For quick access to high quality information for your assignments, try the links on these pages.
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New - 1st May 2025: Changes happening to Ebook Central.
Reading Lists
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Academic Development (Curriculum and Quality Enhancement)
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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.
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ERIC
Fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
the world's leading source of articles on Education
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Research into Higher Education Abstracts
Fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
In addition you might like to look at some of the many journals we subscribe to, or which are freely available online.
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Active Learning in Higher Education
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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Higher Education Quarterly
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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Innovations in Education and Teaching International (SEDA journal)
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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International Journal for Academic Development (ICED journal)
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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Journal of Online Learning and Teaching
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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Practice and Evidence of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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Studies in Higher Education (SRHE journal)
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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Teaching in Higher Education
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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.
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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.
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British University Film and Video Council
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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.
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Linkedin Learning
Online learning and training courses covering business and employability, as well as creative and technical skills.
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Department for Education
The UK Government department responsible for education and children's services, including further and higher education
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The Chronicle of Higher Education
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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Times Higher Education
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
A weekly news magazine covering higher education in the UK but also including some international content
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Complete University Guide
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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Guardian University Guide
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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Higher Education Statistics Agency
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
Comparisons and Rankings
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National Student Survey Data
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
This is the archive covering 2005 - 2017
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National Student Survey from the Office for Students
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
NSS results and information from 2021 onwards
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THES World University Rankings
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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UniStats
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
if you register it is possible to save comparison courses to monitor changes
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Which University
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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Higher Education Academy
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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The Higher Education Empirical Research Database
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
The HEER database has been developed by the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information (CHERI) of The Open University.
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International Staff
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
the website for international staff moving to UK universities
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JISC
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
innovation in the use of ICT for education and research
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JISC TechDis
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
educational advisory service relating to use of technology to support accessibility and inclusion
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Office for Students
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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.
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Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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Society for Research into Higher Education
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
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VOCED
Not fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
VOCED is a free research database for technical and vocational education and training.
Referencing
Use Referencing@Portsmouth to find out how to reference all the sources you have used:
Everyone on courses including education uses APA 7th edition.
Use Search APA 7 inside Referencing@Portsmouth to locate specific referencing advice on chapters, articles, reports, as well as abbreviations, appendices, tables and more.
New to referencing? Watch this short APA basics video.
Can I use ChatGPT/AI to generate references?
Be aware that ChatGPT and similar tools invent academic references (see the more button for why). Using such fabricated information in your work is considered academic misconduct so you should always double check any AI generated references. The University has guidance for students on the use of AI and the Library has produced guidance on citing and referencing generative AI.
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 actually don't exist - the words simply have connections to each other within its training data. When prompted "How does ChatGPT predict which words come next?" ChatGPT stated that it "predicts which words come next based on the patterns it learns from the training data. When given a prompt or context, the model uses its knowledge of language patterns to generate likely sequences of words that would follow the input" ... "it predicts one word at a time, based on the previously generated words" ... " and then calculates the probability distribution of the next word in the sequence based on the patterns it has learned from the training data" (OpenAI, 2023).
Reference
OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 23 Version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat
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.