Swansea Academy of Learning and Teaching

Tape measures. Rulers. Graphs. The gas gauge in your car, and the icon on your favorite digital device showing battery power. The number line and its cousins -- notations that map numbers onto space and often represent magnitude -- are everywhere. Most adults in industrialized societies are so fluent at using the concept, we hardly think about it. We don't stop to wonder: Is it "natural"? Is it cultural?

The purpose of this study was to explore group forming strategies by examining participation behaviours during whole class discussions associated with active participation in a following small group activity. Written communication data, posted in class discussion forums (843 messages/70,432 words) and small group forums (732 messages/59,394 words), were analyzed quantitatively. The result indicated that individuals' participation quantity in small groups was significantly correlated with their own participation behaviour in whole class discussions. Also, a significant portion of small group participation was explained by their group members' participation (i.e., group member effect). Based on the results, we suggest instructors use the information of participation behaviours during the initial period of whole class activities for allocating students into small groups heterogeneously.

"If you can't convince them, confuse them." Simply put, this is the advice that J. Scott Armstrong, a marketing professor at the Wharton School, coolly gives his fellow academics these days. It is based on his studies confirming what he calls the Dr. Fox ypothesis: "An unintelligible communication from a legitimate source in the recipient's area of expertise will increase the recipient's rating of the author's competence."

In Print or On Screen? Investigating the Reading Habits of Undergraduate Students Using Photo-Diaries and Photo-Interviews

Publishing recordings of lectures and other recorded audio and video teaching materials is a growing practice supported by a loose family of technologies, often awkwardly labeled 'lecture capture'. At this seminar Dr Jon Anderson of the School of City and Regional Planning, Steven Vaughan of Cardiff Law School, and Dr Steve Rutherford of the School of Biosciences presented three contrasting perspectives on how this practice can be used to supplement, or even redefine, teaching practice. The session was well attended, with around 50 members of staff hearing from the speakers and engaging in question and answers and discussion.

Australian open-source services provider NetSpot has been bought up by online learning firm Blackboard, along with US-based Moodlerooms.

Bundlenut is a simple service for organizing a set of links and sharing them with others. To use the service just visit Bundlenut and start entering the links that you want to include in your bundle. You can include comments about each of the links. When you have added all of links that you want to include in your bundle, Bundlenut will assign a unique url to your bundle. Anyone with access to that url will be able to see all of your links and comments about those links.

This guide, produced by the HEA, constitutes a revised and updated version of the Pedagogy for Employability publication first published in 2006. This original publication was produced under the auspices of the Higher Education Academy and the Enhancing Student Employability Co-ordination Team (ESECT), and formed part of the Learning and Employability Series, a set of publications offering guidance and information to staff in higher education institutions involved in the enhancement of student employability.

How to Protect Your Data in the Event of a Webapp Shutdown (and Prevent the Problem in the Future)

Learning Analytics, where do you stand? For? Against? Not bovvered? Don't understand the question?

For those of you that were unable to make it to our inaugural UK User Conference, the videos below should help you play catch up. From Professor Mazur's excellent keynote on Peer Instruction to Paul Burt's practical tips for the deployment of ResponseWare, you'll end up furnished with masses of knowledge.

Guardian live chat panelists from universities including Cornell, Bath, MIT and Glasgow Caledonia suggest how to successfully extend the classroom into virtual environments

Twitter is a big part of education and technology. But what happens when it needs to be included in an academic paper? Until now, you had to do your best to guess the proper citation for tweets in academic papers. That all just changed.

JISC elevator is a new way to find and fund innovative ways to use technology to improve universities and colleges. Anyone employed in UK higher or further education can submit an idea. If your idea proves popular then JISC will consider it for funding. The elevator is for small, practical projects with up to £10,000 available for successful ideas.