British Universities have world-class reputations and they are vital to our social and economic future. But they are in a tight spot. The huge public investment that sustained much of the sector is in jeopardy and the current way of working is not sustainable. Some are predicting the end of the university as we have known it. The Edgeless University argues that this can be a moment of rebirth for universities. Technology is changing universities as they become just one source among many for ideas, knowledge and innovation. But online tools and open access also offer the means for their survival. Their expertise and value is needed more than ever to validate and support learning and research.
CommentPress is an open source theme for the WordPress blogging engine that allows readers to comment paragraph by paragraph in the margins of a text. Annotate, gloss, workshop, debate: with CommentPress you can do all of these things on a finer-grained level, turning a document into a conversation. It can be applied to a fixed document (paper/essay/book etc.) or to a running blog.
Learned helplessness as a technical term in animal psychology and related human psychology means a condition of a human being or an animal in which it has learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance to which it has been subjected.
The Society of Biology is a single unified voice for biology: advising Government and influencing policy; advancing education and professional development; supporting our members, and engaging and encouraging public interest in the life sciences. The Society has been created by the unification of the Biosciences Federation and the Institute of Biology, and is building on the heritage and reputation of these two organisations to champion the study and development of biology, and provide expert guidance and opinion.
The recently released ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology gives some excellent insights into trends in college students' technology ownership, perceptions, skills, and habits.
The public domain is the realm of material—ideas, images, sounds, discoveries, facts, texts—that is unprotected by intellectual property rights and free for all to use or build upon. Our economy, culture and technology depend on a delicate balance between that which is, and is not, protected by exclusive intellectual property rights. Both the incentives provided by intellectual property and the freedom provided by the public domain are crucial to the balance. But most contemporary attention has gone to the realm of the protected.
Leicester Research Archive is a digital collection of research output from members of the University of Leicester, UK. It currently includes articles, book chapters, theses, reports, conference papers, and research databases, and can include any form of research output including data sets. Much material is freely available in full text. If an item is not available in full text, you can try the DOI or other links from within LRA. Please note that these links will only give access to full text if you are entitled to see that full text or if it is openly available.
Wikipedia is ubiquitous. It’s handy. And it works. However, wouldn’t it be a great resource for the lay community and an important learning opportunity if these students were actually editing and adding to Wikipedia instead of making it their primary source for new clinical information? It wouldn’t take many medical schools requiring a “Web 2.0 Medical Resources” course focusing on available information, credibility, and online research to drastically increase the utility of Wikipedia and its ilk for both the medical community and patients.
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh 16-17 June 2009 The aim of this national conference is to bring together practitioners in the teaching of science disciplines in HE to share their experiences, identify common challenges and an opportunity to share effective practice. The programme will include keynote lectures; short oral presentations; hands on workshops; posters and exhibitions.
A critical review of the use of the concept of reflection in Higher Education. David Andrew, Miriam Green, Gary Pheiffer, Debbie Holley. BEST conference, April 2002. Reflection as a concept should be abandoned in management educational practice because of: Lack of consistent definition Lack of operational value - we can't tell students how to do it Some minor, but potential dangers if we could tell students how to do it Lack of necessity - we do not see how such an ill-defined concept is necessary for helping students to learn.
The SFES model appears both promising and challenging (see diagram, left). SFES in university and college science departments have the potential to drive science education reform at K-12 and postsecondary institutions. Our data suggest that science education would benefit from (i) increased training opportunities to develop SFES, (ii) reduced professional isolation for SFES, and (iii) improved academic infrastructure to support SFES research and professional activities. Attention to the issues raised by SFES in this study would likely strengthen the impact of SFES on K-12 science education, undergraduate science education, and science education research within the disciplines.
What are the questions we need to answer to understand the needs and demands of future learners? Particularly in relation to the use of technology and the implications that has for education. List them here.
Imagine if every twelve weeks Facebook: * shut down all the groups you belonged to, * deleted all your forum posts, * removed all the photos, videos, and other files you had shared, and * forgot who your friends were.
We detail the research, development and initial outcomes of an intervention process to promote capability building in designing for e-learning at a dual mode university in the UK. The process, called CARPE DIEM, was built on a pilot study and became a Higher Education Academy 'Pathfinder' project named ADELIE. We report on the model workshop, its deployment, research and development over a 12-month period with a variety of subject groups working in small teams with learning technologists, pedagogical facilitators and librarians. Outcomes include improved scores on an institutional e-learning benchmarking exercise and increased capability for designing for online activities for students in the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). The model is stable enough to be tried in other institutions and continues to develop in scope.
This site aims to provide a community resource for those interested in ePortfolios and Personal Development Planning (PDP). This site was first set up to document an FDTL4 project in which we built a configurable ePortfolio.
The Journal of Open and Distance Learning, Volume 24, Issue 1 February 2009, 57-65 Describes the internal motivations and external drivers that led The Open University UK to enter the field of Open Educational Resources through its institution-wide OpenLearn initiative.
Despite growing demand for university education worldwide, and society’s increasing desire, directly and through government agency, for increased value for privately and publicly-expended educational funds, the manner in which most universities conduct
Screencasts can be used to supplement teaching materials and can also be prepared in response to student email queries, then saved and sent to other students with the same question. Screencasts can be applicable across all disciplines for online learners.
A novel approach to improving staff welfare is being offered by the University of Leicester. The local Staff Counselling and Welfare Service has invited a hypnotherapist to address interested staff later this month on the technique's use in controlling st
The number of British students enrolling at UK universities has stalled while those coming to study from overseas has continued to rise according to latest official figures.
The low cost and ease of use of open source software, combined with low funding for education means that commercial software giants like Microsoft will see a continually declining share of the educational technology market.
Key findings: The research shows that they will bring inherent expectations for ICT with them, display instinctive preferences for technology when presented, and be able to evaluate any new technology they may meet at university.
A recent study to be published in an upcoming issue of Teaching of Psychology Journal, found that students who eat chocolate before filling out a course evaluation may give their professor a higher rating than they otherwise would.
I don't like the term digital native. It's not that there aren't generational differences or that there isn't something in the concept: it's more that it strikes me of being a horrible simplification of what is actually going on.