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Interest in how to support the design work of university teachers has led to research and development initiatives that include technology-based design-support tools, online repositories, and technical specifications. Despite these initiatives, remarkably little is known about the design work that university teachers actually do. This paper presents findings from a qualitative study that investigated the design processes of 30 teachers from 16 Australian universities. The results show design as a top-down iterative process, beginning with a broad framework to which detail is added through cycles of elaboration. Design extends over the period before, while, and after a unit is taught, demonstrating the dynamic nature of design and highlighting the importance of reflection in teachers' design practice. We present a descriptive model of the design process, which we relate to conceptualizations of higher education teaching and learning, and compare with the characteristics of general design and instructional design. We also suggest directions for future research and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents results from an interview investigation with teachers in Swedish nurse education especially interested in internationalising the education. The aim has been to study teachers’ understandings and experiences of internationalisation against the backdrop of the strong concern for internationalisation expressed in policy documents. The results are seen in the context of globalisation, constraints to educational change, in a cultural perspective, and in relation to the need of a curriculum theory. The teachers united the global, in the form of personal experiences of other countries and cultures, with the national and local. Their experiences abroad were a basis for their interest in, and choice of content in, their teaching, considered to represent internationalisation of the education. The teachers were interpreting internationalisation in line with there understanding of nursing and the general approach to nursing in the education, without making any clear distinction concerning what specifically was internationalisation. The teachers seem to represent an important resource in internationalising the education. However, their understanding of and approach to internationalisation did not represent a shared culture and there was no shared curriculum including a distinct understanding of internationalisation. This is seen as a big challenge to both policy makers and teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation in higher education teaching is essential to respond to global challenges and actively improve teaching (e.g. through new technologies), necessitating the implementation of educational reform programmes that fund educational innovations. Although currently deployed strategies frequently promote networks between innovators to diffuse educational innovations, little is known about the efficiency of these networks or whether they promote innovation diffusion. This study investigates a network comprising 88 higher education teachers who received funding for their educational innovations in a German university. We collected longitudinal data by asking higher education teachers from whom they adopted innovative teaching ideas and requesting self-reports on innovative teaching climate. Our findings show that the teachers' social network had a smaller path length and more clustering than might be expected by chance. This observation might indicate that the examined educational innovation network exhibits a small-world property and allows efficient exchange of ideas among the teachers. In line with our hypotheses, the network's initial tendency toward hierarchy and homophily decreased over time in response to strategies and network interventions. In summary, this study provides initial empirical support that educational reform programmes can create efficient educational innovation networks, facilitating innovation diffusion and promoting change in higher education teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]