Table of Contents
2. What is the Essence of Modern Higher Education
Modern higher education requires deliberate, evidence‑informed or e-based choices in the design of learning processes. This page provides a clear framework to help educators align their teaching with current pedagogical insights, digital and AI‑driven opportunities and students’ diverse needs.
- Modern University Education learning outcomes represent the pertinent knowledge that students have gained within a particular discipline.
- Students can apply this knowledge to solve problems or carry out tasks in a new discipline.
- More generally, students learn how to tackle academic and professional problems.
- Learning is the outcome of moving from surface to deep learning and applying the knowledge in new situations (transfer).
- Learning involves students building knowledge through interactions with peers, academic subjects, various situations and contexts, and their prior knowledge.
- Effective teaching strategies aim to foster students’ knowledge, attitudes, and skills, which are essential for encouraging academic freedom, cognitive autonomy and self-direction within a specific field or area of expertise.
- The role of university education is to foster and guide learning, thereby deepening understanding of academic freedom. The discussion should focus on the learning pathways within our curriculum, the ways we bolster extra-curricular forums and the support we provide to our faculty to nurture our students into genuine free thinkers and high achievers in academia.
He gives a practical description of the core aims of modern higher education.
- Professional knowledge and thinking strategies are taught and learnt in conjunction. The primary purposes are to acquire, adapt and use that knowledge.
- During the study, the intuitive views of students are replaced by theories and models from the field of study.
The most important characteristics in modern higher education of a good learning environment in modern higher education are as follows:
- Conditions in education are as much as possible following later use, including real-life work situations.
- The students are encouraged to work actively.
- The teacher serves as both a coach and an expert on the subject matter.
- Modern university education provides impulses to work and think independently. Students are given increasing responsibility for their learning.
- The students develop a sense of competence.
What improves when you apply the eight Design Principles of Modern Higher Education?
1. Students learn more actively and retain knowledge better
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Design active learning tasks that require students to apply knowledge and receive timely feedback.
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Make expectations transparent and align learning objectives across courses and learning tracks.
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Support growing student independence through structured scaffolding and meaningful tasks that promote regular study (time‑on‑task).
2. The connection with the professional field becomes stronger
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Use authentic professional problems to drive active learning, with assignments that grow in complexity and include timely feedback.
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Make expectations transparent and ensure learning objectives align across courses and learning tracks.
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Support increasing student independence through structured scaffolding and meaningful tasks that promote regular study (time‑on‑task).
3. Knowledge development becomes explicit and coherent
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Teach disciplinary and procedural knowledge through active, well‑designed learning tasks that connect theory and practice.
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Support deep understanding by contextualising new insights, coordinating threshold concepts across courses, and aligning assessment with higher‑level theories.
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Calibrate task complexity and manage cognitive load to optimise students’ learning processes.
4. Students develop the study behaviours needed for nominal progress
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Foster strong social and academic integration while supporting students’ transition and personal development.
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Ensure a feasible, coherent, constructively aligned curriculum with meaningful learning activities and high‑quality assessment.
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Remove unnecessary barriers so students can progress smoothly within a sustainable, well‑documented program.
5. Collaborative learning becomes a driver of understanding
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Strengthen student commitment by fostering social bonding and structured peer‑learning activities.
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Encourage students to verbalise and exchange insights to develop collaborative and professional skills.
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Guide group work through accessible tutor support at predictable times.
6. Testing and feedback become engines of learning
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Use testing to assess competency and shape study behaviour through aligned formats and timely feedback.
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Encourage continuous learning with practice tests and well‑distributed assessments across the course.
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Ensure summative assessments meet essential quality standards to support meaningful learning.
7. IT makes learning richer, more accessible, and more efficient
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Use IT to provide students with accessible, flexible learning materials and to support independent study.
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Integrate essential digital tools to prepare students for professional practice and greater ownership of their studies.
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Enhance learning with IT‑supported feedback and explanations, while ensuring teachers receive solid technical support.
8. Students gain space for personal developmen
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Help students build effective study habits and digital learning routines early on.
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Strengthen cohesion and guide informed choices through purposeful tutoring contact.
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Transfer responsibility gradually by reducing scaffolding as students progress.
Design Principles for Modern University Education are evidence-based (or evidence-informed)
Chickering and Gamson (1987) formulated one of the first set of design principles for Modern University Education. Other descriptions are given by Theelen and van Breukelen (2021), Parker and Hankins (2002), Sixteen design principles (Visscher -Voerman (1999), Agostinho, 2011, Reilly and Reeves (2022), Wals, Wesselink and Mulder (2017). Picciano (2017) gives a valuable description. These authors describe the design principles in these articles as an abstract summary of the evidence-based research results.
Besides the general design principles for modern university education, the concept of design principles has been researched for specific pedagogical situations. DPs are formulated for the benefit of designing, developing and evaluating hybrid learning (Cremers et al., 2017), DPs about oral presentation (Ginkel, Gulikers, Mulder, & Biemans, 2015), project-based learning (Guo et al., 2020), the principles of authentic eLearning (Reilly and Reeves, 2022), teacher design teams (Post et al., (2022) and more.
Design principles are not meant to give ready-to-use recipes (Theelen and van Breukelen, 2021). They give you the best possible insight into designing an effective modern higher education system. The design principles indicate which pedagogical approaches can be used successfully. There is no guarantee of success.
You can discuss the term evidence-based education or evidence-informed education. I prefer the term evidence-based because this stresses the importance (Nedermejer, 2023 Chapter 3). But maybe Kirschner is right by using evidence-informed.
Frequently, the design principles articulated in scientific articles are robust from a scientific standpoint but not practical for teacher designers. This necessitates that educational researchers present their recommendations in an actionable manner for teacher designers in their design endeavours. Maybe as an annexe or a separate article.
But, it is vital for teacher designers to understand learning theories and have mastered the art of integrating research findings with their personal experiences. With this they can apply the research in the course design.
One of the Insights Merrienboer has formulated in his Farwell lecture (2023)
‘We need empirically supported theories that help us understand teaching and learning processes and make sound design decisions that optimize learning in simulated or real environments”.
‘As a result, there are no instructional methods that do or do not work; that is to say, everything works somewhere, nothing works everywhere. Research should be aimed at increasing our knowledge.’
Evidence based Course Design principles for Modern University Education
A design principle is an intelligent summary of related findings from educational research and their application. Design principles summarise many evidence-based results from research in modern university education, especially in blended learning.
The aim is to make the available research results from scientific articles transparent and usable for teacher designers. They help them make well-considered choices when organising their education, following ideas about modern higher education.
The essential quality of a design principle description is that it should be appealing, understandable, and valuable for university teachers in general, and teachers should be able to translate these design principles into ideas for their courses.
A useful tool to shape your pedagogical plan for your course
An example of a helpful design tool is the set of eight pedagogical design principles of MHE (=DP), as shown in the Figure. These principles will play a role in the design of most courses in higher education.
Sometimes, a DP plays an essential and central role, and sometimes a subordinate one. If you ‘forget’ a design principle, it often turns out that the course does not meet the five quality requirements of being effective, efficient, valued, well-liked and feasible.
The Interactive Assignment Modern University Education (under reconstruction) can help you select relevant pedagogical options for your course.
An example of a design principle: '2. Description Issues and problems from the professional field are central'.
- Learning is an active process. Students study actively in the classroom, in groups, or on their own to master the learning objectives, rather than passively listening. This enables complex learning. Students learn to apply their knowledge through classroom assignments and self-study. The assignments focus on learning tasks aligned with the learning objectives. The students will get feedback after finishing the assignments. The complexity and size of the assignments increase over the years of the study.
- The course book transparently explains the teacher’s expectations concerning the student’s learning.
- The course’s learning objectives are logically related to the other courses in the curriculum and the learning tracks.
- Teachers and/or tutors support students’ self-study. During their studies, students will have to study increasingly independently. You should arrange for proper scaffolding.
- A practical principle is Time-on-task. More hours of meaningful study lead to more learning. The design task for teachers is to find meaningful learning activities that encourage students to study regularly rather than waiting until just before the test.
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An example of a design principle: ‘2. Description Issues and problems from the professional field are central’.
Necessary focus points
It does require pedagogical preparation
Another step to modernise your course
How to apply DPs in Modern University Education?
- You choose from the design principles and the pedagogical options, the pedagogical options from which you expect the most success. Then, you translate the combination of the chosen pedagogical options into concrete learning activities, materials and suitable learning paths(s). In this translation, the teaching experience of the designer teacher is decisive.
- Evaluation of the new design is crucial: the quality of the new education must correspond to the quality requirements set. During the design process, you must evaluate the design carefully. For example, you check if the teacher and the students can function in the designed learning situation if the design elements are consistent, and if the faculty is able and willing to support the implementation. You evaluate new parts of your design in small pilot experiments, and finally, you evaluate your new course during and immediately after the course’s implementation.
- Because of the messiness of DPs, Hanghoj, Handel, Visgaard, and Gundersen (2022) stress the importance of discussing design principles with teachers or in a project group. This discussion about DPs should be combined with teacher training activities on how to use these design principles. The teachers discuss how to interpret and apply them in their course (or curriculum) as a teacher designer. The result must be written down as an essential input for the design process.
Ensure that your course comprehensively covers all eight design principles and characteristics.
