The publication of institutional strategies for learning, teaching and assessment in UK higher education is practically ubiquitous. Strategies for technology-enhanced learning are also widespread. This article examines 44 publically available UK university strategies for technology-enhanced learning, aiming to assess the extent to which institutional strategies engage with and accommodate innovation in technology-enhanced learning. The article uses qualitative content analysis as its method, and uses the categories of disruptive innovation, sustaining innovation and efficiency innovation to evaluate individual institutional strategies. The article argues that sustaining innovation and efficiency innovation are more commonplace in the strategies than disruptive innovation, a position which is misaligned with the technology practices of students and lecturers.

BackgroundHealth sciences students experience high levels of psychopathology conditioned by psychosocial, financial, and academic factors. However, COVID-19 pandemic might even have worsened their mental health. Thus, this article aims to evaluate how the exposure to COVID-19 pandemic has affected these students’ mental health and to determine the effect of purpose in life and character strengths on this psychopathology.MethodsA cross-sectional study of unpaired samples was carried out in Spain during the first and third waves of the pandemic in 70 medical and 52 nursing students.ResultsThe risk factor that most determined the appearance of anxiety was the exposure of family and friends to COVID-19 (OR = 4.01; p < 0.001), while the most protective factors were honesty (OR = –1.14; p = 0.025) and purpose in life (OR = –0.18; p < 0.001). Purpose in life also protected against the onset of depression and total psychopathology. In addition, we observed studying medicine was a protective factor against total psychopathology while being a nursing student was associated with high levels of acute stress.ConclusionExposure of the students’ family and friends to SARS-CoV-2 favored the appearance of symptoms of anxiety. Honesty had a preventing role in the onset of anxiety and a high purpose in life was protective against the appearance of anxiety, depression, and total psychopathology.

If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to analyse institutional strategy documents relating to technology-enhanced learning. Design/methodology/approach In total, 84 documents were sampled from 71 leading higher education institutions (HEIs), identified through the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings 2018. Qualitative content analysis with a directed approach was used to analyse the strategy documents. The specific theory used was disruptive innovation. The use of “innovation”, or variants thereof, was counted in each document. Ten case studies from the sample were used for content analysis. Findings Technology-enhanced learning-related strategy documents are conservative, advocating the more efficient use of existing technologies, or the incremental enhancement of existing technologies, but not transformation through technology. Originality/value By evaluating the extent to which selected institutional strategies engage with innovation in technology-enhanced learning, this study argues HEIs advocate sustaining innovation or efficiency innovation to a greater extent than disruptive innovation.

No abstract