About The Helpful Professor®

Helpful Professor® is a higher education website by Dr. Chris Drew (PhD, B.Ed Hons) that provides trustworthy, accessible, and accurate peer-reviewed study guides that reflect expert consensus – all in language that university students can understand!

Our website has been named one of the 17 Top Teaching Blogs by Education Corner^[1], which praises the website’s  writing style:

“The articles cut through the nonsense and provide answers to your burning questions.”

The Helpful Professor® has been mentioned in top academic and journalistic sources including Times Higher Education, The Economist, Readers Digest, and The Conversation^[2].

We’ve also been cited by universities including The University of North Carolina, State University of New York at Buffalo, City University of New York, The University of Illinois, The University of Sydney, and Calvin University^[3].

Our Editor-in-Chief

Dr. Christopher Drew (PhD)
Qualifications: B.Ed (Hons), PGCLTHE, PhD (Education)

The editor and owner of The Helpful Professor® is Dr. Christopher Drew (Ph.D, B.Ed, PGCLTHE).

Editorial Experience: Prior to starting The Helpful Professor®, Dr. Drew was editor at the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education where he edited major editions including the special issue on academic literacies. He has also been the guest editor on the major Ed Tech journal, the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology where he led the 2019 special issue exploring new developments in David Jonassen’s concept of cognitive tools. He also sat on the conference committee for the 2018 Association for Learning Technology annual conference.

Academic Research Experience: Dr Drew obtained his PhD in Education from Australian Catholic University for his dissertation on nationalism in childhood. Besides his editorial experience, Dr. Drew has written peer reviewed articles in over 20 academic journals, including the British Journal of Educational Studies, Journal of Early Childhood Research, Critical Studies in Education and Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood.

You can find his full archive of publications on his Google Scholar page.

Media Citations: Dr. Drew has been cited in major publications including The Economist, Readers Digest, The Week, and Pearson Education^[4] where he has been quoted as an expert on study skills, child development, and educational studies.

Listen to Chris talking about types of play-based learning on the Learning Success Podcast.

Teaching Experience: Dr. Drew has extensive teaching experience at universities around the world, including Swinburne University (Melbourne, Australia) and Teesside University (United Kingdom).

Our Peer Review and Editorial Process

How we provide trustworthy, accessible, and reliable information to earn and maintain the trust of our readers.

Step 1: Qualified Writers

All contributors on Helpful Professor® must hold relevant postgraduate academic qualifications from a respected mainstream academic institution.

Step 2: Peer Review

All articles written by contributors on The Helpful Professor® (i.e, authors who are not Chris) go through a peer-review editorial process.

Peer reviewers are PhD-level academics with relevant expertise who are asked to review content to ensure it reflects expert academic consensus on every topic. Our chief editor regularly acts as a peer reviewer.

Step 3: Editorial Review

Our chief editor, Chris (the founder of Helpful Professor®), is in charge of editorial review to ensure all content is of suitable quality before publication.

In the editorial stage, we focus on:

1. Clarity of writing. All content should be readable for an undergraduate student.
2. Expert Consensus. We place a premium on publishing content that reflects mainstream expert consensus.
3. Peer Review. Contibutors’ work should be peer reviewed by a PhD-level academic.
4. Co-authorship where possible. For co-authored pieces, at least one author should be a PhD-level expert.
5. Citing claims. All claims should make reference to scholarly peer-reviewed sources that readers can refer to for further information. Sources are cited using APA style (7.0).

Step 4: Monitoring and Updating

Published content is reviewed via a regular audit process by a qualified peer reviewer. Update dates are prominently displayed in the sidebar (for desktop readers) and footer (for mobile readers).

All feedback provided by readers via our contact page is taken to weekly editorial review meetings to ensure it is acted upon promptly (See: Errors and Corrections below).

“We read academic journal articles so you don’t have to!”

Transparency, Errors, and Corrections