Teacher Education Futures: Developing learning and teaching in ITE across the UK

A selection of papers from the Teacher Education Futures conference 2006

Access to Core Course Materials Project: DigiCOMS: report of the pilot service

One of the objectives of the Access to Core Course Materials Project was to set up, run and evaluate a pilot electronic study pack service. The needs analysis demonstrated that the service needed to encompass a range of materials and so the service was broadened to include a variety of electronic course materials. The service included the production of electronic study packs, but also offered a digitisation service for other types of course materials; in particular a facility to make available in-house produced publications such as course handbooks and lecture notes. Related to this work was a separate project funded by a grant from the Sub-Committee on Innovation in Learning, Teaching and Assessment (SCILTA) in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health. The Project Officer was involved in setting up an intranet site to distribute a range of electronic course materials. The Department were particularly keen to include online assessment and for this reason it was decided to build the site using WebCT. This gave the Access Project direct experience of using virtual learning environment software, which could be compared to the simple course material system that was devised in-house. A full report of this project is available; however, the issues of relevance to the DigiCOMS service and an outline of the work is also discussed within this report

INSPIRAL: investigating portals for information resources and learning. Final project report

INSPIRAL's aims were to identify and analyse, from the perspective of the UK HE learner, the nontechnical, institutional and end-user issues with regard to linking VLEs and digital libraries, and to make recommendations for JISC strategic planning and investment. INSPIRAL's objectives -To identify key stakeholders with regard to the linkage of VLEs, MLEs and digital libraries -To identify key stakeholder forum points and dissemination routes -To identify the relevant issues, according to the stakeholders and to previous research, pertaining to the interaction (both possible and potential) between VLEs/MLEs and digital libraries -To critically analyse identified issues, based on stakeholder experience and practice; output of previous and current projects; and prior and current research -To report back to JISC and to the stakeholder communities, with results situated firmly within the context of JISC's strategic aims and objectives

Negotiating cultures in cyberspace

In this paper we report findings of a multidisciplinary study of online participation by culturally diverse participants in a distance adult education course offered in Canada and examine in detail three of the study's findings. First, we explore both the historical and cultural origins of "cyberculture values" as manifested in our findings, using the notions of explicit and implicit enforcement of those values and challenging the assumption that cyberspace is a culture free zone. Second, we examine the notion of cultural gaps between participants in the course and the potential consequences for online communication successes and difficulties. Third, the analysis describes variations in participation frequency as a function of broad cultural groupings in our data. We identify the need for additional research, primarily in the form of larger scale comparisons across cultural groups of patterns of participation and interaction, but also in the form of case studies that can be submitted to microanalyses of the form as well as the content of communicator's participation and interaction online

Learning from the learners' experience: e-Learning@greenwich post-conference reflections

This publication comprises papers from presenters who, having made a conference presentation, were invited to author an academic paper about their work

Students' perceptions of a virtual team assessment item (VTAI): An Australian case study

In today's global business environment, business graduates are often required to work as members of virtual teams. This paper presents the findings of an electronic survey of distance education students' perceptions concerning a virtual team assessment item (VTAI) using asynchronous discussion. The VTAI was set for an undergraduate marketing course at an Australian university. The findings revealed that while the distance education students did not necessarily enjoy the VTAI and found the assessment task to be both frustrating and time-consuming, they agreed that the task was beneficial to their learning and should be included in future course offerings

A gentle transition from Java programming to Web Services using XML-RPC

Exposing students to leading edge vocational areas of relevance such as Web Services can be difficult. We show a lightweight approach by embedding a key component of Web Services within a Level 3 BSc module in Distributed Computing. We present a ready to use collection of lecture slides and student activities based on XML-RPC. In addition we show that this material addresses the central topics in the context of web services as identified by Draganova (2003)