Project

The demand for the quality increase in higher education institutions is a current issue. The need for innovative teaching methods is declared as the Ministerial Goals by the European University Association (EUA). In the Ministerial Conference 2020, it is also planned for the presentation of these principles and best practice examples. Similarly, the need for enhancement in learning and teaching by revealing poor teaching performance of academic staff had been underlined in Trends 2015: Learning and Teaching in European Universities report published by EUA. Existing literature showed that the main indicator of students’ learning is effective classroom management skills of teachers (Emmer & Sabornie, 2015; Kunter et al. 2013; Seidel&Shavelson, 2007; Wang, Hartel, & Wahlberg, 1993). Controlling a classroom can be overwhelming also for academicians (Sherer, 1991).

Especially, academicians that don’t have necessary teaching experience before starting teaching in the university, suffer from lack of experience in the first years of their careers. However, most of the studies focused on classroom management issues are at the pre-collegiate level (Luo, Bellows, & Grady, 2000). There is a knowledge gap in classroom management strategies for higher education classrooms.

Therefore, Teaching in Higher education Effectively via Eye-tracking -THEE- project aims to explore in-class interactions in university classrooms to present classroom management strategies by using eye-tracking technology with a holistic perspective. It is expected that THEE project will answer the necessity of new teaching strategies announced by EUA. THEE project will also contribute to technology integration attempts to university classrooms. It is obvious that academicians are stakeholders of successful technology integration and understanding how they use technology in classrooms is necessary to create innovative teaching strategies. Interactions between academicians and technology will be also analyzed and a set of strategies to enhance technology integration into higher education classrooms will be presented within this project.