Teacher competence development – a European perspective

This chapter provides an European perspectives on teacher competence development

Community-based mentoring and innovating through Web 2.0

The rise of social software, often termed Web 2.0, has resulted in heightened awareness of the opportunities for creative and innovative approaches to learning that are afforded by network technologies. Social software platforms and social networking technologies have become part of the learning landscape both for those who learn formally within institutions, and for those who learn informally via emergent web-based learning communities. As collaborative online learning becomes a reality, new skills in communication and collaboration are required in order to use new technologies effectively, develop real digital literacy and other 21st century skills

Designing Open Educational Resources through Knowledge Maps to enhance Meaningful learning

This paper demonstrates some pedagogical strategies for developing Open Educational Resources (OERs) using the knowledge mapping tool Compendium. It also describes applications of Knowledge Maps to facilitate meaningful learning by focusing on specific OER examples. The study centres on the OpenLearn project, a large scale online environment that makes a selection of higher education learning resources freely available via the internet. OpenLearn, which is supportedby William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, was launched in October 2006 and in the two year period of its existence hasreleased over 8,100 learning hours of the OU's distance learning resources for free access and modification by learnersand educators under the Creative Commons license. OpenLearn also offers three knowledge media tools: Compendium(knowledge mapping software), MSG (instant messaging application with geolocation maps) and FM (web-based videoconferencing application). Compendium is a software tool for visual thinking, used to connect ideas, concepts, arguments, websites and documents. There are numerous examples of OERs that have been developed and delivered by institutions across the world, for example, MIT, Rice, Utah State, Core, Paris Tech, JOCW. They present a wide variety of learning materials in terms of styles as well as differing subject content. Many such offerings are based upon original lecture notes, hand-outs and other related papers used in face-to-face teaching. Openlearn OERs, however, are reconstructed from original self study distance learning materials developed at the Open University and from a vast academic catalogue of materials. Samples of these “units” comprise a variety of formats: text, images, audio and video. In this study, our findings illustratethe benefits of sharing some OER content through knowledge maps, the possibility of condensing high volumes of information,accessing resources in a more attractive way, visualising connections between diverse learning materials, connecting new ideas to familiar references, organising thinking and gaining new insights into subject specific content

Counselling immigrant adults at an educational institution

The principle of promoting free mobility of citizens has been written into European educational policies. Additionally, the philosophy of educational equality has been clearly included into the educational regulation of most European countries. Furthermore, at the beginning of the twenty-first century the ideas of lifelong learning have been defined to be the goals of improving practice within the educational systems. This means that teachers all over Europe are increasingly facing students with various ethnic backgrounds of all ages and having varied educational backgrounds, life situations and work-experiences and accordingly, being in the need of diverse educational support within educational settings. The growth in demands for equal educational rights for all inevitably strengthens the demands for the development of each teacher’s and counsellor's the skills of the teaching and counselling staff for meeting the individual needs of learners emerging from diverse reasons and counselling them accordingly. However, with this new concentration on the needs of diverse students emerging on issues like immigration, age, race, gender, special educational needs or the like, there seems to be some uncertainty with regards to what the development of these skills might mean for the practices of educational settings, their teachers and other staff and, accordingly, for teacher education training professionals for educational settings. In this article we will provide the reader with a couple of examples of how these challenges have been met within educational settings. Besides offering some examples of good practice of working with immigrant adults we also focus on the challenge of training professionals and in particular to of training teachers working with immigrant adults in educational provisions institutions. With In putting the focus on teachers we would like to underline the importance of every teacher to have having the counselling attitude and skills in his/her everyday practice with immigrant adult learners besides the work done by actual counselling professionals. However, we start our article with by addressing briefly the subject of to adult learners and some grounds of working with immigrant adult learners in educational settings. This starting point provides the conceptual framework for the practical examples to be presented. The first two of these examples are dealing deal with counselling immigrant adult students. They are followed with by examples of some learning tools used in training teachers to work with multicultural adult students

The learning portfolio in higher education: an integrative review

The learning portfolio is often lauded as a powerful pedagogical tool, and consequently, is rapidly becoming a central feature of contemporary education. This paper synthesizes and critically reviews the literature pertaining to its use in higher education contexts specifically. Three key themes are identified and discussed. First, although the theory underlying the use of learning portfolios is promising, robust empirical evidence supporting their effectiveness remains sparse. Second, the tool is rooted in a complex pedagogy, and its potential can only be realized if the processes underlying this pedagogy are properly understood by advocates and executed by users. Third, there is a recurring tension between the developmental (process) and evaluative (product) conceptualizations of the learning portfolio. On the basis of these findings, some recommendations for future research and practice in this area are identified

Trans-Pacific doctoral success – A collaborative cohort model

The San Jose Gateway PhD program is a doctoral partnership between the School of Information at San Jose State University (SJSU) in the USA, and the Information Systems School at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia. Because of Californian legislation, SJSU has not been able to offer PhD degrees. The Gateway Program therefore provides a research pathway for SJSU’s coursework students. It also helps the School to grow the research capacity of academic staff. For QUT, the Program provides the opportunity to advance research agendas and to build strong international connections and partnerships. The Program began in 2008. It is a distance-delivered cohort-based scheme with new students commencing in August of each year. All students are enrolled as part-time students in QUT’s Doctor of Philosophy. Each student is assigned supervisors from both universities. In addition to individual and group supervisory meetings, all students and supervisors meet in a virtual meeting space once a month. The online monthly meetings are supplemented by two residential events each year: (i) a one week face to face residential in August at San Jose State University, and (ii) an online residential in March. This paper will critically reflect upon this unique Program, which has led to high quality research outcomes, rapid completions, and noteworthy graduate employments. Critical consideration of the challenges and future proofing of the approach will also be explored

Using Hybrid Effectively in Christian Higher Education

Hybrid is just one of a number of terms used for the convergence of face-to-face and online learning, At the University of Central Florida (UCF) they are called mixed mode courses, In the corporate world the most common language used for hybrid is blended learning, Blended learning, says Bob Mosher, is about using multiple learning modalities, which include, but are not limited to, the Web.7 The blended learning term is also being used more frequently within academic circles,8 Because of the inconsistency in how blended learning is employed, though, and because our goal is not to describe learning in general but to focus on individual courses, this article will use the term hybrid and will apply it more narrowly to mean a course in which face-to-face and online learning are integrated in such a way that the seat time of the course is reduced

National research on the postgraduate student experience: Case presentation on the first year postgraduate student experience (volume 1 of 3)

Also titled: First year postgraduate student experience "This is volume one of three volumes of case studies to enhance the postgraduate student experience. The theme of this case study is: First year postgraduate student experience The other two case studies in this series are: Volume 2 - Postgraduate student diversity Volume 3 - Career development and employability This case presentation on the first year postgraduate student experience is based on experiences derived from student engagement breakfasts, interviews, and focus groups with 366 people across the stakeholder groups of postgraduate students, educators, and university executives from 26 institutions." - from p.

Understanding how people choose to pursue taught postgraduate study

HEFC