Research Group on Higher Education Learning Practices (HELP)

What practical problems is the research group HELP trying to solve?

The practical problems in Higher Education which our research is trying to solve has the overarching theme of how teaching, learning and the environment interact. Under this theme, we see different perspectives: student, teacher, departmental, organisational and institutional. 

The questions we are investigating are diverse focusing on: digital examinations, multimodal texts, transitions and trajectories into Higher Education, issues of inclusion: gender, supervision, development of critical thinking skills, faculty development, academic scholarship and educational leadership. 

What theoretical concepts does our research group contribute to?

The research we address is diverse, but can be described to center around processes and contexts of learning, both from a student and teacher perspective, focusing on questions on different levels of analysis as well as theoretical perspectives used. The research questions guide the theoretical perspectives and methodologies used. Several projects focus on aspects relating to student learning processes and contexts, others on aspects relating to academic teachers’ experiences or academic development. 

Important questions for the future

The digital age enables education in different contexts and targeting different groups in society. This may lead to:

• Widening participation, where students with different academic and cultural backgrounds are entering higher education.
• Life-long learning, where professionals from different sectors are able to go in and out of higher education and enables both research and education a closer link to different organisations in society. 

These groups of students create challenges as well as opportunities regarding sense of belonging, social interaction, language use and learning and thus emphasize the importance of understanding the meaning of context for learning. Issues of social sustainability, with gender equity, socio-economic class and, academic cultural capital need to be explored further and in relation to teaching and learning strategies. Further, we expect strategies to support students and academics to deal with stress and develop resilience and wellbeing in learning environments to be of utmost interest.

In the future, the exploration of how to provide environments for high quality learning will continue to be at core for our research. The area of critical thinking and strategies to deal with so called ‘wicked problems’ will be of continuous interest in a world where trust of knowledge, fake news and alternative truths are available at anyone’s finger tips.

Educational leadership will be of increasing importance as developments of higher education will need to be based on systematic and academic approaches to teaching and learning, and based on HE research in relation to openness, open courses, MOOCs etc.