Reflective practice has become a core component in higher education studies. In the health sciences, reflective tasks are required throughout the undergraduate programmes, yet many students struggle to find value in these tasks for their present and future professional practice. Benefits that can be derived from the process are undermined by this…

A key focus area for the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) is ensuring equitable access to effective teachers for all students in the state (MDE, 2016, 2017b). To achieve this vision, however, MDE recognizes that it must first address persistent teacher shortages in regions of the state and in specific subject areas (U.S. Department of…

Big Data is currently a hot topic in the field of technology, and many campuses are considering the addition of this topic into their undergraduate courses. Big Data tools are not just playing an increasingly important role in many commercial enterprises; they are also combining with new digital devices to dramatically change privacy. This article…

This chapter delineates the consortial activities of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC) to explore models of undergraduate research and to address the impact of undergraduate research on faculty workload. The significant progress made on the member campus of the University of Wisconsin-Superior over the last 10 years is…

This article describes and analyses recent state-mandated undergraduate curriculum reforms in Ethiopian higher education in light global trends as well as local concerns and priorities. Two aspects of the recent curriculum reforms form the focus of the present analyses, i.e., the harmonisation of undergraduate curricula and the integration of…

Legislation introduced in 2015, including Senate Bill 806, sought to amend the "Code of Virginia" regarding fixed four-year tuition and other costs. Eventually, Senate Bill 1183 was incorporated into Senate Bill 806; the substitute amendment directed the board of visitors of each four-year public institution with an in-state…

Despite massive cuts in state funding over the past thirty years, the University of California has managed to keep enrollment on pace with growth in population. With California's population projected to grow 22.5 percent (from 40 to 49 million by 2040), that will no longer be the case, unless UC is able to find a new funding model. Informed by the…

This paper explores the place of research training in higher education in the 21st century. It examines the changing position of research skills within higher education in recent years and looks for possible reasons for those changes. There are three main conclusions. First, training in research skills has been shifting down from doctoral…

There has been much interest in happiness over the last decade fueled by developments in neuroscience and the measurement of happiness. Positive psychology has emerged as a recognised discipline within academia to provide a home for the findings of the new scientific study of happiness. In 2011, positive psychology was the most popular course at…

Two UK programmes to place school teachers in a university setting are compared; the Excellence Fellowship Awards Pilot Scheme and the School Teacher Fellows Scheme. In this paper we compare the School Teacher Fellow Scheme supported by Bristol ChemLabS (Shallcross et al., 2013a, 2013b) and subsequently by the Royal Society of Chemistry with the…

Undergraduate research clearly enriches the educational development of participating students, but these experiences are limited by the inherent inefficiency of the standard one student-one mentor model for undergraduate research. Group-effort applied research (GEAR) was developed as a strategy to provide substantial numbers of undergraduates with…

Using eleven of W.B. Yeats's poems, John Gordon explores ways of thinking about and teaching poetry in secondary schools and at undergraduate level. He draws together commentary, research, and his own professional experience, to enable his readers to develop flexible pedagogical judgement that can respond to the requirements of a range of students…

In the context of continuing pressures from managerialist and neoliberal drivers of university reform in Australia, Macquarie University's recent undergraduate curriculum innovation, based on "People," "Planet," and "Participation," has resulted in the embedding and integration of experiential learning in its…

In the UK, as elsewhere, the use of "contextual" data has been strongly advocated in order to inform undergraduate admissions decision-making. More than a third of UK universities currently take the socioeconomic or other background context of undergraduate applicants' attainment into account when deciding whom to shortlist, interview,…

This article discusses important considerations for teachers who teach or may be thinking about teaching statistics online or in a hybrid/blended format. Suggestions from previous research and practical teaching experiences are examined. Moreover, the latest recommendations from the literature are considered in the context of teaching from a…