Group items tagged

Dell is developing a pocket-sized Internet device using Google's Android operating system that could take on Apple's iPod touch, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal on Monday.

"Oxford Brookes is once again offering this popular fully online course from 6 Oct to 7 Nov this year. You will have the opportunity to work with colleagues from tertiary institutions, in different countries, to explore the concept of internationalising your curriculum for all students. The course moves from the theory to the practice and invites you to become familiar with resources in the area and to develop curricula ideas that could be applicable in your institution and in your discipline. Details and booking here."

"This issue aims to shed light on the way MOOCs affect education institutions and learners. Which teaching and learning strategies can be used to improve the MOOC learning experience? How do MOOCs fit into today's pedagogical landscape; and could they provide a viable model for developing countries?"

"We talk about change a great deal in our profession of Learning and Development (L&D) - and rightly. There is plenty of change going on at the moment, technological, economic and societal, and we have to adapt to it."

Widget Design Authoring Toolkit (WIDGaT) is the world's first online 'code-free' widget creation tool !  WIDGaT a JISC-funded Learning and Teaching Innovation project led by the Accessibility Research Centre at Teesside University.The WIDGaT toolkit supports the design, development and sharing of widgets, by enabling teachers and students to easily produce bespoke widgets.

Researchers at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) launched the Innovative Learning Environments project to turn an academic lens on the project of identifying concrete traits that mark innovative learning environments. They sifted through and categorized the research on learning science, documented case studies, and compiled policy recommendations they hope will transform the current system.

A Marked Improvement has been developed by a group of experts, working with the HEA to provide a strong rationale for transforming assessment in higher education. It includes an assessment review tool, offering a practical method to take stock of current practice and look to a targeted approach to strategic change. The publication also includes further resources for staff, which can be used to support changes to assessment policy and practice.

"When researchers selectively report significant positive results, and omit non-significant or negative results, the published literature skews in a particular direction. This is called 'reporting bias', and it can cause both casual readers and meta-analysts to develop an inaccurate understanding of the efficacy of an intervention. This paper identifies potential reporting bias in a recent high-profile higher education meta-analysis. It then examines a range of potential factors that may make higher education learning and teaching research particularly susceptible to reporting bias. These include the fuzzy boundaries between learning and teaching research, scholarship and teaching; the positive agendas of 'learning and teaching' funding bodies; methodological issues; and para-academic researchers in roles without tenure or academic freedom. Recommendations are provided for how researchers, journals, funders, ethics committees and universities can reduce reporting bias"

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.

I asked for suggestions for a replacement for Netskills TONIC and Sam Oakley (@rscsam) suggested the Internet Detective (developed by the University of Bristol and Manchester Metropolitan University from an original tutorial by Marianne Peereboom. Though launched in 2006 it doesn't appear to have been updated since 2009. TONIC was about the internet generally though, not just research.

I asked for suggestions for a replacement for Netskills TONIC and Sam Oakley (@rscsam) also suggested SAFARI "a guided expedition through the information world." This resource was developed by the Open University (OU) and looks like a comprehensive tutorial on accessing, finding and reviewing information  -- and not just from the Internet. The recommended time to work through the examples is 10-13.5 hours. TONIC was much more of a beginners guide to the internet but Safari looks an excellent resource for students embarking on a research project.

Academic support is a vital component of higher education. Not only does it ensure that students are able to succeed in completing their degree, but it provides them with the confidence to develop their skills and give them a sense of belonging within the institution.

Demonstrations and best practice guides for the new quiz engine in Moodle 2.1 which was developed at the Open University (OU).

Very useful page! See also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdpFrwPGCmc.

""..if we want students to develop critical thinking, judgement and autonomy in assignment production they should be provided with high-level evaluative experiences similar to those of experts. Peer review, students evaluating and commenting on each other's work, is one way to achieve this'"

"CompendiumLD is a software tool for designing learning activities using a flexible visual interface. It is being developed as a tool to support lecturers, teachers and others involved in education to help them articulate their ideas and map out the design or learning sequence. Feedback from users suggests the process of visualising design makes their design ideas more explicit and highlights issues that they may not have noticed otherwise. It also provides a useful means of representing their designs so that they can be shared with others. CompendiumLD provides a set of icons to represent the components of learning activities; these icons may be dragged and dropped, then connected to form a map representing a learning activity. "

"This research project explored good examples of how academic and professional staff are working together in new ways to deliver the best possible student experience.The project addressed the question of how and why these models of good working practices seemed to work well. The research investigated how the change management process was perceived and managed by the key stakeholders, as well as the role of the management, leadership and governance arrangements. Key stakeholders included students as well as staff, and the research considered how the student voice was and is heard in the development of these models. "

"MOOCs Forum is the only international publication dedicated exclusively to shaping the future development, design, and deployment of massive, open, online courses (MOOCs). Multidisciplinary in scope, this authoritative Forum evaluates the components and modules that are critical in creating a global education system and sustainable revenue models for MOOCs, as well as enforcing the integrity behind the creation and use of these systems."

"Direct observation of a medical trainees' performance in clinical settings remains challenging. Direct observation serves to ascertain and document the acquisition of core clinical skills. Barriers to direct observation include the lack of effective implementation strategies and difficulties in delivering transparent standards for judging competence at the bedside. Studies have demonstrated that in the absence of transparent standards, the discriminating ability of evaluators judging the exact same clinical performance is poor. The development of criterion-based assessment tools for use by observers during student-patient encounters offers a potential solution to this problem. "

"The ALT News Blog is created by the membership for the membership. It includes short, topical entries from ALT members and invited pieces from experts in the field help keep us all up to date with developments in learning technology. Comments allow feedback and discussion from ALT members. Writing for the blog gives you the opportunity to disseminate your work, share something you are excited about, explore a common problem, or express an opinion. You can contribute as much or as little as you like."

"The purpose of this team-led course is to help you build and improve your skill in online teaching. Basic strategies for sharing your expertise, facilitating deep discussion, and designing experiential assessments will be covered. Both small and large-scale teaching models will be presented - including MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses. This course will be of particular benefit to adult educators with some classroom teaching experience. Whether you are a corporate training and development facilitator, community educator, or a higher education faculty member, this introduction to teaching online will be an opportunity to explore the possibilities of open education, and network with a diverse, global community of practitioners."