There is increased pressure on Higher Education (HE) institutions from Government to collaborate, which is reflected in funding calls where collaborative bids are often favoured. Academic collaborations at the institutional level have built on research partnerships between individual academics. Although collaborations between HEIs are increasing, it is an under researched area. The focus of research has mainly been on smaller scale collaborations at the level of individual academics or between professions. However, the process of collaboration between institutions needs more attention. This qualitative study addresses the gap in existing research in social psychology and organisational theory by exploring the experience of involvement and the lifecycle of collaboration in a large scale HE-NHS collaboration. The study setting was CETL4HealthNE, a five year HEFCE funded collaboration. The study utilised semi-structured interviews (n=14) with members of the collaboration and longitudinal documentary analysis (n=46, length=5 years). The two main areas of interest were individual experience of involvement and the development of the collaboration. Participants perceived their involvement as a balancing act, involvement in the collaboration was hard work but very rewarding. Relationships with others were central as participants believed the networking formed foundations for future partnerships. Deepening trust at an individual level translated into improved partnership at an organisational level. The lifecycle of the collaboration had three distinct phases: formation, mobilisation and revision. This study portrays collaborations as socially constructed entities where relationships and the context play a vital part. The lifecycle of an individual collaboration is part of a larger cycle of collaborations, traces of the past are carried into the future through personal connections. With the increase of HE collaborations and the proposed organisational changes to the NHS, the study highlights the need to find ways to utilise the connections of previous working partnerships to enable new collaborations to benefit from them.

Research into academic writing in the UK has largely been confined to texts produced by professional academics and has focused on generic characteristics. This thesis investigates writing by novices, undergraduate students, and seeks to identify discipline-specific characteristics in the field of Geography. The demands of writing for different disciplines are seen as affecting the process and product of writing. The thesis develops a framework for the analysis of writing based on information contained within the initial elements of the clause-complex, focusing on theme, thematic progression and the grammatical subject. It sees writing as a socially-situated activity and the linguistic analysis is set within an understanding of the disciplinary setting. A corpus of essays written by first and third year Geography students is analysed and comparisons drawn between writing in the two year groups and between essays on physical and human geography topics. Findings from the research relate to two areas. First, the framework proved successful in highlighting characteristics and contrasts in the data, particularly with regard to multiple theme and variations in types of grammatical subject. Second, Geography essays showed a shift in rhetorical focus from first to third year. First year students focused on a demonstration of understanding basic content, particularly in physical geography. Third year students engaged more with disciplinary argument, making linguistic choices which highlighted evaluation and synthesis of theories and research. The implications for further research and teaching are discussed.

Internationalization of the curriculum has become the subject of a significant body of research and debate, and demands new ways of teaching, learning and assessment in higher education (Ryan, 2013). Since Ecclestone and Pryor (2003) indicated the impacts of assessment on learner identity, this study investigates postgraduate international students‘ experiences of an innovative assessment approach, ‗peer assessment‘, to provide a new perspective from which to perceive the implications of assessment for internationalization of the curriculum. This empirical case study research focuses on five postgraduate taught modules (Business, Education A, Education B, Chemical Engineering and Computer Science) in a UK university in two academic years (2010-2011 and 2011-2012). The study uses a qualitative dominant mixed methods approach with four data collection techniques, including interviews, questionnaires, observation and diamond ranking. The research has identified both the benefits and problematic aspects of applying peer assessment in the international classroom, and proposed conditions that influence the implementation of this assessment approach. Paying attention to dialogue during the assessment process, the study has developed a social cultural model that contributes to the understanding of how assessment associated with Bernstein‘s (1996) concepts of classification and framing impacts on the international student‘s learner identity and the implications for consideration relating to assessment in the internationalization of the curriculum. It is hoped that the results will contribute to understanding about the challenges for international students‘ learning and support the development of successful assessment practice.

Several dynamics have contributed to the increasing conception of higher education as a service, universities as service providers, students as customers and quality as value for money. Quality management has been pursued as a means to promote accountability and is primarily driven by student satisfaction surveys. This has resulted in the dominance of the retrospective customer model for the management of quality in higher education (Biggs, 2001) with emphasis on accountability and ‘value for money’ for the student customer. At the same time, decreasing public funding and a growing student demand for higher education programmes has increased the provision of programmes across borders. This has increased cross-border education activities, which involve the movement of people, institutions and programmes across borders. The latter, termed transnational education, happens when higher education institutions collaborate with institutions in other countries to offer their programmes offshore by forming transnational education partnerships. The current quality management model in transnational education partnerships is dominated by concentration on ‘risk mitigation’ for exporting countries and ‘sameness’ of quality standards between ‘home’ and ‘offshore’ provisions. This is pursued by the exporting country’s retrospective customer model, which takes no consideration of the difference of student expectations and perceptions in different locations of programme delivery. Thus, the applicability of the retrospective customer model in TNHE can be problematic, owing to the fact that students who study in different parts of the world on the same programme are very likely to have different expectations and perceptions of quality in higher education. The purpose of this thesis was to explore the applicability of the retrospective customer model and to propose a prospective model for the management of quality in TNHE partnerships. The research is pursued within a Critical Realist theoretical paradigm, considering that students, irrespective of their location, will form common expectations and perceptions independently of their own interpretations, but at the same time will be impacted, to a significant extent, by the deeper social and cultural dynamics of a particular time and space. The research strategy deployed in this thesis is a case study, using a mixed methods sequential design including a questionnaire survey followed by individual semi-structured interviews as the data collection methods. The analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data showed that students appear to share a common ‘customer’ identity which is shaped by the prevailing quality discourse 2 in higher education. However, students appear to be immature as customers, contrary to the assumption made within the current quality discourse about students being rational decision agents. Students, irrespective of their location, seem to be less aware of the transformative role of higher education and appear to develop an instrumental approach in regard to their expectations and perceptions of quality in higher education. The analysis of the data also showed that the expectations and perceptions of students who are studying on the same programme but at different geographical locations vary. Specifically, it was found that student expectations and perceptions are shaped by a range of contextual dynamics. A conceptual framework has emerged from the findings of the research which can be used as a framework for the analysis, discussion and evaluation of student expectations and perceptions in a TNHE context. The findings of the research have significant ramifications for the applicability of the retrospective customer model in TNHE relating to both service quality (student satisfaction) and educational quality. Specifically, the findings of this thesis suggest that a retrospective customer model which has been designed in one country using the local contextual dynamics would not be applicable in another country without modifications and adjustments. Instead, the research justifies and proposes the adoption of a prospective model for the management of quality in TNHE which enables the acknowledgement and management of student expectations and perceptions prior to academic delivery

Assessment is of paramount importance in enhancing learning through diagnosing learners' needs, describing their accomplishments and checking their learning progress. Self-assessment is a powerful strategy for involving learners in their own learning and increasing their language awareness in everyday educational practice. Conducting self-assessment after writing is a powerful way to develop one's own learning. Adopting and using self-assessment is an ultimate goal in Libyan classrooms. Despite research in self-assessment over many years, there has been no research, which has focused on how this has been implemented in practice in Libyan secondary schools. Changes in Libyan education practices in 1999 - 2000 moved from traditional teacher-led classrooms to a more communicative context which requires learner and learning-centred approaches made it mandatory for self-assessment to become integral and integrated into the English language classroom. However, despite this, there has been little staff development to guide secondary teachers through the changes which were largely dependent on individual interpretations of the new manuals. The study, therefore, explores how self-assessment of EFL writing is understood and used in Libyan secondary schools. This research explores these interpretations and changes to practice through 60 semi-structured questionnaires, 10 semi-structured interviews and 5 semi-structured classroom observations conducted with a sample of EFL Libyan teachers from 12 different secondary schools. For this study, the three methods of data collection have been combined. Thematic analysis was selected as a means for qualitative data analysis while a Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) programme was adopted for analysing the quantitative data. Evaluation of the data produced some very interesting results. Both the quantitative and the qualitative results show that the participants used selfassessment strategies that are required to develop student learning abilities such as establishing criteria, comparing work to the criteria and/or standards and providing feedback. As concerns, the timing of the grades relative to feedback, the majority of both, the quantitative and the qualitative data showed that tutors preferred to provide feedback before giving summative grades. Interestingly, to give feedback after distributing summative grades, which is the standard self-assessment model was less frequent and less popular for all types of data collected. Moreover, conducting self-assessment integrated with peer or teacher feedback was also considered in this stud. The results also show individual and often idiosyncratic interpretations of the practices and processes which support self-assessment. The findings showed that the teachers hold passionate beliefs towards the self-assessment processes. However, most of the teachers did not translate their beliefs into practice. Hence, a noticeable contribution to knowledge was made by the success of this research and adds to the body of previous knowledge. This research is of particular importance because the literature argues and concurs that self-assessment is a critical element which supports learning and teaching and the dialogic, interactive classroom, all of which are components of the communicative language classroom which is the context of the study. Finally, the findings of this study are very helpful for teachers and researchers in Libya and other international EFL contexts and may also provide great insights into the Libyan context and into other similar contexts.

The thesis investigates the lived experiences of Qatari university students with regards to education, language and identity. Qatar provides a unique site for such research, since it has a strange demographic situation in which Qataris are a minority compared to foreigners; English is dominant when compared to Arabic; and the education system of Qatar is being revolutionized continuously in the 21st century. This context has motivated the study to conduct an inquiry into how young Qatari students experience these phenomena in their lifeworlds. The research questions of the thesis are concerned with how the participants understand themselves; how they experience their educational activities; what their perspective is about academic achievement; and how they see the language situation in Qatar and how it influences them. The methodology chosen for the study is a phenomenological interview-based design. For reasons described, the theoretical background that seemed most useful for such a project is interpretivist-constructivist because the main line of inquiry is about the lived and shared experiences of the participants. Many methodological measures are taken to ensure that the results of the thesis are trustworthy. As the data is analyzed, a concept of identity is construed, based on the relevant literature and the initial review of the interviews, and it is applied to the analyses in relation to education, achievement and language. As the findings point out, the participants of the study experience a complicated process of negotiation in multiple layers of social reality and multiple circles of belongings in living through the complex and unique socio-cultural situations of present day Qatar.

Higher education is influenced by social, cultural, economic and academic drivers (Knight, 2004). According to Marginson (2003) education is moving in the direction of marketization and is also becoming more profit-driven. Researching for-profit higher education, Fried and Hill (2009:37) state that "higher education is different from most goods in several ways". Nonetheless, for-profit higher education has to maintain its profitability to stay not only in a very competitive market but one in which external factors have a huge impact. One way to react to the changing landscape could be the application of revenue management principles to for-profit higher education. Revenue Management is nowadays of growing importance across several industries which face capacity constraints and fluctuations in demand. Hence, the purpose of this thesis is to examine how revenue management can be applied in for-profit higher education. Based on a realism research paradigm, the author has conducted a single case study design with embedded units, · by interviewing 19 members of management in a leading for-profit hospitality school which offers higher education programs. The aim of the research was two-fold; first, to analyse the specifics of for-profit higher education, and second, to investigate what implications this has for the management of pricing and capacity. This has led to the following findings: Although revenue management is applied nowadays in many industries it is necess·ary in order to fully understand the practice, to classify the type and application of revenue management practice in terms of preconditions and components and tools of revenue management utilised, For-profit higher education looks like a suitable candidate for revenue management practice, however only a 'loose' revenue management model can be applied, mainly based on the use of scholarships and optimised capacity utilisation,

This thesis explores students' experiences of intergroup contact in two cross-community shared education projects in Northern Ireland. A recent innovation, shared education involves collaboration between separate schools to deliver joint classes and activities. A core aim of this collaboration is to enhance community relations by providing regular opportunities for young people from Catholic and Protestant backgrounds to meet. This study considers participants' experiences of shared education in the light of this aim, focusing on their interpretations and responses within particular social, historical and biographical contexts. The study employs contact theory as its theoretical framework and adopts a qualitative approach, in response to calls for research on intergroup contact that is sensitive to participants' perspectives. Analysis of interview and observation data elucidates the contextual influences on pupils' interpretive frameworks and considers how these, along with features of the contact situation, inform their expectations and experiences of shared education. The findings suggest that tendencies towards separation and feelings of anxiety can be reduced when the features of the shared class are conducive to contact - i.e. where the teaching style, class composition and classroom design help to encourage interaction. However, where these features are not sympathetic, few participants report forming acquaintances with pupils from the other group. The analysis also indicates that interaction, where it occurs, tends to focus on group similarities and non-contentious subjects. Rarely do participating students engage with those aspects of difference that are the most divisive in terms of intergroup relations. In exploring processes of contact via shared education from the perspective of participating pupils, this thesis makes an original contribution to the bodies of literature on intergroup contact, education and community relations. Furthermore, the use of a qualitative approach highlights the complexity of certain taken-for-granted concepts in contact theory, with implications for the design of future studies

Educators look for learning outcomes that will ultimately produce competent practitioners. Their assessment strategies therefore need to be consistent with these desired outcomes. The role of Higher Education Institutions is to implement ways of assessing learning to ensure that competencies are tested and standards met. The use of multiple-choice tests are one such assessment strategy. This thesis presents an evaluation of the use of multiple-choice tests as part of a framework of assessments. A mixed methods design was implemented. The quantitative phase examined banks of questions for: item difficulty; item discrimination; item writing flaws, non-functioning distractors and the balance of questions on each test in relation to course learning outcomes. In the qualitative phase, interviews were held with staff that wrote and developed the questions and examinations. The interviews focused on the extent to which staff were aware of, or followed, best evidence for implementing multiple-choice tests. The results reveal a position where, on the basis of psychometric analyses, the tests appear not to discriminate between students. The size of the item banks fall short of normal expectations and pass rates, considering normal assessment parameters, are extremely high. The study examined the need for staff to be trained in item-writing in order to improve the overall quality of test questions. The findings highlight the importance of examinations being subjected to a recognised standard setting methodology. The study is unique in that it is the first to use a mixed methods design in an undergraduate nursing context to explore how multiple-choice tests are constructed and used. The study demonstrated that appropriate analysis of student responses to assessment questions is a vital step in attempting to improve the quality of assessments as well as being of benefit for staff teaching and student learning. It also provides an opportunity to improve educational practice by exploring the broader relevance of the research to the field of assessment in third level education. The use of multiple-choice tests continues to attract political, social and organisational interest for a number of reasons including; reliability, validity and fitness for purpose. The study should therefore provide an original contribution to assessment research.

A qualitative study exploring disordered eating in a small group of first-year undergraduate students studying for professional health care related degrees (n=12) illustrating what support mechanisms and services are required for those 1st year students experiencing or at risk. Key issues emerging: Lack of understanding to the nature/risks associated with disordered eating and the use of disordered eating as a stress coping mechanism. For some of the students their patterns of disordered eating seemed to predate their arrival at university. Disordered eating was perceived negatively and as a mental health issue, they were consequently reticent to acknowledge to the university or in some cases to approach student counseling, being wary of the academic/ professional consequences. This was possibly reflected in a sometimes concealed /sub-clinical experience. Loneliness was an issue for some. A number of the students were evidently wary of eating in more public refectories. Almost all of the students felt very positive about their arrival at university and that their experience with disordered eating could potentially add to their repertoire as future health care professionals. Conclusion: The University could further develop its outreach to new students with a more consistently supportive program including stress training and more support via student buddying; and extend its program on positive mental health to reduce a sense of stigma within the student population. Personal tutors and student health care facilities need to be consistently trained in the understanding and person centered approach to students experiencing disordered eating, particularly the sub-clinical group. The University could consider some small changes and adaptations to the refectory eating areas to better facilitate at risk students. Finally the University could perhaps better use the first few months of student's arrival at university to help embed a program to develop a stronger sense of coherence and wellbeing.