It should be universally understood that there is a moral obligation on all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to provide their students with the highest quality of teaching standards possible. In countries where students must pay for their own Higher Education (HE), students are investing significant amounts of their own time and money in their HE studies and therefore they are customers expecting the highest quality academic experience in return. Before 1998, in the United Kingdom, HE was free for all students continuing to study for their first degree at the undergraduate level. A radical political shift in educational ethos in 1998 introduced student fees and loans. With this substantial level of personal investment, surely students must be entitled to value for money when it comes to the teaching quality they receive throughout the duration of their studies. This resulted in the introduction of the teaching quality assessment process across the HE sector: the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). This move to the marketisation of HE is not just a UK phenomenon but can be seen across many countries around the world and has resulted in the production of league tables for research and teaching along with ‘student satisfaction’ rates; these metrics are having a greater impact when it comes to institutions competing for student numbers. Clearly, now there is a greater emphasis than ever before on the teaching quality of universities, and it is vitally important to be able to measure accurately teaching excellence within the HE sector.

A contentious issue within HEIs is the notion of what constitutes ‘teaching excellence’ and more importantly if it can be measured. HE by its very nature provides a diversity of learning opportunities to students depending on the various disciplines studied from courses that are highly vocational in nature to the more theoretically based subjects. If teaching quality is to be measured, it could be more appropriately achieved through qualitative rather than quantitative measures. It may be possible to capture the main features, describe them and then use a guide to make judgements of what teaching excellence represents. From empirical studies carried out within HE, it is considered that an excellent teacher should be one that has the following attributes (Wood and Su, 2017; Kreber, 2002):

• • Excellent knowledge of the subject matter

• • Able to convey concepts easily

Teaching excellence is of increasing importance within the Higher Education (HE) sector. In the current climate universities strive to demonstrate the value of their programmes and courses as they seek to attract students in a competitive marketplace. Within the context of this drive to attract students, institutions will readily state that they seek to pursue excellence in learning and teaching. However, it is less clear what constitutes ‘excellence’ when considered across a diverse sector with different traditions and practices relating to different disciplines. The problems associated with the ability to quantify and denote excellence in HE are compounded by the broad range of provision, the variation between institutions and the way in which universities position themselves and their offer to students. An unevenness exists across the sector in relation to teaching practices, class sizes and the philosophy of individual programmes and disciplines, and different contexts and approaches can exist even within a single university. There is no singular, identifiable culture for HE within the United Kingdom, and this makes comparisons between institutions potentially problematic.

Teaching is a complex practice affected by many factors: context, resources, learners, subject discipline, teacher experience, learning expectations and learning needs. It is also affected by the prevailing culture of the day; this includes, but is not limited to, the demographic of students and staff, the rise of social media, widening participation, funding constraints, digital technology and professional body requirements. These are but a few of the factors which impinge on the educational experience. Hence teaching is affected by multiple variables and is a dynamic, evolving practice that is impacted by a range of other elements and effects. Some of these are foreseeable and some are unanticipated but far-reaching, such as the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 which altered the shape of HE suddenly and rapidly, creating a new ‘normal’ and a new set of comparisons. It is clear that HE does not and cannot operate in isolation to other factors. Developments and changes in one location can directly impact the sector globally. This is not just because students often travel to study but also because digital learning enables students to pursue courses remotely via e-learning across the world.

Learning is a fundamental aspect of human existence. It forms one of the essential building blocks of growth and development and continues throughout life. We are constantly surrounded by opportunities to learn. Teaching is one of the key activities which shapes and contextualises our learning, and the choice to continue to formally learn beyond compulsory education is an important life choice, driven by a number of factors. It is a choice that an increasing number of young people and mature students take in the United Kingdom. The Higher Education (HE) sector is eager to demonstrate the benefits of continued post-compulsory education and the importance of a ‘good’ learning experience. The well-used term ‘teaching excellence’ is often employed as an articulation of the pedagogy, learning and learner experience, which come together to ensure effective teaching. There are inherent problematic issues in seeking to universally compare teaching and in finding ways to articulate and measure what can be diverse learning experiences.

This book explores the importance of teaching excellence and how this has risen to prominence in a changing landscape of HE where access to university education has been substantially increased. The book explores some of the factors which have shaped the provision of HE and the responses to the challenge of ensuring that students gain a quality education which provides a satisfactory return on their investment in attending university. Taking in the complexities of the differing perspectives on a university education from sector to student and acknowledging the experience of academics who seek to be excellent teachers, this book offers a guide to understanding the key mechanisms by which teaching is measured and evaluated and offers insights into some of the more contemporary innovative methodologies that can help to enhance teaching excellence.

Although offering a broad overview of teaching excellence in the United Kingdom, the book is of course not comprehensive in its coverage. The field of university metrics is extensive, multilayered and diverse; the coverage here will be sufficient to help readers understand the concept of ‘teaching excellence’ and the role of different players and lens through which it is viewed. The following overview of the teaching excellence terrain provides an introduction to inspire further reading and exploration of the areas included here.

The Importance of Teaching Excellence

Teaching Excellence remains both a high priority and an elusive measurement. It remains a high priority partly due to the commercialisation of Higher Education (HE) which reconfigures ‘Teaching’ as a product to be valued, commodified and sold, and it remains elusive to measure because teaching is always only one-half of the equation, paired as it is with ‘learning’. Although ‘Learning and Teaching’ are often put together as if two sides of the same coin, educators and students alike will know that they do not always occupy the same space. Sometimes learning can occur totally independent of teaching, often through circumstance, reflection and experience. Likewise teaching, even good teaching, requires a fertile audience to result in impactful learning. The emphasis within the HE sector has placed ‘Teaching’ at the heart of the agenda, without fully acknowledging the role that learners play in their own education. This places the emphasis on the part of the process which is costed in financial terms and less on the social and personal investment required from learners if they are to succeed. The responsibility is placed upon the educator and the educational establishment to ensure that learning is taking place. This in no way negates the importance of teaching excellence or the role of the teacher, but it is interesting that a two-way process is often viewed through a single, institutionally based lens. Interestingly institutions are seeking to actively engage students more readily in learning and to provide them with insights on how to learn effectively as an adjunct on how to be successful. But this part of the equation is also quantified by the organisation's success in engaging students; the responsibility is perceived as essentially that of the university. This configuration of learners as passive within the learning process and the recipients of initiatives, knowledge, innovations and information is at times a problematic one in that it leads institutions to be involved in ever more complex arrangements to engage students. The language of HE is often about ‘attracting’ students to courses, programmes and institutions. Therefore the offer must be rendered ‘attractive’ – buildings, estates, timetables, value-added experience – and although all of these are important, there can be a tendency to overlook the need for students to be clear on what they want to learn and be ready and equipped to learn it.

Introduction

While excellence is often perceived as a concept linked with individual virtue or quality, it is also referred to as an organisational characteristic by which universities recognise a vertical stratification which promotes exceptionality (Tavaras, 2014).

Excellence in Higher Education (HE) has more often become the expectation of all. ‘Teaching Excellence’ in particular is the definition of how we teach, how students learn and how we justify value to students and stakeholders. An internet search of HE providers suggests that many promote themselves as offering excellent teaching. The UK regulator for HE, the Office for Students (OfS), and the UK professional standards framework both articulate minimum expectations for teaching excellence. Inherent in these definitions is that excellence is the expectation, not a definition of exceptionality. For the purpose of this chapter the concept of excellence is therefore that of an expected customer service standard: one which underpins our professionalism, our values and our sense of success.

This chapter explores those aspects that define teaching excellence in the UK HE sector. It recognises the importance of teaching excellence to learners, professionals, the sector and HE policy agendas. In conclusion it recognises how a focus on teaching excellence has changed behaviours within the sector.

Student Numbers Entering HE

The number of students going into HE in the United Kingdom has been growing steadily since the mid-1990s. This was a stated objective of government policy back in 1999 when the then Prime Minister Tony Blair made a pledge that 50 per cent of all young people should be in HE by the year 2010. Although this objective was not reached fully by the 2010 deadline, it did reach around 49 per cent by the year 2017 (Adams, 2017).

Figure 1 summarises trends over a 25-year period since the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) was created following the reform of the sector in the early 1990s. It is clearly observed that student application numbers have been steadily rising since the mid-1990s except for the years 2006 and 2012 when there were dips corresponding to the introduction of variable fees and a rise in fees to £9,000 per year respectively.

Best Measures of Teaching Excellence

Implementation of the teaching excellence framework

There are now more students entering Higher Education (HE) in the United Kingdom than ever before. HE is no longer limited just to the privilege of the elite few but where one in three school leavers continue to study at university level (Kershaw, 2019). With the changes in the early 1990s that created the post-1992 modern universities, the number of institutions with the title ‘university’ has also increased dramatically to now well over one hundred in the United Kingdom.

In many countries across the world the cost of HE is expensive with students having acquired a huge debt by the end of their programme that ultimately must be repaid. In the United States, for instance, typically, one year in a private university can cost around $30,000 when all costs are accounted for. In the United Kingdom, student debts are now averaging around £35,000 which is expected to be paid back but only when graduates are earning above a certain threshold amount and they do not have to make any repayments if they are out of work or their income goes below the threshold level.

In the United Kingdom, the government, as part of its reforms of the HE sector, placed a greater emphasis on giving students more choices about their options for HE. Where previously there was a general lack of information for students regarding the quality of teaching within an institution, students were not able to make informed choices regarding the suitability of a university for their needs, now information is available in the form of league tables and Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) awards.

Variability related to teaching activities within different institutions is high and has meant that some students only receive a few hours of actual teaching contact time on a weekly basis compared to other students that have a significantly higher number of hours of contact per week while studying the same course in another location. Students entering HE need to make important decisions regarding what and where to study.

The UK government considers that the best way these choices can be made by students is to have a framework that can gather information which measures teaching in the broadest possible way. As previously discussed, this is comparable to the Research Excellence Framework (REF).