Mental tactility: the ascendance of writing in online management education

A qualitative study of online management education and the role of writing as an indicative measure of thinking and learning. Established educational models, such as Dale\u27s Cone of Experience, are expanded and redeveloped to illustrate the central role of writing as a critical thinking process which appears to be increasing, rather than decreasing, with the advent of online multimedia technology. In an environment of increasing reliance on audiovisual stimulus in online education, the authors contend that tertiary educators may witness an ascendance or re-emergence of writing as central to the academic experience. This may be both supply and demand driven. Drawing on a study of two undergraduate units in the Bachelor of Commerce and applying hermeneutics to develop challenging insights, the authors present a case for educators to remain conversant with the art of teaching writing, and to promote writing to improve educational outcomes. <br /

Users' trust in information resources in the Web environment: a status report

This study has three aims; to provide an overview of the ways in which trust is either assessed or asserted in relation to the use and provision of resources in the Web environment for research and learning; to assess what solutions might be worth further investigation and whether establishing ways to assert trust in academic information resources could assist the development of information literacy; to help increase understanding of how perceptions of trust influence the behaviour of information users

Unlocking the potential of community composting: Full project report

Community based composting schemes can make valuable contributions to the development of local infrastructure and amenities by improving soils and green spaces in addition to diverting waste from landfill. Furthermore, well managed community activities have potential for providing work and volunteering opportunities, as well as bringing people together and improving skills, knowledge and self-confidence. Considered collectively these factors may contribute to local sustainability more effectively than focusing on meeting particular waste related targets. Although there is some anecdotal and financial evidence for the growth in, and diversity of, community composting, there is very little comprehensive data that draws together the activity of the sector as a whole. This research set out to understand and assess the current and potential role of the community composting sector in achieving Defra’s waste related targets and Government’s other wider environmental and social objectives. Thus this research is timely both in terms of establishing what has been achieved in the community composting sector to-date and in terms of possibilities for future achievements

Health and medical research funding agencies' promotion of public engagement within research: a qualitative interview study exploring the UK context

Background: Public engagement (PE) has become a common feature of many liberal governmental agendas worldwide. Since the turn of this century there has been a succession of United Kingdom policy initiatives to encourage research funding agencies, universities and researchers to reconsider how they engage with citizens and communities. Although most funding agencies now explicitly promote PE within research, little empirical work has been carried out in this area. In this study, we explored why and how health and medical research funding agencies in the United Kingdom have interpreted and implemented their role to promote PE within research. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 30 key informants from 10 agencies that fund health or medical research. Data were also gathered from agencies’ websites and documentation. The analysis was based on the constant comparative method. Results: Across agencies, we found that PE was being interpreted and operationalised in various different ways. The terminology used within funding agencies to describe PE seems to be flexibly applied. Disciplinary differences were evident both in the terminology used to describe PE and the drivers for PE highlighted by participants – with applied health science funders more aligned with participatory models of PE. Within the grant funding process PE was rarely systematically treated as a key component of research. In particular, PE was not routinely incorporated into the planning of funding calls. PE was more likely to be considered in the application and assessment phases, where it was largely appraised as a tool for enhancing science. Concerns were expressed regarding how to monitor and evaluate PE within research. Conclusions: This study suggests funding agencies working within specific areas of health and medicine can promote particular definitions of PE and aligned practices which determine the boundaries in which researchers working in these areas understand and practice PE. Our study also highlights how the research grant process works to privilege particular conceptions of PE and its purpose. Tensions are evident between some funders’ core concepts of traditional science and PE, and they face challenges as they try to embed PE into long-standing systems that prioritise particular conceptions of ‘scientific excellence’ in research

A Rule Set for the Future

This volume, Digital Young, Innovation, and the Unexpected, identifies core issues concerning how young people's use of digital media may lead to various innovations and unexpected outcomes. The essays collected here examine how youth can function as drivers for technological change while simultaneously recognizing that technologies are embedded in larger social systems, including the family, schools, commercial culture, and peer groups. A broad range of topics are taken up, including issues of access and equity; of media panics and cultural anxieties; of citizenship, consumerism, and labor; of policy, privacy, and IP; of new modes of media literacy and learning; and of shifting notions of the public/private divide. The introduction also details six maxims to guide future research and inquiry in the field of digital media and learning. These maxims are "Remember History," "Consider Context," "Make the Future (Hands-on)," "Broaden Participation," "Foster Literacies," and "Learn to Toggle." They form a kind of flexible rule set for investigations into the innovative uses and unexpected outcomes now emerging or soon anticipated from young people's engagements with digital media

Internet: turning science communication inside-out?

In the four decades since two university computers were first linked to each other over the prototype internet, scientific researchers have been innovators, early adopters and prolific adapters of internet technologies. Electronic mail, file transfer protocol, telnet, Gopher and the World Wide Web were all developed and applied first in research communities. The Web's development for sharing of information in the high-energy physics community unexpectedly heralded the internet's extension into many aspects of commerce, community, entertainment and governance. But despite the rapid proliferation and diversification of both over the past 15 years, the internet in its various forms has scientific communication indelibly inscribed into its fabric, and internet communication is thoroughly integrated into the practice of science. This chapter reviews some effects of the internet's emergence as a principal means of professional scientific communication, and of public communication of science and technology. It notes several paradoxes that characterise these developments, for example the contradictory trends towards easier collaboration across continents, and towards greater fragmentation. It notes the very significant disturbances caused by electronic publishing in the all-important field of scientific journals. It suggests that these and other developments have made more completely porous than before the boundaries between professional and public communication, facilitating public access to previously private spaces, and thus 'turning science communication inside-out'

Enhancing choice? The role of technology in the career support market

This report explores the role that technology has played in the development of the career support market. This market is conceived broadly to include all possible resources that individuals might draw upon to support them in their career development. A key element is the role that is played by public-sector career services and by careers professionals; though these resources are supplemented by services paid for in a wide range of ways and delivered by a range of professionals and non-professionals.UKCE

Blueprint Buffalo Action Plan: Regional Strategies for Reclaiming Vacant Properties in the City and Suburbs of Buffalo

Over a period of about nine months, the NVPC team conducted interviews and gathered insights that have resulted in this report. During the study period, Buffalo–Niagara emerged as a region broadly challenged by decades of disinvestment and population loss, but also as a close network of communities singularly blessed with a wealth of historic, transit-friendly, and affordable neighborhoods and commercial areas. Building on the City of Buffalo’s “asset management” strategy first proposed in 2004 by the Cornell Cooperative Extension Association—and now formally adopted by the Buffalo Common Council as part of its comprehensive 20-year plan for the city—the NVPC team sought to reexamine how the revitalization of Buffalo’s vacant properties could actually serve as a catalyst to address the region’s other most pressing problems: population loss, a weak real estate market in the inner city, signs of incipient economic instability in older suburbs, quality-of-life issues, school quality, and suburban sprawl