Straddling the intersection

Music technology straddles the intersection between art and science and presents those who choose to work within its sphere with many practical challenges as well as creative possibilities. The paper focuses on four main areas: secondary education, higher education, practice and research and finally collaboration. The paper emphasises the importance of collaboration in tackling the challenges of interdisciplinarity and in influencing future technological developments

Attitudes in Physics Education: An Alternative Approach to Teaching Physics to Non-Science College Students

In this article, we present an alternative way of teaching conceptual physics for non-science majors by depicting the role of physics in today\u27s technology. The goal of this approach is to increase in the minds of non-science students the acceptance of physics as a useful component in general education, and as a major tool in comprehending the present-day technological world experienced by students outside the classroom

Intuitive expertise in ICT graduate supervision

Intuitive expertise in the application of advanced interdisciplinary facilitation is the subject of this personal reflection on the graduate supervisory style of Professor David Squires in computers in education. This single‐case reflective study examines the characteristics of effective supervision observed during masters and doctoral supervision at King's College in the years 1990–9. Interdisciplinarity in ICT graduate studies particularly requires a fluency of supervisory expertise in enabling supervisees to combine multiple complex perspectives from a number of fields of knowledge. Intuitive combinatory aspects of supervision are highlighted in this reflection on the role carried out by an academic expert in facilitating student success. This is examined from a perspective incorporating affective as well as intellectual elements, informed by characteristics identified in professional sports and performing arts coaching/mentoring. Key characteristics comprising a model of intuitive expertise in ICT graduate supervision were outlined. The resultant portrait aims to complement existing literature on graduate supervision, with reference to the field of ICTI computers in education relating to student hypermedia composition

On the Provision of a Comprehensive Computer Graphics Education in the Context of Computer Games

Position paper for the ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Computer Graphics Education Workshop 200

The global hydrology education resource

This article is a selective overview of a range of contemporary teaching resources currently available globally for university hydrology educators, with an emphasis on web-based resources. Major governmental and scientific organizations relevant to the promotion of hydrology teaching are briefly introduced. Selected online teaching materials are then overviewed, i.e. PowerPoint presentations, course materials, and multimedia. A range of websites offering free basic hydrology modelling software are mentioned, together with some data file sources which could be used for teaching. Websites offering a considerable range of general hydrology links are also noted, as are websites providing international and national data sets which might be incorporated into teaching exercises. Finally, some discussion is given on reference material for different modes of hydrology teaching, including laboratory and field exercises

Responsible research and innovation in science education: insights from evaluating the impact of using digital media and arts-based methods on RRI values

The European Commission policy approach of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is gaining momentum in European research planning and development as a strategy to align scientific and technological progress with socially desirable and acceptable ends. One of the RRI agendas is science education, aiming to foster future generations' acquisition of skills and values needed to engage in society responsibly. To this end, it is argued that RRI-based science education can benefit from more interdisciplinary methods such as those based on arts and digital technologies. However, the evidence existing on the impact of science education activities using digital media and arts-based methods on RRI values remains underexplored. This article comparatively reviews previous evidence on the evaluation of these activities, from primary to higher education, to examine whether and how RRI-related learning outcomes are evaluated and how these activities impact on students' learning. Forty academic publications were selected and its content analysed according to five RRI values: creative and critical thinking, engagement, inclusiveness, gender equality and integration of ethical issues. When evaluating the impact of digital and arts-based methods in science education activities, creative and critical thinking, engagement and partly inclusiveness are the RRI values mainly addressed. In contrast, gender equality and ethics integration are neglected. Digital-based methods seem to be more focused on students' questioning and inquiry skills, whereas those using arts often examine imagination, curiosity and autonomy. Differences in the evaluation focus between studies on digital media and those on arts partly explain differences in their impact on RRI values, but also result in non-documented outcomes and undermine their potential. Further developments in interdisciplinary approaches to science education following the RRI policy agenda should reinforce the design of the activities as well as procedural aspects of the evaluation research

"Mr. Valery": report on two experiences of mixed fields of research

Ponencia presentada a Session 1: Educación y arquitectura: fundamentos teóricos / Education and architecture: theoretical foundationsIn the last thirty years, there was a revolution in the way we work and teach, with the introduction and development of different ways of creating and manipulating digital images. Consequently, architects and students give representation more and more importance every passing year. This growing prominence of representation can be dangerous because it can lead us to think that a good project is the one that makes a good rendering. But the perfection of the render is many times hiding the deficient understanding of the problem presented by the client, the site and/or the program. To prevent this from happening, it is important that Studio classes are focused on the ideas behind the images. However, this evolution has a positive side too; induced by the digital paradigm, students can learn how to use another kind of architectural means of research in the process of design. They seem to easily acquire the skills to create images that explain the concepts, the ideas, rather than the actual form of the building that they are representing. So, architecture students can be taught to create and manipulate images that express ideas, as tools for interdisciplinary research that can be used outside the Studio, in other Curricular Units. In the work done for a Theory exercise, students can also develop methods of analytical research as a support for the communication of ideas. This paper will show two examples of the work done by Master students in classes of Studio and Theory of Architecture, trying to explain the specific objectives of each one and to summarize the results. The first one is from 2008-09 (Curricular Unit of Studio III, for second year students); it’s a practical exercise that aimed to simulate the relation between architect and client: on an existing site (located near the School), the students had to propose a house for the fictional character “Mr. Valery”, from the book with the same name by Gonçalo Tavares. In this book, Mr. Valery (a strange character, inspired in the philosopher Paul Valery) explains his ideas of the ideal holiday house. Confronted with this peculiar client, the students should try to design a holiday house responding to his demands, which had to be suitable to the site and also function like an (almost) normal house. The idea was to confront the student with the idiosyncrasies of a difficult client, but also to make them understand that it is possible to relate the architectural practice with the fields of literature and philosophy. The results showed unusual relations between site, form and function and led to many different approaches to a very common program. The second example is related to the first: in the next year, the same group of students attended Theory III (in the third year of the same course) and were asked to do a group exercise, in which two colleagues had to produce a critical analysis of a previous Studio work that they both shared, comparing their ideas on a paper and on a multimedia presentation. Many of them chose the “Mr. Valery” exercise, and their results were the most interesting: maybe because it was a small program, which was simple to compare, but also because it allowed a very clear discourse on the reasons for the project options, which sometimes were quite the opposite, in the two different proposals