54,660 research outputs found

    Masters' courses in the education of adults in the UK

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    This is a paper from the Academic Papers Online series from ESCalate, written by John Field, Richard Dockrell, Peter Gray in 2005. Universities provide a range of advanced qualifications for professionals who support adult learners. Describing and evaluating this body of work, though, poses something of a challenge. The field of continuing education is a broad one, which has been widened further by current government policies promoting lifelong learning, as well as by increased concerns for quality improvement among providers in further and higher education. Qualifications are accordingly offered under a variety of different titles: many universities now offer taught postgraduate courses in areas such as lifelong learning, continuing education, post-compulsory education and training or adult education. This report examines the background against which these courses developed, and explores a number of curricular and organisational issues associated with them. It includes, as an appendix, a list of courses currently offered in British higher education institution

    What do we know from the literature on public e-services?.

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    Public e-services are a broad and growing research field in which scholars and practitioners from different domains are involved. However, the increasing attention devoted to public e-services only partially captures the extreme variety of aspects and implications of the diffusion of information and communication technologies at all levels of public administrations. The paper aims to develop a meta-analysis of the literature on the delivery, diffusion, adoption and impact of public e-services and examines current research trends in terms of differences in methodologies, approaches and key indicators across five service platforms: eGovernment, eEducation, eHealth, Infomobility and eProcurement. We examined 751 articles appeared in 2000-2010 in the top international academic journals listed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), as classified in the following fields: Communication, Economics, Education, Environmental Studies, Geography, Health Policy & Services, Information Science & Library Science, Law, Management, Planning & Development, Public Administration, Transportation and Urban Studies. We highlight a significant heterogeneity in scientific production across service domains, countries covered by empirical analyses, indicators used, and affiliation of authors. We also show an increasing diffusion of quantitative methods applied to different research fields which still appears to be constrained by data limitations. The overall picture emerging from the analysis is one characterized by largely unexplored service domains as well as scarcely analyzed issues both across and within individual service platforms (e.g. front vs. back office issues). Thus many research opportunities seem to emerge and need to be exploited from different disciplinary perspectives in this field of analysis.eGovernment, eEducation, eHealth, Infomobility, eProcurement, Bibliometrics, Metaanalysis, Innovation in services, Public e-services

    Contextual Sensitivity in Grounded Theory: The Role of Pilot Studies

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    Grounded Theory is an established methodological approach for context specific inductive theory building. The grounded nature of the methodology refers to these specific contexts from which emergent propositions are drawn. Thus, any grounded theory study requires not only theoretical sensitivity, but also a good insight on how to design the research in the human activity systems to be studied. The lack of this insight may result in inefficient theoretical sampling or even erroneous purposeful sampling. These problems would not necessarily be critical, as it could be argued that through the elliptical process that characterizes grounded theory, remedial loops would always bring the researcher to the core of the theory. However, these elliptical remedial processes can take very long periods of time and result in catastrophic delays in research projects. As a strategy, this paper discusses, contrasts and compares the use of pilot studies in four different grounded theory projects. Each pilot brought different insights about the context, resulting in changes of focus, guidance to improve data collection instruments and informing theoretical sampling. Additionally, as all four projects were undertaken by researchers with little experience of inductive approaches in general and grounded theory in particular, the pilot studies also served the purpose of training in interviewing, relating to interviewees, memoing, constant comparison and coding. This last outcome of the pilot study was actually not planned initially, but revealed itself to be a crucial success factor in the running of the projects. The paper concludes with a theoretical proposition for the concept of contextual sensitivity and for the inclusion of the pilot study in grounded theory research designs

    Personal data broker instead of blockchain for students’ data privacy assurance

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    Data logs about learning activities are being recorded at a growing pace due to the adoption and evolution of educational technologies (Edtech). Data analytics has entered the field of education under the name of learning analytics. Data analytics can provide insights that can be used to enhance learning activities for educational stakeholders, as well as helping online learning applications providers to enhance their services. However, despite the goodwill in the use of Edtech, some service providers use it as a means to collect private data about the students for their own interests and benefits. This is showcased in recent cases seen in media of bad use of students’ personal information. This growth in cases is due to the recent tightening in data privacy regulations, especially in the EU. The students or their parents should be the owners of the information about them and their learning activities online. Thus they should have the right tools to control how their information is accessed and for what purposes. Currently, there is no technological solution to prevent leaks or the misuse of data about the students or their activity. It seems appropriate to try to solve it from an automation technology perspective. In this paper, we consider the use of Blockchain technologies as a possible basis for a solution to this problem. Our analysis indicates that the Blockchain is not a suitable solution. Finally, we propose a cloud-based solution with a central personal point of management that we have called Personal Data Broker.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

    Proceedings of the Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference (SPARC) 2011

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    These proceedings bring together a selection of papers from the 2011 Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference(SPARC). It includes papers from PhD students in the arts and social sciences, business, computing, science and engineering, education, environment, built environment and health sciences. Contributions from Salford researchers are published here alongside papers from students at the Universities of Anglia Ruskin, Birmingham City, Chester,De Montfort, Exeter, Leeds, Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores and Manchester

    Benefits and challenges of cloud computing adoption and usage in higher education

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    The aim of this article was to provide evidence pertaining to cloud computing (CC) adoption in education, namely higher education institutions (HEIs) or Universities. A systematic literature review (SLR) of empirical studies exploring the current CC adoption levels in HEIs and the benefits and challenges for using CC in HEIs was performed. A total of 20 papers were included in the SLR. It was discovered that a number of universities have a keen interest in using CC in their institution, and the evidence indicates a high level of successful CC adoption in the HEIs reviewed in the SLR. In conclusion, the SLR identified a clear literature gap in this research area: there exists limited empirical studies focusing on CC utilisation in HEIs

    ALT-C 2010 - Conference Introduction and Abstracts

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