Group items tagged

The growing flood of scholarly literature is exposing the weaknesses of current, citation-based methods of evaluating and filtering articles. A novel and promising approach is to examine the use and citation of articles in a new forum: Web 2.0 services li

"Academics often treat students' discipline-specific literacy as unproblematic. In doing so they may underestimate the difficulties for university students as they move between subjects of study that may involve different disciplines, language genres and academic practices. This paper describes an initiative aimed at supporting students in reading academic articles in preparation for completing an essay for an assessment task. This initiative involved a structured and collaborative two-week tutorial exercise that provided students with practice in using a framework to extract the main ideas from academic readings. Students were surveyed after this exercise, and their reflections of its value are described in this paper. The findings of this study will inform further stages of the project which aim to develop and investigate practical ways to develop student's academic literacy across several business disciplines."

Open access web version articles for 24(1), AJET's first online only issue, were mounted on 16 January 2008. Commencing with 24(1), articles are available in both HTML and PDF formats.

Interesting article on learning analytics (thanks to Emlyn Phillips for the heads-up on this one).

This paper investigates the similarities and differences between two important ideas in information processing and knowledge utilisation. Those ideas are [critical thinking] and [information literacy]. The two phrases are shown in brackets to indicate that the two words involved in each idea are not arbitrarily combined but have been coupled by authors to represent a single entity or a focus for development of concepts describing the characteristics involved. By exploring terms related to this couplet from the same sentence, the meaning of each of the central ideas can be expanded. The education, library science, and health science literature were used in this study, which analysed 8745 articles dealing with [critical thinking] and 8201 reports dealing with [information literacy] included in either ERIC or PubMed from 2000-2009.

Published papers and articles on the use of Pebble Pad in Learning & Teaching

Plagiarism is a folk devil into which is poured many of the challenges, problems and difficulties confronting higher education . This article investigates how software- Turnitin in particular - is 'solving' a particular ' crisis' in universities . However I investigate how alternative strategies for the development of information literacy offer concrete, productive and imaginative trajectories for university staff and students.

This article explores excellence in web-based teaching. Drawing on the views of experts in the field and the perspective of their own years of experience, the authors compiled a list of 9 principles to provide direction in the search for online excellence

"The existence of 'Learning Styles' is a common 'neuromyth', and their use in all forms of education has been thoroughly and repeatedly discredited in the research literature. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that their use remains widespread. This perspective article is an attempt to understand if and why the myth of Learning Styles persists. I have done this by analyzing the current research literature to capture the picture that an educator would encounter were they to search for "Learning Styles" with the intent of determining whether the research evidence supported their use. The overwhelming majority (89%) of recent research papers, listed in the ERIC and PubMed research databases, implicitly or directly endorse the use of Learning Styles in Higher Education. These papers are dominated by the VAK and Kolb Learning Styles inventories. These presence of these papers in the pedagogical literature demonstrates that an educator, attempting to take an evidence-based approach to education, would be presented with a strong yet misleading message that the use of Learning Styles is endorsed by the current research literature. This has potentially negative consequences for students and for the field of education research."

Over the past several months, the proliferation of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) has been hailed as a potent defense against the rising cost and insular culture of attending a traditional college. The courses, which are generally taught by experts with affiliations to elite universities, are characterized by their unique pedagogy and unlimited enrollment. To date, no course has been accepted for transfer credit at a major on-campus institution; however some administrators and higher-education experts predict their gradual integration into university curriculum. This article examines the MOOC phenomenon, identifying aspects that academic librarians should consider in the coming years, including how these courses interact with scholarly resources and library services. Methods for integrating library services in these courses are evaluated, with recommendations for the best course of action.

News article showing a Berlin School where the students set their own learning - something to trial in HE perhaps?

Interteaching: A Strategy for Enhancing the User-Friendliness of Behavioral Arrangements in the College Classroom

"For the 2013 Conference in Orlando, we received nearly 50 full papers. From those 50, we selected a subset of the highest quality papers to publish. All articles went through a rigorous double-blind peer review and editing process. From the selected papers, we published two special issues - one IHR special issue and one JARHE special issue."

Interesting article on whether the new, much hyped Google wave can be used to replace VLEs

This 2008/9 Wikipedia DVD Selection is a free, hand-checked, non-commercial selection from Wikipedia, targeted around the UK National Curriculum and useful for much of the English speaking world. It has about 5500 articles (as much as can be fitted on a D

The article offers information on the benefits of peer review. According to the University of Kansas, peer review is an assessment of an instructor's effectiveness by another library staff member who is also involved in providing library instruction. It i

"A knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic." Not content with taking on Microsoft, Google are now going after Wikipedia. Resistance is futile?

"Routledge is pleased to offer the Library & Information Science community free access to a collection of articles highlighting MOOCs and librarianship. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are free, online classes designed to provide university-level education to a large number of students. As MOOCs become a mainstream part of higher education, libraries will play an important role in the advancement of these innovative learning opportunities."

""It's Mooc or die", a university vice-chancellor has said, claiming that institutions must embrace the massive open online course movement and adapt their teaching methods or face a tough future."