Velibor Mladenovici

West University of Timişoara · Center for Academic Development (CAD)

During the COVID pandemic, it became clear that understanding assessment in terms of cognitive processes has plenty of limitations. The emerging artificial intelligence technologies (e.g., ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity) made it even more apparent, bringing more ethical dilemmas and showing more weaknesses in the higher educational systems. Online ed...

Teaching conceptions in higher education, or so-called academics' conceptions of teaching (ACTs), are essential in informing teaching behaviors and influencing students' learning. Consequently, several attempts have been made since the 1990s to understand what ACTs represent and how they can be developed towards student-centered teaching. However,...

Current studies highlighted a positive relationship between academics' learning-focused approaches to teaching and students' active and deep learning. Thus, scholars have an ongoing debate about the dynamics of change from academics’ content-focused to learning-focused approaches to teaching. Previous studies investigating this subject used variabl...

A didactic grant competition for academics is organized annually at the West University of Timişoara (WUT), offering a grant to the winners of a public student-centered activity project competition. The teaching grant winners later take part in a program to develop their pedagogical skills in student-centered teaching based on the WUT's reflexive-c...

Academics' conceptions of teaching (ACTs) and academics' teaching approaches (ATAs) are essential factors in informing academics' teaching behaviors. However, empirical evidence from longitudinal research exploring the causal link between ACTs and ATAs is lacking. In the current study, we employed a cross-lagged panel model approach in three waves...

This study focused on the relationships between teachers’ subjective well-being, perceived teacher support and students’ subjective mental and physical health. We surveyed students at the beginning, halfway, and at the end of the second semester, collecting 1230 observations clustered within 410 students. Additionally, 66 of their teachers rated th...

The present contribution reports a systematic review of the literature that analyzed the relationships between teachers’ subjective well-being (SWB) and student school experience (i.e., academic performance, academic engagement, student well-being, and student reports of teacher-student interactions). We categorized teachers’ well-being into hedoni...

This study focused on the relationships between teachers’ subjective well-being (SWB), perceived teacher support (PTS) and students’ subjective mental and physical health. We surveyed students at the beginning, halfway, and at the end of the second semester, collecting 1230 observations clustered within 410 students. Additionally, 66 of their teach...

Over time, the academics’ approaches to teaching (i.e., content- or learning-focused approach) were intensively studied. Traditionally, studies estimated the shared variance between the items that describe a behavioral pattern (i.e., the psychometric approach), defined as a learning- or content-focused approach to teaching. In this study, we used a...

Existing science evidence sustained that students’ preferences for a learning approach (i.e., deep or surface learning) depend on several contextual variables. In this study, we used the network psychometrics perspective to investigate the interactions between the elements that define students’ learning preferences. We aimed to understand which are...

In the context of the Bologna Process, the top management of West University of Timişoara has decided to adopt the student-centred learning approach as a central concept of the instructional process in the university. The aim of the process is to develop a system for quality assurance of instruction in higher education with the following components...

This paper presents a meta-analysis that investigates the effectiveness of instructional development programs (IDPs) dedicated to academics. IDPs are instructional activities specifically planned to improve quality of teaching in higher education by enhancing academics’ instructional approach to support student learning. We analyzed 1555 unique res...