Measuring impact from university research is increasingly seen as important, not least because of its use in resource allocation processes by governments. These measurement approaches, however, often take 'wide and shallow' economic effect-based views that are ex-post, linear and uni-directional. Consequently, research collaborations between…

Efforts to develop common higher education data standards are expanding both within and across countries. The institutional research (IR) community plays a critical role in assuring that these efforts capture the diverse manifestations of the postsecondary and tertiary education systems and promote responsible comparisons. This chapter provides…

In an educational context, the accurate determination of each student's socioeconomic status (SES) is important for planning, reporting and general institutional research. This article describes a project undertaken to develop the means to derive a proxy measure of students' SES, based on home address location and Australian Bureau of Statistics…

Total Survey Error (TSE) is a component of Total Survey Quality (TSQ) that supports the assessment of the extent to which a survey is "fit-for-purpose". While TSQ looks at a number of dimensions, such as relevance, credibility and accessibility, TSE is has a more operational focus on accuracy and minimising errors. Mitigating survey…

Data governance is a relatively new and evolving discipline. It encompasses the people who are responsible for data quality (the stewards); the policies and processes associated with collecting, managing, storing and reporting data; and the information technology systems and support that provide efficient infrastructure. Higher education…

Distributed leadership has been explored internationally as a leadership model that will promote and advance excellence in learning and teaching in higher education. This paper presents an assessment of how effectively distributed leadership was enabled at five Australian institutions implementing a collaborative teaching quality development…

When Geoffrey Sherington and I set out on our project on the Australian Public University, which culminated in "Sydney: The Making of a Public University" (2012), we wanted to move away from the emphasis of conventional institutional history on chancellors, vice-chancellors and governing councils in order to explore the university as a…

The importance of transnational programmes as part of the internationalisation of higher education has grown rapidly in importance in recent years. In this paper, transnational higher education is defined as the delivery of programmes overseas by a parent institution either operating directly or in association with an international partner. Whilst…

The literature suggests that collaborative approaches to leadership, such as distributed leadership, are essential for supporting educational innovators in leading change in teaching in universities. This paper briefly describes the array of activities, processes and resources to support distributed leadership in the implementation of a network,…

The English Funding Council has announced its intention to invite tenders for the contract currently held by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA), and the Australian government is promoting a Bill to curb the activities of the equivalent body, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency. This article compares the two…

More students with disabilities are accessing the tertiary sector with many disabilities not easily observed (or hidden), because there are no physical indicators. These "hidden" disabilities affect a variety of cognitive processes and may be developmental or acquired. To ensure students with hidden disabilities can enrol, engage in and…

Benchmarking has traditionally been viewed as a way to compare data only; however, its utilisation as a more investigative, research-informed process to add rigor to decision-making processes at the institutional level is gaining momentum in the higher education sector. Indeed, with recent changes in the Australian quality environment from the…

Over the last decade, the assessment of student experience has gained significant prominence in Australian higher education. Universities conduct internal surveys in order to identify which of their services students rate higher or lower on importance and performance. Thus, institutions can promote highly performing areas and work on those needing…

Australian higher education lags behind other western countries in relation to access and attainment of equity groups (Organisation for Economic Development [OECD], 2010). This is despite major policy reforms in the last two decades targeting better educational outcomes for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Australian Labor Government's…

University libraries worldwide are reconceptualising the ways in which they support the research agenda in their respective institutions. This paper is based on a survey completed by member libraries of the Queensland University Libraries Office of Cooperation (QULOC), the findings of which may be informative for other university libraries. After…