Learning & Teaching in Higher Education

Programme aims

The main purpose of the programme is to offer those working in higher education the opportunity to deepen their understanding of their own professional practice as well as the broader context of higher education academic practice internationally. The programme aims to:

• encourage participants to critically reflect on their own professional practice in the light of current research into higher education;
• create new approaches to, and understanding of their own and others' higher education contexts;
• encourage the development of teaching approaches which actively support inclusivity and develop students' ethical awareness;
• discuss and critique areas of academic practice including: teaching and learning; assessment; development of curricula; learning environments; higher education policies and strategies; higher education research and scholarship; and higher education leadership;
• examine professional practice in higher education through processes of critical enquiry, reflection and practice based research;
• support participants working in collaboration with peers and experienced colleagues to develop competence and confidence within their individual roles in higher education as well as within their communities of practice.

Intended Learning Outcomes

The programme provides opportunities for participants to develop and to demonstrate knowledge and understanding, skills, qualities and other attributes in the following areas.

Knowledge and Understanding

By the end of this programme participants will be able to:

• articulate a rationale for their own professional practice as well as being able to critique wider international higher education research practices and contexts;
• analyse a range of higher education provision and activity, including for example, undergraduate and postgraduate provision, higher education strategies and policies, the balance between research and teaching, and other university services and functions;
• identify and critically reflect upon specific issues of concern within their own professional context.

Skills and Other Attributes

By the end of this programme participants will be able to:

Subject specific/practical skills

• identify a range of learning, teaching and assessment methods and evaluate their appropriateness in constructing well aligned course designs;
• devise appropriate quality criteria for judging the relative value of higher educational research literature;
• competently outline an investigation of significant issues in higher education professional practice through designing a research plan;
• independently plan and competently carry out an appropriate research investigation including data collection, analysis and writing up of an in-depth study of higher education practice. (MEd only)

Intellectual skills 

• evaluate and synthesise a range of higher educational research literature and research methodologies to be able to judge their appropriate use in particular contexts.

Transferable/key skills

• provide a robust rationale for changes to their own individual professional practice and wider collective academic practices;
• critically evaluate at a conceptual and methodological level the quality of published higher educational research in relation to participants' own area of higher education professional practice;
• describe and justify a research project and report on outcomes in a way that informs participants' own contexts as well as the wider academic community. (MEd only)