Group items tagged

"Objective - To describe the development and implementation of two courses designed to help university students avoid plagiarism. Design - Quantitative and qualitative analysis. Setting - A university in the United Kingdom. Subjects - An unknown number of university students who took a Plagiarism Awareness Program (PAP) course between 2008 and 2011, and approximately 3,000 university students enrolled in a Plagiarism Avoidance for New Students (PANS) course delivered via a virtual learning environment (VLE) between October and December 2012. The authors attempted to collect rates of continued plagiarism among students who had taken plagiarism education courses. The authors also surveyed 702 university students about plagiarism in 2011. Methods - Data collected from PAP participants informed revision of the authors' approach to plagiarism education and led to development of the second course, PANS. At the end of the course, students completed a test of their knowledge about plagiarism. Authors compared scores from students who took a course supervised by a librarian to the scores from students who took the course independently. Main Results - Students reported that many aspects of citation and attribution are challenging (p. 149). The authors discovered that 93% of students who completed the PANS course facilitated by a librarian in-person passed the final exam with a grade of 70% or higher, while 85% of students who took the same course independently, without a librarian instructor, in an online VLE scored 70% or higher (p. 155). The authors report that referrals of students who plagiarized declined significantly (p-value < 0.001) since the implementation of a plagiarism avoidance curriculum. Conclusion - As reported by the authors, first-year university students require more extensive education about plagiarism avoidance. A university plagiarism avoidance program instructed by librarians reduces the total number of students caught plagiarizing an

"Since 2006, academics at the University of Surrey have been using a 'clicker' based Electronic Voting System (EVS) to engage students and promote interaction in their classrooms. Although the system has served the University well its reliance on proprietary hardware has limited wider adoption. An issue for students was the need to book clickers out from library services and carry additional electronic devices around (not to mention the prospect of incurring a fine if they lost them). For staff, getting the USB 'dongles' (receivers) to pick up the signal from the clickers at the beginning of the lecture was a concern. The time and resources required to manage and distribute clickers and dongles were a further consideration, as were long-term maintenance costs for the institution."

UK universities should push to become world leaders in online higher education, ministers will say tomorrow, despite the failure of the UK e-University four years ago.

In a first for the UK, the University of Glasgow is to offer Intellectual Property - including ground-breaking medical and scientific research - to business and entrepreneurs free of charge.

Facebook photo albums, online clips and video briefings for international students are among examples of best practice highlighted in a new report aimed at helping universities and colleges better inform their first-years about life at university.

Featuring four towering limestone columns and classic Flemish-bond brickwork, the century-old Mackay School of Mines Building at the University of Nevada, Reno, has long served as a bastion of Silver State history. Named after Irish immigrant and "Comstock Lode King" John Mackay, notable touches such as a cast bronze statue designed by Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum just outside the building helped it earn a spot in the National Register of Historic Places. Within its oak doors, however, are the makings of an intriguing experiment that's decidedly more new school. Like a mini museum, a collection of 3D-printed models are displayed within the building's sunlit, three-story atrium -- attracting a mix of students and teachers. Even more popular than the displays of plastic gears and molecule models, however, are the two 3D printers that made them: a professional-grade Stratasys uPrint SE Plus and a hobbyist 3DTouch machine by 3D Systems Corporation.

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.

Webinar Date: February 19, 2013 17:00am - 17:45am While Eastern New Mexico University (ENMU) is the third largest school in the state, it covers more ground than any other university. The entire eastern part of the state, to be exact. In the dean's quest to make education accessible to the region's traditional, non-traditional and dual-enrollment students (high school students taking college courses), she had to think outside the traditional classroom experience.

"No, this isn't about privatisation or student fees or neo-liberal economic models! It's a revelation I had about academic careers"

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.

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.

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.

This paper reports on a study at a research intensive University in the North of the UK exploring academics' perceptions of the potential of Web 2.0 for their teaching and any influences shaping those perceptions. It looks at the perceptions of academics 'on the ground' as well as those leading teaching and learning strategies at the University. The study identifies a range of perceptions among academics. These are influenced predominantly by academics' beliefs of what constitutes good teaching in their contexts. The paper concludes with an exploration of ways in which the range of perceptions evidenced may inform discussion of Web 2.0, arguing that academics' perceptions are crucial to context-based understandings of its potential.

Principles in Patterns (PiP) is a £1 million project partly funded by JISC under its Institutional Approaches to Curriculum Design Programme. The project is led jointly by the Development and Innovation Unit of the Information Services Directorate and the Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement (CAPLE) at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. PiP is developing a new technology-supported approach to curriculum design, approval and review at the University of Strathclyde.

"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."

"The Open University has collected and analysed student data as a means of providing information relating to student support and retention for many years. The changing landscape of higher education has seen the rapid expansion of uses to which student data is put. The Open University, in common with many other higher education institutions, is now looking at its use of learning analytics."

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.

"In 2012, Duke University began using MOOCs to promote innovation in teaching and learning within the campus community, with the goal of importing successful new pedagogical ideas into Duke classrooms. Since that time, 30 instructors from 28 departments have developed 31 MOOCs on Coursera, attracting 2.8 million enrollments and issuing more than 72,000 certificates. Various examples show how these instructors changed their teaching approach in both MOOCs and traditional courses, including by improving classroom materials and activities, crafting better measures of student learning, and experimenting with new pedagogies to increase engagement and learning."

Community Maps. It provides access to maps generated from data sourced from a range of social and technical data providers. Data providers include: Experian, Point Topic, the University of Essex, Connection Services Ltd, UK online centres, University Coll

A major review into the way Welsh universities are run is expected to be ordered by the education minister.