Based at De Montfort University, Decolonising DMU is a strategic initiative working to create an anti-racist institution where all can achieve. Growing from DMU's Freedom to Achieve project Decolonising DMU extends anti-racist work across the structure and composition of the institution, moving away from a sole focus on the curriculum. The Library…

Reading lists have been described as a stalwart of the academic environment. This article explores the role of reading lists as a pedagogical tool and describes how reading lists contribute to an immersive block teaching model at an Australian university. Little has been written about the application of reading lists in block teaching models. This…

Increasingly across many UK higher education institutions staff and students are questioning and challenging systemic inequalities that affect racially minoritised groups in their learning and sense of belonging within the curriculum. Students are calling for inclusion of diverse sources of knowledge and perspectives, especially from scholars of…

As in other academic libraries, LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science) Library does not meet student expectations for access to core readings despite increasing provision. We used user experience research to gather evidence of student experience, behaviours, and preferences for taught course content with the aim of making…

There is a growing impetus, from university students and administrations, to decolonise the curriculum and develop diverse reading lists. Yet, there is limited theoretical or empirical analysis of the authorship of current reading lists to justify this imperative. The present study developed and applied a method for auditing the authorship on…

Reading is an "invisible" skill, making it challenging to address in a college classroom. Yet, it is fundamental to disciplinary thought. Inspired by the "signature pedagogies" conversation, I wanted to find ways to make more visible in my classroom what I do when I work with readings. This gave rise to several questions: How…

Within the literature on decolonizing the curriculum, a clear distinction is frequently made between diversity and decolonization. While "decolonization" entails dismantling colonial forms of knowledge, including practices that racialize and categorize, "diversity" is a policy discourse that advocates for adding different sorts…

This article presents a case study of liberating reading lists through a staff-student collaboration in a UK arts university. It characterizes reading lists as a familiar but under researched feature of academic life and discusses their practical and symbolic role in maintaining Western/Eurocentric/White disciplinary canons, and how they inform…

Although deterrence was one of the cornerstones of the international relations field for much of the 20th century, today surveys demonstrate that most students lack even a basic understanding of this concept. Yet, in the light of recent events on the Korean Peninsula, in China, and the post-Soviet space, our civilian and military leaders continue…

This case study explores student and lecturer views of reading lists at Loughborough University. Taking the qualitative data from two surveys previously undertaken at the institution, it uses the grounded theory approach to identify key issues regarding the purpose, importance, visibility, content, currency, and length of reading lists, as well as…

Colleges are not the only enterprises interested in the possibilities of free, online courses. Publishers have begun to investigate whether so-called MOOC's, or massive open online courses, can help them reach new readers and sell more books. For the moment, providers of the classes encourage professors not to require students to buy texts, in…

Despite reading being recognized as a core academic skill, surprisingly little research has been undertaken into university lecture reading requirements. This article reports on the trial and evaluation of a minimalist reading model developed for students in arts and education subjects. Comprising annotated extracts from full texts…

Lee Shulman's concept of signature pedagogies in the professions has captured the imagination of many researchers and educators. In higher education, the concept has been extended to teaching in particular disciplines, and it is here argued that the concept of signature pedagogy can be usefully extended to an influential teaching system in the…

There has been an exponential growth of e-learning in the UK Higher Education. However, there is a growing opinion that e-learning practitioners are not critical enough and that they should adopt a more techno-negative or techno-scepticism approach when implementing new e-learning tools. In this paper we use a techno-scepticism framework to assess…

Teaching that intentionally integrates cognitive learning with students' affective lives is the kind of pedagogy that can leave a long lasting, even transformative impression on students that outlives the details of course content. Because this author wants her students to truly engage with the subject of domestic violence, she finds it essential…