Editorial

Whether in the workplace or anywhere else, the use of technologies of one kind or other impacts what we do, within it. A university is a workplace for us, academics and administrators, and it is in some ways a workplace for our students, who also need to take note of its norms and practices, and to adhere to whatever rules and regulations apply within it. A workplace, whether a university or any other, requires us to communicate with each other in a more formal way than is the case in our personal lives, whether this is using the medium of writing or instead via speaking to each other. Whilst speaking to each other was once confined to only either on the telephone or face to face in an office or some other on campus space, such is the technology these days that face to face now includes speaking to each other via technologies such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and similar. Indeed, at the time of writing this editorial, whilst we are all still being affected in one way or another by the global pandemic, many of the formal meetings that, prior to this, were conducted on campus are now being conducted in the online environment, only. For many academics, this is very unfamiliar territory indeed, and it is not without its considerable challenges, particularly for those of us who are not used to either attending or running meetings online but, more importantly, have had little or no experience of running our lectures and seminars online, too, whilst sitting at home. As with everything in any workplace, had the transition been carefully planned, and had we had a satisfactorily long period of time for the necessary training and development needed to make the considerable changes needed, this may perhaps have been less of a culture shock for many of us. And, certainly, it would have meant less work to do in such an incredibly short timescale; making fundamental changes of the type required is hugely time and effort intensive, naturally enough.

For those who have moved their on campus teaching to an entirely off campus mode of delivery, the students who had, previously, been used to attending their lectures and seminars in classrooms on campus, the adjustment has likely been no less of a culture shock. That said, at least for our undergraduates, they are known as the ‘digital natives’ so, in theory anyway, these students are far more used to using technologies of one sort or another. So, whilst now being 100% online is a new experience for them, they are said to have the advantage of being more confident with the technology side of it, at least. Whether this is the case or not, as the article comprising the first of this issue reminds us, social media use for those within the age group of our undergraduates and likely most of our postgraduates is now simply something that is taken for granted, something that they do every day. Having seen so many young adults glued to their smartphones for such a long time, some might also add ‘they’re on their smartphones pretty much all day (and night)’. Entitled ‘the effects of social media usage on attention, motivation and academic performance’, its authors, Bianca A Barton, Katharine S Adams, Blaine L Browne and Meagan C Arrastia-Chisholm, all at Valdosta State University in US, cite sources that suggest that almost all of our students spend time on social media sites such as Instagram and Twitter and our own observations of young people confirm that this is certainly the case. Indeed, many lecturers have now incorporated the use of such social media sites into their everyday teaching and so our students are using social media both outside and inside of the classroom. However, as the authors point out in their review of the literature, technology is like everything else, that is, it has its considerable benefits but also its equally considerable negative aspects. This, they say, raises the issue of what to focus attention on, given that students claim that they are able to deal with multiple tasks and that so doing has no negative effects on their learning/studying. However, as the authors say, it is important to distinquish between switching between tasks rather than multitasking, and it is task switching that has been linked to a less than optimum learning and also to a poor performance as an outcome of that learning.

The very useful and comprehensive overview of the literature in this article around social media use also covers aspects of two of the self regulating strategies that are important to academic success, namely, attention and motivation. These, too, are looked at in the context of social media use. As the authors tell us, one of the difficulties with using social media is dealing with the distractions that social media use brings with it, and this is as true for students as it is for ourselves, naturally enough. Creating an environment that best suits our learning/working and managing our time, not allowing those distractions to creep in, is easier said than done, however. In the context of our students, studying/learning at home, as they work on their coursework or prepare for their examinations, it is all too easy to be distracted by social media; social media unrelated to the academic work at hand, that is. Going on to discuss motivation and its importance to sucess, the authors talk about motivation in terms of effort regulation, that is, whether or not we keep going, we persist, with a task, or whether or not we get distracted by something that excites or interests us more, in this case, something that pops up on social media. However, as the authors say that effort regulation is the strongest predictor of academic performance given that it needs action, this explains its greater importance over other strategies that also need action, such as time management and making sure that the learning/working environment is a suitable one. Effort regulation also involves how we self manage our motivation in order to achieve what we want to achieve but when we are faced with challenges of one sort or another. For students and their learning, how they manage their motivation to achieve positive outcomes when faced with academic challenges. Unsurprisingly, however, we are told that students have difficulties with effort regulation and so although they know that they have to devote time to their studying, it is all too easy to set this aside and instead do someting that is far more exciting or engaging, that is, something on social media. However, rather than applying to students, only, this applies to us all, whether in the workplace or anywhere else.

As in any workplace, there are some tasks that are simply not that interesting. However much we might love the job/occupation that we have chosen and we would never choose to do anything else, it is simply not possible to find every single task interesting or motivating. For ourselves and for our students, checking our work for spelling errors or making sure that our citations/references conform to a particular format falls into such a category. That is, vitally important, necessary, but fairly or very dull. Whilst we all make our own module or course sound exciting to prospective students, and indeed much of what they are going to learn about the subject matter is indeed exciting, challenging and the rest (it is why we run such a module or course and also why our students choose to do it), we need to make it clear to our students that whilst they should, of course, expect to feel excited, highly motivated and similar, there are tasks or subject matter that will simply not appeal, for one reason or another. What motivates and excites one person/student may well be very dull indeed to another, after all. And, thank goodness. It would be a very boring world if all of us were interested/excited by the same thing. Students, like everyone else, need to be helped to better understand their own likes and dislikes, their own strengths and weaknesses, as learners, as this article tells us. And, importantly, to learn that, in order to succeed, it means persevering, persisting, even when things look overwhelming. Or, when they look dull. The article goes on to tell us that as social media has become so ubiquitous, studies have been carried out looking at the impact of social media usage on academic performance. Academic performance is always a difficult thing, as it depends what is meant by this term, but here it is measured by using the grade point average (GPA). Again, there is a difference between using social media for academic purposes and using it for non-academic purposes, and it is not surprising perhaps to find out that when we ask our students to use social media as part and parcel of their studies, their performance does not suffer. It is when they are using it for non-study related purposes that their performance might suffer or, rather, if they are using it to the extent that it negatively affects the time and attention given to their studies. This article raises the interesting point that students may well not see or appreciate the impact that their use of social media has on their performance, and the associations between aspects such as the key strategies and skills needed when it comes to academic success, hence the study described in the article. That is, to explore the relationship between social media usage and academic performance and whether or not the regulation of both time and the environment they create for studying and effort regulation moderates the relationship between social media usage and academic performance. Given the amount of time that our students (and many of us, truth be told) spend on social media, the discussion of the results makes for fascinating reading.

With social media, whether we are a student, an academic or anything else, we are always part of perhaps a very large number of people who, for one reason or another, want or need to interact with each other, in some way. It might be to post pictures or images to share with others, or we might wish to write something, for others to read. As the authors of the second article rightly say, whilst it is great to feel that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, that we are a group of people coming together for a common interest, in the online environment as is the case in certain non-online ones, it is all too easy to feel lost in the crowd. In an on campus lecture theatre, if there are, say, 800 or 1000 students sitting there, in rows, despite what we do, as the lecturer, to engage everyone to the best of our ability, it is by nature not a one-to-one experience, hence the feelings by some that they might be somewhat lost, not fully engaged. In the online environment explored in this article, that is, massive open online courses (MOOCs), the word ‘massive’, alone, is enough to make some feel a bit anxious when it comes to participating, to engaging, to getting involved. However, as the authors tell us, MOOCs are becoming more popular these days, and so it is for us, lecturers, to not only make sure that we are providing the content that we need to provide in terms of our own subject matter within the discipline but also to do what we can to engage each and every learner, in as much as it is possible to do that. Entitled ‘“Your words matter!” Relevance of individual participation in xMOOCs’, the authors Jens Riehemann, Jens H Hellmann and Regina Jucks, at the University of Münster in Germany, explore the issue of virtual crowding and how this might impact the engagement and the learning of our students. For those perhaps unfamiliar with MOOCs, the comprehensive overview of the literature in this article explains what these are, and also that there are two main models, hence the ‘x’ before MOOCs, in the title. As with everything, there are advantages and disadvantages, but there certainly advantages to running courses online, however large, or small, the number of students there might be in that online classroom, as is clear from their review of the literature.

The authors point out that whilst it is often great to know that we are not alone in facing challenges, whether in the work situation or in our social/private lives, knowing that we are not alone, in that online classroom, brings with it the fact that we may feel ‘exposed’ if we are asked to participate, to engage, in activities whereby what we say or do can be seen by others. It is all very well to say ‘engaging in these activities will be very useful indeed in helping you to learn’, which is likely the case, but as with all activities, how much or how little (or if at all) we participate depends on our own psychological make up. There are those who quickly and easily get involved in situations involving communication with others, and who relish the chance to do it. At the other end of the scale are those who are far more reluctant, who shy away from communication, particularly in such a very ‘public’ arena. These days, lectures are normally recorded, so any communication, written or oral, within a lecture, is available, later, for all to see/hear, which can only but make the more reluctant/shy even more so, or so it would be reasonable to surmise, anyway. Putting your (virtual) hand up to ask a question, say, takes what for some would be a great deal of confidence, and confidence is normally in short supply, in most of us, and particularly in young adults, the age range of most of our students. This brings us neatly on to the issues raised in this article, that is, that we need a better understanding of the psychological factors involved. Whether it is ourselves or our students, whatever the activity, and whether it is online or not, we ask ourselves ‘is it worth me fully engaging in this’, as the authors remind us, and rightly so. Because, if we perceive something to be not relevant, not useful, we are unlikely to either do it in the first place or to engage with it as fully as we might. The article covers issues such as dealing with tasks in the ‘virtual crowd’, social crowding and how the numbers of students in a class might influence important cognitive variables in individual learners, arguing that we need to better understand participation and engagement in large online courses like xMOOCs and the extent to which the class size might affect how an individual perceives themselves and others in such an environment. Reference to self and reference to others (to other students, to the lecturer) is explored in this interesting study, which provides some useful pointers as to what we ourselves can do, as lecturers, in a large class, whether an on campus or a virtual one.

What goes on outside, as well as inside, the classroom is something that impacts both the learning and the experience of our students, as can be seen from the third article comprising this issue. Regardless of where our own university is in the world, the authors of this article, Patrick Buckley and Paul Lee, both from the University of Limerick in the Republic of Ireland, rightly say that since universities began, extracurricular activities such as being a member of a club, society or social group of some sort has been a key part of what it means to be a student in higher education. These days, there is as much if not more emphasis being placed on making a contribution to the local or wider community in some way, perhaps by volunteering or carrying out charity work of some type. Whatever the nature of the extracurricular activities offered we, as individuals and as a university, do all that we can to promote these to our students, and to encourage them to take part in them. Entitled ‘The impact of extracurricular activity on the student experience’, the authors rightly tell us that, today, we are competing with other universities in our bid to attract an ever-growing number of students to this massification of the sector and as part of this drive to attract students, we make much of what could be called ‘the lived student experience’, which embodies more than simply their experiences of learning and teaching, in our classrooms. Indeed, it extends beyond their studies, as when our students apply for jobs, after graduation, it is increasingly common for graduates to find themselves having to include their extracurricular activities on their CVs/resumes and to discuss these in their interviews. With this is the assumption that if they have not engaged in such extracurricular activities that they are lacking in some way or other. However, whilst many students have personal circumstances which allow them to spend their time outside the classroom on such activities, there are many who, for one reason or another, are simply unable to do so, however valuable those activities might be. Be that as it may, the article provides a very useful overview of the higher education context in which we find ourselves these days, and how certain trends now give us certain challenges and that these are responded to in different ways, in different contexts.

The review of the literature covers, amongst other aspects, the need to measure quality, performance and outcomes, that we need to help our students to develop competencies such as effective time management and organisation skills, the ability to work collaboratively and the rest, and how participation in extracurricular activities might impact their academic performance, that is, that if they devote too much time to such activities this will be at the cost of time spent on their studies. Whatever the positives and negatives of participating in in extracurricular activities, the authors rightly tell us that whilst we focus much of our attention on the development of such skills, particularly those associated with our own discipline, all employers need in their employees what are known as the ‘soft’ skills, which are non-discipline specific, such as the ability to communicate effectively and to build good relationships. Of note, say the authors, is the role that self confidence plays when it comes to efficiency and productivity, so no wonder that employers, and everyone else, value this. The authors explain that the attention now being paid to extracurricular activities is in part due to the fact that competency and development of such ‘soft’ skills can be gained from engaging in these, even though it is difficult to establish cause and effect here. Whether this is clear or not, what is certainly the case, regardless of institution or country/culture, is that most of our students do not recognise the employability related skills that they have acquired, as this article tells us. Whilst some work is being done to address this, as detailed here, the authors rightly say that whilst we need to be aware of the future careers of our students, it risks not taking sufficient account of other benefits associated with taking part in in extracurricular activities, hence the study undertaken and described. Their discussion and conclusion section offers some interesting insights into the impact of extracurricular activities from quite a few perspectives, among these the reported effect on increased self confidence, which is such a key one, of course. However, the authors righly take us back to the issues raised at the start, that is, the need to question the role that universities play, in the wider context.

How prepared or otherwise our students are for their working lives after they graduate is the theme of the fourth article in this issue. Whilst we, academics, do all that we can to prepare them for whatever they are going to do after graduation, whether that is for further study or for employment, how students feel about their preparedness or otherwise is key. If they feel that they are less than well prepared for the workplace, then this may perhaps lessen their confidence in their own skills and abilities, and that is never a good thing. Entitled ‘Students’ perceptions of their preparedness for transition to work after graduation’, the article takes a look at the factors that, in the view of students, contributed to their successful transition from university to the workplace and how prepared they felt that they were for this. The authors, Adela García-Aracil, Sílvia Monteiro and Leandro S Almeida, the first from the Universitat Politècnica de València in Spain and the latter from the University of Minho in Portugal, asked students to assess their preparedness for the workplace and also to reflect on the knowledge and competencies/skills that they believed that they had developed as part of their degree course. As in the previous article, this one also raises the question about the role that universities play, or should play, in society and that there are very different views on this. That said, over recent years, and regardless of the country in which we find ourselves, greater emphasis is being placed on the employability side of it, given that it is one of the main reasons why students undertake studies at university level. No wonder, then, that most of us are attempting to make those competencies/skills more visible in our modules and courses, one way or another. However, as the authors rightly say, if we are to better prepare them for whatever they might be doing, after graduation, we need to find out more about their perceptions of their own preparedness for it, hence the study undertaken and described. Their review of the literature covers what skills, precisely, are being referred to here, and the terms used for them, including ‘professional’, ‘core’, ‘generic’, ‘key’ and ‘non-technical’. Whatever the terminology, as the authors say, they are needed in all workplaces, regardless of the nature or state of the economy in a particular country.

The article covers aspects including models of employability, arguing that apart from the fact that these are broad and complex, there is a subjective dimension to it, including individual beliefs and attitudes, hence the need to find out more about the perceptions of students. Self belief, we are told, is strongly related to achievement, and so the authors argue that students that who believe that they are well prepared for the workplace will be in a better position than those who believe that they are not as well prepared. This very interesting study looks at the relationship, if any, between the perceptions that students have of their learning and of their competencies and how prepared they believe that they are for the world of work after they graduate. The discussion at the end sheds light on the aspects that students believe are most beneficial and those which are less so, and it also tells us whether or not there are differences in terms of characteristics such as age, gender and discipline. Another factor is their perceptions of what work experience they had had either during and/or before they began their studies, and the findings are particularly interesting in this respect, it could be argued. The article concludes with a thoughtful reflection of the challenges involved in supporting our students in moving from university to employment, and it offers all of us some useful insights to inform our practices. Questions and questioning forms the essence of the fifth article comprising this issue, but here it is in the context of getting our students to generate their own questions, in the way that we, academics, normally generate them when we design our assessments, whether that is an examination paper or an item of coursework or any other. As its author Ester Aflalo from the Hemdat Hadarom College of Education in Israel tells us at the start, this is a very useful activity to ask our students to do in terms of the benefits when it comes to learning but it is something that we rarely use. Entitled ‘Students generating questions as a way of learning’, a study was carried out, the results of which may be useful as a potential model for those of us who may be considering using such an approach with our own students.

The review of the literature begins by telling us that questioning is at the heart of learning, whether that is in the university context or in any other. In the higher education context, as we are told, the ability to question, to be critical, to reason, to argue, is at the core of what we ourselves do, as researchers and lecturers, and it is also something that we foster in our students given that they are the future generation of decision makers and that if they/we do not question what we are currently doing, little if anything is going to change, to improve, in either an organisation or more widely. Getting back to the classroom context, when our students ask questions, it helps us in determining what they know, and do not know, about the subject matter and our responses to these, and our dialogue with them about these if we have the opportunity to do that, is designed to both assist them in their learning but also to become more motivated, more interested, in the subject matter, we are told in this article. It also informs our own teaching, naturally enough. The review provides an overview of the question types and levels, including those known as transformation questions, that is, those that are considered to be higher-order questions, such as those of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, before moving on to provide us with the evidence for the the pedagogical value and importance of question generation. As we are told, question generation is not only a way to better understand the subject matter but that it is linked to the implementation of the vital skills of self regulation, critical thinking, the ability to criticise oneself and also creativity, that is, skills associated with higher cognitive strategies and metacognition. It seems from the review of the literature that getting our students to generate questions in a group setting may well be more useful, more meaningful, than asking them to do that as an individual, alone, although the author rightly acknowledges studies which tell us that this might not be the case, which is something that prompted the study described in the article. The study and the resulting model that we are presented with comprised three different activities, that is, students generating their own questions, students answering the questions that their fellow students had generated, and peer assessment of the questions generated by other students.

The students were asked to carry out these three activities and two of the research questions were to find out whether or not this might have improved the marks/grades that they got for the examination that they took, later, and whether or not it helped them to cope with dealing with questions in an examination. Because, regardless of our discipline or context, or whatever the nature of what is being assessed, most of us are anxious or stressed about doing examinations. The discussion section makes for very interesting reading indeed. Testing your own knowledge is also the subject matter of the sixth and final article comprising this issue, this time dealing with the complexities involved in self testing and in the spreading out of study sessions. As assessment is, for most students, at the top of list in terms of what is important to them given the impact of marks/grades on their final degree classification/GPA and all that this means for their futures, after graduation, the issues of self testing and spacing of study sessions are clearly vital ones. Entitled ‘Do spacing and self-testing predict learning outcomes?’, its authors, Fernando Rodriguez, Sabrina Kataoka, Mariela J Rivas, Pavan Kadandale, Amanda Nili and Mark Warschauer, all from the University of California Irvine in the US, tell us that the effective optimisation of these two aspects are essential for effective learning. Given that the majority of the time spent by students is outside, rather than inside, the classroom, as the article tells us, it is unsurprising that the decisions that they make about how and when they study are important, and that some study strategies are more optimal than others, including the one under investigation in this study, namely, breaking down study sessions into manageable chunks rather than doing it all in one big session where they attempt to cram it all in, perhaps at the end, as the assessment gets near. Also under consideration as a strategy is testing yourself, that is, not simply reading or highlighting text but instead taking the more active approach, which is to do some practice, in the form of problems or exercises. From the review of the literature presented in this article, it is argued that more needs to be done to better understand the relationship between testing yourself, spacing and learning outcomes, hence the study undertaken and described.

Even if we had not read the literature around whether or not to space studying or instead cram it into one single session, it probably strikes us all that ‘spreading it out, into smaller, manageable chunks’ is likely ‘the better way’ to do anything, not least because the word ‘cram’ suggests that this is unlikely to be something good. It also no doubt strikes us that testing yourself in the form of giving yourself problems or exercises to do is likely to be better than, say, using a highlighter pen to help memorise certain aspects, and that the same is the case for recopying or condensing notes and reorganising them in order to learn what needs to be learned. In the study described, the effectiveness of these approaches was looked at in terms of whether or not such strategies were positively or negatively associated with the marks/grades for the course, at the end. The discussion section of this really interesting and useful article will confirm or disprove that. Like any good story, it is best not to spoil it before readers have had the opportunity to read it for themselves, so it is over to you, now, to discover what the study revealed. I myself thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and so I have no doubt that you will, too.