Teaching and Learning in Higher Education : Perspectives from UCL

'Research and teaching' is a typical response to the question, 'What are universities for?' For most people, one comes to mind more quickly than the other.

Most undergraduate students will think of teaching, while PhD students will think of research.

University staff will have similarly varied reactions depending on their roles.

Emphasis on one or the other has also changed over time according to governmental incentives and pressure.

For some decades, higher education has been bringing the two closer together, to the point of them overlapping, by treating students as partners and finding ways of having them learn through undertaking research. Drawing on a range of examples from across the disciplines, this collection demonstrates how one research-rich university, UCL (University College London), has set up initiatives to raise the profile of teaching and give it parity of esteem with research.

It explains what staff and students have done to create an environment in which students can learn by discovery, through research-based education.