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The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges that are experienced by staff responsible for commissioning liaison psychiatry services and to establish if these are shared by other health professionals.

Using a mixed-methods design, the findings from a mental health commissioner workshop (n = 12) were used to construct a survey that was distributed to health care professionals using an opportunistic framework (n = 98).

Four key themes emerged from the workshop, which was tested using the survey. The importance of secure funding; a better understanding of health care systems and pathways; partnership working and co-production and; access to mental health clinical information in general hospitals. There was broad convergence between commissioners, mental health clinicians and managers, except in relation to gathering and sharing of data. This suggests that poor communication between professionals is of concern.

There were a small number of survey respondents (n = 98). The sampling used an opportunistic framework that targeted commissioner and clinician forums. Using an opportunistic framework, the sample may not be representative. Additionally, multiple pairwise comparisons were conducted during the analysis of the survey responses, increasing the risk that significant results were found by chance.

A number of steps were identified that could be applied in practice. These mainly related to the importance of collecting and communicating data and co-production with commissioners in the design, development and monitoring of liaison psychiatry services.

This is the first study that has specifically considered the challenges associated with the commissioning of liaison psychiatry services.

A key challenge for higher education institutions around the world is to provide active and engaging learning encounters for a new generation of students to develop their skills for work in a rapidly changing environment. Typically, these students are accustomed to being digitally connected 24/7 and they have real-time access to truly global learning resources. The challenge facing higher education providers is how to create active and engaging learning encounters within an aging stock of infrastructure by a generation of traditional academics, both of which generally foster teacher-led instruction.

In considering this conundrum, this chapter is viewed through two lenses: (1) a teacher practising problem-based learning (PBL) for more than 20 years and (2) an educational planner who designs learning spaces. Together the paper explores the challenges of pedagogy and design, some disruptors that are making change imperative and, specifically, the opportunities available in both pedagogy and design to create new learning activities and spaces. The paper argues that curricula need to be dominated by collaborative investigation and problem solving in spaces that encourage and afford such activity.

This chapter extends the phenomenographical research method by arguing the merits of engineering the outcome space from these investigations to effectively communicate the outcomes to an audience in technology-based discipline areas. Variations discovered from the phenomenographical study are blended with pre- and post-tests and a frequency distribution. Outcomes are then represented in a visual statistical manner to suit the specific target audience. This chapter provides useful insights that will be of interest to researchers wishing to present findings from qualitative research methods, and particularly the outcomes of phenomenographic investigations, to an audience in technology-based discipline areas.

In this chapter, the authors discuss the use of various kinds of images, namely photographs, drawings and verbal metaphors, as research data. These, perhaps less conventional forms of data, have been used to identify and probe deeper into beliefs and conceptions that are closely connected with identities, but which might not be obvious to the research participants themselves. The purpose of this chapter is to provide examples of how images can be used in research, and to identify some of the features particularly pertinent or specific to the use of images. The authors draw on their own research using these forms of data in studies on teaching and learning in higher education. The authors describe key issues related to data collection and analysis, and identify challenges in these processes. They also discuss trustworthiness of images as data and dependability of interpretations in the process of analysing photographs, drawings and metaphors, and identify ethical perspectives specific to research utilising these data.

Work-based learning (WBL) has long been recognized and lauded for its transformative capabilities, enriching the knowledge and organizational and cultural impact of its learners. Students deepen understanding of their sector as well as professional interdisciplinarity on work-based academic programs, and in focusing on real-world scenarios in a scholarly way, open up opportunities for improvement and change. However, one of the key challenges in sustaining or continually improving provision for work-based learners in this context is in evidencing impact of enhancement-based, in-program learning and teaching activities. This chapter will examine some of the ways in which WBL values influence academic support delivery at one United Kingdom (UK) Higher Education Institution (HEI) and present examples of the operationalization of some WBL-driving principles in practice. In so doing, this chapter aims to share some of the tenets underpinning WBL practices in the UK in exploring its potential role and contribution as a socially responsible endeavor.

As with many professional programmes, nursing students in the United Kingdom spend a significant proportion of their time ‘on placement’ – applying their theoretical learning to the clinical area.While off campus and at a distance from their peers and university staff, however, they must continue to study and complete assessments. This creates enormous complexities for nursing students; issues of retention and success, anxiety and isolation are well documented in the research literature relating to this particularly diverse group. Emerging technologies offer opportunities to increase engagement between nursing students and faculty, thus potentially eliminating many of these difficulties. At Glasgow Caledonian University, a blog was developed to provide new students with remote support and a virtual community while on their first placement. The open access resource offered a link between faculty and students and a forum for peer support among the cohort. Student produced materials, such as ‘talking head’ videos and placement diaries, were posted alongside assessment-specific learning resources developed by staff. The blog was fully interactive and participants were encouraged to comment on and respond to posts in order to increase engagement. A thorough evaluation of the continuing initiative highlighted the success and further potential of the resource but also suggested limitations in terms of interactive engagement and issues of digital literacy among some learners. This chapter will discuss the use of technologies such as blogs in providing remote support to learners, using the student nurse blog as a case study.

The purpose of this article is to posit an alternative learning design approach to the technology-led magnification and multiplication of learning and to the linearity of curricular design approaches such as a constructive alignment. Learning design ecosystem thinking creates complex and interactive networks of activity that engage the widest span of the community in addressing critical pedagogical challenges. They identify the pinch-points where negative engagements become structured into the student experience and design pathways for students to navigate their way through the uncertainty and transitions of higher education at-scale.

It is a conceptual paper drawing on a deep and critical engagement of literature, a reflexive approach to the dominant paradigms and informed by practice.

Learning design ecosystems create spaces within at-scale education for deep learning to occur. They are not easy to design or maintain. They are epistemically and pedagogically complex, especially when deployed within the structures of an institution. As Gough (2013) argues, complexity reduction should not be the sole purpose of designing an educational experience and the transitional journey into and through complexity that students studying in these ecosystems take can engender them with resonant, deeply human and transdisciplinary graduate capabilities that will shape their career journey.

The paper is theoretical in nature (although underpinned by rigorous evaluation of practice). There are limitations in scope in part defined by the amorphous definitions of scale. It is also limited to the contexts of higher education although it is not bound to them.

This paper challenges the dialectic that argues for a complexity reduction in higher education and posits the benefits of complexity, connection and transition in the design and delivery of education at-scale.

The aim of this paper is to assess the motives, expectations and preparedness of postgraduate marketing students, and discuss possible implications for postgraduate marketing education in the UK.

The research uses primary data collected from postgraduate marketing students at four British universities. Factor analysis is used to evaluate the convergent validity of the survey questionnaire and Cronbach's alpha coefficient to examine the internal consistency and reliability of the variables composing the major scales.

The results indicate that postgraduate marketing education today faces a culturally diverse student body coupled with a notable lack of relevant work experience. Students are found to have relatively low perception of their preparedness for postgraduate study and high expectations for support and practical experience in marketing.

The sample used is relatively small although the high response rate achieved would help add validity to the study. Further research should examine the ways in which students draw on their prior‐learning experience to make sense of their learning process.

This study should be of interest to postgraduate marketing programme and module leaders. It suggests that a realignment of curriculum design and various support activities on the part of postgraduate marketing education providers are needed to respond to the changing body of students.

The study offers a timely measure of the motives, preparedness, and expectations of postgraduate marketing students. The findings should be of immediate and practical value to postgraduate marketing educators in the UK.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a study aimed at understanding the different conceptions that University of Northampton teachers hold of “Changemaker”, an institutional initiative to develop capacities for social innovation.

The study took a phenomenographic approach to identify a small number of qualitatively different conceptions of Changemaker among teaching staff. Face-to-face, phenomenographic interviews were carried out with 30 teachers across the university. Transcript data were analysed using thematic inductive analysis.

Five different conceptions of Changemaker were found: Changemaker as university strategy; Changemaker as critical thinking, perspective shifting and problem solving; Changemaker as employability; Changemaker as social betterment; and Changemaker as personal transformation.

The outcome space of conceptions represents the beliefs of teaching staff at the University of Northampton. The approach to research and plans for the practical application of findings may be of direct benefit to other education providers as they develop their own models for teaching and learning.

The findings from this study will inform the next phase of the project, which involves the development of a skills/attributes/behaviours matrix for social innovation education.

An initiative, such as Changemaker, works to enhance the capacities of university students to work as agents of positive social change. By building a research programme around this initiative, the findings from this work can be disseminated and used by other higher education institutions.

The findings of this study will address the absence of literature on teachers’ conceptions of phenomena related to social innovation, social entrepreneurship and intrepreneurship. Understanding teachers’ beliefs of such phenomena is relevant to the growing number of universities that address these subjects in the curriculum.

The premise of this chapter is that methodological ‘tribes’ in higher education create ‘territories’ of research practice that do little to encourage those new to research to reconceptualise methodology. This premise is based upon the perceived absence of dialogic space, beyond an expert academic community, that would allow open critique of the degree to which research methodologies make sense for those ‘on the ground’. As such, it is argued that practices of this nature signify methodological process over genuine debate around methodological theory, which can serve to encourage methodological idolatry. Phenomenography has been selected, and analysed, in this chapter as an example of a research methodology used in higher education, in order to reveal both the encoded messages of phenomenography and the layering of meaning that such messages convey. The chapter concludes by arguing for a repositioning of research methodologies as ontologically coherent heuristic devices that enable us to generate and test theory, rather than as processes of discovery that may lead us to unsubstantiated claims of knowledge generation.