Springer eLearning for Quality Teaching in Higher Education: Teachers’ Perception, Practice, and Interventions

This book explores the impact of eLearning on the quality of teaching in higher education, focusing on three main issues: university teachers’ perception of quality teaching, their strategies for achieving quality teaching in practice, and interventions that design and implement online collaborative activities in a large class. The book argues that if eLearning targets the real problems in practice and is appropriately designed and implemented, it can improve the teaching quality at universities. It also demonstrates the complexity of teachers’ perception of quality teaching and contextual factors that affect teaching practice and quality. Further, it explores university teachers’ perception of quality teaching in Italy, the UK and China – an aspect that is rarely addressed in the literature – and reveals why the impact of ICTs on university teaching is not as great as in other fields by explaining the issues that threaten the quality of day-to-day teaching. Lastly, it confirms that traditional lecturing, combined with online collaborative activities, improves the quality of teaching compared to traditional lecturing alone. As such, this book is a necessary and important resource for the research community. From the Back Cover This book explores the impact of eLearning on the quality of teaching in higher education, focusing on three main issues: university teachers’ perception of quality teaching, their strategies for achieving quality teaching in practice, and interventions that design and implement online collaborative activities in a large class. The book argues that if eLearning targets the real problems in practice and is appropriately designed and implemented, it can improve the teaching quality at universities. It also demonstrates the complexity of teachers’ perception of quality teaching and contextual factors that affect teaching practice and quality. Further, it explores university teachers’ perception of quality teaching in Italy, the UK and China – an aspect that is rarely addressed in the literature – and reveals why the impact of ICTs on university teaching is not as great as in other fields by explaining the issues that threaten the quality of day-to-day teaching. Lastly, it confirms that traditional lecturing, combined with online collaborative activities, improves the quality of teaching compared to traditional lecturing alone. As such, this book is a necessary and important resource for the research community. About the Author Nan Yang is an Assistant Research Fellow at the Institute of Higher Education, Beijing Academy of Educational Sciences, China. She received her Ph.D. in Psychological Sciences and Education from the University of Trento, Italy. Her research interests include quality assurance in higher education, learning analytics, computer-supported collaborative learning, large-class pedagogy and learning design.