Introduction Compass: Journal of Learning and Teaching, Vol 6, No 10, 2015 It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the tenth issue of Compass, the University of Greenwich learning and teaching journal. Two major changes have been introduced since the last publication – the change of the managing editor following Karen Smith’s departure from the University, and the introduction of the limited print run. The composition of the tenth edition offers a good balance of opinion pieces, case studies and articles with an addition of a technology review. All of the submissions fall under the broad theme of a range of approaches to enhancing student engagement and university teaching. Some authors address this through references to technology such as Google Glass, intranets, MOOCS or flipped classroom approach, others tackle the aspects of feedback or consider general place of teaching in HE. The discussion of the theme of student engagement commences with three opinion pieces. Duncan McKenna reports on the student involvement in the TESTA@Greenwich research project, which seeks to harness the creativity and imagination of students in those aspects of their university experience which most concern them, namely assessment and feedback. Genuine student engagement, achieved through the deployment of five ‘students as change agents’, is one of the project’s aim: by the opening of channels of communication between staff and students, the latter may be empowered not only to learn, but also to influence and construct the ways they are taught. Diana Bath challenges advice offered in feedback to students in the early part of their course which counsels them not to express opinion, as that may lead them into making unfounded claims and digressing from the focus of their task; she explores the ways by which students may review their fixed and narrow interpretation of that advice and gain the confidence to build into their final assessed pieces relevant, informed personal opinion substantiated by reflection upon objective evidence. In the final opinion piece Mary Kiernan reflects on her research into how well collaborative online learning works and her unsatisfactory personal experience of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). She argues that innovative use of cyber-technologies to enhance learning can pose challenges for educators in providing support to students engaging with them; and advocates constructive online community socialisation measures to ensure that participants do function fully in whatever structured learning materials and activities may be on offer. Mark Betteney opens the case study section where he questions the truth of the commonly- held belief that grades for undergraduate students generally improve from the second to the third year (the so-called ‘exit velocity’) of their course. He analyses grade data from the four years 2010-2014 on the Greenwich BA Primary Education professional programme and comes up with some interesting patterns. Jane Challinor in her case study examines the potential advantages and challenges of a ‘flipped classroom’ to develop academic, research and digital skills in first-year students on Nottingham Trent’s undergraduate Health and Social Care course. She draws on personal experience of offering collaborative learning opportunities to a large (103 students) group in a technology-rich environment and considers how the design of both the curriculum and the learning space might be adjusted to maximise student engagement and learning benefits. Introduction Compass: Journal of Learning and Teaching, Vol 6, No 10, 2015 The case study section concludes with Ray Stoneham’s exploration of plagiarism in Higher Education. He examines the various methods by which Computing at Greenwich University has, with considerable success, not only identified when students have plagiarised but also educated them to understand why it is not permissible or acceptable to appropriate the work of others, but rather to take responsibility for the authenticity of their own submissions in their pursuit of a final grade. In his second submission, this time an article, Ray Stoneham discusses the achievement of the Greenwich School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences in developing an intranet to produce, in the complex context of connected learning in an open world, a single, summative, achievement-reflective grade for each student that will stand rigorous external scrutiny and provide appropriate information for Higher Education league tables. The second and final article by Ana Paula Cabral and Isabel Huet is sharp scrutiny of a Higher Education sector-wide concern, with a study of the current imbalance between and segregation of research and teaching/learning. Both authors examine the possible impacts of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework and argues that the much higher status enjoyed by research and the focus of research funding on a charmed few institutions and individual staff within them are having a deleterious effect on the rest of the sector and on the many academics who are relegated to teaching-only roles with limited rewards. Finally after an absence from Compass we welcome back a technology review. Bradley Elliott and Artun Sukan seek to demonstrate how the wearable technology ‘Google Glass’ may be used by both students and academic staff to exploit its potential in a variety of teaching and learning situations from the laboratory to the lecture hall, the author takes account also of various disadvantages of this hands-free technology and the barriers to its successful deployment. As these overviews show the papers published in the tenth issue show a wealth of interesting work that captures the landscape and the challenges of the higher education sector. We hope that you will find something of interest here and share your research and practice with the wider reader base by submitting to the next issue. Monika Pazio Educational Development Unit University of Greenwich