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The literature on student transition to university commonly investigates student expectations, perceptions and experiences and rarely focusses on university academic staff viewpoints. The purpose of this paper is to explore the staff development potential of a filmed visit of university academic staff to a sixth form college.

The project created a space for eight university colleagues from a wide range of discipline areas in a large metropolitan university and ten college students from one local sixth form feeder college to observe and reflect on their experiences of learning and teaching (L&T) in the two environments.

Staff development episodes were subsequently designed to allow staff who had not attended the visit to comprehend the experiences of L&T in colleges and promote a consideration of pedagogies for student transition. Observations and reflections from this “second audience” are presented.

This was a case study of a visit of a small group of university academic staff to one Roman Catholic sixth form college who selected students to speak on film. The visit occurred just prior to final exams at the end of the academic year.

Packaging the visit via film and workshop activity enabled university staff to hear their own colleagues’ reflections on how students learn in college and the step up to university study. This combination of vicarious/peer learning could be used in a range of staff development and training settings.

This study explored a practical way of extending a small-scale episode of experiential staff development to a much larger staff audience via the use of filmed reflections of participants, combined with workshop activity and online comment and discussion.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the university course trajectories of students from entry to a 3‐year full‐time undergraduate programme, to graduation with an honours degree, in the light of their self‐reported motivations to study. This small‐scale investigation took place at a UK Higher Education Institution (HEI).

A small‐scale survey using the Academic Motivation (to study) Scale was administered to 102 students on entry to a full‐time undergraduate degree course in an interdisciplinary information‐based department in a UK HEI. The students’ motivation profiles were assessed in relation to their trajectory through the degree course and selected students were interviewed just prior to graduation.

The report focuses on the pattern of student motivations – in general students who achieved “good” degrees were likely to have lower motivation and students achieving “not so good” degrees were likely to self‐report higher levels of both autonomous and controlled motivations. Whilst the small sample size and individual variation may partly explain these results, interviews with a small number of participants allowed some further explication of these patterns.

Because of the complexity of variables potentially involved in studies relating to motivation, the focus of this study was practitioner reflection. Thus, it examines self‐reported motivations measured on a established scale and ‘success’ in terms of progression and attainment. The research findings were from a small cohort study in a convenience sample of 102 students in a particular context, so there are necessarily limits on the generalisability of the study.

Elements around student achievement and progression related to their motivation are identified, and may contribute to effective design of learning experiences that students “can be arsed” to engage in.

New empirical data are reported which provide an insight into student attitudes to study and the applicability of teacher responses, which are briefly discussed in relation to socio‐cognitive and socio‐cultural perspectives.

This chapter explores the ways in which academic educators’ experience of collaborative inquiry-based learning (IBL) can illuminate student behaviours, particularly in relation to assessment and the affective domain. The facilitator of this IBL, in the setting of academic staff development in UK Higher Education, uses a reflective storytelling style to detail the learning of an annual cohort of staff at a university in the north west of the United Kingdom. Six separate academic staff cohorts enroled in a unit, as part of a Master of Arts in Academic Practice, to undertake this experiential, humanist way of learning, working with all the principles of collaborative inquiry. The chapter explores the ways in which the participants’ self-reported affective responses altered over the course of the unit, particularly in relation to the assessment. Participant reflections are integrated with pedagogic literature and extracts from the facilitator’s contemporaneous notes, assessor’s feedback and other material, detailing the ways in which the freedom of an IBL episode moves to anxiety associated with assessment, which can build as the assessment point nears. Reflections on group constitution, cohort characteristics and the role of the facilitator are considered in relation to the notion of ‘success’ of IBL episodes. This is interrogated particularly in relation to academic staff responses to the experience of the emotions of IBL, and how this may affect their own practice in designing teaching and learning experiences for students in Higher Education.

This chapter provides an introduction to how the inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach is being used by colleges and universities around the world to improve faculty and institutional development and to strengthen the interconnections between teaching, learning, and research. This chapter provides a synthesis and analysis of all the chapters in the volume, which present a range of perspectives, case studies, and empirical research on how IBL is being used across a range of courses across a range of institutions to enhance faculty and institutional development. This chapter argues that the IBL approach has great potential to enhance and transform teaching and learning. Given the growing demands placed on education to meet a diverse range of complex political, economic, and social problems and personal needs, this chapter argues that education should be a place where lifelong and lifewide learning is cultivated and where self-directed learning is nurtured. To that end, this chapter argues that IBL helps cultivate a learning environment that is more meaningful, responsive, integrated, and purposeful.