Editorial

Whether we are students, workers or anything else, at some point in our lives, we have to make a transition of some sort. For students, this might be the transition from school to university, or from university into the workplace after graduation. For academics, this might be making the transition from studies into our first job, leaving for a new one, or retiring. On a more personal level, we might have to make a transition from being single to being part of a couple, or to becoming a parent, or moving to another country. Whatever the transition, and however exciting the opportunity might be that leads to that transition, by its very nature it is somewhat daunting, and not without its difficulties, however confident we might be in our everyday lives. In the context of universities, we recognise that, for our students, whatever the nature/type of that transition, it is likely going to be a bit scary, a bit daunting, and not without its challenges. It is, then, unsurprising that we, as academics, do all that we can to ensure that our new, incoming, students get the most supportive, welcoming environment that we can provide for them, at such a time. Initially, this usually takes the form of some kind of induction programme, filled with not only activities designed to help them to deal with the study-related aspects that they will shortly have to deal with but also activities that help them to make friends, to find people who they can relate to, to share their experiences with. This is not easy in a context where they are going to find themselves, on day one, in a lecture theatre with some 300, 500 or 700 (or more) students in it, sitting in rows, which is probably going to be in sharp contrast to in the classroom from which they found themselves in, at school, where perhaps 20 or so is more the norm. Not for nothing is higher education known as ‘mass education’, these days, after all. In such a lecture theatre, it is easy to feel entirely alone, and anxious, wondering whether you, alone, are the only one feeling that way. True, as the lecturer, we incorporate as many activities as we can, in such a lecture theatre, to get students to talk to each other, to work together in some way, which all help to alleviate the anxiety to a certain extent, but given the pressures both from studying itself and also from outside of the university, those first few days or weeks cannot help but be a bit (or very) overwhelming for most students.

It may well be the case for the lecturer too, if stepping into a classroom of this size is the first time that they have done this. We know, full well, that exuding confidence in our own teaching is going to go some way towards making our students feel confident, but that is no easy task when faced with a lecture theatre in which there is not only the technology to deal with (logging on seems to take an age when you are in a hurry, and even longer if you are the first person, that day, to use it and it has not been set up), the lighting to sort out and the activities to run, but also dealing with getting perhaps700 students in and out at the beginning and end. Students normally choose to sit at the ends of the rows rather than in the middle of them, and if the room is going to be full, another task is to coax them to move to the seats in the middle, to save those who arrive later having to inch their way slowly over bags, coats and around downturned tables and the rest which now restrict movement in what is already a very tight space, which they are normally not keen to do. If the lecturer who was in the lecture theatre overran their own lecture by a few minutes, the level of anxiety ramps up even more both for the lecturer, and for the students. The title of the first article in this issue hints at the anxieties and stresses involved in transition: ‘study-related exhaustion: First-year students’ use of self-regulation of learning and peer learning and perceived value of peer support’. Yes, transition can certainly be exhausting, given the time and sheer effort needed to deal with it. However, as this title also suggests, our students, just like any new lecturer, will benefit from support from their peers. In this article, by Milla Räisänen, Liisa Postareff, Markus Mattsson and Sari Lindblom-Ylänne, from the University of Helsinki, the University of Turku, and the University of Helsinki, all in Finland, they rightly say that one of the challenges that our students face is that we require them to be far more independent than they had been prior to coming to university, which means that they need to further develop their skills when it comes to self regulation. This is described in great detail in the article, which goes on to say that our students may well face difficulties when it comes to either planning their study or during their study, or perhaps both, and that the management of their time may suffer, all the more so as, for the first time, they have to juggle the sometimes competing demands of study alongside their personal lives. And, these days, as so many students work to support themselves or their families financially, to manage this, as well.

While self regulation is innate in us all, each of us varies, in terms of how good, or poor, we are when it comes to any skill or ability, including self regulation, and so it is evident, as this article makes clear, that any problems when it comes to self regulation may manifest itself in various ways, including whether or not our students persist in their studies, their success and particularly when it comes to dealing with the increased workload that they are faced with. The more stressful that students find all this, the more likely they are to be at risk of exhaustion and/or burnout, as the authors rightly say, going on to describe aspects such as a lack of emotional energy, tiredness and chronic fatigue, study-related cynicism and a feeling of inadequacy as a student, which may carry on into their working lives, after graduation. However good or poor a student’s self regulation skills, the authors of this article say that support in the form of peer learning benefits all involved. Described in detail in the article, this can cover a wide range of aspects, including the use of social resources, how to study and emotional support. On that matter, the article tells us that there is a positive relationship between self regulation, resilience and well being, with the latter being key to everything, whether while at university or anywhere else, but that first year students, in particular, have low levels of well being and are therefore in need of even greater support from their peers, and from other sources. While we, academic members of staff, make our students aware of the support mechanisms provided within our institutions and beyond, as the article and our own experiences tell us, students are often reluctant to seek help from these sources, for a variety of reasons, hence the value of support from their peers. However, as the article reminds us, just because there are many students in a particular class or programme, perhaps many hundreds of them, this does not necessarily mean that every student has peers who they can turn to for support when they need it, despite studies showing us that those who sought social support and advice while they were a student demonstrated less burnout some ten years into their careers than those who avoided or withdrew from the more social side.

The authors argue that while there have been many studies which have looked at self-regulation, peer learning and support and study-related exhaustion, more work is needed which looks at the complexities involved in all of these, in terms of certain student profiles. The discussion of the results shows that there were four profiles, and it sheds light on, amongst other aspects, the links between well being, peer support and self regulation when it comes to study-related exhaustion and how this might impact our practices, in the classroom. The emotional aspects associated with studying is also the subject of the second article in this issue. Perhaps above all else, it is assessment which triggers the more extreme, and often more negative, feelings, as the title of this article makes perfectly clear: ‘annoyance and frustration: emotional responses to being assessed in higher education’. As its authors, Rob Wass, Julie Timmermans, Tony Harland and Angela McLean, all at the University of Otago in New Zealand rightly say, assessment is central when it comes to studying and, while we may not like to accept this, as there is of course merit in learning beyond that which we choose to assess our students on, how much students study, and how, is driven by the assessment aspect. They go on to say while there has been much research into assessment, less attention has been paid to the emotional aspects associated with this and, importantly, that whatever the emotional reactions might be, they should work to the benefit, rather than to the detriment, of achieving the learning outcomes that we set for our students. Their review of the literature provides a comprehensive picture of the both the positive emotions that students feel, such as feelings of success, but also the negative ones, such as anger and anxiety, which may in turn impact motivation and effort. However, as the authors note, things are not so black and white when it comes to emotions, citing an example where a feeling such as ‘relief’, a positive emotion, may in fact lead to decreased not increased motivation and that ‘anxiety’ from having not done well in a particular test might lead to increased not decreased motivation. Emotional responses, to the same situation, may vary according to aspects such as their feelings of control either in general or at that particular time, and other factors.

Whether we have been in higher education for a long time or not, all of us would recognise that, as we are told in this article, higher education has become far more competitive, for various reasons, and this puts those within it, including ourselves as lecturers, under more pressure in terms of demonstrating success. This, for students, means marks/grades and, ultimately, the highest degree classification that they can achieve. No wonder, then, that our students experience greater stress than those in the general population, we are told. As raised as an issue in the previous article, every university has a raft of support mechanisms to support students, but as the authors of this second article also say, not only does this require students to identify themselves as being in need of assistance, which they may well not be able to do, but seeking and getting support is simply seen as time taken away from doing what they should be doing, that is, studying, which itself adds to their stress, so they do not take up any of the many interventions offered. This article then goes on to explain how we, as academics, need to take particular care when it comes to not only the assessments that we ask our students to undertake but also how we design our courses/programmes. This is always a tricky one as, normally, a significant proportion of that assessment, whether coursework or examination, comes at the end of any term/semester/course, and so there is the inevitable ‘bunching’ of assessments at a particular point in time, which adds to not only their workload but the perceived or actual level of anxiety/stress that this can cause. Drawing on what we know about constructive alignment, the authors provide a comprehensive and useful overview of the frameworks, environments and learning approaches, including the providing of feedback, that both help, and hinder, anxiety/stress. On the matter of feedback, as the authors rightly say, and as we know from our own experiences, feedback is as emotionally laden as assessment itself, however positively we might frame it, and as assessment practices are largely summative rather than formative these days (the authors provide data that suggests that a typical pattern is that students eight times as much summative assessment as they do formative assessment), we may well be not only over-assessing our students but also contributing to their negative emotions about everything associated with assessment.

The authors argue that by better understanding the emotional responses that our students have to assessment the better we might be able to ‘design in’ success, that is, helping our students to achieve the learning outcomes, going on to say that our assessment practices could be either detrimental or instead beneficial, hence their study into the emotional responses from students. The results and subsequent discussion shed light on this, and it makes for fascinating reading. And, as you might expect from this particular subject matter, there are some useful, practical suggestions for what we might do, when it comes to the planning and implementation side of assessment, and which in turn may positively impact not only their learning but also something that is equally as valuable, if not more so, that is, their well being. Fear of failure, stress and poor time management skills, the latter part of self efficacy, continues the theme of the more emotional and negative aspects associated with learning and studying. The third article in this issue looks at it from the context of plagiarism. Entitled ‘active learning strategies and academic self-efficacy relate to both attentional control and attitudes towards plagiarism’, its author, Andrew R du Rocher, from Goldsmiths, University of London in the UK, first provides us with an overview of the literature into learning strategies and goals. This covers aspects such as cognitive structures, surface and deep learning strategies when it comes to performance, and also that some students are performance driven while others are achievement driven and the impact that the latter has on achievement/performance. There is then a comprehensive overview of the literature around the learning environment, task value and self efficacy and the role that the interaction between students and their fellow students, and also that between students and their lecturers, has on their motivation, as well as how learning styles impact how valuable a particular student sees a particular task, whatever that might be. However, what is worthwhile to one student depends in part on their perceptions of their own capabilities, we are told, and so this belief affects their motivation and therefore time on task and effort, amongst other aspects. Also covered in this review is attentional control and learning, learning goals, values, strategies, and levels of self efficacy and how all of these can affect motivation, which in turn impacts trait conscientiousness. This, we are told, has been linked to the cheating behaviours that students report themselves to have carried out.

While this article tells us that there are many reasons why students plagiarise, a lack of confidence and/or low self efficacy could account for this. The author argues that there is a need to better understand how these variables, both individually and collectively, relate to attitudes towards plagiarism, hence the study undertaken and described. The discussion and conclusion shows us the relationship between overall study motivation and negative attitudes towards plagiarism and how this was driven by differences in self efficacy, the use of certain learning strategies, and learning values. In terms of what this means for us, those who teach, all of us provide extensive information to students about what to do, and not do, when it comes to aspects such as citing the work of others in order to avoid being the subject of an investigation into a possible disciplinary offence, the punishment for which could vary from, say, a loss of marks to not being awarded a degree at all, depending on the severity and/or number of instances of any behaviour constituting misconduct. What we ourselves say or do in our classrooms about plagiarism is also something that libraries and other sources of student support also provide extensive information about, and which is regularly provided to students, to reinforce the message. However, as the author of this study suggests, while all of this information has to be provided, as regularly and by as many of us within the university as possible, it is the focus on improving self efficacy that may lead to a reduction in any cheating behaviour. That, however, is far more difficult to do, naturally enough, although the author also offers some suggestions as to the strategies/approaches that we already use but which might help in this regard, such as a project-based learning environment and, something that is currently gaining a great deal of attention in both practice and in the literature, the use of training in mindfulness. The comprehensive and insightful discussion and conclusion covers a whole range of aspects, and this makes for very interesting reading indeed. The learning environment that we, academics, help to shape and which therefore influence the behaviours of our students is also the subject of the fourth article comprising this issue, which looks at the difficulty involved in making learning feel more personal, more personalised, for our students, which is all the more problematic in a classroom of some 300, 500 or more students, as the authors, Heather A McQueen and Craig McMillan, both from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, acknowledge in their article entitled ‘quectures: personalised constructive learning in lectures’. Whatever our individual discipline or context, lectures form a significant part of that learning environment for many reasons, and so all of us have to see what, practically speaking, we can do, within the constraints of the lecture theatre in question. As the authors of this article rightly tell us, there is much that we can do in making it as student-centred as we can, and that so doing improves learning even in the largest of classes.

The comprehensive and insightful overview of the literature provided in this article covers all that we need to know about the flipped classroom, including its benefits but also its downsides, the latter of which is a lack of engagement on the part of students. This covers what is known as the transactional distance (the communication and psychological distance) between the lecturer/instructor and the students, which is highly variable, we are told, and the ever changing nature of this can lead to student anxiety and an increase in cognitive load. This review covers the critical factors that we need to consider if we wish to design and implement a flipped classroom and how this will necessarily involve the use of collaborative working during flipped lectures, that is, when we ask students to reflect on a particular question or aspect that we have asked them before we get them to discuss it with their fellow students, often involving the use of a poll of their answers, via their smartphones or other such devices (a show of hands or the use of clickers are now a dim and distant memory, these days). This, we are told, not only reduces transactional distance but also improves engagement and achievement. However, as those of us who have used the flipped classroom will recognise, or indeed when providing any material ahead of a lecture, whether in a flipped environment or not, when we provide this, to ensure that our students come fully prepared to the lecture, for the various reasons listed in this article, too few students do this. We are told that there is also a ‘half flipped’ approach, which may help to resolve some of the issues of the fully flipped one, but whichever it might be, the authors tell us that, for the reasons listed, individualising their learning is no easy task. Put forward as another approach that we might like to consider is the use of the ‘quecture’ which, as the name suggests, and as described, is a partially flipped lecture that has within it certain questions. Because, rightly, as this article tells us, thinking is driven not by answers but by questions. The questions in a ‘quecture’ are those which lead to students making their own individual, personalised reflection on whatever topics or aspects are new to them, followed by discussion with their peers, and the article describes the study in which students were asked for their views on the usefulness of this approach compared to ‘normal’ lectures or a fully flipped classroom and what effect, if any, it may have had on their learning behaviours, experience and responsibility for their own learning. The discussion of this makes for insightful reading and, more importantly, helps those of us who are considering such an approach in our own classrooms, of whatever size.

The flipped classroom is also the context of the learning environment explored in the fifth and final article comprising this issue. Entitled the ‘predictive power of grit, professor support for autonomy and learning engagement on perceived achievement within the context of a flipped classroom’, its authors are Seonghye Yoon, Seyoung Kim and Minjeng Kang, from LET’s Lab, and Ewha Womans University respectively, all in the Republic of Korea. Whether as students, academics or anyone else, and whether in the workplace or in our private lives, no one could or would argue that the more grit any of have the better, as this is something that is much needed, particularly when we are faced with the more difficult challenges that we face. As in the previous article in this issue, the context here is again the flipped classroom and these authors, too, acknowledge not only the benefits but also the drawbacks associated with this. As the authors rightly say, whether for the flipped classroom or for anything else, if students are going to persevere, to not give up, in their pursuit towards achieving what they need to achieve, patience and enthusiasm, that is, grit, is essential. With more grit comes less reliance on others, for example, on lecturers/instructors, and also more engagement which, we are told, means the degree of cognitive, behavioural, emotional and agentic involvement, each of which are discussed in great detail in the review of the literature. As in the non-flipped classroom, as the authors tell us, certain conditions have to be met if our students are to meet the learning outcomes that we set, but that it is as yet unclear as to what these might be, in the context of the flipped classroom, hence the study undertaken and described in this article. The insightful discussion and conclusion helps us to better understand the impact that grit, the amount of support for autonomy that we, lecturers/instructors, provide to foster this and the engagement that takes place has on the achievement of our students in the context of the flipped classroom. As the use of the flipped classroom is becoming all the more common these days, for various reasons, this article provides us with some useful insights into what we need to do in order to ensure that our students get the most out of this approach. While it might not be possible to improve the amount of inherent grit that any of us have, unfortunately, whether as a student, lecturer or anyone else, we can certainly do our best to provide the kind of environment which gives anyone within it the opportunity to better be supported through whatever stressful, daunting, emotionally challenging situations that are, without doubt, going to affect our students, whether they are making the transition into higher education, out of it or meeting those which they face along the way. Their emotional well being, like our own, is paramount, after all, as this impacts everything that they do more widely, not only in the very short time that they are studying at university but throughout their lives. Whatever our own personal interpretation of what ‘higher education’ might mean these days, amid all the enormous changes of late, all of us would agree that whatever we learn at university affects what we do throughout our lives, and in all kinds of ways. This reminds us not only how important higher education is but also what a privilege it is for us to be in some way part of it.