Within the last decade there has been a significant increase in the range of Social Media tools that have become available. This has led to a significant increase in the use and popularity of Social Media within many aspects of everyday life, particularly within the UK and US. One of the areas in which there has been a rise in the use of Social Media is within Higher Education (HE). Within HE there have been reports that Social Media has been successfully utilized for teaching and learning, particularly in the case of blogs. Despite reportedly successful usage there has to date been relatively few empirical studies which have explored whether the use of blogs within teaching and learning leads to an increase in perceived learning by students. This research study therefore provides an empirical study of perceived learning by students when using blogs within teaching and learning in UK and US HE. This research study adopts a post positivist research approach and a quantitative research design method. Questionnaires have been utilised in order to explore student views of perceived learning when using blogs as a tool for HE teaching and learning within the UK and US. This study provides a framework for student use of blogs within HE teaching and learning and explores whether the use of blogs in this way leads to greater levels of perceived learning amongst students. The results of this research are analysed using PLS-SEM and have shown that the successful use of blogs for teaching and learning is complex. The results have demonstrated that students do report higher degrees of learning from using blogs within teaching and learning, however, this is influenced by the perceptions students hold relating to digital technology, teaching and learning, previous experience and expectations of blogging. The results of this study have implications for both HE teachers and HE students and provides a framework which can be used to help ensure the successful use of blogs when utilised for HE teaching and learning within the UK and US in the future.

The research investigated the perspectives of the management team on strategies in managing a British college with a mainly South African market, namely Blake Hall College (BHC). The study aimed to identify teaching methods used at the college to be competitive in the distance education and higher education market. The approach was qualitative. Eight participants were purposefully selected and interviewed by means of an interview schedule that focused on management and teaching methods in particular. Information was also collected on quality assurance and cooperation between BHC and other higher education institutions. The results illustrated the influences of institutional growth and progress, maintenance, management structure and leadership, quality control, collaboration and communication. Regarding teaching methods, the advantages and disadvantages of distance education and face-to-face methods were illuminated. Participants also described a number of innovative teaching methods used. From the aforementioned, recommendations were made for surviving the competitive higher education market. / Educational Studies / M.Ed (Educational Management)

This thesis is a study of Durham University, from its inception in 1831 to the opening of the College of Physical Science in Newcastle in 1871. It considers the foundation and early years of the University in the light of local and national developments, including movements for reform in the church and higher education. The approach is holistic, with the thesis based on extensive use of archival sources, parliamentary reports, local and national newspapers, and other primary printed sources as well as a newly-created and entirely unique database of Durham students. The argument advanced in this thesis is that the desire of the Durham authorities was to establish a modern university that would be useful to northern interests, and that their clear failure to achieve this reflected the general issues of the developing higher education sector at least as much as it did internal mismanagement. This places Durham in a different position relative to the traditional understanding of how universities and colleges developed in England and therefore broadens and deepens the quality of that narrative. In the light of the University's swift decline, and poor reputation, from the mid-1850s what were the ambitions of the founders and how did this deterioration occur? Were the critics' accusations against the University - principally that it was a theologically-dominated, inadequate imitation of Oxford, bound to the Chapter of Durham and ruled autocratically by its Warden - based on fact or prejudice? And if the critics were wrong, what were the factors that lead to the University's failings?