Editorial

It goes without saying that, for various reasons, changes in higher education have been fundamental and far-reaching. Whatever our context, all of us recognise that learner-centredness is, or should be, at the heart of all that we do. These days, we do all that we can to ensure that as much time in the classroom is spent on activities that engage learners as much as we are able to. Or, more accurately given that in some contexts students are not physically in a classroom but instead learning, engaging, elsewhere, that we design the learning environment, whether an actual classroom or not, with this in mind. While it is probably still the norm that lectures form the majority of teaching activity in classrooms, particularly where class sizes are, say, anything upwards of 300 or so (there are a lot of these in the sector, regardless of country or context), even in such a learning environment there is much that we can do to make things more dynamic, more interactive. Activities such as discussions in groups, working in teams, carrying out practical activities of one sort or another mean that less if any time is spent lecturing. Activities such as these fall under the umbrella terms of collaborative, problem-based or cooperative learning. It is far more difficult to do activities associated with this in a class of 730 rather than in a class of 30 (those teaching such small classes should be able to do these pretty much all the time) but it is possible, even if not in the same way or as extensively. However, it is vitally important to realise that just because students are either speaking, moving or actually doing something other than sitting silently, it does not mean ‘better learning is taking place’. Or, indeed, that any learning is taking place. Yes, students may be interacting, physically, in the classroom or online, but just because students or any other human beings are moving about in a room or speaking or doing something online does not mean ‘learning is taking place’. Indeed, learning is a social activity, that is, we learn from other human beings. However, this does not mean that we need to be working in groups, in teams, talking, doing something other than sitting in silence. There is no clearer evidence that a human being can learn something than the fact that we can learn something from sitting, silently, alone, in a room, reading a journal article or a book. The fundamental aspect of learning is that learning is done by an individual. That individual does not have to be in a room with other human beings for all learning to take place or for that learning to be ‘better’.

Our classrooms are environments that we design in such a way as to best foster engagement, to support students in their learning. While the space itself is fixed (if, say, you have to run lectures in a large lecture theatre designed to seat 500 students sitting in fixed seats in rows, then there is nothing that anyone can do to change that), what goes on in that classroom is more open to different possibilities in terms of the activities that we can design and get students to participate in. Given that we are now far more likely to be designing activities more associated with collaborative, problem-based or cooperative learning, it is important to explore, more closely, the impact that the design of the classroom has (or does not have) on the achievements of learners. This is the subject matter of the first article comprising this issue. Titled ‘Do interactive learning spaces increase student achievement? A comparison of classroom context’, its author, Mary Lou Vercellotti, from Ball State University in the United States, explores the relationship between two, different, classroom contexts and their impact, if any, on the performances of learners as measured by the marks/grades achieved at the end of the module/course. The two different learning spaces are the ‘traditional’ one and the ‘interactive’ one. Of note in this study is that while the students had to enrol for this particular module/course, they were not told, at enrolment, which classroom context they would have. The same lecturer taught in the same way, teaching the same content, in both. This involved reading some materials before coming to class and while in class, most classes involved assessment in the form of multiple choice quizzes. Most of the time spent in class was carried out via small group work and whole class discussions. The article provides an extensive overview of the literature on what are termed ‘learning spaces’. This may be activities more associated with what goes on in the ‘traditional’ classroom, lectures, say, or those more associated with collaborative, problem-based or cooperative learning. Of interest at the time of writing is the ‘flipped’ classroom. This is explained at length in the article but is summarised here as asking learners to do the learning of the content, the subject matter, in their own, non-classroom time, and to then come along to class ready and prepared in order to carry out the problem-solving activities, the activities associated with the application of that subject matter in some way. There is, however, a variation of this, as is explained in the article, namely, the ‘scrambled’ course design. While the mix of activities is the same as in the ‘traditional’ and the ‘flipped’, in a ‘scrambled’ course the lecturer does not set out, in advance, what activities they will be and when they will happen but instead decides and plans each class as it goes along. The article looks at what differences, if any, there might be between the two classroom contexts and, unusually, measures were taken not only at the end but also before the start, which is to be commended. It was hypothesised that there would be no difference in the performance at the end given that both groups were taught by the same lecturer and the same materials and approach were used. Some years ago, when the use of technology took off in such a major way, there were concerns expressed that attendance, in an actual classroom, would drop considerably, perhaps even to them not attending at all. This article makes for interesting reading on what is perceived to be ‘successful’ student behaviour, including aspects such as rapport and satisfaction.

Given that the ‘flipped’ classroom is fast becoming an approach that many are using, it is perhaps not unsurprising that this is something explored in the second article comprising this issue. Its authors, Thamar M. Heijstra and Margrét Sigrún Sigurðardóttir, from the University of Iceland in Iceland, look at this from the perspective of the use of the recorded lectures that are provided. While recording lectures and making these available to students is, now, common, standard in the sector, whether we use a ‘flipped’ approach or any other, it is nonetheless important to look at their use in the ‘flipped’ one given that there may be approach-specific differences. Titled ‘The flipped classroom: Does viewing the recordings matter?’, the article looks at the viewing patterns of students who have been learning in a ‘flipped’ classroom, looking at whether or not there was an increase or a decrease in the viewings as the course progressed, for example. As most if not all of us make recorded lectures available to our students, this study has possible implications for us all, whether we use the ‘flipped’ approach or not. As the authors rightly say, learning styles are in part dependent on the learning environment that we, lecturers, help to create and so we need to better understand students’ attitudes towards the learning environment if we are to design one which best supports their learning. It goes without saying that the ‘flipped’ classroom is certainly a major change to the learning environment, as is acknowledged and described in the article. While it provides for greater flexibility, which seems like an advantage, flexibility might come at a price. That is, by allowing students to use the materials we provide, such as videos, in their own time and at a pace that suits each individual learner, it is not necessarily the case that this will lead to a better performance as measured by their mark/grade at the end of the course. The study described here looks at the patterns in terms of viewing the recordings and the impact of this on the mark/grade. As detailed in the discussion, there was not a insubstantial difference in the performance, and it sheds light on the importance of the engagement or otherwise that our students have with the out-of-class activities that we provide, such as recorded lectures. The results also tell us when, during the course, students are more likely to watch the recordings and also whether there are any differences in terms of gender or age. As the authors suggest, this has implications for us in terms of whether we place what we consider to be the ‘more important’ lectures at or towards the beginning, or at or towards the end, of the course given the possible impact of this on their approach to learning. The behaviours that students use in dealing with out-of-class activities, whether related to the demands of their studies or those outside the university such as family and work, are also the subject of the third article. Titled ‘Adjustment-seeking behaviour: the role of political skill and self-efficacy in training students to be more actively engaged in their studies’, as the title makes clear, this study is about how students deal with the conflicts that can arise when trying to balance the sometimes competing demands of studying and non-studying activities.

All universities, regardless of context or country, have students who, at one time or another, or perhaps throughout their studies, will need, say, extra time/an extension for a piece of coursework or to make a request to submit do an assessment perhaps in a different way or at a different time, that is, to request an adjustment of some sort. Its author, Paul D Geyer, from Keiser University in the United States, says that this normally means that the student has to make a personal request to the marker, the lecturer responsible for the module, to make such a request. This, says the author, falls into the category of coping behaviour, that is, where a student or anyone else has to not only identify their resources and needs but also has to involve someone else, a lecturer say, to help them to move forward with a view to helping them to best deal with the issue or issues, going on to say that there are four types of coping, namely, proactive, anticipatory, preventive and reactive. Examples of each are given, and all of us have met students who, for example, have either requested a change to a mark/grade due to their performance having been considered to have been impaired in some way by circumstances beyond their control such as bereavement or illness or requested extra time to complete coursework due to such reasons. We, ourselves, may well face such circumstances and, while we do not have coursework to submit, we nonetheless might wish to request some time off or some adjustment to our teaching commitments, for example. Whether a student or a faculty member, one way or another, a request has to be made. Depending on the university in question, this request might be made more ‘remotely’, that is, a student submits their request online (e.g. ‘I’d like an extra week to do my coursework for module AB1234’), to a centrally managed university computer system, making their request and also supplying any documentary evidence to support the claim. A panel or committee comprising faculty members looks at the request and the evidence, and the decision (‘yes, your circumstances and documentary evidence justify an extra week’ or ‘no, sorry, because …’) is conveyed to the student in the same manner, that is, via a response from the centrally managed university computer system. While seemingly impersonal (it all goes through a computer system), it has its advantages for the student that are made apparent when compared to what is described in this article, that is, when students have to make that request face to face to a lecturer.

This, says the author, falls into the category of coping behaviour, that is, where a student or anyone else has to not only identify their resources and needs but also has to involve someone else, a lecturer say, with a view to helping them to best deal with the issue or issues, going on to say that there are four types of coping, namely, proactive, anticipatory, preventive and reactive. Examples of each are given. As the author eloquently explains at length, this necessitates the student drawing on their powers to influence and persuade, and as there is always a power imbalance (we, lecturers, hold that power and exercise our authority in some way), this is by no means easy, for either the student or the lecturer, in so many ways. It is difficult to know where to begin in terms of describing the difficulties associated with asking a lecturer to deal with this, but as a start there is having to hear about sometimes very personal circumstances for which most are ill equipped and/or not appropriately trained to respond appropriately to (e.g. students with severe mental illness, or someone who has just lost a baby, or someone who has been raped), what a particular circumstance merits in terms of the length of a particular extension (a few days, a week, longer?) and whether or not it is even something for which an extension is the ‘right’ response (it might instead be the kind of circumstance where, in fact, a period of abeyance might be better). If we delegate this to individual lecturers, even if sufficient training and support is given (it rarely is), then such a process inevitably means that different lecturers make different decisions – even if the circumstances are exactly the same. This creates inequity of treatment, which is never a good thing. The author says that, in some contexts, it may be the case that a single parent may need to seek approval to arrive late to a class, again with that request being made to an individual lecturer, or, rather, to more than one lecturer because if they are going to be late to one class, it is likely that they are going to be late to others, too. If they have been raped/suffered some other tragedy of some sort, to reveal this not just to one academic member of staff but to do so with the other lecturers from whom they will need extensions. This raises the crucial matter of confidentiality and what, precisely, we demand that students reveal, and to whom they are obliged to reveal it. In the above process, this says, ‘all of your personal circumstances, of any nature, are to be revealed to any or all academic members of staff (if you want them to consider any such requests)’.

If we ourselves had faced such circumstances, and we had to arrange cover for, say, four lectures from four different colleagues, we would not be asked to go around to each member of staff who was covering for us and say, ‘I’ve been raped/I’ve had a cancer scare, so can I please request that you cover for me’. Our circumstances would remain confidential (to our line manager, alone). We, like our students, are adults, and we are all entitled to have our personal circumstances treated as confidential. Even a student being a single parent (this is used as an example in this study) is personal information that should not need to be disclosed to academic members of staff. Unless, of course, we are happy to reveal our personal circumstances to anyone that we choose (note, choose). But, in the above process, students have no choice but to reveal this if they want an extension or whatever they are requesting. These lecturers are going to be marking their work, later. This raises the issue of bias and/or prejudice. While it is easy to say ‘academic members of staff are never biased or prejudiced’, this is simply not the case; whether we work in a university or anywhere else, bias and/or prejudice exists. We need to do all that we can to reduce it. Requiring students to reveal aspects of their personal lives which may, perhaps, negatively affect the perceptions that the lecturers may have of them increases that risk. The author says that ‘it would be nice if the “darker” side of student/instructor relations (fears of coercion and manipulation) could be minimised and the “brighter” side (use of skills) encouraged. And it would be nice if more students felt confident in seeking adjustments rather than avoiding doing so’, and no one would disagree with that. However, it is difficult to see how confidence and the number of requests could increase if the system in place to deal with them relies on students having to ask those whose task it is to award marks to the work of those very same students. As the author rightly says, at a time when students are perhaps at their most vulnerable, ‘the student is trying to persuade an authority figure (the instructor) to make a decision favourable to the student’, which means that we, lecturers, have ‘coercive power’. The article goes into considerable depth about aspects such as political skill, which includes the ability to understand ourselves and also how that knowledge informs how we seek to influence others to our own advantage or to the advantage of an organisation. Sincerity is vital, of course, but if students or ourselves have to display behaviours that ‘build trust and confidence and demonstrate integrity, genuineness, and intentions compatible with mutual goals’, which we do, then it is difficult to see how any human being can do that when at their most vulnerable, particularly in a face to face situation.

This brings with it a whole raft of other behaviours, as described and discussed in the article, such as compliance-seeking behaviours, learned resourcefulness persuasion, preparation/logic, flattery, sincerity, self-set barriers, legitimate authority, fear of adverse consequences and approachability. These all too easily disappear when human beings are at their most vulnerable. As the author notes, in universities where decisions about requesting extensions or similar are made by individual lecturers rather than by a panel or committee independent of the student–lecturer relationship, there have been few if any studies into what is termed the ‘political skill’ needed by students when they try to ask for an adjustment of some sort, hence this study. The discussion at the end brings up the valid point that behaviours are context/culture specific; specific not only to the culture of the university itself but to the culture in a wider sense. The study described here reports that 60% of students who took part in the study asked for adjustments of one sort or another. Although figures are not to hand, this is far higher than would be found in, say, the United Kingdom, which is, itself, an interesting finding and worthy of further studies, as well as those suggested by the author, which include looking further into the antecedents of political skill and self-efficacy, such as prior experience, social persuasion and perceptiveness. There are also the practicalities to take into account when we design any system, which involves students making such requests. Staff can be ill, off work for a variety of reasons, so booking a meeting could take days or even weeks. Students who have faced traumatic personal circumstances or whose requests need an immediate decision are not going to be best helped by having to wait, and to not know when, precisely, such a decision will be made or who should make it if the lecturer is away for a long period of time. Whether right or wrong, millennials are said to be the generation who expect things to be done immediately and suffer stress and anxiety when this does not happen; they are also said to lack the resilience and coping abilities of earlier generations. Even the strongest of students is, when tragedy or something severe hits, at their most vulnerable. Processes, in any organisation, have to be designed to protect the most vulnerable. They will not work in every single case (no process or organisation can prevent something going wrong), but we need to do all that we can to ensure that we have designed them to the best of our ability and that means designing them with the most vulnerable in mind.

Engaging with faculty, but in a different context, is also the theme of the fourth article comprising this issue. Its authors, Nadia Ali, Lubna Ahmed and Sarah Rose, from the University of Huddersfield, St. Mary’s University and Staffordshire University in the United Kingdom, respectively, look at something that concerns us all, regardless of context, that is, what (if anything) students do when they get our written feedback on their work. Titled ‘Identifying predictors of students’ perception of and engagement with assessment feedback’, the authors rightly say that not only are we ourselves putting considerable effort into providing feedback to learners but that there is also a considerable body of literature which has looked at this. As lecturers, even if we have not read the literature we know, from our own experiences of providing feedback, that our students’ perceptions of feedback are predominately negative (‘I didn’t get enough feedback’, ‘it wasn’t not specific enough’, ‘I got it too late’ and similar). This article provides a comprehensive overview of the causes of these negative perceptions, saying that they could in part be structural, such as large classes and too few staff and feedback being provided only at the end of the module/course given unitisation of the curriculum or instead individual. Indeed, as they say, it paints a fairly depressing picture of feedback, from whichever perspective it is looked at. Students themselves are not blameless, of course, as the literature and our own experiences tell us that some students do not read it (perhaps more than we like to think) or they read it but then forget about it and therefore do not apply any of the feedback to their future work (should there be any future work, as if they are right at the end of their studies, there may not be any further assessed work). Such ‘passive engagement’, say the authors citing the literature to support this, is unlikely to help us to foster the kind of self-regulated learners that we want to graduate after having studied. The authors argue that although there is a great deal of literature about what students think about or do with feedback and also with engagement, little attention has been given to the factors explored in the study, that is, the key predictors influencing their learning approach(es) and therefore the learning outcomes. The variables explored in this study include those at the level of the course and also individual characteristics. If we know these, say the authors, we might perhaps be able to provide targeted intervention or support in some way.

The four variables are gender (the article describes the known differences about how males and females deal with, in particular, negative feedback), the different backgrounds of students (adapting to higher education varies according to whether students come from a ‘non-traditional’ background or not), the change in learning patterns and goal orientations and, finally, whether doing a dual (or combined honours degree) in the same discipline or a different discipline influences their perceptions of, and engagement with, feedback. For various reasons, it seems that the desire to learn, and also their enjoyment, diminishes with each year that students are in university and that in contrast the desire for good grades increases with each year. Contrary to what might be expected, perhaps, is that the authors cite literature saying that by the time that students get to their final year of undergraduate study, they devote as little as 5% of their time outside of the classroom to activities or tasks which are not assessed. Indeed, as many of us know from our own experiences, for one reason or another, the landscape is very much one focused on assessment, on marks/grades, on graduating with the highest possible certificate. The discussion and conclusions make for some very interesting reading indeed. While the authors offer some useful, practical suggestions as to how we, lecturers/markers, might improve things ourselves, as individuals, that is, in the way that we actually write or provide written feedback, this cannot be divorced from the narrative underpinning the conception of higher education today. As it is rarely a good idea to end any text, including an editorial, on a note of gloom, the final article comprising this issue looks at something more positive, more upbeat, that is, the differences, if any, in classrooms that are high on technology and those that are low on technology. Whether rightly or wrongly, there is a perception that ‘as we have spent lots and lots of money on all kinds of technologies, it must be making things “better” in some way’. The authors of this article, Adelheid AM Nicol, Soo M Owens, Stéphanie SCL Dill, Allister MacIntyre and Christina Eastwood, all from the Royal Military College of Canada in Canada, rightly tell us that most of us have invested heavily in technologies and that our students are, for the most part, technology ‘rich’.

It is, these days, quite a surprise if we see any undergraduate or postgraduate student without a smartphone in their hand or held to their ear – even in our classrooms, when we are expecting them to be turned off unless we are specifically using them for a particular purpose. Indeed, such is the addiction to smartphones (and it is the word ‘addiction’ which is actually used in the literature about the use of smartphones in our lives and not just the life that we have at work or when studying) that whether we like it or not, there needs to be some accommodation of some sort if we are to reflect in our classrooms what is, nowadays, normal, standard practices outside of it. At the time of writing, a simple illustration of this addiction is that there was near panic buying when a simple, clear plastic pocket designed to hold a smartphone that can be stuck onto any shower curtain became available on the world’s most well-known online marketplace – so that the user can use their smartphone even while in the shower. How far you/we are along the spectrum of ‘genius idea’ to ‘how terrible’ depends on the extent of our own addition, of course! For us, in higher education, we are concerned with the effectiveness of these various technologies when it comes to learning, as the authors of this final article explain. Titled ‘Comparison of high-technology active learning and low-technology active learning classrooms’, the authors say that while there is much literature about the effectiveness of the use of technologies in or outside of the classroom, there is less when it comes to the more ‘lite’ version. The article describes what is meant by learning, that our view of knowledge is that it constructed by the learner and that, these days, we all claim to use a teaching approach that is underpinned by the use of activities which best support this, hence the growing use of activities that are collaborative, cooperative in nature and which are often problem-based. An environment, whether an office or a classroom (virtual or otherwise), impacts in some way what goes on within and outside of it and, as the authors say, more and more universities are putting in classrooms that have been designed with small group work in mind and which are particularly well supported by technologies of one sort or another. However, as the authors’ review of the literature tells us, there are mixed results in terms of whether or not such technology-rich classrooms actually lead to better performance in terms of the marks/grades awarded. If, as is claimed, students are so focused on their marks/grades these days, then we need to look very closely at the structure of the learning environment given that it influences all kinds of aspects, as extensively detailed in the article. These aspects include the readiness or otherwise of students to engage in ways that are considered desirable, that certain personality and learning styles are correlated with academic achievement and that the design of the classroom impacts their engagement and thus performance in some way, the difficulties with group dynamics and others.

The authors rightly ask the question, ‘To what extent does technology need to be integrated in the classroom in order to improve student performance?’, and their study seeks to answer it by comparing the effectiveness of lecturer–student engagement within the two different environments, that is, either a high-technology or a low-technology one. The results, and the discussion at the end, raise some very important aspects that all of us need to consider, regardless of class size or context, particularly as many universities are now spending a great deal of money, taxpayers’ money in most countries, creating technology-heavy classrooms designed for small group work, despite the fact that there is little research out there which provides us with evidence as to which elements of these are the most important. The authors rightly say that, at first, students believe that such classrooms are more useful, that it is more interesting but, as with so much in life, the novelty quickly wears off. If there is little or no evidence that such classrooms provide benefits over and above the ‘traditional’ classroom, then it will be difficult to justify the high cost involved, not only in terms of the money spent but also the costs in terms of staff training and development and also staff, as a resource (far more staff are needed for such small classes than for lectures for large or whole-group classes). The authors conclude by rightly saying that we need to be driven not by the technology itself but instead by what we know about learning and engagement given, as they put it, that learning is an ‘interpersonal process’, that is, a human activity. This is entirely the right note to end on, whether for an article or an editorial.