ABSTRACT The dominant response within higher education to the emergence of free online text- and graphic-generating software has been a concern with identifying AI usage in students’ work. We argue that this is both a waste of time and neglects our educational responsibilities. A police-catch-punish approach to AI, as with the use of this process in relation to plagiarism, ignores the broader purposes of higher education. If higher education is understood as being a space for nurturing transformative relationships with knowledge, AI can be harnessed to enhance learning experiences. Such an approach would also enable a critical understanding of the limitations and ethical deliberations around AI usage. Those critical academics who emphasise transformative learning over surveillance-driven approaches are likely to foster more meaningful higher education experiences.

ABSTRACT Precarity of the Ukrainian professoriate is a lacuna in the higher education literature. There was no research on this subject before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Furthermore, no investigations have been conducted on how university professors handle the hardships of teaching in wartime. This study tries to understand the phenomenon of precarity, as it is experienced by Ukrainian educators affected by the brutal invasion and ensuing dehumanization. The study explores the following questions: What do post-Soviet educators learn from precarity and hostile environments that undermine their individual and professional dignity? How do they manage the security deficit in their academic and living environments? By presenting insights from thirty-nine interviews, this paper elaborates on the phenomenon of precarity among university educators who are urged to redefine themselves, reinstate their academic identity, and salvage their teaching careers in the context of war.

ABSTRACT Higher education courses frequently utilize trauma-related content material as part of the curriculum. To reduce the potential for secondary traumatic stress, it has been recommended that instructors be purposeful and cautious with the use of trauma-related materials in the classroom. Most recommendations for implementation of these materials are based on theory, as few empirical studies examine actual student reactions to this content. This study, guided by Hill's ABC-X Model, presents mixed methods survey data from undergraduate students enrolled in a trauma course across three semesters to measure trauma exposure and subjective reactions to course materials. Qualitative results indicated a range of emotional reactions to course content, with both positive and negative effects. Results support the notion that coping resources and appraisal of the content itself may influence how course content is experienced by students. Implications for teaching, policy, and future research are discussed.

ABSTRACT This paper presents research on a posthumanist approach for reframing community-engaged pedagogy. We employ posthumanist theory as a way to examine the educational possibilities of ethically engaging with technologies and materials as a means to build and sustain community partnerships for social justice. This research project employs a diffractive inquiry involving interview encounters with 20 college writing instructors. The posthumanist approach presented in this paper provides a window into understanding how a myriad of human-material assemblages, response-able designs, and affective encounters shape and transform community-engaged pedagogy. In the context of community-engaged writing, the posthumanist approach oftentimes coincides with the use of multiple modes of communication, such as text, image, sound, and video, to foreground marginalized communities and their perspectives. Through allowing for the expression of multiple voices and perspectives, including those of non-human entities, this approach further challenges and disrupts traditional human-centric and dualistic views of community-engaged pedagogy.

ABSTRACT Simulation-based learning (SBL) has been the focus of higher-education literature, especially in teacher education and training. Led by a professional facilitator, the SBL process requires learners to step out of their comfort zone. This multiple case-study examines the roles of SBL facilitators to better understand the conditions for creating an optimal learning setting. Triangulation was accomplished using three data-collection methods: 218 facilitators’ written reflections were collected; a focus group was held with eight SBL facilitators; and interviews were held with 21 SBL participants. Data analysis revealed six themes describing the facilitator’s multiple roles: removing barriers to promote participants’ openness to learn; reducing stress; counterbalancing harsh criticism; gauging the intensity of the scenario; pacing the learning process; linking the learned lesson to practice. Conceptualizing the SBL facilitator’s role as the combination of these opposing poles suggests that the facilitator’s goal is to create a ‘stretch zone’ that promotes effective learning.

ABSTRACT This qualitative case study proposes a pedagogy to support the academic success of students from historically excluded groups (HEGs), e.g. first-generation students, low-income students, and Students of Color, who are struggling academically. We adopted a ‘student-ready’ approach (McNair et al. 2016), which foregrounds institutional responsibility for meeting the needs of students. This study took place at a large, public, research-focused institution in the US. Undergraduate students from HEGs nominated faculty who they believed supported their academic success. Nominated instructors participated in semi-structured interviews and classroom observations to share more about their teaching. Data were analysed and categorized into themes: Creating a Culture of Learning, Demonstrating Care, and Meeting Students Where They Are. These themes were then applied to create a model of Student-Ready Critical Care Pedagogy, a teaching approach for working with struggling students.

ABSTRACT Teachers’ conceptions of teaching play a key role in the pedagogical practices they apply in their teaching. Previous studies of conceptions of teaching generic skills have been mainly qualitative with small samples, and thus there is a need for a more extensive quantitative study. This study investigates the associations between higher education teachers’ conceptions of teaching generic skills, pedagogical practices, pedagogical training, and teaching experience. The data consist of teachers’ survey answers (N = 286). The findings indicate that conceptions were related to pedagogical practices. In addition, pedagogical training has a significant relation to conceptions and pedagogical practices. However, teaching experience did not relate to conceptions of generic skills, but it did to some of the practices. This study suggests a need for teachers to enhance their awareness of conceptions related to teaching generic skills and highlights the importance of pedagogical training.

ABSTRACT Holistic assessment is an evaluative approach in which assessors work backwards from an overall appraisal of work to determine the criteria relevant to individual student responses. One of the strongest proponents of this approach in higher education is Royce Sadler, whose theoretical contributions over recent decades provide a strong conceptual rationale for holistic assessment. While Sadler’s contributions are well renowned, few explicit accounts are available of Sadlerian theory in practice. The purpose of this reflective paper, as such, is to explain how we have attempted to synthesise and apply a Sadlerian theory of holistic assessment design in one of our own courses. Our intended contribution is to provide a relatively concrete interpretation of holistic assessment design which may serve as a point of reference for assessment design in higher education coursework.

ABSTRACT To gain insight into the potential benefits and shortcomings of online experiential education, seventeen teachers were interviewed who offered online experiential legal education following the COVID-19 pandemic. Juxtaposing the online learning activities with the stages of the experiential learning cycle provided a more detailed understanding of the type of online activities that can induce meaningful learning experiences, and which online activities may be less suited to attain experiential learning. The analysis shows that teachers deemed symbolically oriented online learning activities to be most fortuitous, whereas affectively oriented online learning activities were seen as inferior to equivalent on-site activities. Teachers had more mixed feelings concerning the quality of perceptually and behaviorally oriented online learning activities. The findings are of wider relevance than the legal domain as teachers (and students) across higher education grapple with the transition to online (experiential) learning that will arguably continue well past the pandemic.