The use of open education resources in higher education programmes of academic practice

Digital technologies provide a wide range of tools which research shows can enhance and support teaching and learning. However, this knowledge is not uniformly available across disciplines. This paper reports on a project which aims to provide materials that are cross-disciplinary, applied in an online context and which are used to support the development of understanding of the power of collaboration and the re-purposing of open educational resources (OERs)

A learning design toolkit to create pedagogically effective learning activities

Despite the plethora of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools and resources available, practitioners are still not making effective use of e-learning to enrich the student experience. This article describes a learning design toolkit which guides practitioners through the process of creating pedagogically informed learning activities which make effective use of appropriate tools and resources. This work is part of a digital libraries project in which teaching staff at two universities in the UK and two in the USA are collaborating to share e-learning resources in the subject domains of Physical, Environmental and Human Geography. Finding, or creating, suitable e-learning resources and embedding them in well designed learning activities can be both challenging and time consuming. Sharing and adapting effective designs and solutions is both a stimulant and a time saver. This article describes the background to the specification of a learning activities design toolkit to support teachers as they create or adapt e-learning activities. This uses a model of pedagogical approaches as a basis for developing effective learning design plans and illustrates its use. The authors share their definition of a learning activity and taxonomies for the constituent elements. Real examples are discussed to illustrate their approach

An Integrality Model for Teaching

For Christian educators working in secular institutions, or for those who are required to teach curricula based on secularist philosophy, it can be confusing as to how to faithfully integrate faith and learning. This essay suggests an appropriate and biblically-grounded way to regard this problem and effectively use knowledge from secular sources. This process starts with a reconsideration of the definitions for integration, faith, and knowledge. It also entails the purposing of all truth, which belongs to God, within the classroom

City street experiments and system change:Identifying barriers and enablers to the transformative process

City street experiments continue to be employed as a tool to improve urban mobility and liveability. Despite growing popularity, understanding of this transformative process, and more specifically, the barriers and enablers that exist for street experiments aiming to cause system change, remains an important knowledge gap. By way of a systematic search and review of 17 empirical studies, barriers and enablers to the transformative process are identified. Enablers include embedding experiments in long-term policies including stakeholders, active promotion and institutional support. Barriers include those within the experiment's control (a lack of required resources, unconducive design, lack of clear vision and low frequency) as well as those out of the experiment's control (opposition from stakeholders and institutional regulations and processes). The relationships between these enablers and barriers are recounted, revealing concrete recommendations for experiment organizers as well as two dilemmas for consideration.</p

Communicating, learning and the in-between: a study of the impact of open-access, informal online learning environments

1. The broad aim of this project has been to contribute understandings of the uses of computer-mediated communication in 'informal' (not leading to certification) yet institutionally-hosted online spaces. The project consisted of an investigation into engagement with communication and discussion tools provided by OpenLearn, the Open University's Open Content Initiative (http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn). 2. The research focused on a selection of examples of asynchronous and synchronous communication situations within OpenLearn, including a selection of forums from the LearningSpace (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk) and various instances of synchronous communication using FM (FlashMeeting) that took place within the context of two pilot studies organised by the researcher in coordination with discipline-based colleagues. 3. Whilst the research was based on an action research orientation, the approach was predominantly exploratory and ethnographic methods (observation and participant observation) were used, complemented with semi-structured interviews, as appropriate. Thematic analysis was used within a grounded theory approach. 4. The study suggests 5 themes as core elements of engagement in CMC within an OER context: 'validation�; 'privacy�; 'trust�; 'purposefulness�; 'leadership'. The themes are mutually-dependent and each warrants more detailed investigation, and relevant topics are discussed. 5. In short, the study provides a contribution to enquiries on the impact of OERs in that it brings to light, from within a sample of learning situations across the 'informal�/�formal' space, a number of boundary issues concerning curriculum and, in particular, pedagogy. It suggests that a major aspect of the impact of OERs is that their availability is not only creating new challenges but also uncovering previously veiled tensions and questions regarding identity and boundaries. 6. A number of outputs have been generated, including two new projects that capitalise on understandings facilitated during the pilots carried out within the remit of this study

De/construction sites: Romans and the digital playground

The Roman world as attested to archaeologically and as interacted with today has its expression in a great many computational and other media. The place of visualisation within this has been paramount. This paper argues that the process of digitally constructing the Roman world and the exploration of the resultant models are useful methods for interpretation and influential factors in the creation of a popular Roman aesthetic. Furthermore, it suggests ways in which novel computational techniques enable the systematic deconstruction of such models, in turn re-purposing the many extant representations of Roman architecture and material culture

Invest to Save: Report and Recommendations of the NSF-DELOS Working Group on Digital Archiving and Preservation

Digital archiving and preservation are important areas for research and development, but there is no agreed upon set of priorities or coherent plan for research in this area. Research projects in this area tend to be small and driven by particular institutional problems or concerns. As a consequence, proposed solutions from experimental projects and prototypes tend not to scale to millions of digital objects, nor do the results from disparate projects readily build on each other. It is also unclear whether it is worthwhile to seek general solutions or whether different strategies are needed for different types of digital objects and collections. The lack of coordination in both research and development means that there are some areas where researchers are reinventing the wheel while other areas are neglected. Digital archiving and preservation is an area that will benefit from an exercise in analysis, priority setting, and planning for future research. The WG aims to survey current research activities, identify gaps, and develop a white paper proposing future research directions in the area of digital preservation. Some of the potential areas for research include repository architectures and inter-operability among digital archives; automated tools for capture, ingest, and normalization of digital objects; and harmonization of preservation formats and metadata. There can also be opportunities for development of commercial products in the areas of mass storage systems, repositories and repository management systems, and data management software and tools.

Qualitative archives and biographical research methods. An introduction to the FQS special issue

The use of archival materials as a point of departure when designing and launching social research takes for granted that a culture of archiving (for sharing and re-use) has rooted time ago in our complex societies. This mentality and research practice first flourished and is fairly well installed in the case of statistics, surveys and certain other primary or secondary documents. On the contrary, it is less frequent and certainly not a routine activity for qualitative data. Only some of the raw and elaborated materials gathered during qualitative research become part of an archive for further reanalysis. These can include the backstage practices and experiences of a project, raw materials such as field notes, audio and visual recordings, and other documents produced during the research process. This issue presents a colorful range of articles that deal with experiences, challenges and opportunities of archiving and re-using qualitative material, particularly under the umbrella of biographical and narrative research. It aims to raise awareness of the importance of archiving in qualitative social research and highlights some of the new methodological reflections and approaches that have been and that are being developed within the European landscape. We hope that the articles in this issue will help promote further communication and exchange among qualitative archival practitioners from different countries and with different sensitivities and conceptual horizons. © 2011 FQS

Design strategies for the exploration of product meaning in meaning-driven innovation

Design has been framed as a driver of innovation through product meaning, but it falls short when it comes to dedicated knowledge and methods directly applicable into design practices. Structured by Design Research Methodology (DRM) (Blessing and Chakrabarti 2009), this thesis combines exploratory research with practice-based design research. This thesis presents a literature review covering design studies, psychology, cognitive semantics, linguistics, marketing, innovation management and new product development. Together combined these have been used to develop a new framework of ‘product meaning’ consisting of 4 definitions: meaning as conceptualisation, as importance, as intention, and as representation. The framework has been used to demonstrate that different types of meaning are utilised throughout different stages of product development. Meaning as conceptualisation is identified as fundamental, and the most suitable, for design practice engaged in product meaning innovation. Three strategies of innovation of product meaning through product re-purposing are identified. Furthermore, from the field of cognitive science, theories and methods such as concept categorisation, thematic roles and conceptual blending are used as analysis tools for the selected 6 examples of innovative new meaning products. The structure of meaning innovations has been identified to consist of seven distinctive elements. Ten common characteristics of new meaning innovations are identified and, additionally, an exploratory method of current meanings of products is presented. Moreover, through engagement in practice-based design research a new meaning-driven design process has been developed. The findings from this research have been combined into a new design platform for an approach to meaning innovation and evaluated with experienced designers.</div