COVID-19 changed university life worldwide as campuses closed or offered restricted inperson teaching. Whilst early evidence suggests that educational experiences were satisfactory, concerns were raised about the impact of COVID-19 on social and psychological elements of university including student loneliness. We conducted a UK-wide…

Expectations of online masters students commencing their studies has been under-researched, as have the challenges of transition from undergraduates learning on-campus to postgraduate online students. The study described here investigates student expectations of this transition, development of resources for academic skills teaching, and student…

The nature and significance of students' informal peer feedback networks is an under-explored area. This paper offers the findings of a longitudinal investigation of the informal peer feedback networks of a cohort of student teachers [n = 105] across the three years of a UK primary education degree programme. It tracked the dynamic nature of these…

Recent studies have indicated that the "sophomore slump" (dissatisfaction and disengagement of second year students in the US) may also be observed in other countries, including the UK. However, no studies have reported on the effects of support interventions on student perceptions. This study used the DREEM-S survey, a modification of…

There is a huge body of research supporting a positive correlation between teachers' content knowledge and better pedagogical practice. In this context, this study revealed serious gaps in a cohort of preservice physics teachers' understanding of the simple pendulum. It also pointed to their poor grasp of some fundamental concepts in physics.…

This paper examines the role that social characteristics play in determining the academic success of students who begin university with roughly similar entry grades. The data used were drawn from the administrative records of over 38,000 UK-domiciled undergraduate students from one British university between 1998 and 2009. Results show that the…

The ability to apply prior knowledge to new challenges is a skill that is highly valued by employers, but the confidence to achieve this does not come naturally to all students. An essential step to becoming an independent researcher requires a transition between simply following a fail-safe set of instructions to being able to adapt a known…

A vast body of research has indicated the importance of distinguishing new vs. continuing students' learning experiences in blended and online environments. Continuing learners may have developed learning and coping mechanisms for "surviving" in such learning environments, while new learners might still need to adjust their learning…

Although learning theories suggest that repeat testing can be highly beneficial for students' retention and understanding of material, there is, so far, little guidance on how to implement repeat testing in higher education. This paper introduces one method for implementing a three-stage model of repeat testing via computer-aided formative…

Student retention and success are key performance indicators within higher education. One of the key opportunities to address both of these lies with the support offered to students who fail a module but are entitled to resubmit. This study investigates the value of implementing a resubmission intervention to improve the quantity and quality of…

This article makes a comparison across the unique educational settings of law and business schools in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and New Zealand to highlight differences in teaching methods necessary for culturally and ethnically mixed student cohorts derived from high migration, student mobility, higher education rankings…

Students on a first year undergraduate economics module were given the choice of when to sit their first assessment in the subject in order to determine both preferences over assessment timing, and the impact of timing on performance. Clear preferences of having this option were shown (only 2% of students stated to be indifferent) with those more…

This article focuses on the role of training managers (TMs) in UK participation in WorldSkills Competitions (WSC). The TM role is outlined, according to the perceptions of the TMs, and there is analysis of the benefits to them of participation, as well as the barriers they face, and the benefits and barriers available to participating further…

Students often struggle with learning about statistics, which encompass a large proportion of a psychology degree. This pilot study explored how first- and final-year students reflected on their experiences of being taught this topic, in order to identify needs that could be addressed in a project to improve their learning. First-year students…

Faulty group processes have harmful effects on performance but there is little research about intervention protocols to pre-empt them in higher education. This naturalistic experiment compared a control cohort with an inducted cohort. The inducted cohort attended a workshop, consultations, elected a leader and used tools (a group log and group…