Research areas

The Higher Education Research Group (HERG) is a group of staff and students at Deakin University who are interested in research in the broad area of higher education.

Higher education research incorporates a wide range of areas and topics, including, but not limited to the following (derived from the current Excellence for Research in Australia (ERA) discussion paper):

Curriculum and pedagogy in higher education, including

• the student experience of higher education
• transition to higher education
• student engagement in higher education
• the student learning experience in higher education
• international students in higher education
• internationalisation of higher education
• use of technology in teaching in higher education
• flexible higher education (using Deakin's definition)
• the scholarship of teaching in higher education
• curriculum renewal in higher education
• improving teaching in higher education
• assessment in higher education, and so on.

Higher education policy, including

• all of the above
• access, equity and participation in higher education
• Indigenous higher education
• quality assurance in higher education, and the like.

'Other' higher education, including

• research methods in higher education
• the organisation and management of academic work/workloads, and similar areas.

This list is not exhaustive but gives an indication of the sorts of research that members of the HERG are and will be undertaking. This work will not include discipline-based research (there are other research groups available for you if this is your focus) - we will be doing work directly relevant to higher education as a field of enquiry and a field of professional practice.

Research in higher education is undertaken from the perspective of a range of disciplines and using a range of conceptual and theoretical models drawn from the disciplines. Much higher education research is concerned with the enhancement of professional practice and policies in higher education.

Professor Marcia Devlin
Chair of Higher Education Research
Ph: (03) 9251 7092
Email: marcia.devlin@deakin.edu.au