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To inform the work of the Online Learning Task Force, HEFCE commissioned the National Union of Students to undertake research into the demand, perceptions and training needs of students in both further and higher education. The report's findings and recom

Nine guides written on technology enhanced learning initially by the authors listed below. Nearly all are current or recent members of the ALT Research Committee.

Research is like a voyage-it takes planning, a curious mind, an adventurous spirit, an awareness of your final destination, and perseverance, even when the road ahead looks rocky. At times it can be exhilarating-when you discover something new. At times i

Groundbreaking work to try to enable computers to describe visual content on web pages begun this month with the formation of a new UK academic research network.

New research from the Kaohslung Medical University Hospital in Taiwan shows a correlation in young teens between internet addiction and other psychological disorders. According to CNN and the research report, "ADHD and hostility were linked to Internet ad

Brings together academics, scientists, sociologists, entrepreneurs and decision makers who will create the first multidisciplinary research body to examine the Web and offer the practical solutions needed to help guide its future use and design.

Today Google, the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium, and academic researchers are taking the wraps off of Measurement Lab (M-Lab), an open platform that researchers can use to deploy Internet measurement tools.

Useful podcast introduction to a research project on student evaluation being carried out by Betsy Barre of the Rice Centre for Teaching Excellence

"MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses, have become all the rage, with numerous institutions joining forces with Coursera, edX, FutureLearn, and other providers. The Babson Survey Research Group recently found that although 55 percent of institutions said they were undecided about their plans for offering MOOCs, 9.4 percent said they were in the planning stages of offering one, and 2.6 percent have already taken the plunge;  the same survey showed the number of students taking at least one course online has reached an all-time high of 32 percent."

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.

As part of our greening scientific computing and videoconferencing projects, we are producing short (2pp) case studies on best practice in universities, colleges and research organisations (see below for list, and page bottom for downloads). The 2008-09 SusteIT project also produced over 20 case studies of greenIT in universities and colleges - see below for a master list and click here for actual cases.

"This website provides an introduction to digital collections designed for education. They are mainly aimed at university students, researchers and librarians but many of the online archives are open to anyone. The collections cover areas such as history, social sciences, or science and engineering and include, for example, journals, newspapers and images."

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.

Lots of useful stuff from the Association for Learning Technology research

"Through the writings and research of pre-eminent online learning expert, Dr. Tony Bates (Instalment 1 of an 8 part series)"

"The present research assessed the potential effects of expecting to teach on learning. In two experiments, participants studied passages either in preparation for a later test or in preparation for teaching the passage to another student who would then be tested. In reality, all participants were tested, and no one actually engaged in teaching. Participants expecting to teach produced more complete and better organized free recall of the passage (Experiment 1) and, in general, correctly answered more questions about the passage than did participants expecting a test (Experiment 1), particularly questions covering main points (Experiment 2), consistent with their having engaged in more effective learning strategies. Instilling an expectation to teach thus seems to be a simple, inexpensive intervention with the potential to increase learning efficiency at home and in the classroom"

"In Higher Education Focus Groups and Nominal Group Technique are two well-established methods for obtaining student feedback about their learning experience. These methods are regularly used for the enhancement and quality assurance. Based on small-scale research of educational developers' practice in curriculum development, this study presents the use of a combined approach that potentially offers more benefits than the use of Focus Groups alone. It proposes a combined method, 'Nominal Focus Group', which includes the benefits of in-depth discussion of a Focus Group and the prioritising of results of Nominal Group Technique. These benefits include questions for further exploration, initial data analysis and increased ownership of the process by students. In practice, the method gave rise to rich data and actionable outcomes that were used to make informed curriculum enhancements for the programme teams."

This review focuses on the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education. It provides a synthesis of the research literature in the field and a series of illustrative examples of how these tools are being used in learning and teaching.

Announcement - Research in Learning Technology - Open Access from 2012 From January 2012 our journal will be fully Open Access, produced in partnership with the Swedish publisher Co-Action Publishing. We are about to complete negotiations on the new publi