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Artificial Intelligence in higher education (AIED) is becoming a more important research area with increasing developments and application of AI within the wider society. However, as yet AI based tools have not been widely adopted in higher education. As a result there is a lack of sound evidence available on the pedagogical impact of AI for learning and teaching. This conceptual paper thus seeks to bridge the gap and addresses the following question: is artificial intelligence really the new big thing that will revolutionise learning and teaching in higher education? Adopting the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) framework and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) as the theoretical foundations, we argue that Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, at least in their current state of development, do not afford any real new advances for pedagogy in higher education. This is mainly because there does not seem to be valid evidence as to how the use of AI technologies and applications has helped students improve learning, and/or helped tutors make effective pedagogical changes. In addition, the pedagogical affordances of AI have not yet been clearly defined. The challenges that the higher education sector is currently experiencing relating to AI adoption are discussed at three hierarchical levels, namely national, institutional and personal levels. The paper ends with recommendations with regard to accelerating AI use in universities. This includes developing dedicated AI adoption strategies at the institutional level, updating the existing technology infrastructure and up-skilling academic tutors for AI.

The extensive and intensive online teaching and learning during the pandemic has provided good opportunities for academic staff and students to experiment with learning and teaching using synchronous communication technology and learning platforms. This experience is highly valuable for helping higher education institutions move learning and teaching practices forward after the pandemic. Indeed, many universities are considering adopting blended learning in the new era. However, it is worth noting that a number of emerging issues related to student behaviour also appeared during online learning, such as teaching to blank screens, students’ inappropriate use of social media icons, languages and their inappropriate outfits. It appears that these issues have not yet been investigated properly, and are not addressed by the existing codes of conduct, since these have been written mainly for face-to-face teaching. This study offers some important insights into students’ unprofessional online behaviour from tutors’ perspective, and also the experiences of academic tutors in managing such behaviour in formal online learning and teaching environments. It used semi-structured interviews to collect data, and analysed the narratives of 20 academic staff working in UK universities. The findings report and describe students’ unprofessional online behaviours witnessed by academic tutors in different academic disciplines. The findings also suggest that special attention needs to be paid to policymaking regarding online learning, in particular, in the area of students’ online professionalism.

Research on international students’ learning experiences pays much less attention to those studying semester and/or year-long programmes in a country that differs significantly from their home country with respect to culture and the education system. Adopting transformative learning theory as the theoretical framework, this paper explores the learning effectiveness of students on such programme in a Chinese and in a UK university. It analyses the narratives of 27 students in relation to their cognitive and behavioural activities and also their self-reflective and collaborative reflective activities. The findings indicate that these students only partially achieved transformative learning. The main reasons are: (1) the duration of this type of programme was not long enough to achieve a full transformation and (2) both host universities did not include reflection in the learning process properly. This paper makes a contribution to cross-border learning literature in the Chinese and the UK contexts.