Swansea Academy of Learning and Teaching

"This systematic literature review was undertaken primarily to examine the role that print and digitally mediums play in text comprehension. Overall, results suggest that medium plays an influential role under certain text or task conditions or for certain readers. Additional goals were to identify how researchers defined and measured comprehension, and the various trends that have emerged over the past 25 years, since Dillon's review. Analysis showed that relatively few researchers defined either reading or digital reading, and that the majority of studies relied on researcher-developed measures. Three types of trends were identified in this body of work: incremental (significant increase; e.g., number of studies conducted, variety of digital devices used), stationary (relative stability; e.g., research setting, chose of participants), and iterative (wide fluctuation; e.g., text length, text manipulations). The review concludes by considering the significance of these findings for future empirical research on reading in print or digital mediums."

This report summarises the findings from 74 UK institutions who ran the tracker survey with their students collecting 22, 593 student responses on their expectations and experiences of technology. Institutions had the options of running surveys designed specifically for their learner types, HE, FE, adult and community learners, skills learners and those learners studying remotely online.

"SCALE UP stands for Student-Centred Active Learning Environment for Upside-Down Pedagogy"

Resources & information related to learning spaces (physical and virtual).

"When researchers selectively report significant positive results, and omit non-significant or negative results, the published literature skews in a particular direction. This is called 'reporting bias', and it can cause both casual readers and meta-analysts to develop an inaccurate understanding of the efficacy of an intervention. This paper identifies potential reporting bias in a recent high-profile higher education meta-analysis. It then examines a range of potential factors that may make higher education learning and teaching research particularly susceptible to reporting bias. These include the fuzzy boundaries between learning and teaching research, scholarship and teaching; the positive agendas of 'learning and teaching' funding bodies; methodological issues; and para-academic researchers in roles without tenure or academic freedom. Recommendations are provided for how researchers, journals, funders, ethics committees and universities can reduce reporting bias"

"Before jumping into creating a rubric, think carefully about the performance objectives of the assignment. Keep these objectives specific and clear."

"Based on interviews with deans from a range of UK universities, this report produced by LSE Enterprise for the HEA, provides a snapshot of different conceptions of what constitutes good teaching practice at discipline level and exemplifies the challenges facing the architects of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and reviews the current literature base."

"The future of digital culture ― yours, mine, and ours ― depends on how well we learn to use the media that have infiltrated, amplified, distracted, enriched, and complicated our lives."

"No, this isn't about privatisation or student fees or neo-liberal economic models! It's a revelation I had about academic careers"