Universities as public and private higher education institutions has been criticized and called for change in this changing world (Uka, 2014). While there are many studies on universities in the scope of higher education, a few of them focus on quality (e.g., Bergseth, Petocz and Dahlgren, 2014).  On the other hand, there are many significant challenges of defining quality since quality is an elusive term as Schindler, Puls-Elvidge, Welzant and Crawford (2015) stated. Literature on this area indicate that there is still no consensus on the definition of quality (Schindler et al,  2015). Iacovidou et al. (2009; cited in Teeroovengadum, Kamalanabhan and Seebaluck, 2016) state that quality in higher education is not a unidimensional concept and is in fact best described as a set of dimensions based on the literature. In sum, there are many stakeholder such as students and teachers in higher education and they all have different roles in this context. Based on this reality, there are some studies which focus on academics' perceptions of quality in higher education and quality strategies (e.g.Mammen, 2006) whereas there are some studies which focus on students’ expectations and perceptions about university (e.g. Hill, 1995; cited in Cardona and Bravo, 2012; Spooren, Mortelmans & Denekens, 2007). Additionally, there have been also many studies which focus on understanding excellence in teaching and research (e.g.Brockerhoff, Stensaker & Huisman, 2014), effective teaching in higher education (e.g.Stephanou & Kyridis, 2012; ), effective teacher (e.g.Walker, 2008; Steele, 2010), teachers’ role (e.g.Liston, Borko & Whitcomb, 2008; Lunnenberg, Korthagen & Swennen, 2007).

From this perspective, the following research questions were addressed in this paper: (1) How do academics perceive effective university teaching? and which factors do they consider the most important for effective unversity teaching? (2) How do academics perceive effective university teacher? Which characterstics are the most important ones for them? (3) What are main differences or similarities among academics’ perceptions?

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