Editorial

Whilst there is debate about the purpose and function of higher education, what is uncontested is that whatever the backgrounds and experiences that our students come in with prior to enrolling in either an undergraduate or postgraduate degree course, the majority of those leaving university will find themselves in the workplace after graduation. This naturally raises the thorny issue of to what extent, or in what ways, should or do we provide ‘training’ within what we consider to be ‘education’. In most if not all disciplines there has to be a certain amount of training, of course. What immediately springs to mind here is the providing of training for future lawyers, doctors and accountants, for example. No one would want to employ a graduate from these disciplines who did not possess the full range of practical skills and abilities associated with these disciplines. And, more importantly, no client or patient of a lawyer or doctor would want to be seen by someone who is not fully trained. However, inextricably linked within these and all other disciplines is the notion that graduates from universities possess the skills that are often said to be part of ‘graduateness’. Whilst not easy to define or describe, and even less easy to measure, these are the less visible skills such as critical thinking, reasoning, the ability to make effective decisions, using ethical and other judgements, problem solving and similar. Such skills and abilities are needed not only in the workplace but also in the university, which is in many ways little different, as both are organisations of one sort or another. They both involve working alone, but also working with others. Indeed, the human race would have died out long ago if we did not work with others in some way. It is, therefore, always something of a mystery as to why so many claim that we need to ensure that our students work in groups as part of their experience of being at university. Whether we put them into groups or not, they will work with their fellow students, and with us, faculty, one way or another. However, simply putting them into groups, or allowing students to choose their own groups, to work in teams of one size or another, does not necessarily mean that it will be a useful experience for each or all of them, however beneficial or useful such group work can be. As faculty, we ourselves often find ourselves in groups or teams (a committee is a sort of group) and the idea that it is always a positive experience is not always the case. We might well learn something, but that learning can sometimes be a painful experience.

Working in a group or team certainly has its advantages, and there is really no need for anyone to extol the virtues of this, but also to be acknowledged is that there are also some considerable downsides associated with it. So, whilst we will continue to ask students to work in groups or teams, we must be mindful that, when (it is not a matter of ‘if’) it all goes wrong, for some it might go very wrong indeed and we need to not only be aware of this but, where possible, offer suitable support. However, one of the major drawbacks associated with students working in groups or teams is that this is rarely carried out in the classroom, under our watchful eye. Instead, we set them a task to do, and they do it, as a group or team, outside of the classroom, somewhere. It might perhaps be virtual but it is more likely to be face to face, just as it is in the workplace. We therefore cannot see what, precisely, is going on. We can ask them to keep diaries, but this is, simply, a diary. A diary cannot, and does not, confirm that x or y happened (or did not happen). All that it tells us is that whoever wrote something in the diary believes that x or y happened (or did not happen) or wants the reader to believe this. If we then add the issue of awarding marks/grades into the task that we have set them, this can lead to all sorts of behaviours, good and not so good. There is also the issue of what precisely we are awarding marks/grades for. If it is for, say, the report that they write, as an outcome of having worked in a group or team, it is very easy to use our normal marking criteria to it, to exercise our academic judgement in the normal way and have sufficient confidence that, for example, that report merited a mark/grade of, say, 65, a B. If, however, we are going to award a mark/grade for ‘how they worked in a group or team’, their ‘critical thinking’ or their ‘problem solving’ this is very different indeed. If we did not actually see them working in that group or team, and we are relying, solely on, say, a diary, this is little if any evidence of an individual’s personal, individual, contribution or effort. We award degrees to individuals, not to teams or groups, after all, so we cannot, or should not, award a mark/grade of say, 65, a B, to all five or six members of that team or group, because there is no way at all that the performance of all five or six members of the team or group was identical. If we choose to give each of the five or six members of the team or group a different task to do, as a way around this, then we have set them five or six very different tasks, and this then means that we are awarding marks/grades for very different things, which then makes the assessment inequitable, because we cannot design tasks of equal ease or difficulty or which require the use of the very same skills and abilities. All in all, asking our students to collaborate in teams or groups is not without its many problems.

This does not mean that we should not ask them to do it, but it certainly means that we need to take extra special care when we do. The issue of asking students to work in what we hope is a collaborative team (just because we put a group of individuals into a group or team does not necessarily mean that any ‘collaboration’ takes place) is the subject of the first article in this issue. Entitled the ‘Effects of a heedful interrelating intervention on collaborative teams’, its authors Sarah R Daniel and Michelle E Jordan, from Shenandoah University and Arizona State University in the US respectively, report on the benefits of asking our students to work in collaborative groups but focus their attention on what is termed ‘heedful interrelating’, which might be a new or different term for some of us. This, they say, concerns not only giving consideration to the task at hand, the goal in question, writing a report, say, but to each individual paying attention to their own individual actions and, importantly, how others in the team or group might perceive these and how this may or may not affect the functioning of the group or team. They explain that this concerns the in-the-moment interpersonal and intrapersonal processes involved, including how assistance is offered or accepted, how constructive (or not so constructive) feedback is given and taken, being able to see someone else’s viewpoint (or not), how challenges are dealt with and similar. It does not necessarily mean that this makes for a successful group, or a successful product of that collaboration, but it cannot help but improve the behaviours of the participants which in turn may or may not improve the output, the product, that they have been asked to do. The article goes on to say that the manifestations of these interpersonal and intrapersonal aspects involve the three interrelating aspects involved, namely, contributing (what each member offers), representing (what each individual imagines the contributions of the other members of the group to be) and subordinating (putting the needs of the group above the needs or wishes of the individual).

As they rightly say, each of us will have different levels of ability when it comes to this, just as we have different levels of ability when it comes to anything else. Some of us might be brilliant at doing x or awful at doing x. Quite how much we can improve our ability to do x is another matter entirely (a lifetime of training or education in x does not necessarily mean that we become brilliant at x, after all). However, as the authors report, heedful interrelating might not mean a brilliant collaborative experience for each and every member of the group, or a highly successful outcome in terms of a product of some sort, but it can enable things such as sustained innovation and may lessen the risk of catastrophic errors in certain contexts. The authors argue that whilst this heedful interrelating has been studied in the context of the working environment there has been little in the context of higher education, hence the study described. Of note for its rarity, some of the students who participated in the research described received training in how to engage in heedful interrelating. So often we simply put students into groups and provide no hands-on practical, actual training as to how to do x or y in a group, so the fact that this was done, here, is not only rare but also to be highly commended. It does not mean that training, however brilliant, makes those who have undergone such training experts at doing x, but it can certainly go some way towards improving it. Although, for those of us teaching classes with anything upwards of 400 students in one classroom, by no means uncommon in certain disciplines these days, providing such training is not without its considerable difficulties. But, whatever the context we find ourselves teaching in, the findings from this study make for fascinating reading.

Whether in a collaborative context or not, aspects such as anxiety or stereotyping can affect us both in terms of the impact on our mental well being but also in terms of our performance. The second article in this issue looks at stereotype threat and anxiety. As this must exist in every setting where human beings have to be with other human beings, the classroom being one of them, this is an issue for us all, regardless of the particular stereotype in question, whether this is because of our gender, age or anything else. In the study described in the article entitled ‘Stereotype threat, anxiety, instructor gender and underperformance in women’, as the title makes clear, this concerns stereotype threat and anxiety as it pertains to gender. Its authors, Susan Kapitanoff and Carol Pandey, from the American Jewish University and Los Angeles Pierce College in the US respectively, describe at length what stereotype threat is and how having that identity leads us to expect that others will evaluate us negatively on that basis, that is, that those who see these superficial characteristics in us may have certain expectations about our capabilities and/or behaviour. The threat is, they say, to the integrity of our own self image, which leads to harmful consequences such as poor self-esteem, self-imposed isolation, the inability to focus mentally and academic underperformance, thus underpinning the importance of this as a subject, regardless of the context, and is therefore a global issue. The article tells us, rightly, that whatever the stereotype threat, it impacts aspects such as confidence, what careers we go into, our earnings and our influence. Looking at anxiety and performance the article describes how anxiety and stress not only reduces the capacity of our memories but also our thinking, not to mention wasting time and energy doing what they call ‘over efforting’ in a bid to combat it. Stereotype threat is aroused by even very subtle external cues, we are told. A very interesting example is given in that if/when women are asked to state their gender on something after, rather than before, they have carried out a task that is regarded as ‘something that men are better at than women’ it can improve their performance a great deal. Gender may or may not also come into play of course in the classroom in terms of the gender of the instructor, as this article explains. The results and the discussion of these show us, for example, that women more often agreed with the stereotype statement and underperformed more if they had a female rather than a male instructor or, rather, at least on the first assessed task that they were asked to do. Results concerning women with high GPA scores and those who had no opinion are also detailed and they, too, make for very interesting reading indeed, and the authors put forward important implications for us, faculty, whether male or female.

The learning environment in which our students find themselves impacts in some way how they learn, and given that for many of us large or very large class sizes (anything over 300 in one single classroom might be considered as ‘large’) are the norm these days given the expansion of higher education, we are always looking for different ways of helping students to engage with the subject matter both inside and, increasingly, outside the classroom setting. This is not only because of class size, where interaction is, by the nature of the classroom, necessarily more restricted but also because many of our students lead more complicated lives than students from a decade or so ago. So many have to work to fund their studies or to keep their families from a financial perspective, and this can often mean not just a few hours a week but instead near or actual full time work, often done during normal office hours; the very time when, normally, we schedule our classes. However, whether doing part time or full time work or juggling the demands of life outside their studies, a great deal of the time that our students spend is, in fact, outside of the classroom. And, just like within the classroom, support and guidance outside of it also needs to be provided. As faculty, we often set reading or some other activity to be done ahead of the upcoming lecture or seminar, so that students are as fully prepared as they can be. However, as all faculty will recognise, it can be very difficult to get students to do the reading and preparation that we consider essential. As this particular generation of students is so used to using mobile technologies, or any technologies for that matter, it is no surprise that we, faculty, are turning to the various technologies at our disposal to harness their benefits. Whilst we acknowledge their downsides, technology now plays a vital, and growing, role in the learning environment that we, faculty, play a part in creating for our learners. One such technology is the use of screencasts. As the authors of the third issue say, their use is becoming widespread, as is the approach of the flipped classroom in which this sits, and screencasts can be used within the classroom as well as outside of it, but they argue that there is more that we need to do to better understand how students actually use them. In addition, equally or more importantly, whether using screencasts that comprise some kind of immediate feedback might impact their engagement and/or achievement. Entitled ‘Using pre-lecture activities to enhance learner engagement in a large group setting’, its authors Gemma K Kinsella, Catherine Mahon and Seamus Lillis, from the Dublin Institute of Technology, Maynooth University and Lillis and Associates in Ireland respectively, embedded activities such as a multiple choice quiz into a pre-lecture screencast, drawing on evidence from the literature that if students begin the module/course with as much knowledge as is possible they will be in a better position when it comes to learning new(er) subject matter later.

In a large class coming along as well prepared as is possible is, arguably, all the more advantageous given that the opportunities for engagement with fellow students and the lecturer are, by the nature of the large classroom, more restricted than in a very small classroom where it is more conducive to asking questions, to sharing views, to being able to stop and start more frequently as the need arises. In addition, say the authors, the use of pre-lecture activities can reduce the cognitive demands of having to grapple with the learning of new terminology and concepts; trying to do this whilst in the lecture is far more difficult. Their review of the literature describes at length both the advantages and limitations of the use of screencasts but they rightly conclude that just because we, faculty, provide screencasts prior to a particular lecture or lectures it does not necessarily mean that students use them in the way that we think (or hope), particularly in light of evidence that students who find themselves in large classes commit less of their time to pre-class preparation than those in small classes, hence their study. The authors rightly say that pre-lecture screencasts need to be designed in such a way as to be not simply ‘something to read’ but instead which engage students in some kind of activity, such as carrying out a multiple-choice quiz or similar, which is what they asked their students, their participants, to do. Not only is this useful for the learners themselves, as carrying out these activities gives them instant feedback, but it also provides valuable information for us, faculty, too; information that, very often, we just do not have in large classes. Also, more immediately. Because, whilst we might perhaps set some task for students to do, either assessed or not, the time taken to mark it and provide feedback on it is, in a large class, a long time. With immediate feedback given by way of a multiple choice test via a screencast, that feedback to us, faculty, is instant, and we can harness what we find before the upcoming lecture or seminar. The results from their study provide some perhaps surprising insights into how, how often and when the students used the pre-lecture screencasts. As technologies such as this are now becoming more commonplace, and are set to be even more widely used, this study makes for very interesting reading. Developing or enhancing relationships either within or outside the large classroom is not easy, and much of it is not one to one, in contrast with what is explored in the next, the fourth, article comprising this issue. Here, the authors Jenny J Lee, Lydia F Bell and Stephanie Levitt Shaulskiy, from the University of Arizona, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the Ohio State University in the US respectively, look at the relationship between the mentor and mentee in what is, at the moment, a ‘hot topic’ in higher education, namely, service learning.

Entitled ‘Exploring mentor’s perceptions of mentees and the mentoring relationship in a multicultural service learning context’, their article describes, at length, what is meant by ‘service learning’, which is important given that this is a fairly new area. However, it might be summed up as being some kind of activity that not only benefits the student in terms of their own learning (about not only themselves but about others) but also benefits the wider community in some way. Doing voluntary community service for the homeless, say. As the authors rightly note, the activities undertaken have generally been outside of the formal curriculum although there have been calls for greater integration of service learning into the ‘normal’, formal, activities that contribute to their eventual award. The article describes the two, different, foundations which underpin the perceptions that we have of service learning, namely, the philanthropic and civic, and the notions associated with each, both positive and negative, citing literature that says that one is ‘doing for’ and other is ‘doing with’, going on to explain that this means that the former is concerned with perceptions and relationships associated with privilege and charity whereas the latter is more about collaboration and mutuality. As these are fundamentally very different things, it is important that we, as faculty, carefully consider these if we are to consider embedding this into the degree programme itself, as it reflects on the myriad of factors raised in this article, not least of which is privilege, class and inequality in society and how involvement in service learning could, in fact, negatively impact how our graduates think about social inequality or, more importantly, those within any society. The authors argue that given these issues there is a need to further explore the beliefs that students have about the relationships that exist within service learning in order to them to move beyond seeing this as fitting neatly into the two boxes of either ‘philanthropic’ or ‘civic’ given that, in fact, these are not as discrete as they might seem. Their study sought to find out to what extent such beliefs are reflective of philanthropic and civic approaches, both of which are underpinned by the notion of ‘good’, one way or another. Their results tell us that their beliefs spanned a wide range and that they did not always reflect the favourable views of each. For example, some students, who acted as mentors, reported their low opinions of their mentees, and how some mentally disengaged and saw themselves as mere observers rather than participating and thus being involved in any possible change of any kind. If there was any learning, this was of benefit to only the student, not the mentee, so this was not a relationship that benefited both. If students, mentors, have what the authors call adverse beliefs about their mentees in a service learning environment this suggests that we need to be very, very careful as to what kind of service learning is going on, as there is potential for harm not good. Good communication, say the authors, is key here.

Communication is the subject of the fifth and final article comprising this issue, although in a very different setting, namely, by way of technologies such as texting and Facebook or Twitter. Given the pace of change in the mobile social networking arena, by the time this editorial is seen in print it may well be the case that other, newer technologies have taken over, particularly given the fact that as Facebook and similar are now being used by ‘oldies’, teenagers do not want to be seen to be using anything that ‘oldies’ are using and are now turning to technologies that have not yet caught on with their parents or, worse, those even older! In fact, this is no laughing matter as these technologies are, rightly or wrongly, being increasingly associated with poor mental health, in the form of anxieties about their image, what other people will think of them, given that the sharing of both images and viewpoints, including extremely negative ones, is so easily shared. Whether we can link the worsening mental health of our students, most of whom are teenagers when they enter higher education, to such technologies is the subject of debate but, like everything, technology or anything else, it has its downsides. The author of this article entitled ‘Communication technology use and study skills’, Penny Thompson from Oklahoma State University in the US, provides us with some useful statistics confirming how widely such technologies are used by students. Citing literature which goes back some six years (‘a lifetime’, in the world of this kind of technology), students send or receive over 100 text messages a day; this can only have increased since then. The use of social media has also seen a dramatic rise and so it is no surprise that, despite the reluctance of some faculty, we are now harnessing such technologies in the classroom. Or, more accurately, harnessing it to assist our learners in their learning, wherever that learning is taking place. Indeed, as students spend so little of their time in our classrooms, most of that learning must take place outside, not inside, the classroom so the potential for impact of such technologies is, arguably, so much greater. As the author rightly says, such technologies might well not be used for the actual study of a particular subject matter that we want our learners to engage with but their use may increase engagement and motivation per se. The aspect of anonymity, raised in this article, is also pertinent, because in the classroom some students are reluctant to speak, for one reason or another. It might be argued that engagement and motivation, and particularly the need to feel a sense of belonging and to create the learning community that we perceive to be useful, students are at their most vulnerable, and therefore find it particularly difficult to engage when they are new entrants, making the transition from school or wherever to what is, without doubt, an extremely different environment for many.

In many disciplines, on day one of their course, new students, particularly undergraduate ones, find themselves in a classroom of some 300, 500 or perhaps 800 students or more, in a tiered lecture theatre, with their lecturer (at this stage no longer called ‘a teacher’ but instead ‘a lecturer’, itself signalling a perhaps significant change), wondering what, if anything, they should be doing in such a classroom. Because, whilst we all run induction programmes of one sort of another, few induction programmes can suitably prepare any student for ‘the real thing’, however much we try. Before they came to university, their days in school were full, from the time that they came to school to the time that they went home, their classes arranged for them, and it may well be the case that transport was provided for them, too. They usually had their own desk, or at least their own locker for their belongings, and what seemed like a lifetime of friendships forged throughout that time. Their timetable comprised classes pretty much all day, registers were taken, their attendance monitored. Having been through many years of school, they ‘rose through the ranks’, so to speak, and in their final year at school, they were at the very top. Suddenly, at university, their timetable is ‘near blank’ (there are few lectures and seminars), attendance is usually not compulsory and the lecturers are, in a tiered lecture theatre anyway, a dot at the front, barely visible (and, unless the theatre has excellent acoustics and equipment, audible only to those in the first few rows). And, of course, rather than being ‘at the top’, they are now suddenly plunged into the world of being at the very bottom, the beginning, unsure of how, or even if, they will make it through the first year let alone all three or four years. The pressure to ‘get a good degree’ is even greater these days, and students are being asked, before they even get to university, what their ‘career plans’ are for after they graduate. In many countries, the costs of going to university mean that there is a considerable financial investment as well. If they have chosen to attend a university far from home, or in another country, they will find themselves without the comfort of friends and family, so may well feel lonely. It is difficult enough for many to make friends, and sitting in a classroom with around 500 or so other students makes this even more difficult, even for the minority who are socially adept. Whilst students recognise that going to university is an exciting time, a time for wonderful new challenges that have the potential to shape their future lives after graduation, that realisation, for ‘newbies’, is at the same time also a fairly scary one. As anyone who has taught new, incoming first year students will say, or indeed as any new faculty member will say, it is the forging, or not, of relationships that can cause the greatest angst. All the more so in those aged 18 or so, who are still developing their identity, and whose confidence is not what it seems, on the surface.

The use of communication technologies does not in any way ‘solve’ any of the issues, naturally enough, but as such technologies are now part and parcel of everyday life for our students, in all areas of their lives, including being at university, it is the case that we need to better understand how we might use the benefits of communication technologies to (better) support our learners. The article provides a comprehensive overview of the literature concerning what we know about the relationship between in-class use of communication technologies and performance, and also their effect on cognition and learning, both good and bad, although concluding that there have been mixed results, and therefore the picture is not clear as to whether frequent use of communication technologies changes cognitive structures and instils in learners behaviours that might negatively impact two different, although related aspects, namely, ‘studying’ and ‘learning’, arguing that it would be useful to know which specific habits and behaviours are associated with frequent use of communication technologies. Because, as the author rightly says, if we have such knowledge, this might help us, faculty, to identify students at risk of having unproductive study habits which, in turn, would allow us to implement interventions to support them. The article provides evidence from the literature that tells us that not only are study skills, habits and attitudes important for learners but how good or not so good these are predicts how successful students will be in their university courses by the end of them and accounts for the variation in their performance beyond other factors which might impact it. The author says that there are several measures or inventories that are used to find out the study skills, habits and attitudes that our students have but that the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) has proven to be the most useful, for the reasons described, going on to say that this consists of 80 self-report questions that are designed to measure students’ behaviours and attitudes about aspects such as the ability to manage anxious thoughts about academic performance, the ability to focus on a task, the willingness to persist and expend effort on academic tasks and use of organisation and scheduling strategies to manage academic work. The study described in the article asked whether or not frequent users of texting, social network sites and instant messaging have greater difficulty with study strategies than infrequent users. As it might well be the case that our students are, these days, frequent rather than infrequent users if our perceptions reflect the reality, this is an important issue for us all.

The results shed light on aspects such as anxiety and time management but also on the relationship between these and the issue of mnemonics to aid memorisation. The author tells us that, as we know, the use of abbreviations such as ‘ru’ for ‘are you’, are standard in texting, and elsewhere there are many who bemoan this, for various reasons. It was to be expected that students who said that they texted a great deal (with this being considered as over 1000 texts a week) would perform better on tests involving retention but in the study cited and described that this turned out not to be the case. This was about retention rather than learning (the two are related, but different) but it nonetheless raises the issue, says the author, of the role that attention, or more accurately, partial attention, plays in concentration and memory and thus why this was explored in their own study. Indeed, concentration was one of the scales where the finding was significant, and that as this is related to self regulation, it is all the more important that we better understand this, although the author rightly says that the relationships involved here are complex. However, for us all, distractions impact what we do, and this is no less the case with learners and their learning, so the article described also raises the interesting point that, like daydreaming, behaviours and attitudes are affected by distractions and this naturally includes technology-related ones such as texting. Citing a study describing media technology as “irresistible” (few would disagree with that), it is not surprising that there is much more that we need to do in order to better understand the impact of media technology on aspects raised by the author, namely, expectation of success, positive attitude, and grade level, and the article leaves us with something for us to puzzle about. That is, that those who are frequent users of media technology behave in ways that are inconsistent with concentration or that those with poor concentration skills find themselves more likely to gravitate towards such technology. As all of us, faculty or students, have what the author terms ‘unproductive habits and behaviours’ associated with our skills, good or bad, when it comes to concentration, attention and time management, if the frequent use of such technologies make any or all of these worse, well, this is very useful information given that we might then be able to address it in some way. The article concludes with some practical, useful ways in which we might do that in terms of assisting our learners. ‘All’ that we need now is how the ‘unproductive habits and behaviours’ of us, faculty, might also be changed for the better given that we, too, work in an environment that the author says is “filled with seductive digital distractions”!