During the last twenty years we have witnessed a growing interest in research in teaching, learning and educational development in higher education. The result is that 'Higher Education Didactics' has established itself as a research field in its own right. This article explores Higher Education Didactics as a framework for academics' professional reflection on teaching and learning, by mapping the didactic topics in all contributions in four journals in the period 2008-2015. Two of the journals are based in Scandinavia, where the European tradition of didactics (Didaktik) has been highly influential, while the others stem from the Anglo-Saxon curriculum tradition. The mapping shows that all journals are strongly occupied with teaching methods, especially methods grounded in theories of active and social learning. In contrast, didactic categories such as goal, content and assessment are rare topics. Students as participants and learners are a frequent topic in specially one journal, but receive little attention in the other journals. Also educational technologies receive a varying degree of attention across the journals. Based on the mapping, this article discusses Higher Education Didactics as a framework for professional reflection in higher education. It concludes that a broader range of research topics would be desirable and ask for future collaboration on the currently uncharted topics.
This article offers a re-description of feedback and the significance of time in feedback constructions based on systems theory. It describes feedback as internal, real-time constructions in a learning system. From this perspective, feedback is neither immediate nor delayed, but occurs in the very moment it takes place. This article argues for a clear distinction between the timing of communicative events, such as responses that are provided as help for feedback constructions, and the feedback construction itself as an event in a psychic system. Although feedback is described as an internal, system-relative construction, different teaching environments offer diverse conditions for feedback constructions. The final section of this article explores this idea with the help of examples from both synchronous oral interaction and asynchronous text-based interaction mediated by digital media. Feedback and TimeFeedback is considered one of the most powerful factors in learning. A general assumption is that feedback 'empowers active learners with strategically useful information, thus supporting selfregulation' (Bangert-Drowns et al, 1991, p. 214). The effect that feedback has on learning appears to fall into two main categories: one that focuses on changing or correcting learning outcomes, and another that focuses on changing some aspect of the learning process as a means for shaping knowledge and beliefs meta-cognition (Butler & Winne, 1995).The premise that underlies most of the research on feedback is that, if delivered correctly, feedback can significantly improve learning processes and outcomes (Ilgen et al, 1979;Bandura & Cervone, 1983;Corbett & Anderson, 1989;Bandura, 1991;Bangert-Drowns et al, 1991;Fedor, 1991;Azevedo & Bernard, 1995;Race, 2001;Epstein et al, 2002; Moreno, 2004;Hattie, 2009). The phrase 'delivered correctly' might suggest that, in order for feedback to play an effective role in the student's learning process, one need simply locate or select the right feedback method. In accordance with this premise, Race lists five criteria for effective feedback, the first of which concerns time: 'the sooner the better' (Race, 2001, p. 79).However, a closer look at the notion 'delivered correctly' reveals a far more complex reality than the phrase suggests. Even after thirty years, one can still agree with Cohen that feedback seems to be 'one of the more instructionally powerful and least understood features' of teaching and learning (Cohen, 1985, p. 33). Considering the numerous historical reviews and meta-analyses on feedback and the hundreds of research studies published on the topic of feedback and its relation to learning and performance over the last fifty years, it is quite striking that we are still faced with highly variable, disparate, contradictory or conflicting, and non-consistent patterns of results (e.g.
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