This article reports on a piece of research designed to explore first year undergraduate students’ perceptions of what constitutes effective teaching in a modern UK university. Whilst quality assurance processes have long taken into account students’ perceptions of the teaching they receive, their views have not been as influential in the UK or Europe as, for example, in the United States where, according to Shevlin et al (2000, p. 38) information from student evaluation of teaching “can be used for faculty decisions about conditions of employment such as salary and promotion”. Paradoxically, whilst a number of  fairly recent studies (Vielba & Hillier, 2000, Hillier & Vielba, 2001, Skelton, 2004) focus primarily on teachers’ perceptions of high quality university teaching, the dearth of research relating to higher education (HE) students’ perceptions of effective teaching in the UK and other European countries reported by Reid and Johnston (1999), still applies almost a decade later. Thus the presentation should be of particular interest to all conference participants involved in undergraduate teaching.

This study aims to (a) offer a framework  for conceptualising effective teaching in HE based on extant literature and  (b) contribute to an emerging body of knowledge relating to students perceptions of effective teaching. The empirical study addresses aim (b) and posits three interrelated questions:

1.      What do law, engineering and applied science students perceive to be effective teaching in their first year in HE?

2.      To what extent is there congruence  and dissonance between students studying different disciplines?

This case study was undertaken from a phenomenographic perspective (Marton, 1981; Marton & Booth 1997, Moustakas, 1994) to examine students’ perceptions of, and insights into, effective undergraduate teaching in the first year of their study.  We have undertaken  previous studies into the perceptions of education students but, conscious of the possibility of a subject-specific response, what Gurung et al (2008) call “signature pedagogies”, we have sought to broaden our case study to encompass three additional disciplines.

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