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Flipping the course curriculum: Digital engagement for active learning

Digital engagement has steadily become an important part of an educator’s pedagogic repertoire since universities started offering courses online in the early 2000s. In light of the Covid-19...

Values first, goals second

I have a certain disquiet about the way we in higher education so often relate success and failure to the attainment or otherwise of goals. This focus on goals is present at all levels of...

Flattening the awarding gap through identity work

The awarding gap is starkest between the likelihood of White (domiciled) students and Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) (domiciled) students being awarded a ‘good’ degree in the United...

Engaging international students in the UK: The experiences of Christian churches

International student mobility has been increasingly affected by politics, culture, economics, natural disasters and public health. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic this year, we have witnessed the...

Avoiding the obvious: Crime and race in higher education

The #BlackLivesMatter protests sweeping across Europe have encouraged us to question just how far the criminal justice system labels ‘people of colour criminals and discriminates against them’...

The impact of Covid-19 and the UK public lockdown on postgraduate research students in the UK

While disruption to educational ‘norms’ has received coverage since the public lockdown, less attention has been shown to the impact of the public lockdown on postgraduate research students....

Education: An academic discipline or a field?

What is the problem? Education research has periodically been sharply criticised for being weak in comparison with research from other disciplines. Some of this criticism has implied, or...

Situated professionalism and its influence on the university–school divide within initial teacher education

‘Would you do that in school?’ A question familiar to anyone who trains new teachers, but one without an easy answer. There often appears to be a divide between what trainees view as...

Rigorous designs for learning bridges are challenging but we need them now more than ever

Donald Clark (CEO at WildFire Learning) published a thoughtful blog post on 27 March: ‘I fear,’ he began, ‘that the UK University system has been myopic regarding online learning’ (Clark,...

‘Can everybody hear me?’: Foundation year students’ experiences of studying during lockdown

Foundation year programmes aim to prepare ‘widening participation’ students for university-level study, and focus on developing study skills and underpinning knowledge on their chosen subject...

Colin McCaig

Professor of Higher Education Policy

Colin has around 20 years’ experience as a WP researcher and evaluator, with a particular interest in higher education policy that impacts inequalities of access. He has been involved in large...

Summer 2020

Research Intelligence Issue 143 is on the theme of 'Widening participation in practice'.