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Reading Lists

Finding Articles

The following specialist sources are suggested as good starting points for finding Higher Education Learning & Teaching materials. However, the Library's Discovery Service is also excellent for finding material relevant to higher education.

This list is not exhaustive. You may find other databases more suited to your needs on the Subject page for your own subject. These may include news of the latest teaching developments/initiatives in your own field.

  • ERIC

    (Searchable in EBSCO Discovery)

    The world's leading source of articles on Education. ERIC is part of Discovery but you can take advantage of extra limiters such as education level and intended audience when you search directly within ERIC.

In addition you might like to look at some of the many journals we subscribe to, or which are freely available online.

Recommended Sources

There are a wide range of resources available for Higher Education Learning & Teaching beyond the obvious journals, databases and websites. Here we list a selection we think you'll find useful.

  • BoB: On demand TV and radio for education

    An archive of UK television and radio programmes from free to air channels (1998 onwards). For use in the UK only. Find some great tips about how to use BoB in these short videos.

  • British University Film and Video Council

    This resource, from Learning on Screen includes a Moving Image Gateway to 2,000 websites relating to moving image and sound materials, News on Screen resource for the study of newsreels and cinemagazines, Archives and Footage from screen heritage, including film production and television and video equipment, and International Database of Shakespeare on Film, Television and Radio.

  • Kanopy

    A unique collections of films including award-winning documentaries, training films and theatrical releases on every topic imaginable. Content can be searched or browsed.

  • Linkedin Learning

    Online learning and training courses covering business and employability, as well as creative and technical skills.

  • Department for Education

    The UK Government department responsible for education and children's services, including further and higher education

  • DERA

    An online archive of documents published by the UK Government and related bodies made freely available by the Institute of Education, University of London

  • Global Newsstream

    Full text articles from UK and international news sources - coverage varies but can run from the 1980s to today. As well as newspapers, you'll find news wires and BBC Monitoring reports.

  • The Conversation - Education

    Search and browse, or sign up to the daily newsletter, for an independent source of news analysis and informed comment written by academic experts working with professional journalists to reach a wider audience.

  • The Chronicle of Higher Education

  • Times Higher Education

    A weekly news magazine covering higher education in the UK but also including some international content

  • Advance HE

    Used to be known as the Higher Education Academy

  • The Higher Education Empirical Research Database

    The HEER database has been developed by the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information (CHERI) of The Open University.

  • International Staff

    the website for international staff moving to UK universities

  • JISC

    innovation in the use of ICT for education and research

  • Office for Students

    The Office for Students (OfS) is an independent public body reporting to Parliament through the Department for Education (DfE). Their primary aim is to ensure that English higher education is delivering positive outcomes for students and OfS monitors higher education providers to ensure that they satisfy the conditions set out in the regulatory framework.

  • Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education

  • Society for Research into Higher Education

  • VOCED

    VOCED is a free research database for technical and vocational education and training.

Referencing

  • Everyone on courses including education uses APA 7th edition.
  • Use Referencing@Portsmouth to find out how to reference all the sources you have used.

 

Can I use ChatGPT/AI to generate references? 

Be aware that ChatGPT and similar tools invent some academic references (see the next paragraph for why). Using such fabricated information in your work is considered academic misconduct so you should always double check any AI generated references. They also make some mistakes with APA 7th style.

ChatGPT is a large language model which has been trained on which words should appear and in what order - hence similar authors/titles/journals get linked with each other, producing very plausible sounding references that don't actually exist - the words simply have connections to each other within its training data.

All reference generators make errors! 

Ensure you check and edit your references before submitting your work.  Here are some common errors.

There are many different ways to generate APA citations:

  • Quick options:
    • Look for a "Cite" button in EBSCO databases like Discovery, or in Ebook Central, Statista, Google Scholar etc.
  • Advanced options:
    • See our referencing tools page. The humanities and social sciences librarian supports the use of EndNote Online.

We do not advise using the referencing tool in Word.