Setting up an international academic journal is no easy task. This article reviews the planning stages and the publication of the first issues of the Tuning Journal for Higher Education. The need for such a journal and its role in supporting the objectives of the Tuning Academy are outlined.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the higher education sector significantly. It forced the stakeholders to do new things and brought many innovations to educational activities. As the pandemic hit the shores of many countries, among other things and sectors, education activities were disrupted. Many, not well-advanced universities in terms of technology and learning management systems (LMS) embarked on a forced recess, using the period to put online education platforms in place. The advanced universities immediately migrated contact teaching and learning to online platforms. This paper aimed to investigate the immediate effects that the pandemic has on South Africa’s higher education systems in terms of how both lecturers and students were made to use new technologies/tools, how the tools enhanced teaching and learning, how assessments transformed due to the pandemic, and if some of the interventions employed during the pandemic will find usefulness when the pandemic has finally retreated. In this study, universities that are offering engineering degrees in South Africa are used as a case study, and data were obtained from both engineering students and engineering lecturers at these universities through qualitative (survey with open-ended questions) together with quantitative (surveys with closed-ended questions) research methods. The study shows that higher education activities cannot go back to the way they were before the pandemic. The study brings to light that some old techniques will be combined with some innovations employed during the pandemic to ensure effectiveness and greater throughputs in the higher education systems going forward.
 Received: 2 December 2021Accepted: 1 August 2023

Both authors express their gratefulness to the whole Tuning Academy and to the many colleagues who cooperated to their editorial experience. Moreover, revisiting that period, they present some new remarks and reflection on that “incredible 5-years journey”. Anna’s contribution focusses on three big added values, that – according to her editorial experience – TJHE offered (and offers) to the higher education community worldwide. Indeed, TJHE offers – in the first place – a platform of individual and collective reflection on the themes emerging in the international scenario; in the second place, it offers an inclusive international approach, the variety of countries represented by authors being very large; finally, it offers a reference database, since it collects a variety of scholarly experience, from more structured projects and reforms to local teaching innovation and scholarship of teaching and learning. In Lupo’s contribution, the focus is “a meditation on competences”, those which are the heart of the Tuning community. The contribution starts from a description of the different competences and roles, which occur in a well-structured editorial process (whose achievement was the aim of those 5 years). Such an example – in its particular context – shows the complementarity and the circularity of competences, qualities which are present even in more general contexts of human life. Moreover, this example leads to a deeper understanding of the splendour and magnificence, that the competences may generate.

In order to adapt to an increasingly competitive world, organizations need to continuously change, yet the success of the change is conditioned by its institutionalization. The institutionalization of change is the key factor to perpetuate sustainable changes. Based on the exploration of the role of transformational leadership in times of (institutionalization of) change, the objective of this study is to analyze the contribution of the components of transformational leadership on the institutionalization of change within a Lebanese private university Redundancy, engaged in an accreditation process. Through a qualitative method on a single case study, based on semi-structured interviews conducted with 15 senior executives occupying key positions in the studied university and through 15 focus groups with 85 faculty members from four disciplinary fields, we explored the role of each of the four dimensions of transformational leadership in times of institutionalization of change. Our findings highlight the essential role of intellectual stimulation and inspirational motivation of transformational leadership, while the two other dimensions, idealized influence and individualized consideration, play a limited role in the university context of institutionalization of change. Moreover, individual recognition and idealized influence are essential to convince all members of the need for change and involve them in the accreditation process. This study allows us to understand the role of each of the transformational leadership dimensions in order to promote and escort institutionalization of change within high education sector.
 Received: 16 June 2021Accepted: 20 June 2023

When the first issue of the Tuning Journal for Higher Education was published in November 2013, the Tuning initiative had become of global significance, running projects in all continents. These all focussed on curriculum reform backed up by an internationally defined approach based on the paradigm of outcome based, that is, student-centred and active learning, in addition to agreed reference points. Around the same time, the Tuning aims and objectives were extended. This reset followed societal and technical developments. More emphasis was put on social inclusions, the involvement of students, identifying relevant topics, and to the development of practical tools. Also, more attention has been given to staff development responding to the notion that the modernisation of the higher education sector as well as the reform of degree programmes proved to be rather slow and a bit disappointing. To boost the process, Tuning – very recently - developed general Qualifications Reference Frameworks for all learning cycles as well as a Guideline to use these for Quality Assurance. For five disciplinary fields it also developed transnational diagnostic tests as a means to identify shortcomings in degree programmes, pushing for change. As a result, Tuning has reinvented itself to stay highly relevant for the years to come.

The prevalence of the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences, such as the closure of educational centers and the requirement to use virtual education, have all challenged students’ learning. Students’ mathematical misunderstandings can be regarded as one such challenge. While such problems may also occur in face-to-face training, where teachers and educators are involved, it seems that this problem is more serious in virtual education. The purpose of the present study was to investigate students’ misunderstandings in regard to integration methods. More specifically, the statistical population of this study consisted of engineering students from Islamic Azad University. The sample members included 40 students from the faculty of engineering who had been taught Mathematics1 by virtual education in the first semester of the academic year 2021-2022. To conduct this research, students were taught different methods of integration in cyberspace for six consecutive weeks. During these six stages, tests were conducted online to assess students. The results showed that most of the students’ errors were conceptual and computational in nature; they were rooted in no suitable understanding of the basic concepts of mathematics and the lack of good education in high school.
 Received: 3 May 2022Accepted: 15 April 2023

The University Social Responsibility Network (USRN) promotes civic engagement in higher education and awareness of the nature of University Social Responsibility (USR), how it functions, and what it means depending on its context. In 2019 the USRN started a collaborative Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) called Introduction to University Social Responsibility. The outbreak of COVID-19 affected the production of the course, however this also led to the addition of a Special Session on Universities’ Response to the MOOC showing how members addressed the challenges of the pandemic. Based on the experiences from 13 universities and the USRN, this article portrays flagship responses of how universities in the network tackled some of the challenges presented by the pandemic in range of academic and non-academic initiatives categorized as University Social Responsibility (USR) Areas of Engagement, namely research, education, advisory role, outreach, information management, provision of support, institutional reforms, and extended services. The article discusses broader questions referring to how COVID-19 impacted the understanding of what USR is; therefore, looking into both policy and theoretical implications of how the concept of USR and universities responses can be understood and applied in different contexts and universities.
 Received: 31 January 2022Accepted: 30 August 2023

This article presents a pilot experiment on subjects from three Social Sciences degrees at two public Andalusian universities. The aim is to analyze the teaching guides and their presentation to students as a means of communicating with them, primarily through the video format instead of the conventional written format. To this end, attractive, clear and relatable video teaching guides have been developed to present to students, aware of the success of short videos dominating digital social networks, especially among younger age groups. A knowledge test was given to 99 students on the subject contents, as well as a satisfaction test; the following information was processed through the SPSS program. The main conclusion is that students have a high degree of satisfaction and a better knowledge of the new video guide format than the conventional written model.
 Received: 21 July 2022Accepted: 20 June 2023

This study aims to understand the impact of a faculty development program emphasizing active learning (innovative teaching) attended by instructors of diverse disciplines at the University of Padova in Italy, which has had an 800-year history of using traditional approaches to teaching and learning. Using a community of practice theoretical framework, it recognized that the development of faculty learning communities provided a supportive medium for fostering innovative teaching. A multilevel research design involving surveys collected from 2019 to 2020 explored the program’s impact in terms of student satisfaction and program effectiveness. Findings showed varied levels of impact, among student examination attempts, pass rates and average grades. These findings, although involving one university, are organizationally and culturally emblematic of other Italian universities and have related implications when considering the implementation of innovative approaches to teaching via faculty development programs. This study also revealed challenges (faculty engagement) and limitations when measuring (e.g., satisfaction, exam attempts) the impact of active learning in relationship to learning outcomes.
 Received: 30 June 2022Accepted: 3 October 2023

This study aims to discover if Online Learning Self-Efficacy (OLSE) and attitude toward online learning (AOL) significantly predict the academic performance (AP) among Turkish prospective mathematics teachers. Unlike the studies conducted in the literature, online learning self-efficacy and attitude towards online learning as predictor variables were included in the study and both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. The study included 1075 prospective mathematics teachers’ responses in the analysis. The Pearson correlation was employed to determine how strongly OLSE, AOL, and AP are related. Results indicated that OLSE and AOL influenced the level of AP. Also, the multiple regression aimed to predict AP based on OLSE and AOL, and this model explained 44.6% of the variance in AP. The beta weights demonstrated that OLSE and AOL (OLSE β = .36, t(1072) = 9.705, p < .001, and AOL β = .34, t(1072) = 9.176, p < .001) significantly contributed to the model. The results showed that the level of academic performance can be predicted by online learning self-efficacy and attitude toward online learning. In addition, this study revealed the factors that have favorable and adverse effects on the academic performance of prospective mathematics teachers to gain more extensive information. Under the theme of negative factors, there were 7 codes. The results obtained from the study can be a guide for practitioners, policy makers and teachers to take the necessary precautions for the effective execution of the distance education process.
 Received: 4 October 2021Accepted: 27 June 2023