The author describes how she has developed learning and teaching through engaging with social media. By following a wealth of individuals and organisations (both local and national) she has tapped into a rich source of information.

In part one of this paper, Stoszkowski and Collins showed that shared online blogs were a useful tool to structure and support the informal learning of a cohort of final year undergraduate sports coaching students. The aim of the present study was to offer insight into student coaches' perceptions of their use and experiences of structured group…

Studies about effective practice in Higher Education (HE), student retention, progression and attainment suggest that student engagement is a major factor in success. A sense of belonging to a community of students and academics is seen as key to creating effective engagement. Such studies have identified interventions that have proved successful…

Purpose: Universities can do more to deliver against the sustainable development goals (SDGs), working with faculty, staff and students, as well as their wider stakeholder community and alumni body. They play a critical role in helping shape new ways for the world, educating global citizens and delivering knowledge and innovation into society.…

This paper reports on how the FutureLearn Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) "Becoming a Better Teacher" was blended into English Language Teaching (ELT) university programmes in conjunction with telecollaboration. It discusses how the addition of a MOOC blend can enhance a telecollaborative exchange by adding to it increased…

A reading of college-based HE (CHE) teachers' self-identified academic development preferences against an understanding of the professional demands of academic practice in Higher Education (HE), whilst being mindful of the specific college-based context, serves to add the experiences of CHE teachers to the HE sector understanding of 'the staff…

The authors' lived experience of devising a professional development programme for research supervisors and securing SEDA (Staff and Educational Development Association) accreditation informs this paper. Our first purpose is to outline the programme and discuss its uniqueness in using a community of practice model in conjunction with practitioner…

Several of the key measures in this year's Student Academic Experience Survey have moved in a positive direction, but these movements have tended to be relatively small. Value-for-money perceptions have improved, but not statistically significantly, while there has been no change in the proportion who would choose the same course and institution…

Given the increasingly prominent position of digital technologies in the Higher Education classroom, this paper takes a concurrent triangulation mixed method approach to explore the ways in which blogging might be used to support student learning through a large MA dissertation module, comprising students from five courses. Taking as it impetuous…

This article reports findings of an 18-month research project, funded by the Higher Education Academy in the United Kingdom (UK), to develop understanding of pedagogical differences in employing emerging technologies with transnational doctoral students. The focus of the research is a Professional Doctorate course delivered by a UK-based…

This article explores the positioning of a sample of Arabic complementary language schools in the context of the UK government's discourse and promotion of so-called Fundamental British Values. While there is considerable social and political debate about radicalisation in Arab communities, teachers in the sample are deeply committed to a form of…

This article was written in response to concerns that have been expressed about the possible consequences of an increasing number of countries overtaking the United States in educational attainment. International statistics on educational attainment were analyzed, questions about comparability of data were discussed, and the impact of different…

Political leaders like to put forward guiding ideas or themes which pull their individual decisions into a broader narrative. For John Major it was Back to Basics, for Tony Blair it was the Third Way and for David Cameron it is the Big Society. While Mr. Blair relied on Lord Giddens to add intellectual weight to his idea, Mr. Cameron's legacy idea…

Hardly anyone can have failed to pick up on the recent flurry of stories in the national press about the Big Society, sparked off by Dame Elisabeth Hoodless's remarks that funds for volunteers are disappearing at an alarming rate, and that this is undermining the very idea of a "Big Society". At the same time, under the government's…

This article shows how a group of language teachers use Twitter as a tool for continuous professional development through the #MFLtwitterati hashtag. Based on data collected through a survey (n = 116) and interviews (n = 11), it describes how this collective of teachers use the hashtag and evaluates the impact of their Twitter network on their…