Feature article

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

A student works at a laptop with headphones on

What future-proofing a course really means

Instead of attempting to predict the future, future-proofing online courses is about making them easier to update, more inclusive and more useful to students, even as context changes

Gennadii Miroshnikov

King’s College London

Why diversity literacy is a research skill

As funders demand more inclusive and internationally collaborative projects, researchers and research managers need the skills to turn good intentions into meaningful practice, says Jakob Feldtfos Christensen

Jakob Feldtfos Christensen

Independent academic

What established academics can learn from technical staff

University research runs on the expertise of technicians, research software engineers, data stewards and core‑facility specialists. Treat them as strategic partners and your group’s quality, speed and compliance will improve

Ian D. Williams

University of Southampton

Making space for Black voices in higher education

While higher education has talked a lot about EDI, are Black academics noticing the difference in their day-to-day lives? A conference gave them a space to reflect

Yaz Osho

University of Westminster

A group of seated pharmacology students laughing together

Why I use a dating analogy to teach complex pharmacology

Pharmacodynamics is one of the more difficult topics when educating students about the complexities of prescribing medicines. But parallels with sexual attraction and rivalry offer a low-tech way to ease learning apprehension

Louise Grisedale

The University of East Anglia

Why subject-aligned career talks matter – and how to deliver them

Discipline-focused careers talks bring the labour market and recruitment practices into the classroom in a way that is based on speakers’ personal stories and experiences

Emilie Rutledge, Merim Baitimbetova

The Open University

Four ways that study tours can put decolonisation into action

Instead of discussing decolonisation in theoretical terms, engaging with those theories in practice via a study tour can be transformative. Here’s how

Kam Kaur, Welyne Jeffrey Jehom

Adelaide University, University of Malaya

Students exploring the historic district of Bogota, Columbia

What the ‘overseas elective’ can teach us about adapting student exchanges for 2026 and beyond

Short-term exchanges may be an effective way to rejuvenate interest in international experiences among students, writes Lucas Lixinski, drawing lessons from his department’s ‘overseas electives’

Lucas Lixinski

UNSW Sydney

Secondary school pupils studying science in a classroom

How to embed outreach into final-year research projects

How to take a proactive approach to ethics approval and use existing university mechanisms to transform outreach into assessed, curriculum-aligned work

Nephtali Marina-Gonzalez

UCL

Effective outreach means translating research into action

Collaboration between research and extension in forest resources and environmental conservation offers a clear lesson for universities everywhere: knowledge matters most when it is communicated, trusted and applied

Shane Furze, Jennifer Gagnon

Virginia Tech

Three business professionals standing in an office and smiling to camera

What skills will help students thrive in the job market of the 2030s?

Students will need a skills-focused mindset as GenAI absorbs entry-level jobs. Here, Raphael Dennett and Lisa Harris share lessons from developing a module that prepares undergraduates for a radically different start to their professional lives

Raphael Dennett, Lisa Harris

The University of Exeter

An illustration of a robot in a mortarboard

How universities can learn to live with AI

University policy and students’ practical use of AI are running in different directions. Higher education needs a collaborative approach, focused on human capability, write Doug Specht and Gunter Saunders

Doug Specht, Gunter Saunders

University of Westminster

A peer-led approach to helping university students with information overload

Complex administration tasks and fragmented communication channels can cause students unnecessary stress and prevent them from accessing support. A centralised approach that offers peer guidance can be an answer

Véronique Hédou

Université de Technologie de Compiègne

Use short-form videos to build community in large courses

TikTok-style videos can give a face to a department and encourage students to take an active role in academic life. Learn how to work with students to create them

Ramin Nassehi

UCL

Students working on a project together in class

Turning final-year research projects into community collaborations

How to embed collaboration with external partners into core research assessment to ease pressure on labs while building core employability skills

Nephtali Marina-Gonzalez, Molly McCabe

UCL

A student uses an AI tool on their phone while working

Why timing matters for research into students’ GenAI misuse

Research into GenAI-assisted cheating across disciplines may not be showing the whole picture. Here’s what researchers should be doing to make sure their work stays relevant when technology is moving so quickly

Sara Brownell, Benjamin G. Chan

Arizona State University

Jose Eos Trinidad teaching at the University of California, Berkeley

How I used chalk and paper to win back students’ attention

It’s not just about kicking AI and other technology out of the university classroom. A return to analogue teaching methods requires preparation in order to reap the benefits of deeper learning and engagement, writes Jose Eos Trinidad

Jose Eos Trinidad

University of California, Berkeley

Universities are ‘wintering’: we need psychological safety more than ever

The UK sector is enduring course cuts, redundancies and restructures. Here, Meredith Wilkinson suggests practices that leadership can put in place to support staff and students through uncertainty

Meredith Wilkinson

De Montfort University

Indigenous Mexican women dressed in colourful traditional clothes

How to turn humanities students into advocates

How a design thinking approach to a community project helped students raise awareness about racism against Indigenous women in Mexico

Eunice Costilla Cruz , Adriana García Domínguez

Tecnológico de Monterrey

A construction student uses a VR headset

How VR can embed the health and safety standards of the future

Virtual reality simulations can equip construction students with technical skills and impress on them the importance of safety. Find out how here

Tsang Yiu-Fai, Kevin Chan Yan-Wai

The Education University of Hong Kong

Academic collaboration isn’t automatic – here’s how to make it work

Effective collaboration in research and teaching practice requires more than goodwill. It depends on clear goals, shared contributions, project management, cultural awareness and space to raise concerns

Jonna Lee

Georgia Tech College of Lifetime Learning

A female university student reading a newspaper

A philosophical approach can help media students understand complex terms

Students need to do more than memorise definitions of complex terms. Learn how a classroom activity based on analytic philosophy makes abstract concepts more tangible

Tuğba Gülal

Istanbul Aydin University

How to be present in teaching, even when you’re not physically there

Asynchronous course design has to work for the student logging in alone at 11pm, or it doesn’t work at all. Here’s how to design to make your presence felt, even in absence

Lucy S. Méndez Santiago

Universidad del Caribe (UNICARIBE)

Why one-way university outreach falls short

If outreach work is only about disseminating knowledge and not about listening, universities risk reinforcing their ‘ivory tower’ reputation. Real impact comes from co-creating knowledge with communities. Pipiet Larasatie explains

Pipiet Larasatie

Virginia Tech

A group of multicultural students in the classroom

Help students become language mediators to bridge knowledge gaps

How mediation, translanguaging and a class contract can develop understanding, prevent clashes and promote appreciation for diversity in multilingual classrooms

Mazal Oaknín

UCL

Five ways academics can protect their annual leave

Organisation and communication will ease the way for university staff to book guilt-free time off and prevent burnout

Emily Nordmann

University of Glasgow

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