Feature article

A woman walking up a leafy green structure extending up into the sky

Why AI makes a growth mindset fundamental for university students

How to encourage students to use AI as a reflective learning partner to strengthen weaknesses and respond to instructor feedback

Ana Li Zhong

Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

The key to designing outreach activities students remember

Five ways to spark students’ curiosity during outreach activities and encourage them to keep exploring

Kenneth Wai-Ting Leung

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Young healthcare student in a coaching session

How academics can use coaching approaches to support students

Academic coaching assumes students are the experts who already know how to overcome their barriers and achieve their potential. The key is giving them prompts and space to set their own action plan

Helen Foster

Canterbury Christ Church University

How to supervise a student systematic review without losing a semester

A systematic review can fit inside a degree but only if the supervisor sizes the question to the calendar before the student starts searching

Sarah Mitchell

Research Gold

University students sitting outside looking at a funny video on one of their phones

Help students practise digital mindfulness

By reducing screen time, students can recharge and reconnect with their physical surroundings. Learn how to guide them towards more mindful digital use

Chaonan Xu

Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

Medical students talk in a university corridor

Connecting the institutional dots for workforce readiness

Collaboration is proving critically important for changing workforce needs in the healthcare sector. Here’s how to make it part of your university’s culture

Walaa Awad

Colorado State University Global

How to apply for promotion in higher education

In seeking a more senior role in academia, you will need to communicate a strong, positive story about yourself that emphasises performance and impact as well as contribution to the institution and its reputation

David Waller

University of Technology Sydney

Students in a classroom with an online student appearing on a screen at the end of the table

Give students greater flexibility with HyFlex learning

Designing different routes through the same module so they offer an equivalent learning experience is where the real work begins, writes Stuart Samuels, who offers practical planning advice

Stuart Samuels

To get started with interdisciplinarity, ask: what’s the problem?

Interdisciplinarity can often be treated as an institutional side project. But embedding it into university structures can change everything. Here’s how

Yuzhuo Cai

The Education University of Hong Kong

Rethinking course design to enliven student engagement

To foster students’ meaningful learning, educators should be using class time to maximise the benefits of the in-person experience, as Nasreen Sultana explains

Nasreen Sultana

The University of Queensland

How to set your students up to write compelling op-eds

Help students develop their writing and refine their arguments by publishing opinion pieces. Find advice for supporting student writers here

Arafat Reza, Shahariar Sadat

BRAC University’s Centre for Peace and Justice

Five principles for designing industry-relevant microcredentials

Microcredentials that respond to student and employer needs require industry-backed, thoughtful design, writes Karla Margarita Banda Martínez, who offers guidance

Karla Margarita Banda Martínez

Tecnológico de Monterrey

Black university teacher calling on a student in class

Teaching is a verb: what sets good teachers apart

Reflection is what moves teaching beyond performance and towards continuous improvement, writes William Owen

William J. Owen

University of Northern British Columbia

A student discusses options with a careers support advisor

Embed career readiness throughout a student’s journey

Instead of a stand-alone service, career support should be part of a larger academic ecosystem that begins at orientation. Here’s how to implement it

Angel Iverson, Julia Vollrath, Alison Noonan

University of Florida

University staff on laptops listening to a speaker out of shot

How to build an inclusive curriculum design toolkit

Educators often understand the benefits of inclusivity but lack the skills to embed it in courses and curricula. An inclusive design toolkit can bridge institutional ambition and everyday teaching practice

Emma Whewell, Sian Davies-Vollum, Faith Tucker, Helen Tiplady

University of Northampton

Black female student taking notes at laptop

Leveraging student agency in course design

Giving students choice is not about reducing expectations or allowing students to take shortcuts in their study, writes Courtney Kimmel. Here, she explains how course structure can create pathways to deeper learning

Courtney Kimmel

Virginia Tech

How to show students’ learning beyond grades: a five-step process

Teaching success should not rely solely on pass rates or student satisfaction. Here’s how to gather evidence that students understand, apply and transfer what they learned

Anabel Campaña

Universidad del Caribe (UNICARIBE)

Show students why your classes matter

When we demonstrate clear benefits, offer incentives that support learning and intervene when students fall behind, we can make attending a more attractive choice. Read strategies based on student insights

Andrew Snyder, Bingqing Wang, Jiayu Zhou

Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

‘Effective outreach closes the gap between understanding and action’

University outreach is often measured in terms of reach and participation. But information alone rarely changes behaviour. The real test is whether people do something differently as a result

Mike Gutter

Virginia Tech

A hiring manager shaking hands with a candidate

Recruitment isn’t an endurance test – universities should stop treating it like one

If we want the best researchers, educators and professional services colleagues to choose our institutions, we need to scrutinise whether the processes designed to recruit them are helping or hindering us, writes Angela Goff

Angela Goff

UCL

Adding an E to an MBA: what an ‘executive’ rebrand costs in real terms

Renaming an MBA an EMBA sounds like a branding tweak. It isn’t. Here’s what we learned about stakeholder buy-in, message sequencing and what a single letter can mean

Ekant Veer, Teresa van Dugteren

University of Canterbury | Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha

STEM students watch and interact with a classroom presentation

Harness the power of ‘what if?’ in STEM teaching

Interactive, computable lecture presentations offer students autonomy and the chance to flex their creativity. Find out how

Dmitry Sizov

Nazarbayev University

Students sitting together in the library

Rethinking critical thinking in the age of algorithms

How to help students build a three-stage daily habit that interrogates both online sources and the systems that surface them

Temi Odusanya

Robert Gordon University

Why the ‘lone wolf’ principal investigator no longer works in modern academia

Teams that integrate clinical insight and academic enquiry result in better academic outputs, increased researcher well-being and a sense of community and shared ownership

Zoë Walters, Tim Underwood

University of Southampton

Research participants sit together in a circle

Six questions researchers should ask before assigning pseudonyms

It might seem like a routine step in research but choosing participants’ pseudonyms can be an uncertain, unsettling process. Here’s how to approach it thoughtfully

Eileen Harkess-Murphy, Rachel Allen

University of the West of Scotland

University students at a desk surrounded by shelves full of books

Here’s how to show students what responsible AI use looks like

Well-designed assessments can highlight generative AI’s limitations, where it can provide support and what responsible practice looks like. Andrew Firr and Alex Fenton offer strategies

Andrew Firr, Alex Fenton

University of Chester

Using AI to create the practice opportunities online students need

For disciplines that depend on interpersonal skills such as communication, leadership, negotiation and mediation, AI can provide elusive experiential learning, particularly in asynchronous environments

Kathy Miller Perkins

Virginia Tech

A network of intelligent nodes representing AI agents

The moats are still shallow but the stakes are much higher

Why a freely downloadable Chinese model and a security breach at Hugging Face should make universities wary of signing exclusive AI contracts

Ben Swift

Australian National University

A psychology student providing counselling to a patient in a clinic

The role of work-based learning in psychology education

By offering choice and emotional support, educators can prepare students for a range of psychology careers. Learn how

Kalum Bodfield, Emma Tarpey, Melissa Pilkington, Aspasia Eleni Paltoglou

Manchester Metropolitan University

Gamification can support sustained engagement with course content

Game mechanics use feedback, rankings, discussion and participation over time to maintain students’ attention throughout the semester

Fabrizio Marozzo

University of Calabria

Bring playfulness into teaching for collaboration and creativity

In learning, playfulness is often overlooked. Yet it could be key to embedding the soft, ‘human’ skills students will need for the future. Isabel Taurel shows how

Isabel Taurel

Al Akhawayn University

Students sitting in a circle with no desks

Tech-free teaching: how to get it right

Carefully designed device-free lessons can help students learn to articulate their thoughts, engage with peers and brainstorm ideas. Learn how

Arpita Ghosh

The University of Exeter

Young male college student studying in library

AI literacy cannot be bolted on to first-year courses

Future teachers, nurses, engineers, lawyers and business leaders need more than rules and policies about when to use AI. Inexperienced students benefit from courses that help them practise responsible judgement alongside foundational learning

Nicole Brownlie

The University of Southern Queensland

Retro style poster for space tours to Mars

Does student attention have a half-life?

Can a theatrical approach to teaching a dry subject free up brain space? Chris Jones uses cognitive load theory to manage when students’ attention drifts

Chris Jones

Regent’s University London

Students hold brightly coloured speech bubbles up to their faces

How to turn student feedback into HR decisions that actually change their experience

Despite the amount of student feedback collected, it is not impacting on students’ day-to-day lives. How can we change that?

Igor Kim

Nazarbayev University

Back view of student raising his hand to answer teacher's question

When the university lesson becomes a ritual

By turning your classes into ‘interaction rituals’, you could re-energise even the most apathetic of students – and yourself – and spark excitement for learning. Allan McCoy explains how

Allan McCoy

University of Nottingham

Will China’s push to bring higher education closer to industry fix its skills mismatch?

Despite 12 million graduates entering the job market, Chinese companies still lack highly skilled candidates, writes Gerard A. Postiglione. Here, he looks at how the country’s universities are addressing employment and what its strategies can offer other higher education systems

Gerard A. Postiglione

The University of Hong Kong

"AI" and "..." in speech bubbles superimposed over a chatroom webpage

How an AI-integrated anonymous chatroom boosted AI literacy and inclusion

A single course design choice helped make AI literacy intrinsic and opened up a way to level the playing field educationally

Fridolin Ting

The Education University of Hong Kong

Business colleagues having a meeting in a boardroom

An academics’ guide to integrating industry engagement in course design

How to embed short, structured company projects into courses, from securing institutional support to building lasting relationships with external organisations

Paulina Vargas

CETYS Universidad

A student wearing earphones on her laptop

How to navigate multilingualism in global online classrooms

Virtual international collaboration can develop intercultural competence and critical thinking skills. Here are strategies that help make these experiences valuable

Francisco Alberto Núñez Tapia

CETYS Universidad

Robot hand holding magnifying glass up to computer screen

How to make your academic work visible to AI

If you want the robots and LLMs to find your scholarly publications, you need to make your outputs legible, connected and repeatedly encountered

Darshan Vigneswaran

University of Amsterdam

A Black female academic with glasses sat at a desk on her laptop

Supporting female academics in Sub-Saharan Africa to publish and lead

Five lessons from a Ghana-focused project that addressed the gendered conditions of academic work to give women the tools needed to participate fully and progress

Alicia Bowman, Juliet Thondhlana, Liticia Effah-Manu, Felicia Nkrumah-Kuagbedzi

University of Nottingham, Ho Technical University, Association of African Universities

Students play a game designed to improve their clinical communication

Why serious skills need serious play

Are your students struggling with role play? Game-based learning can offer structure, safety and feedback, especially when combined with AI support. Here’s how

Mark Anthony Chan Wen Kein

Singapore Institute of Technology

Why a unity lens is crucial in higher education

When institutions highlight that commitment to learning, research and service to the broader public good is shared across campus, they help students and educators see themselves as part of a collective endeavour rather than isolated participants

Katerina Standish

University of Northern British Columbia

Five ways to turn students from spectators into collaborators

Practical tips for transforming traditional assignments, research projects and graduate theses into opportunities to connect students with real-world stakeholders

Rafael Núñez

Universidad del Caribe (UNICARIBE)

Six assessment types that support deep, real-world learning

If traditional assessment methods feel limited, Temesgen Kifle shares alternative ways to measure students’ understanding and ability to apply learning to authentic problems

Temesgen Kifle

The University of Queensland

An illustration of international research collaborations

Juggling competing priorities in research collaborations

Bringing together cross-disciplinary research teams, government and industry on a single project will need strategic management from the beginning. Here’s how

Xiao-Lin Zhao, Chien-Ming Wang

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Let it evolve: five lessons from developing our own journal

When you launch a new academic journal, be prepared to learn as it develops and let it evolve over time, writes Natalia Azzi

Natalia Azzi

Technological University of Uruguay (UTEC)

Treat outreach as an integral part of the research process

Universities often frame outreach as something that happens after research is complete. But when knowledge transfer is left to the end, impact becomes an afterthought. Mike Gutter explains

Mike Gutter

Virginia Tech

Beyond checkbox training: how to build university faculty’s digital fluency

How can institutions align digital training with the realities of academic work, professional identity and institutional culture? Here, five academics suggest design principles for effective skills development

Multiple authors

University of Chester, Kate Lindsay Consulting Ltd, University of Plymouth, University of Greenwich , Buckinghamshire New University

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