Feature article

The wintering of universities

The fallow moments of retreat are necessary to bring about spring. For universities, we must use this winter to think about what it is we do, writes Katie Normington

Katie Normington

De Montfort University

Students work together in an outdoor setting

Give students the skills to communicate across disciplines

In sustainability education, inter- and transdisciplinary teaching alone is not enough – students need to develop the skills to learn in a cross-disciplinary way. Co-creation could be the answer.

Julia Myatt

University of Birmingham

A cheerful student waves hello on a Zoom call

What’s the crucial element for interdisciplinary teamwork? Psychological safety

Foster a sense of radical openness in your interdisciplinary online learning environment by establishing psychological safety – here’s how

Helena Robinson, Fabian Held

University of Technology Sydney, University of Sydney

Lessons from an interdisciplinary community engagement course for engineers

STEM curricula in the US don’t often expose students to perspectives on culture, history and power nor equip them with effective community engagement skills. Here, an instructor and students share lessons from designing and teaching an interdisciplinary course that sought to address that gap

Ruthie Yow

Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities

Students sitting around a table with a teacher at the front

How to get students interested in interdisciplinary work

Providing real-world opportunities, incentives and spaces for interdisciplinary work enables undergraduate students to explore important solutions to complex issues

Sambit Dash

Manipal Academy of Higher Education

How to prevent compassion fatigue

Many educators experience compassion fatigue at some point in their careers. Prevent it by shifting your perspective, setting boundaries and building strong support networks

Bhawana Shrestha

Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

An illustration of tiny figures putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle

Universities need to move interdisciplinary professional associations to the next step

Inter- and transdisciplinary teaching is going beyond communities of practice – but it’s still too small to compete with discipline-based professional associations. Here are the questions we should be asking to move forward

Gabriele Bammer

Australian National University

Vibe Lounge event at Turner Sims at the University of Southampton

How civic arts programmes can make students feel welcome

Empowering students to co-create music events with peers can foster a sense of belonging in their university and city. Here’s how a student-community collective breathed new life into a 50-year-old venue

Jessica Santer, Carley Divish

University of Southampton

Improving assessments through industry collaboration

How to build and maintain industry relationships and coordinate effective project-based assessments for MBA students

Maninder Singh

Manipal Academy of Higher Education

African colleagues at a conference session

International research needs international research professionals

When researchers in poorer countries are expected to deliver programmes to the exacting standards of funders in the Global North, it makes international collaboration more difficult. Here, Mary Ryan calls for skills development initiatives to align global aspiration and reality

Mary Ryan

University of Glasgow

Scholarly publishers’ role in fostering collaboration in academia

With the infrastructure in place to exchange ideas and information, journals can enable scholars to build on their research and accelerate discovery and quality of innovation, as Antonia Pop explains

Antonia Pop

University of Toronto Press

A phone screen with several different GenAI apps displayed

DeepSeek and shallow moats: what does it mean for higher education?

DeepSeek’s arrival may have spooked the markets, but what does it mean for the research and development of LLMs? Higher education should avoid putting all its eggs in one GenAI basket, writes Ben Swift

Ben Swift

Australian National University

Participants of a focus group chatting in a circle

Show students you care

When you prioritise well-being, your students will thank you for it. Show kindness by taking steps to reduce cognitive load and create a welcoming and engaging learning environment

Natalie K. D. Seedan

The University of the West Indies

Providing the right resources for students who work alongside study

Student services and scholarships are among the support systems that can help students manage a job in tandem with their university education

Cheong Fan

Macau University of Science and Technology

Four questions to ask when bringing students from different disciplines together

With interdisciplinary teaching, we need to look at ‘how’ as well as ‘what’. Focus on these four elements of course design to create a space where integration and interdisciplinarity can flourish

Jessica Oudenampsen

Utrecht University

How to know when students need mental health assistance

Academic institutions have a rare opportunity to intervene to help students with mental health challenges, but this requires support and training for staff and faculty, writes Amy Epperley

Amy Epperley

Virginia Tech

Three alternative assessments that build managerial skills

Personal development discussions, presentations and peer coaching help build essential communication skills and emotional intelligence. These tips will make them effective

Michelle Civile, Alison Sydenham, Julie Pepper

The University of Exeter

Students working on an interdisciplinary project

Can you teach interdisciplinarity in 10 weeks?

Interdisciplinarity is an ambitious and rewarding research process, but how realistic can we be in a 10-week module? Here is how to frame the task, structure the process and balance workloads

Simon Scott

University of Birmingham

Market orientation must be an institution-wide endeavour

As higher education becomes increasingly global, universities must adopt a market-orientated philosophy, balancing student needs, national priorities and competitive differentiation, writes Emily Owen

Emily Owen

THE Consultancy

Tap the mine of library data to help enhance your courses

University libraries offer a rich well of data for course enhancement teams, on everything from student engagement to which resources they’re using most. Here’s how to make the most of it

Steve Briggs, Carly Ramirez-Herelle , Jo Myhill

University of Bedfordshire

Pathway from PhD to healthcare leadership

Beyond the classroom: from PhD preparation to leadership

A foundational pathway that nurtures future leaders in healthcare and scientific innovation produces students who are not only ready for their PhD journey but emerge as skilled professionals and researchers, write Zoltán Benyó and Attila Szijártó

Zoltán Benyó, Attila Szijártó

Semmelweis University

What can module leaders learn from Toyota?

How to use the plan-do-check-act cycle to improve student success, satisfaction and grades

Sercan Demiralay

Nottingham Trent University

Voice, agency and style: what goes missing when AI chats back

We need to teach that imperfect but authentic writing is more valuable than sentences that are polished on the surface, argue three US academics. Here, they share surprise findings from STEM and beyond

Qian Du, Daniel M. Gross, Patrick Hong

University of California, Irvine

An illustration of a robot hand supporting a human brain

How to integrate AI into strategy and business education

Incorporate AI into your teaching or ignore it and hope it fades from view? Let’s balance these two attitudes by raising our expectations of students

Guillaume Carton , Julia Parigot

EMLyon Business School, Institut Supérieur de Gestion

People sat around a table slotting cogs together

How can we assess interdisciplinarity?

Effectively assessing interdisciplinarity involves encouraging students to ask the right questions and critically evaluating the quality of the knowledge created, explains Simon Scott

Simon Scott

University of Birmingham

Should universities meet all industry demands?

With higher education institutions adapting their programmes to prepare students for future jobs, they risk producing corporatised graduates to a detriment of innovation or even business’ best interests, writes Stéphane Bouchonnet

Stéphane Bouchonnet

École Polytechnique

Middle-aged male patient with female doctor

Evaluating the impact of patient and public involvement in health research

Measuring the impact of involving patients and the public in healthcare research is less about proving that the practice is a ‘good thing’ and more about finding ways to do it better, writes Gary Hickey. Here, he shares eight key considerations

Gary Hickey

University of Southampton

White privilege doesn’t exist for working-class men in higher education

Consider social class a protected characteristic and remove financial barriers to make HE accessible to white, working-class men, writes Mark Butterick

Mark Butterick

University of Leeds

Tips for designing interprofessional education courses in healthcare

Adapting to and collaborating with other professionals is essential in medicine. Here’s how to nurture an interdisciplinary mindset from the very start

Hajer N. Sheikh, Umamah Rehman

Dubai Medical University

Active, flipped, micro, virtual learning: a toolbox for interdisciplinary teaching

Young engineers need interdisciplinary skills more than ever to communicate science clearly, both to inform the public and to protect shared resources such as the environment. Here are lessons from a cross-course project

Martin Morgeneyer, Esteban Zúñiga Domínguez

Université de Technologie de Compiègne

Unlock the potential of internationalisation in higher education

Let’s smash through the barriers to effective internationalisation. Here’s a four-part framework to do so

Wafa El Garah

Al Akhawayn University

How to create a higher education AI policy

A successful university AI policy guides internal innovation and usage, directs resources and identifies key contacts for emergent needs. Here are the steps and considerations for writing guidelines

Eric Scott Sembrat

Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities

How to build a citizen science research culture

Practical advice for building inclusive and innovative research cultures that prepare students for real-world challenges

Aadhi Agilan, Sam O’Keefe, Gareth Bilton

University of Chester

A small toy robot works at a notebook with a laptop open

The evolution of assignments in the age of generative AI

Instead of cracking down on AI use for written assignments, we just need to make our assessment smarter

Miriam Wun

Singapore Institute of Technology

Hands tearing off the letter "t" from the word "can't "

Fostering an ‘I can’ attitude in students

Challenging assumptions about competency and student independence and promoting self-reflection can foster agency, writes Megan Jones

Megan Jones

The University of East Anglia

‘Generative AI is making our students more creative than ever’

The real opportunity of AI isn’t automation, it’s the potential to democratise innovation, writes Ramona Pistol. And teaching practices need to catch up to this reality

Ramona Pistol

University of Hertfordshire

The power of effective feedback for early-career educators

How can assessors improve educators’ ability to give feedback that influences students’ motivation, engagement and achievement?

Jennie Fox

The University of Exeter

An insider’s guide to how students use GenAI tools

There’s no doubt students are using GenAI in their assignments – but how? Miriam Wun and Nah Yong En talked to students to find out

Miriam Wun, Nah Yong En

Singapore Institute of Technology

Tackling declining attendance with the ‘show up’ mindset

A model that instils in students a commitment to ‘showing up’ from day one includes practical strategies for improving attendance and fostering long-term engagement

Maya Cara, Nina Seppala

UCL

Five key stages when embedding AI networking tools

The Ask an Alum AI tool is helping current students connect with alumni, develop networks and benefit from career advice. Here’s how to embed a digital networking tool

Wallis Spence

The London School of Economics and Political Science

Young woman in front of brain illustration, arts and sciences

What a transdisciplinary lens brings to university teaching

Why is it important to integrate knowledge and methodologies across disciplines? Catherine Amelink has recommendations to encourage the student engagement needed to address complex, weighty problems

Catherine Amelink

Virginia Tech

Streamline the literature review process with these tips

Ways to make the research, reading and referencing processes smooth

Natalie K. D. Seedan

The University of the West Indies

Female university student walking to class

‘Why do we still timetable classes as if students don’t have lives outside university?’

As the block model has evolved from educational outlier to established practice, the questions it raises about how higher education is delivered are increasingly difficult to ignore, writes John Weldon

John Weldon

Victoria University

The AI genie is out of the bottle – now what?

Generative AI is here to stay, so let’s build AI literacy, incorporate AI into assessment and craft solid policies for its use

Aida Nuranova, Timothy Wawn

Nazarbayev University

Female students sitting along in lecture hall

Empty classrooms and disconnected students in the age of AI

Universities face an urgent need to accelerate change in how they teach – and think about teaching – to reconnect students’ digital lifestyles with the way they learn, write Nic Fair and Larisa Yarovaya

Nicholas Fair , Larisa Yarovaya

University of Southampton

Three ways to ensure you are teaching for lasting societal impact

Multidisciplinary courses, applied learning and personalisation will all help business schools prepare graduates to serve the needs of the global community. Baback Yazdani explains how to make them work

Baback Yazdani

Nottingham Trent University

A jumble of everyday objects, including a calculator

Use everyday objects to educate student teachers

By using simple, familiar items and fostering open dialogue, we can encourage critical reflection in our students, transforming traditional teaching models into more inclusive learning experiences

Daniel Gutiérrez-Ujaque

University of Lleida

Teaching with empathy: a practical guide for university educators

By making consistent efforts to understand and support students, university teachers create a learning environment where they feel capable and appreciated, writes Dianne Stratton-Maher

Dianne Stratton-Maher

The University of Southern Queensland

Tips for creating and delivering effective educational webinars

Strategies that incorporate interactive elements and rules setting to help teachers design engaging webinars

Lauren Flannery

The University of East Anglia

An illustration of a pile of books linking to a crowd of businesspeople

Career-connected learning is an investment in the future

A strong reputation for career-connected learning can create a seamless circle for universities, with graduates happy to pave the way for others via the alumni network. But how to get started?

Audra Spicer

Colorado State University Global

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