3,332 research outputs found

    Supporting regional growth from the higher education community: the Energy Coast Campus Programme in West Cumbria

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    West Cumbria is a predominantly rural, but post-industrial region undergoing a transition from one that has been dominated by heavy industry over a 200 year period. The regional economy has latterly been dominated by one of the world’s largest nuclear technology hubs, which continues to influence the structure of the economy. The region has aspirations to evolve a high technology manufacturing base, with a continued strong role for nuclear, but with a more diversified economy, including an expanded focus on low carbon and renewable energy generation. The region has aspirations to evolve a high technology manufacturing base, with a continued strong role for nuclear, but with a more diversified economy. As part of this strategy, a large investment has been made to build a higher education community in this largely rural area, to support its strategic objectives to promote innovation through applied research, research demonstration, enterprise, business support, skills and training and other transformational actions. Three case studies are described in detail: the Cumbrian Centre for Health Technologies (CaCHeT), the Sustainable Energy Technology Group and the Knowledge Action Network (KAN). The lessons learned are evaluated and presented, with details of future plans

    Building a smarter future towards a sustainable Scottish solution for the future of higher education: consultation report

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    "The higher education green paper: Building a Smarter Future, was launched in the Scottish Parliament on 16 December 2010 following a lengthy period of discussion with stakeholders in the sector. The deadline for the consultation responses was Friday 25 February 2011. In total there have been 115 consultation responses, these comprised of 28 individuals and 87 group responses. In addition to the option to formally contribute to the consultation, opportunities were also offered for those with an interest to attend one of five public events. Over 250 people from 80 organisations attended these events. We also had over 1,500 unique visits to the green paper pages on the Engage for Education website and around 300 people participated in our online survey. This report pulls together the main themes from all of this activity." - Page 4

    Sri Lanka Social Enterprise Needs Assessment and Advisory

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    Authored in collaboration with Oxfam, this research maps social enterprises within the agriculture sector, identifies the key challenges they face, and makes recommendations for donors and development agencies looking to support the space in Sri Lanka. Findings and recommendations developed based on secondary research and field survey of social enterprises in Sri Lanka

    E-Learning in the workplace: an annotated bibliography

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    Provides an overview of the literature relating to e-learning in workplaces in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Summary The key findings of this annotated bibliography are: E-learning can provide flexible learning options for employees and allow them to upskill more rapidly. E-learning in the workplace can decrease the costs of upskilling a workforce through reducing travel and employee time away from work. E-learning is particularly useful for a geographically-dispersed workforce because it can deliver a consistent training experience. The uptake of e-learning in the workplace is increasing. Many New Zealand firms have the systems and infrastructure to support e-learning, but often lack the capability to implement it successfully. To overcome design inadequacies in e-learning courses, new skills and personnel are required in the teams charged with developing and delivering it. Firms need to have strategies and plans in place to support their e-learning which integrate or align with their overall plans and strategies. Support by managers for  e-learning in the workplace (including allocating sufficient time for it) is critical to success. Large organisations are more likely to adopt e-learning than small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) because they have better infrastructure and systems and can more readily achieve economies of scale and return on investment. SMEs can form collaborative networks to share knowledge, resources, and expertise to overcome the cost and relevance barriers they face when implementing e-learning. E-learning is most often used in workplaces to supplement traditional delivery (blended learning). Blended learning can contribute to significant gains in learner achievement. The focus in workplace e-learning has moved from ‘courses’ to learning content that is available to employees as and when needed. E-learning is more effective when people can access it in small ‘chunks’, reflect on it, and then apply it immediately. E-learning supports informal learning in the workplace because it makes it easier to codify information and knowledge and make this available to the organisation and its external stakeholders. The most common technologies and systems used to support workplace e-learning are learning management systems, video, mobile devices, social networking tools, wikis, weblogs, simulations/virtual reality, CD-ROMs, and DVDs. Some of the main barriers to implementing e-learning in the workplace are: high up-front costs that include new and/or upgraded systems, training the trainers, and developing interactive and/or personalised content employee resistance to e-learning organisations not having an appropriate learning culture in place lack of management support adopting technologies and systems that are difficult to use and access, are unreliable, and/or lack technical support employees and trainers lacking the skills and capabilities to teach and learn in e-learning environments irrelevance to real-time work tasks and not integrated with business processes

    E-learning in a rural context : alternative media and contemporary applications

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    This report has been written as part of the E-ruralnet –project that addresses e-learning as a means for enhancing lifelong learning opportunities in rural areas, with emphasis on SMEs, micro-enterprises, self-employed and persons seeking employment. E-ruralnet is a European network project part-funded by the European Commission in the context of the Lifelong Learning Programme, Transversal projects-ICT. This report aims to address two issues identified as requiring attention in the previous Observatory study: firstly, access to e-learning for rural areas that have not adequate ICT infrastructure; and secondly new learning approaches introduced through new interactive ICT tools such as web 2.0., wikis, podcasts etc. The possibility of using alternative technology in addition to computers is examined (mobile telephones, DVDs) as well as new approaches to learning (simulation, serious games). The first part of the report examines existing literature on e-learning and what e-learning is all about. Institutional users, learners and instructors/teachers are all looked at separately. We then turn to the implementation of e-learning from the organizational point of view and focus on quality issues related to e-learning. The report includes a separate chapter or e-learning from the rural perspective since most of Europe is geographically speaking rural and the population in those areas is that which could most benefit from the possibilities introduced by the e-learning development. The section titled “Alternative media”, in accordance with the project terminology, looks at standalone technology that is of particular use to rural areas without proper internet connection. It also evaluates the use of new tools and media in e-learning and takes a look at m-learning. Finally, the use of games, serious games and simulations in learning is considered. Practical examples and cases are displayed in a box to facilitate pleasant reading

    Intermediary perceptions of investment readiness in the social investment market

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    The ‘social investment market’ (SIM) in the UK is a growth area due to the governments’ focus upon building up the supply-side element of the market over the last decade, often through the direct financing of ‘social and investment finance intermediaries’ (SIFIs). However, this ignores problems that can occur on the demand-side of the SIM, such as a lack of ‘investment readiness’ (IR) amongst social enterprises (SEs) seeking investment. Indeed, whilst there is now a significant body of policy-based and practitioner research exploring the SIM, there remains a paucity of empirical academic research. The research reported in this paper sought to explore SIFI perceptions of what constituted IR in the SIM. Semi-structured interviews were held with the fund managers (or relevant personnel) at 15 SIFIs in order to explore what they believed constituted IR and how they assessed this. The results indicate that the conception of IR in the SIM is similar to that held in mainstream financial markets. The results are discussed in relation to the prior literature and theories of the SIM
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