Highly Intensive Teaching in Tertiary Education: A Review of Recent Scholarship

This chapter provides a critical review of recently published empirical papers on highly intensive teaching in higher education. Highly intensive teaching refers to subjects taught face-to-face in four weeks or less. Building upon and extending an influential review of intensive mode delivery (IMD) in higher education by Davies in 2006, this literature review confirms the observation made by several scholars investigating IMD that despite the increasing popularity of this form of delivery, rigorous and methodologically robust research into the benefits and challenges of this form of pedagogy is still in its infancy. By applying cognitive learning theory, this chapter discusses the circumstances under which intensive mode teaching is
likely to be most effective and outlines potential avenues for further research.