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This article explores a range of factors associated with excellent teaching from the perspective of past student groups. One hundred and thirty-nine respondents who had been asked to nominate one teacher for an excellence in teaching award provided comments on the reasons for their nomination. An exploration of these reasons is presented. Findings show that students are more likely to invoke teacher attributes more than actions, and recall positively such dynamics as a sense of belonging, the pleasure of community, the importance of being understood and cared about and the experience of having been welcomed and respected within their classroom settings. The implications of these experiences and insights for the enhanced development of the quality and effectiveness of higher education are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes that introducing musical/percussion activities to university classrooms represents an opportunity for innovative teaching that could create positive experiences replete with learning potential. An analysis of 17 students’ written reactions to a ‘drumming circle’ activity demonstrates that the experience created a positive, energised classroom climate. The value of the exercise was demonstrated in the observations that students made about how the experience engaged them emotionally and how it could be linked to insights about specific aspects of their programme of study. With some preliminary guidance provided in advance of the activity, students were able to identify analogies between aspects of the experience and topics within their management curriculum. The paper provides suggestions and ideas that can help teachers to introduce similar learning experiences into their own classroom settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes and analyses a specific mechanism, the writing consultation, designed to help academics to prioritise, reconceptualise and improve their writing practices. It makes the case for its potential to stimulate consideration of writing practices and motivations, a possible precondition for creating time for writing in academic contexts. This article proposes that the process of revealing and developing writing practices in a specific form of regular, structured, collegial discussion has potential to prompt academics to reconceptualise their writing practices and, perhaps crucially, to find different ways to write. In addition, it demonstrates, in a new way, how recognised behaviour change strategies might be embedded in the academic writing process. The writing consultation draws on principles established in other contexts. This article makes the case for adapting them to the context of academic writing, in order to support and improve academic writing output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]