Michael Prosser

Michael Prosser
University of Melbourne and University of Tasmania

About

127
Publications
45,708
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12,658
Citations
Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
June 2013 - present
The University of Sydney
Position
  • Professor

Publications

Publications (127)
Chapter
As higher education has made the transition from elite to mass enrolments, the student body has become more diverse and online and blended learning have become more common. This study aimed to examine the impacts on attrition of admitting a more diverse student body with the shift towards online and blended learning. The study compared models for u...
Chapter
The chapter presents short case studies of how universities and countries have adapted teaching and learning to deal with the Covid-19 era and how higher education has transformed towards a new normal. Case studies are presented for five universities in five countries: The University of Melbourne, Australia; Imperial College London, UK; Seoul Natio...
Chapter
Full-text available
The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) as a scholarly field of study has been rapidly developing since Ernest Boyer published Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate in 1990. In that Boyer drew the distinction between four scholarships—Discovery, Integration, Application, and Teaching & Learning (Boyer in Scholarship reco...
Article
Full-text available
The admission of the more diverse student body in higher education has been facilitated by greater flexibility in teaching and learning mode of study and by permitting part-time study. This study aims to compare a hypothesised model on a set of presage variables relating to admission and mode of study; intermediate variables of age and year of stud...
Article
Full-text available
The term e-portfolio refers to a portfolio an electronic format that allows users to collect evidence of learning in several media types (e.g., audio, video, text, and graphics) and to organise these using hypertext links. E-portfolios have been introduced into teacher education programs internationally to help pre-service teachers (PST) build reco...
Chapter
This chapter reviews the empirical studies relating teaching and research (e.g. student evaluations of teaching related to research citations and publications) and argues for a deepening of how the relationship can be conceptualized. The way the structure of the subject matter of teaching and research is conceptualized is considered to be fundament...
Chapter
This chapter contains a summary of the view of university teaching and student learning presented in the book. The underlying coherence in the way university teachers experience their teaching, their student learning, their research and perceptions of leadership and their ongoing growth and development are reiterated. A description of the underlyin...
Chapter
The focus of this chapter is research on how university teachers’ approaches to and experiences of teaching and learning change and develop over time. It addresses the role formal university courses, seminars and workshops play in developing these approaches and changing these experiences. It concludes that teachers with appropriate support can and...
Chapter
This chapter begins with a summary of the qualitative studies examining teachers’ approaches to teaching, leading to an analysis of the refinements of the Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI) and a summary of the qualitative studies behind the inventory. The ATI has been used to identify and confirm the empirical relationship between teachers app...
Chapter
This chapter contains a brief review, up to 1999, of the research on the student experience of learning from the student approach to learning perspective. The results and implications of more recent research on (a) the relationship between students’ approaches to learning and their emotions relating to learning and (b) students’ experience of learn...
Chapter
This chapter introduces the research investigating how forms of teaching leadership are related to variation in the way teachers approach their teaching. The results show that there are direct empirical links between teachers’ experiences of leadership and the academic context, their approaches to teaching and their students’ experiences of teachin...
Chapter
Do the different ways that teachers go about teaching have different outcomes for their students’ learning? This is the question addressed in this book. It is introduced in this chapter through a model describing the relations between university teaching and student learning. Using a presage-process-product format, the model proposes (a) that stude...
Article
Full-text available
Freedom to innovate in teaching and learning are essential to meaningful higher education. Universities’ rhetorical commitments to freedom and innovation are ubiquitous and quite homogenous. Beneath the rhetoric, however, lie sharp divides between neo-liberal and Humboldtian approaches to innovation, course design, teaching and learning. This artic...
Article
“This important book offers an accessible, research-informed guide to understanding student learning and university teaching. Written by two world-leading experts in the field, it provides rich insights and practical responses to the challenges faced by those who care deeply about teaching and learning in higher education.” —Professor Paul Ashwin,...
Article
As higher education has made the transition from elite to mass enrolments, the student body has become more diverse and online and blended learning have become more common. This study aimed to examine the impacts on attrition of admitting a more diverse student body with the shift towards online and blended learning. A hypothesised path model of at...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose Hong Kong has undergone extensive curriculum reform and shifted from a three-year to a four-year university system. With a nuanced look at the impact of the curriculum reforms, the present study compared two concurrent cohorts by examining the extent to which the students in each perceived their learning environment and learning outcomes d...
Article
Michael Prosser makes an important distinction between course grades and learning outcomes, and argues that grade levels, without adequate descriptors, provide no effective guidance for either teachers, in how to carry out assessments, or for students in how to improve the quality of their work. He argues that it is important to provide full grade...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Abstract This paper examines e-portfolio-based learning in the context of a theoretical framework which is based on constructivism (Dewey, 1929) and is a combination of students approaches to learning (SAL) and a 3P model of learning (Presage, Prosess, Product), in order to gain a deeper understanding of how students use e-portfolios to achieve lea...
Article
Constructive alignment has emerged as a powerful curriculum design idea, but little is known of the extent to which the effectiveness of this idea is a function of qualitative variation. This article introduces a model of qualitative variation in constructive alignment, and uses the results from known alignment studies to test the model. The resear...
Article
Abstract The aim of this article is to examine processes occurring within problem-based learning (PBL) courses (inside the black box) by contrasting these processes with outcome-based studies (from outside the black box). We review meta-analyses of input-output studies of PBL in comparison with traditional approaches and provide a summary of qualit...
Article
Research on teaching from a student learning perspective has identified two qualitatively different approaches to university teaching. They are an information transmission and teacher-focused approach, and a conceptual change and student-focused approach. The fundamental difference being in the former the intention is to transfer information to stu...
Article
This paper reports on an evidence-based quality assurance system for teaching and learning. It takes as its starting point a well researched theoretical perspective on student learning in higher education. We argue that the explicit use of a relevant theoretical base promotes coherence between quality assurance and quality improvement processes and...
Article
Recent research on student learning has revealed that a number of students in any learning context are unable to distinguish between contrasting contextualised approaches to learning. In other words, the relationship between their perceptions of the learning context and their approaches to learning disintegrates and becomes incoherent. These studen...
Article
Full-text available
To survey medical graduates from the University of Hong Kong on how well they perceived their learning needs had been fulfilled by the old (before 1997) and the new (after 1997) curricula. Retrospective questionnaire survey. The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Medical graduates from the University of Hong Kong who graduated between 1997 and 200...
Article
Research into qualitative differences in students' approaches to study, the quality of learning outcomes, and the relations between them has, in the main, been conducted on learning resulting from involvement in small academic tasks such as reading an academic article. This study, based on a sample of 122 first year university nursing students, foc...
Article
Full-text available
This study focused on Chinese students’ goals, experiences, and learning outcomes associated with their participation in study abroad. Data were drawn from survey responses from 214 undergraduates of a university in Hong Kong who studied or engaged in overseas internships/volunteer work in 20 countries. To explore the data, an experiential intercul...
Article
Full-text available
This study explored qualitative variation in first year undergraduates' induction into the discipline in four dimensions: (1) induction into disciplinary knowledge, (2) induction into disciplinary research, (3) integration of learning from different courses, and (4) induction into disciplinary skills. Data were drawn from focus groups with students...
Article
Full-text available
In both Australia and abroad, there is an increasing pressure towards professionalisation of university teaching, with the expectation that academic development courses, such as the Graduate Certificate in Education Studies (higher education), lead to better teaching and learning practices. However, the knowledge, skills and/or attitudes that educa...
Article
A close relationship between teaching and research is one which is espoused by most academics, yet there is little empirical evidence to support the relationship. This article shows how phenomenography is being used in a project to try to understand the research-teaching nexus. Case studies drawn from phenomenographic categories of description are...
Article
Full-text available
This article examines the construct validity of the Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) in Hong Kong and investigates the similarities and differences in the process of learning among students in different disciplinary studies. It is based on a survey of 1,563 undergraduate students in two disciplines, humanities and sciences, and of principally...
Article
There is increasing pressure toward professionalisation of university teaching, through the attendance of academic development courses and programmes. This is based on the expectation that such courses lead to more student-focused perspectives on teaching and learning and more effective teaching and learning practices. In this study we interviewed...
Article
Full-text available
This mixed methods study used a survey with programme completers from 32 UK higher education institutions, and interviews and focus groups with programme completers, programme leaders, heads of department and pro‐vice‐chancellors, to explore the perceived impact of UK‐accredited teaching development programmes upon participants and departments. The...
Article
Full-text available
The scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education is an idea and a practice that is relatively new and still in its early stages of development. What it means, how to engage in it, what are its expected outcomes, etc. are still issues of debate. In this short essay, I argue that the scholarship of teaching and learning should be about in...
Article
Full-text available
This study focused on students' conceptions of and approaches to learning through face-to-face and online discussions. The study setting was a course in which students (N=110) worked in small teams and in which team discussions took place both face-to-face and online. The design of the study involved a combination of in-depth interviews and self-co...
Article
There has been a growing research debate over the relations between university teaching and research. This paper contributes to that debate by describing the variation in the way university academics’ experience research, then linking that empirical evidence with previous work to explicate the relations between variation in research, teaching, and...
Article
Full-text available
This paper reports on an investigation into learning through discussions by undergraduate social work students. Second-year students studying psychology for social work experienced discussions began with face-to-face tutorials, and then continued for some time after online. This study used closed-ended questionnaires to investigate what students th...
Article
Full-text available
The psychometric properties of a version of the Course Experience Questionnaire revised for students currently enrolled at the University of Sydney, the Student Course Experience Questionnaire (SCEQ), were assessed, gathering students’ perceptions on a number of scales, including Good Teaching, Clear Goals and Standards, Appropriate Assessment, App...
Article
This study investigates fourth-year pharmacy students' experiences of problem-based learning (PBL). It adopts a phenomenographic approach to the evaluation of problem-based learning, to shed light on the ways in which different groups of students conceive of, and approach, PBL. The study focuses on the way students approach solving problem scenario...
Article
The study examined associations between university teachers' experiences of academic leadership, their perceptions of a specific academic context and their approaches to teaching in a particular subject that was taught in that context. The sample consisted of 439 lecturers in Australian universities in four fields of study. Lecturers completed surv...
Article
Full-text available
This paper reports on an investigation into learning through discussions by undergraduate social work students. Second‐year students studying psychology for social work experienced discussions began with face‐to‐face tutorials, and then continued for some time after online. This study used closed‐ended questionnaires to investigate what students th...
Article
Many factors affect students' learning approaches, including topic conceptions and prior study. This research, undertaken after a first-semester compulsory subject, explores students' conceptions of biochemistry and how they approached their studies. Students (n=151) completed an open-ended survey analysed phenomenographically. Those with cohesive...
Article
The problem of the usefulness of educational evaluation activities is one which has been of concern for some time. Recently, evaluations of educational media have been criticized in particular. This paper identifies several alternative models for the design of evaluation studies and describes a study based upon aspects of these alternative models....
Article
No matter how participative a course might be in its conduct, it is normal for the aims to be specified by staff for students, the programme to be planned by staff for students and particularly for the assessment to be one way—of students by staff. It is possible for courses to be established on a different basis, and it is especially necessary whe...
Article
Effective learning in higher education is associated with students' perceptions of clear goals and standards of an educational program. In programs using problem-based learning (PBL), students' conceptions of what PBL is about could determine how well they perceive the clarity of goals and standards of their program. In this study the authors aim t...
Article
Abstract This paper reports a phenomenographic investigation into students' experiences of learning through discussion – both online and face to face (F2F). The study context was a second-year undergraduate course in psychology for social work in which the teacher had designed discussion tasks to begin in F2F mode and to continue online. A combinat...
Article
The Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI) was developed to explore the relationship between students' approaches to learning, and teachers' approaches to teaching, in the physical sciences in higher education. It is increasingly being used in other contexts. To analyse the factor structure of the ATI. Confirmatory factor analysis. Inventory respon...
Article
Full-text available
This paper describes an evidence-based quality assurance system for teaching and learning, which takes as its starting point a well-researched theoretical perspective on student learning in higher education. We argue this explicit use of a relevant theoretical base promotes coherence between quality assurance and improvement processes. We outline t...
Article
Full-text available
The Approaches to teaching inventory (ATI) is now being widely used as an instrument for formally monitoring approaches to teaching. A lesser-known use is as a stimulant for discussion among groups of teachers to raise awareness of the variation in qualitatively different ways of approaching teaching. The phenomenographic origins of the ATI are con...
Article
Student approaches to learning vary from surface approaches to meaningful, deep learning practices. Differences in approach may be related to students' conceptions of the subject, perceptions of the learning environment, prior study experiences and performance on assessment. This study aims to explore entering students' conceptions of the unit they...
Article
Full-text available
This paper backgrounds and illustrates an approach to researching didactic knowledge. Underlying the approach are some of the frameworks developed from the student learning research. Based on these frameworks the experience of learning about a particular phenomenon is theorised as having educationally critical aspects. Without addressing these aspe...
Article
Full-text available
This paper reports an analysis of qualitatively different ways in which teachers experience change in their understanding of subject matter they have recently taught. In this exploratory study, interviews with 31 ‘typical’ teachers from a range of first and second-year university subjects revealed that 20 reported no experience of change in their u...
Article
Full-text available
In this paper we focus on the issue of how academic staff experience the understanding of their subject matter and the relationship of this understanding to their experience of teaching. In recent years there has been a substantial amount of research into how academic staff conceive of teaching and learning, how they approach their teaching, and ho...
Article
This paper describes how research into approaches to university teaching, from a relational perspective, has been used to develop an inventory to measure the key aspects of the variation in approaches to teaching. The Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI) is one of several that derive from the research perspective applied by Marton and colleagues...
Article
This paper describes how research into approaches to university teaching, from a relational perspective, has been used to develop an inventory to measure the key aspects of the variation in approaches to teaching. The Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI) is one of several that derive from the research perspective applied by Marton and colleagues...
Article
In this paper we describe phenomenography and demonstrate its use in two separate studies; an investigation of students' understandings of gravity and a comparison of two groups of students awareness of the utility of physics.
Article
The term ‘grade descriptors’ has commonly been used to refer to the practice of describing for students characteristic work that would merit different grades. This paper reports the results of a phenomenographic study on the different ways that academic staff understood and practised grade descriptors as forms of standards‐based assessment. Four qu...
Article
Over the last 20 years or so, there has been a substantial development in our understanding of how and what university students learn in their courses (here meaning a component of a programme) and programmes of study. This research has shown that rather than there being a direct connection between the way teachers teach and design their courses, an...
Article
This article describes ways in which heads of university academic departments and the subject coordinators of large first-year subjects experience the leadership of teaching. It examines variation in perceptions of leadership experienced by the teachers in the same subjects and departments. It explores empirical relations between subject coordinato...
Article
Several recent studies on student learning in higher education reported on 'dissonant' forms of contextualised learning engagement. The focus of the present study is on 'dissonant' forms of teaching and their relation to student learning. This relatively large--scale research programme involved surveys of approximately 8829 students and 408 univers...
Article
Full-text available
The paper discusses a framework for the analysis of learning designs using new technologies. It takes a learner-centred view derived from literature in higher, professional and adult education. The process of developing guidelines for applying this framework to particular learning activities is outlined and the strengths and limitations of this app...
Article
The manner in which students manage their learning activities in response to perceived task or course demands describes their 'learning orchestration'. This paper addresses relations between a student's learning orchestration and their learning outcome as a function of prior understanding in first year university biology courses. A cluster analysis...
Chapter
In this chapter we first describe university science teachers differing ways of understanding what it takes for their students to solve problems. Using the phenomenographic approach described in the chapter by Martin et al., this volume, we have found significant variation in how teachers understand student problem solving situations in science cou...
Article
Studies of Australian first year students (McInnis & James, 1995; McInnis, James, & Hartley, 2000a) show that initial experiences on campus are important, and influence students' persistence in higher education. In this paper we present the way in which one Australian university has sought to address the issues of first year student progression and...
Article
A study aimed at exploring the variation in perceptions of learning outcomes reported by undergraduate nursing students enrolled in a problem-based learning subject in a pre-registration Bachelor of Nursing course (BN). Students were asked to respond to four open-ended questions which focussed on their learning outcomes in the different teaching/le...
Article
Full-text available
In this article we make three related arguments. The first isthat different teachers have different intentions concerning whatstudents will learn and consequently in their teaching they constitutethe topic or subject to be taught quite differently. The second is thata teacher's intentions concerning what it is that students should learnis closely a...
Article
Full-text available
In this paper we present a model which describes the scholarship of teaching. We ® rst explore what scholarship of teaching means, both in terms of the way it is represented in the literature and also the way it is understood by academic staff themselves. From this information, we derive a multi-dimensional model of scholarship of teaching which ca...
Article
Full-text available
This paper reports on an empirical study which shows that qualitatively different approaches to teaching are associated with qualitatively different approaches to learning. More specifically, the results indicate that in the classes where teachers describe their approach to teaching as having a focus on what they do and on transmitting knowledge, s...
Article
Recent research on student learning in higher education has highlighted the effect that students' perceptions of the nature of learning and understanding of their discipline has on their consequent understanding of the subject matter. This present project grew out of a programme aimed to help first-year students in physics develop their ideas on th...
Article
Argues that both students and teachers form certain perceptions of their teaching and learning situations. Presents a relational model of student learning and teaching context and examines the model in terms of tertiary science education. (CCM)
Article
This paper reports research into the conceptions of mathematics, orientations to studying it and experiences of learning it of first year university students. A questionnaire based on students' conceptions of mathematics was developed. This and other questionnaires which investigated students' approaches to learning mathematics and their mathematic...
Article
A Conceptions of Mathematics Questionnaire was developed, designed to provide an indicator of the nature of students' conceptions of the subject matter they were studying. The scales of the questionnaire were based upon a set of conceptions of mathematics identified in an earlier phenomenographic study of students studying mathematics. The scales r...
Article
The evaluation and continuous improvement of the quality of teaching and learning in higher education is an issue of sustained concern. While most universities are implementing systems of quality assurance, there is substantial variation in the principles underlying these systems. La Trobe University has developed and implemented a university-wide...
Article
Objective: A study aimed at exploring the variation in conceptions of problem-based learning (PBL) held by undergraduate nursing students and their approaches to study in PBL in a pre-registration Bachelor of Nursing Course. Method: Students were asked to respond to four open ended questions which focussed on their experience of PBL in a particular...
Article
This article uses a phenomenographic perspective to interpret and integrate the results of relational research, including phenomenography in particular, in analysing the experiences of teaching and learning in higher education. In this analysis the experience is conceived of as temporal and not extended over time. We describe conditions associated...
Article
Previous research has established substantial relations between students' approaches to study in higher education and their perceptions of the learning environment. More recently, there has been a growing body of research into teachers' approaches to teaching and conceptions of teaching. There has, however, been little research into their perceptio...
Article
This article describes two academic development activities which exemplify how phenomenographic ideas and the results of phenomenographic research, can be built into the design of teaching development workshops for staff teaching in higher education. The activities focus on two important tenets of a phenomenographic approach to teaching and learnin...
Article
This paper describes the results, and some implications, of an empirical study of the congruence between intention and strategy of university science teachers' approaches to teaching in their first year science courses. The study drew upon the results of a previous phenomenographic study which identified qualitatively different approaches to teachi...
Article
In this study the validity and reliability of the revised version of Kolb's (1985) Learning Style Inventory are investigated using the responses to the LSI2 of 187 Arts and Science students in an Australian university. Results indicate high internal consistency of the LSI2 scales and some evidence of validity. While, as predicted, four factors form...
Article
Studies of student learning have shown that students' conceptions of learning are strongly correlated with their approaches to study. Students who consider learning in quantitative terms are likely to find it very difficult to adopt a deep approach to learning. This study looks at the parallel situation for teachers. It looks at the conceptions of...
Article
This paper outlines the qualitative research method and results of an investigation of the conceptions of teaching and learning held by teachers of first year university chemistry and physics courses. In both cases a limited number of qualitatively different categories of description were identified (6 and 5 respectively) ranging from information t...
Article
This paper reports results from an investigation to identify the conceptions of mathematics held by beginning university students and their approaches to the study of mathematics. Phenomenographic techniques were used to analyze responses to a questionnaire administered to approximately 300 students. An analysis of the results identified a structur...
Article
Changing lecturers' teaching strategies to improve learning in higher education may mean first having to address the intentions associated with those strategies. The study reported in this paper used a phenomenographic approach to explore the intentions associated with the teaching strategies of first year physical science lecturers. Approaches fou...
Article
A sample of 190 first- and second-year university students from three courses in two faculties completed questionnaires on their general orientations to learning (classified as deep, surface or achieving), their perceptions of the skills and abilities being assessed by multiple choice question (MCQ) examinations and the study strategies (either dee...
Article
This paper reports on research into the process and product of student essay writing at undergraduate level. The research was carried out from two different theoretical perspectives: phenomenonographic research on student learning in higher education, and systemic functional linguistic research on student writing in higher education. The research h...

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