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The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of empathy in the student service experience. Taking a dyadic perspective, both students’ and staff’s perceptions are analyzed to determine if empathy matters to both actors alike; and which differences in perceptions about the role of empathy between these actors exist.

The authors adopt a multi-method approach and used data from 256 usable survey responses from 11 higher education service providers in Singapore. Empathy was operationalized by six cognitive and affective independent variables and multiple multivariate analyses are applied, such as multivariate analysis of variance, discriminant analysis and multiple regression analysis.

Results show that both students and staff alike evaluate empathy as important in the co-created service experience. The provision of individualized attention to students to positively influence student experience in learning was deemed important by both staff and students. Yet, there are also distinct differences. For students, it is essential that staff members have students’ best interests at heart; for staff members, knowledge of students’ needs and show of care and concern are important.

Students and staff perceive empathy in higher education service provision differently. Interestingly, whilst staff think caring for students is important, students feel that too much care and concern from staff has a negative effect on their experience. Hence, too much care and concern might cause potential issues with the students’ perception of “over-servicing” which might manifest as “spoon-feeding.” Instead, students are asking for individualized and professionalized attention to be taken seriously and to be involved in the co-creation of the education service experience.

This study advances the understanding of affective and cognitive aspects of empathy and their influence on students’ service experiences.

Considerable research has been conducted into the outcomes of vocational lifelong learning (VLL) funding in terms of courses offered and their effectiveness, but much less into the work, professional development needs and careers of staff organising and delivering VLL programmes. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the career management and development needs of such university staff.

A survey was conducted of VLL professionals in higher education to establish the position and their future prospects.

A survey revealed that experienced VLL staff are being required, in some cases unwillingly, to move away from activities concerned with external training to take on work in areas such as technology transfer and general student recruitment. This development is likely to be to the detriment of VLL provision by universities.

VLL staff identify further knowledge of new developments in the field, stronger IT skills, and competence in conducting research as their major development needs.

The paper puts forward some concrete suggestions for improvements.

Based on a review of professional staff (PS), which includes research managers and administrators, in 54 academic publications, I propose a novel definition for this category of staff: ‘degree holding university employees who are primarily responsible for developing, maintaining and changing the social, digital and physical infrastructures that enable education, research and knowledge exchange’. The proposed definition facilitates the development of new research questions that target the level of the organisational fields of higher education and science, to complement research on the university and individual levels. This view supports the study of the contributions of PS to higher education and science. I anticipate that such a broader focus will help to counter and nuance accounts of ‘administrative bloat’ by focusing on how PS as a group shape and are shaped by the organisational fields of higher education and science, rather than dismissing them as superfluous or parasitic.

The European Forum for Enhanced Collaboration in Teaching (EFFECT, 2015–2019) (EFFECT, 2019), a project co-financed by the European Commission, through its Erasmus+ programme, has been exploring effective methods for university teachers’ development at the European level, including pedagogical staff development “modules” to support inclusivity and citizenship in teaching and learning practice. Throughout the project and in this chapter, the authors have taken “inclusivity” to convey an attitude and appreciation for principles which inform “inclusion” as a practice – in the context of reflective and reflexive practice the words become largely interchangeable.

The way academic staff teach is of critical importance in any reform designed to enhance inclusion and citizenship in higher education. Conveying these values-related topics in an academic context hardly lends itself to a traditional pedagogical training model. Promoting inclusion means stimulating discussion, challenging stereotypes and unconscious biases, as well as improving educational and social frameworks. The Change Laboratory methodology (Engeström, 2001) was chosen for the pedagogical staff development workshops under EFFECT, with a view to engaging teaching staff in a deeper reflection about the topics and about their teaching practice. Change Laboratory is an intervention-research methodology that aims at reconceptualizing activity: it intends to provoke authentic reactions, responses and disagreements among the participants and provides opportunity for them to work together to reimagine their activities and to identify “concrete” solutions that address persisting issues in their practice. The theory takes a broad conceptualization of “activity” and “practice,” which is not specific to the education sector or the “classroom.” The Change Laboratory is a methodology designed to support the “expansive learning cycle” described by Engeström and as such can be understood as a theory of change which the EFFECT project team applied to a pan-European higher education learning and teaching context.

In 2017, the project team designed and implemented four physical, face-to-face pedagogical staff development workshops on inclusivity and citizenship skills based on this methodology, attended by over 100 participants from across Europe. In 2018, the workshop model was adapted to a virtual learning environment and three online sessions on inclusivity and citizenship skills for higher education teaching staff were offered.

The pedagogical staff development workshops enabled participants to use open reflective questions to provoke discussion about the challenges faced in their own learning and teaching contexts, think about their pedagogical practices and identify their unconscious biases. Most of the participants rated the workshops as very good and innovative, and considered the methodology an effective vehicle for promoting meaningful open discussion.

In this chapter, the authors reflect on the design, implementation and lessons learnt from the pedagogical staff development workshops on inclusivity and citizenship skills. The authors propose a set of recommendations for individual teaching staff and institutional leadership to consider when addressing continuous professional development for inclusivity and citizenship.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the expectations, perceptions and role understanding of academic staff using a model of academic competencies (i.e. time management, learning skills, technology proficiency, self-monitoring and research skills).

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten members of academic staff at a German university. Participants’ responses to the open-ended questions were coded inductively, while responses concerning the proposed model of academic competencies were coded deductively using a priori categories.

Participating academic staff expected first-year students to be most competent in time management and in learning skills; they perceived students’ technology proficiency to be rather high but their research skills as low. Interviews indicated a mismatch between academic staff expectations and perceptions.

These findings may enable universities to provide support services for first-year students to help them to adjust to the demands of higher education. They may also serve as a platform to discuss how academic staff can support students to develop the required academic competencies, as well as a broader conversation about higher education pedagogy and competency assessment.

Little research has investigated the perspectives of academic staff concerning the academic competencies they expect of first-year students. Understanding their perspectives is crucial for improving the quality of institutions; their input into the design of effective support services is essential, as is a constructive dialogue to identify strategies to enhance student retention.

Social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter are increasingly being integrated into recruiting and outreach activities across the US universities. Despite their popularity among staff, resources on best practices in higher education remain sparse. As new communication tools evolve and transform higher education, researchers must adapt their approaches to understand these tools and collect relevant data. This study presents and tests new methods for conducting research in higher education communications. The author presents digital ethnography as a relevant methodological approach for researching and understanding online communities in higher education. Using an exploratory online survey distributed through online social networks as an example, the author gathers data on the use of social media in international higher education recruiting and outreach. The exploratory survey sought information on which social media tools were being used by university staff, the perceived benefits and drawbacks of social media use in international recruiting and outreach, and how universities measured social media for international recruiting purposes. Using a digital ethnographic approach, the author gathered relevant, timely data from international higher education professionals and gained insight into the norms, rules, and workings of social networking communities. Results point to new methods for understanding the evolution of higher education communications for researchers and university staff alike. Data from the exploratory study of international higher education communications are presented as an example of the rich amount of data obtained through the approach.

This paper aims to determine how quality assurance practitioners in Vietnam describe their levels of professional knowledge and related skills, as well as identifying factors that interfere with the development of these skills.

Semi-structured were conducted with 22 quality assurance practitioners who were directly involved in quality assurance policy-making and implementation.

Thematic analysis identified that internal challenges for quality assurance staff were mostly related to their lack of knowledge, skills and experience in this area. Limited capacity in English communication was also reported as a major challenge for Vietnamese quality assurance specialists.

The paper concludes that regular capacity-building programmes can help quality assurance staff gain the necessary knowledge and skills to improve their work performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of change leadership on staff organizational citizenship behavior in a university setting. Moreover, the study aims to explore forces that influencing on staff organizational citizenship behavior in higher education institutions.

The study adopts a qualitative research design. An interview protocol along with field notes were used as major approaches for collecting in-depth data. Coding and categorizing approach were used to analyze interview transcriptions to help for emerging the study’s themes.

The findings reveal that change leadership builds confidence of staff, motivate them and helps to ensure trust. Moreover, results show that staff organizational citizenship behavior is influenced by personal, organizational, social-cultural and economic forces. To increase the organizational citizenship behavior of staff in higher education institutions, there is a need for leaders to use appropriate change-oriented style in leading their organizations. Findings also revealed that change leaders must serve as role-model to their subordinates as a way on enhancing staff organizational citizenship behavior.

Academic leaders are the pivot of change in higher education institutions. Accordingly, the effectiveness of higher education institution, staff and students are depending on the effectiveness of the leadership. In this regard, academic leaders’ willingness to change is the most effective factor that not only sets the credibility of the organization, but, more importantly, influence on staff organizational behavior.

It is hoped that the outcome of this research will contribute to the current knowledge of change leadership and organizational behavior in universities.

This is an original research and makes a great contribution to higher education in Asian countries.

This chapter offers a discussion of the increasingly widespread use of student evaluations in higher education. It critiques the extent to which these student evaluations are now regarded by governments and higher education management as an authoritative source of information on all aspects of HE provision, with a particular focus on their use to rank and evaluate teaching excellence through the Teaching Excellence Framework. It provides an overview of research looking into how student perceptions of teachers' teaching excellence, or otherwise, play out very differently depending on the gender, age and social class of the lecturers doing the teaching. This chapter argues that these differences make it difficult to ensure that students' assessment of higher education teaching are fair and/or consistent with regard to the teaching they are experiencing across different courses, disciplines and institutions. It concludes that acknowledging how inequalities will inevitably play a part in any evaluative processes is a more productive way of thinking about how more informed indices of teaching quality might be more usefully understood and operationalised in higher education. This approach, however, requires HEI's to recognise the ways in which existing racialised, sexualised and gendered patterns reoccur and sustain inequalities currently in the UK higher education sector. (199)