, we are told. Described in the article is the use of a particular learning application within Facebook, namely, ‘the Café’ which, as its name suggests, offers a space in which to not only discuss whatever students want to discuss about their learning, assessment or anything else but it also has things such as a virtual ‘pinboard’, a ‘gallery’ and other features which facilitate interaction. As this technology is fairly new, and therefore few of us have used it, it is very good to see that this article describes a study which looks at the affordances but also limitations of face-to-face staff to student feedback, face-to-face peer feedback and online peer feedback. The results and subsequent discussion make for very interesting reading, not least given what was found about different attitudes and use by two cohorts, namely, local students and international ones. As international students are significant in terms of their numbers in some disciplines and institutions, this is an important aspect to consider in the blended learning environment. However, whether local or international, as the article attests, getting feedback to students via this means, particularly for those teaching large classes, is valuable in very many ways and it should therefore be encouraged. The issue of engaging with others underpins the fourth article in this issue, although this is in the context of physical, not virtual, attendance in class. The issue of attendance is one that creates a lot of debate amongst academics, and not a little disagreement it has to be said. The disagreement, the debate, seems to hinge on whether we are talking about ‘attendance’ or ‘engagement’. Students can attend a class, or academics can attend a meeting, and it is uncontested that they attended. Whether or not they engaged, whether or not they were present from a mental perspective, is a very different thing. We are, or should be, interested only in engagement, in learning, and not in actually being physical present in a classroom. That said, a classroom is an environment where learning may well take place (although this can in no way be guaranteed, however brilliant the educator) and so we do all that we can to encourage it, naturally enough.

However, this article looks not at the learning of a particular subject matter but instead at how attendance may or may foster aspects of human behaviour that are beyond the classroom, that is, the regard for human values. Entitled ‘Does attending classes help foster human values in college students?’, the article tells us that attendance at classes often means that students have to understand not only themselves but also the perspectives of others when interacting with their fellow human beings and that whilst the literature has focused much if not all of its attention on the issue of attendance from the learning and performance side it has not explored the value of actually being in the classroom in terms of the possible impact of this on the human values that this may or may not foster in students, our future graduates. Its author, Reena Cheruvalath, from BITS Pilani KK in India, describes in the article how whilst we as individuals get our values from our family, the community and similar, experiences at university also help to shape our views and perceptions of both ourselves and others and also the wider environment beyond, including aspects such as what does and what does not constitute appropriate moral or ethical behaviour, which are currently very ‘hot’ topics not only in universities but in workplaces more generally, so this article is timely. The article ends with the plea that whilst technology now means that face to face interaction is perhaps now only minimal in our classrooms we are still tasked with ensuring that, whether as an educator, student or anyone else, that we do not lose sight of the need to foster in ourselves and in others human values such as self-efficacy, non-discrimination, respecting the views of others and for the environment, caring for the well-being of others, loyalty, good manners, politeness, altruism and similar. No one can or would disagree with that. Facilitating engagement in the classroom is a theme continued in the fifth article, and it looks at this with the technology available to us to do so, in this case, clickers. As the authors Jian-Jie Dong, Wu-Yuin Hwang, Rustam Shadiev and Ginn-Yein Chen, the first two who are from The National Central University, Taiwan, the third from Nanjing Normal University in China and the last from the National Chiayi University in Taiwan tell us, for those of us teaching large classes, or even in smaller classes, it is a difficult task to know whether or not our learners are following what is going on or when or whether any intervention is needed at any particular point during a lecture. Clickers are therefore a very useful tool at our disposal, as the article tells us, because as lectures are still the most common way in which we deal with our subject matter, if we go too fast, or too slow, or anything else, we may lose our learners one way or another, either by a lack of engagement within the classroom or indeed by them leaving at some point or by not attending at all.

The article provides an overview of the very interesting work of Schlechty, who proposed five levels of engagement, namely, authentic engagement, ritual compliance, passive compliance, retreatism and rebellion. From this it seems that most of our classrooms could be described as being compliant, that is, everyone is doing what they should be doing, from the perspective of an onlooker, anyway. However, as the article tells us, whilst it would be easy to infer that learning is taking place, it may well be the case that no learning is taking place at all, despite our best efforts. However, as the authors say, working out when there is retreatism in the classroom and therefore the need to pause during the course of a lecture is not as easy as it might seem and it is here that instant response systems (IRSs) or clickers as they are more generally known come into their own, and the article describes at length how they can be used to good effect. The article reports that the use of such systems can increase attendance, motivation and attention levels and, of note here, the engagement of the more reluctant students, those who, for various reasons, are not keen to voice their opinions or who are hesitant to ask questions out loud (there are likely far more of these than we might think). Whilst no human being can be pigeonholed as being entirely extrovert or introvert, it is nonetheless the case that we are somewhere along such a continuum between being an extrovert and an introvert and that clickers are useful when students feel that they cannot follow what is being said by the lecturer, they need time to pause and reflect or whatever. As the current design of clickers does not allow students to request a pause or pauses during the lecture (that is, to alert the lecturer that some kind of engagement is needed at that particular point), the authors designed their own system to enable the students to do this, and report on its use. The authors proposed when an optimal decision boundary for pausing the lecture is reached, that is, how many students need to have pressed the ‘pause’ button in order for this to tell the lecturer that a pause was warranted. The results shed light on not only when the students pressed the ‘pause’ button and the factors that influenced their willingness to do so, in particular the role that the perceptions that students have of the lecturer in terms of their strengths or otherwise as a leader, someone who they could have confidence in, but also the differences between those who rated themselves as either extrovert or introvert.

Until smartphones came along, clickers were pretty big bits of equipment that normally had to be taken along to the classroom and given out to students and then collected in again at the end, until such time as some institutions built them into the classroom in some way, although this was uncommon. No wonder, then, that those of us teaching large classes did not use them as the time taken to hand out and then collect them all back in again at end, even if it were possible to do it alone, would probably be longer than the time taken to actually give a lecture! But, with smartphones, and also tablets, these can be used as clickers. Indeed, it is not uncommon for lecturers to be using smartphones and tablets for the purpose of, say, carrying out a survey in class, or for a tablet to be used as a kind of digital whiteboard. As in the previous article, the sixth and final article comprising this issue also discusses the problems associated with the ‘traditional’ lecture, namely, low motivation, minimal contact between teachers and students, and low student involvement with the material. Its authors, Javier Remón, Víctor Sebastián, Enrique Romero and Jesús Arauzo, all from the University of Zaragoza in Spain, also cite the issue of the reluctance of many students to ask questions or to voice their opinions in class, regardless of class size. Entitled ‘Effect of using smartphones as clickers and tablets as digital whiteboards on students’ engagement and learning’ their article rightly says that the internet and what is called ‘personal hardware’ such as smartphones and tablets have changed, fundamentally, the ways in which today’s generation interacts with their fellow human beings outside the classroom. This therefore means that we, within the classroom, need to use them too if we are assist students in their learning and foster their engagement. Some academic members of staff may be reluctant to do, or even dead against it, but whatever our personal views, this technology is here to stay, and the sooner we adapt the better, even if learning how to do so is both a little painful and not a little daunting. These kinds of technologies are themselves changing all the time, so it is far from easy, naturally enough, but the study described here shows us the potential that such technologies have if we use them in the right way. The article goes on to say that whilst we are all now using presentation graphics software such as PowerPoint, there is overuse and misuse too (we are likely all guilty of that) and that so doing is detrimental both to learning but also to interest and motivation, amongst other things. The same can be said, the article informs us, for interactive whiteboards whereas tablets, on the other hand, offer particular advantages over both.

Describing the findings about the use of clickers, the authors then bring us up to date with the advanced technologies at our disposal, including smartphones and tablets, in what they say can be termed either ‘mobile learning’, ‘m-learning’ or ‘ubiquitous learning’. Whatever the terminology, the study described in the article looks at the effects of teaching using different resources based on digital tools, namely, traditional presentation graphics software (PowerPoint) and the tablet, and the use of tablets and mobiles from the perspective of assessing the learning process and student engagement. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, the results show that students are very receptive to the use of interactive technologies and that ‘traditional methods’ led to the lowest participation, for the reasons outlined in other studies. As the authors rightly point out, smartphones and tablets create a more comfortable and relaxing atmosphere and, for the incoming generation of students, a very familiar one; one to which the word ‘addictive’ has been applied, in the popular press. Just like the use of smartphones and tablets outside of the classroom, the use of such technologies means that nervousness and the fear of looking like a bit of an idiot can be reduced or even eliminated given the anonymity provided, although this is of course a double edged sword in some ways, as incidences of cyber bullying and worse tell us, but the technology exists and so it is up to us all to minimise, as far as it is possible to do so, the risks and the negatives associated with it. Returning to the matter of learning itself, the results show what effect, if any, the use of these technologies had on the marks/grades achieved by students in their end-of-course tests and examinations, leading the authors to conclude, along with many others before them, that “it is now time for teachers to abandon the old-fashioned transparencies, blackboards and hand raising questions and make the most of these new technologies”. Yes, as we move on, technology-wise, as for our students, we are all constantly learning something, one way or another. Whilst change can sometimes make things worse, it is certainly the case that if things do not change, there can be no progress.