Educating and Training Accelerator Scientists and Technologists for Tomorrow

Accelerator science and technology is inherently an integrative discipline that combines aspects of physics, computational science, electrical and mechanical engineering. As few universities offer full academic programs, the education of accelerator physicists and engineers for the future has primarily relied on a combination of on-the-job training supplemented with intense courses at regional accelerator schools. This paper describes the approaches being used to satisfy the educational interests of a growing number of interested physicists and engineers.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figure

Portmerion, Proportion and Perspective

The holiday village of Portmerion was created by Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis (1883 1978) over a period of fifty-one years, starting in 1926. It was grade II listed in 1971. However, Portmerion has become a part of western popular culture rather than of mainstream architectural history. Its use as the setting for the cult 1967 television series “The Prisoner” ensures continued worldwide interest and a constant stream of visitors. Williams Ellis’ design methods were empirical, initial designs being adjusted by eye on site in close collaboration with trusted builders. This paper analyses the development of Portmerion as a gesamtkunstwerk; considering the experience of movement through the village as a dynamic composition of shifting vistas, focussing the visitor on a series of constructed views. Through this analysis, Portmerion is revealed as both a manifestation of the architecture of pleasure and an exercise in the pleasure of architecture

Teaching electronics-ICT : from focus and structure to practical realizations

We present a four-year electronics-ICT educational master program at Ghent University in Belgium. The students develop knowledge and skills from novice to experienced electronic circuit designers. In the corresponding topics, the immersion into engineering problems is deepened. The horizontal and vertical alignment of courses in the four-year master program at our university is discussed. The curriculum of the four-year master program is highly projectoriented and all topics are clustered around a well-considered set of standards. This clustering supports the logical structure of the program, with students gradually acquiring the necessary competences. All standards and their mutual interaction are extensively discussed in the paper. We also focus on four design-implement projects included in the electronics-ICT program, explicitly following CDIO-guidelines. Whereas the first-year project has a limited level of difficulty, the challenges increase significantly in the course of the next years. Students learn that product design is an iterative process on different levels, where the design strategy can be changed continuously based on important and crucial feedback. Different evaluations have demonstrated that our students are not only aware of CDIO-principles, but are also convinced of the quality of the results obtained by following the standards

Maximizing Competency Education and Blended Learning: Insights from Experts

In May 2014, CompetencyWorks brought together twenty-three technical assistance providers to examine their catalytic role in implementing next generation learning models, share each other's knowledge and expertise about blended learning and competency education, and discuss next steps to move the field forward with a focus on equity and quality. Our strategy maintains that by building the knowledge and networks of technical assistance providers, these groups can play an even more catalytic role in advancing the field. The objective of the convening was to help educate and level set the understanding of competency education and its design elements, as well as to build knowledge about using blended learning modalities within competency-based environments. This paper attempts to draw together the wide-ranging conversations from the convening to provide background knowledge for educators to understand what it will take to transform from traditional to personalized, competency-based systems that take full advantage of blended learning

A comparison of production processes for OER

In most cases the initial production and publication of OER is undertaken by a University and funded through a special project with grants from external bodies. In this phase, OER are developed both from scratch or derived from existing Higher Education courses. After this project phase, the ongoing development and publication of OER continues and the question of the management and upgrading of the OER comes into focus. The costs of producing and upgrading OER are an important factor in devising a sustainable process. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an efficient process for the continuing production, publication and maintenance of OER. To learn more about influencing factors of production process efficiency we have compared the production processes of two institutions, the Open University UK (OU-UK) and the Open Universiteit Netherlands (OU-NL), both in the initial project phase (OpenLearn for OU-UK and OpenER for OU-NL) and the post initial phase. We aim to identify the differences and commonalities and the influence of these on the efficiency of the production processes. The main difference between the two Universities is the adoption of state-of-the-art (XML) standard to deliver to different channels at OU-UK. At OU-NL this adoption has just started. Valuable lessons learned in the project phase for the post initial phase are clear specification of requirements for selection of an open course and utilization of technologies already being used for regular materials production. Both institutions firstly drew upon the existing expertise and capabilities for educational resource production being used for regular courses. But rather than strictly follow exactly the same process and possibly compromise the more mission critical development of resources for students both institutions chose to experiment or adapt this process to help provide lessons that might be taken back into regular materials production. Once these lessons and experiences had been gained both open universities sought to reduce the costs of dealing with legacy or de novo educational resources by integrating identification, production and publication within the regular curriculum and course development processes