This thesis explores the three threads of identity, invisibility and social forces in relation to ‘non-traditional’ students undertaking undergraduate study within an ‘HE in FE’ environment. The exploratory nature of the research required an inductive approach and thus the design of the research activity was informed by the principles of classic grounded theory methodology. Loosely structured interviews were used to elicit rich narratives from ten participants across a range of curriculum areas and levels of study. The five conceptual categories of participant ‘biography’, ‘context’, ‘social engagement’, ‘use of technology’, and ‘identity/self’ emerged though analysis of the coded data. Engagement with Lewin’s concept of ‘hodological space’ (Lewin, 1997;1936) and subsequent diagrammatic analysis of the invisible ‘life space’ of each of the participants supported further theoretical analysis of the conceptual categories. This led to the emergence of the three core categories with greatest degree of reported psychic impact, these being ‘biography’, ‘context’ and ‘identity/self’. Analysis of the properties within the category of ‘identity/self’ brought to the fore the importance of the reported role identities of participants, with a focus on ‘identity standard’ (Burke & Stets, 2009) and ‘identity salience’ (Stryker, 2008; 2002). The study, in engaging with these issues of identity, makes critical reference to recent policy documents, research reports and peer reviewed research, making an original contribution to knowledge through the subsequent foregrounding and potential impact of invisible or psychic social forces on the expectations, perceptions and actions of undergraduates studying within college based higher education.

In this thesis, I discuss conflict in virtual learning communities in the context of a democratic pedagogy. Democratic pedagogies are underpinned with emancipatory educational values through enabling students to participate in governance of their learning processes thus taking responsibility for their own learning. In these communities, knowledge is socially constructed through interactions and negotiations. The method and content of the learning programme are loosely structured in order to fulfill the community members' wishes, interests, ideas, and so on throughout the learning process. Within this framework, my point of departure is that emergence of conflict among the community members is probable given the diverse and sometimes clashing individual differences in participation in the negotiation process; in the loose structure of the programme which brings about uncertainty; and in the nature of the technological environments in which learning takes place. To address these issues, I conducted field work with third year undergraduate students enrolled in a Computer Education and Instructional Technology programme. The field work consists of two staged studies: pilot study and main study. Respectively, a four week course for the pilot study and a fourteen week course for the main study were designed according to learning community principles underpinned with a democratic pedagogy, and students were introduced with their respective learning communities. Throughout the field work, I collected data via interviews, focus group meetings, prepost questionnaires, essays, Moodle logs and field notes. Drawing on my findings, I discuss the dynamics and the roles of conflict in learning through a model of conflict which I developed. This model identifies 3 types of conflict: intrapersonal, interpersonal and socio-cultural. I show how small groups of students in the community experienced different conflict pathways during the course of study. The findings show the importance of taking a holistic, processual view of the emergence of conflict in a learning community. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.

This thesis explores student engagement in university decision-making. Universities are expected to involve their students in a range of governance activities. Yet, the conceptual base for this is under-formed and often draws from learning theories. As a result, the emphasis is on what students should do and how they can be motivated to engage. This thesis proposes an alternative view that examines the issue from a public participation perspective. To support this, it offers a model of engagement that refocuses the debate onto the processes and procedures of the university. These shape the nature of student engagement in an institution. Various modes of engagement exist and each has different expectations on student activity. However, there is little published data to establish whether students actually want to participate. What is available tends to focus on the experiences of highly engaged students, such as course representatives. To redress this, the thesis establishes an evidence-base for mainstream students’ views on engagement. This is based on mixed-methods research that involved over 1,300 students in one university. It used a sequential design, in which information gathered in a qualitative phase was tested in a university-wide survey. The research demonstrates that many students see the value of engagement and want to participate. Yet, this was not universal and an argument is presented that student subjectivities influence engagement. These are shaped by a variety of factors, including the relative power of the student in a university environment. Contemporary literature suggests that this is shifting in favours of students as they assert themselves as customers of the university. However, the research findings dispute this. Students are not overwhelmingly consumerist and, if they are, this has little impact on engagement activity. Instead, the localised connection between students and tutors appears to be crucial for engagement. This tests the new public management approach to university governance that overlook or over-regulate such relationships. This is one of several challenges identified in this thesis for student engagement in university decision-making.

This thesis presents the findings of a mixed methods study conducted in the context of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). More specifically, it focuses on the Heads of e-Learning (HeLs) perspective of the needs of tutors who teach in blended and online environments, the ways HEIs in the United Kingdom (UK) address these needs and on institutional issues around the deployment and support of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) by campus-based institutions. The HeLs’ perspectives are also compared to Laurillard's conversational framework for the effective use of learning technologies. The literature review in the area of staff development on TEL offers an analysis of the key issues and provides a useful backcloth for this research; the TEL context in UK HEIs is discussed, the terminology is clarified and learning theories are briefly looked at, prior to the more detailed description of staff development models and approaches around TEL. The research design follows a mixed methods approach. The informants in both phases of this research were the HeLs in various UK HEIs. Using an online questionnaire, quantitative data were gathered on the various ways that the staff development needs of the lecturers in blended and online learning have been addressed by UK HEIs. Simple frequencies and cross tabulations were applied to the data. During the second phase of this research, thirteen semi-structured interviews were conducted. The questionnaire findings – interviews’ outline chapter describes and analyses the research findings from the online questionnaire and provides information about the interviewees and outlines the way the interview questions were developed over time. Further discussion, integration and interpretation of both phases of this research takes place in the discussion – integration of findings chapter. The study concludes by re-addressing the research questions and by pointing out its achievements as well as its limitations.

This thesis investigates variation in how Maltese post-compulsory pre-university computing students account for their networked learning (NL) experiences, and variation in how these students account for teachers and other students as contributors to these experiences. It advances a constitutive view of NL experiencing configured as an emergent progression of expanding awareness hence transcending portrayals emphasising contrasts and conflicts. Phenomenographic results are based on a purposive sample of thirty-two participants. Qualitative differences in students’ accounts on their NL experiencing is constituted by four, hierarchically inclusive descriptions incorporating the use of the Internet (1) for flexibly accessing resources, (2) to follow through individual self-managed learning, (3) for learning in connectivity with others for increasing personal learning, (4) for learning in community with others consciously facilitating others’ learning. Experiencing NL is projected as critically structured by the use of technology, learning activity and related goals, and self-positioning in relation to others for learning. In expanding awareness the student is portrayed as shifting from ‘having an experience’ standing outside the learning system to ‘making an experience’ standing as an integral part of the learning system. Qualitative differences in students’ accounts of teachers and other students as contributors to their NL experiencing is constituted by three, hierarchically inclusive descriptions critically structured by perceived roles played. This variation incorporates (1) the teacher as director and other students as indirect consequence, (2) the teacher as guide and other students as direct learning means, (3) the teacher as convener and other students as significant co-actors in learning. These descriptions may serve to inform the design of online learning systems meant to improve students’ experiences of learning using networked technologies.

As the highest degree awarded, successful completion of a doctorate demands that learners work at a conceptual level. The demands of independent, original research intended to extend knowledge in a field can lead to oscillating feelings of confidence, acceptance, and belonging—intellectually and socially. Exposure to new ideas, norms, and ethics can cause learners to question their position within their various social contexts. The descriptions of doctoral experiences of identity positioning in networked learning environments is the focus of this thesis. I set out to examine to what extent doctoral students in two NL programs experience identity positioning; how they describe this process; and whether or not positioning might be described differently by students in different fields. This investigation took place at a distance university in Canada in which the learners used networking technologies to exchange information and discuss ideas. Participants were solicited from doctoral courses offered via networked learning in education and business. The main method of data collection was semi-structured interviews. The interviews were transcribed and coded through qualitative open coding in which I sought themes indicative of social positioning. Discourse analysis was also used to aid in the analysis of interview transcripts, allowing deeper interrogation of the meanings of and relationships between specific utterances appearing within the transcripts. The results indicate that doctoral students experience identity positioning across multiple aspects of their lives including, but not limited to their social, intimate, professional, and academic contexts. The importance of this work is partially directed towards the concerns of governments and funding agencies that may pass over the intangible benefits of doctoral studies in search of direct and measureable economic and social outcomes. More importantly, this work is intended to draw attention to the variety of social contexts that may impact doctoral students’ experiences, and how these influences might influence learners’ persistence, completion, and enjoyment of doctoral studies.

There is a substantial body of research suggesting the advantages of using e- Portfolios in higher education assessment, where work is collated by individuals to record their learning. The use of learning communities in this context is an under-researched area, despite the number of e-Portfolios that implement a social component. This work develops an alternative e-Portfolio approach by using a networked learning based pedagogy, which brings richer descriptions of both artifacts and the structure of the underlying community. Action research and free/open source development principles have been aligned over two cycles, where students have participated as both co-researchers and co-developers. Evolving the nature and presentation of assessment artifacts, participants have determined how these are best shared and reused, and the ways in which larger contextual information about the community can improve both the learning and the knowledge of the learning taking place. A multi-method research framework is used to show what artifacts are created, who is interacting with whom and why participants act as they do. Data has been collected using interviews, focus groups and from analytics from the e-Portfolio itself. The findings suggest that the types of artifacts created are influenced by both the community and by the nature of the material being learnt. Artifacts reveal the sources that students use for their work and although participants can be reluctant to reveal incorrect or incomplete work to the community, this can be encouraged by a carefully constructed induction, reinforcing the importance of the role of teacher as tutor. Expertise is quickly associated with some participants by the quality and regularity of their artifact construction, who become more central and influential to the community, with their work becoming increasingly visible through search activities. This work presents the framework, an analysis of the results, conclusions and recommendations along with a reference implementation.

In contemporary society, nation development relies heavily on the presence and availability of human resources/capabilities. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are vital to create of this human resource. The Kurdistan Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MoHESR) reformed its Higher Education policy in 2009 to enhance service/product quality. The most tangible aspect of these reforms was the evaluation of academic performance. MoHESR claimed it is the duty of academics to invest time/effort to fulfil their contractual obligations. Consequently, a new mechanism of performance appraisal (PA) for evaluating teachers‘ performance was formally launched. Despite its benefits, PA has created many challenges for Kurdistan HEIs due to external and internal factors, including: culture; continual wars; inadequate laws and regulations; political unrest; poor management of HEIs and mismanagement of human resources, which have exposed gaps in effective PA management and dissatisfaction amongst key stakeholders - particularly academics. This exploratory sequential mixed methods study explores the perceptions of senior/middle managers and other stakeholders at different levels of the organisational hierarchy of PA management at the University of Sulaimani (UoS) and examines their experiences of/aspirations for better PA. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to identify the key contextual and institutional factors affecting PA, supported by quantitative data collected through a questionnaire involving 654 teaching staff at UoS. The study reveals PA in Kurdistan HEIs is strongly influenced by contextual factors: cultural dimensions; legal characteristics; political hegemony, which have eroded attention to human values so human resource activities were not fully embraced in Kurdistan HEIs. Consequently, PA is challenged by: low commitment, support and enthusiasm from top management; little engagement between PA and institutional strategy; unclear purpose/standards; little communication; poor training; unfavourable rewards; absence of interviews, equality and promptness in the process. The study presents a final model of PA more suited to the Kurdistan HE context and makes recommendations for government, MoHESR, HEIs, leaders and faculty members.

Rationale: Employability features prominently in the current lexicon surrounding higher education. What is evident in the literature is that employability has no single definition and has evolved from an economic interpretation of the ability to secure work, to a multi-faceted concept, including skills, self-efficacy and self-regulated learning. Higher Education Institutions are coming under increasing pressure to address employability as part of their portfolio, while operating in an increasingly turbulent and competitive environment. Much of the existing research into employability in Higher Education concerns itself with the undergraduate population. There exists little research into postgraduate employability. This study seeks to contribute to that gap by exploring whether postgraduate management education has an impact on students’ perceptions of their employability. Research Methods: A sequential mixed methods approach was used involving two phases of data collection. Phase 1 was a survey of 450 students from two Universities’ Business Schools who completed a paper-based questionnaire. This quantitative data was analysed using SPSS. Phase 2 comprised follow-up interviews with 10 survey participants, following completion of their programme. The interviews were informed by the survey, and transcripts were analysed using NVIVO 10. Findings: Survey findings from the whole research population (n=450) saw some differences in students’ perceptions of their employability following their engagement with the taught programme. Postgraduate education has a more positive impact on females’ perceptions of skills and self-efficacy than on males’ perceptions. Students with work experience perceive their employability higher than those without work experience. Those without work experience perceive their skills and self-regulated learning higher after postgraduate education. Discussion: The similarity in results in students’ perceptions between the data collection points suggests more could be done within the programmes to make a difference to students’ perceptions of their employability. Where differences do exist suggests opportunities for specific interventions, to enhance students’ perceptions. Conclusion: Underpinning this work is the contention that increasing students’ perceptions of employability requires postgraduate education to enhance students’ perceptions of their skills, their perception of themselves as independent learners, and their perceived self-efficacy. Survey findings suggest postgraduate management education is achieving this aim in part, indicating opportunities for interventions to address this.

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