An investigation into the adoption of CDIO in distance learning

The Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate Initiative (CDIO) uses integrated learning to develop deep learning of the disciplinary knowledge base whilst simultaneously developing personal, interpersonal, product, process and system building skills. This is achieved through active and experiential learning methods that expose students to experiences engineers will encounter in their profession. These are incorporated not only in the design-build-test experiences that form a crucial part of a CDIO programme but also in discipline focused studies. Active and experiential learning methods are, of course, more difficult to incorporate into distance education. This paper investigates these difficulties and the implications in providing a programme that best achieves the goals of the CDIO approach through contemporary distance education methods. First, the key issues of adopting the CDIO approach in conventional oncampus courses are considered with reference to the development of the CDIO engineering programmes at the University of Liverpool. The different models of distance based delivery of engineering programmes provided by the Open University in the UK, and Deakin University and the University of Southern Queensland in Australia are then presented and issues that may present obstacles to the future adoption of the CDIO approach in these programmes are discussed. The effectiveness and suitability of various solutions to foreseen difficulties in delivering CDIO programmes through distance education are then considered. These include the further development, increased use and interinstitutional sharing of technology based facilities such as Internet facilitated access to laboratory facilities and computer aided learning (CAL) laboratory simulations, on campus workshops, and the development of a virtual engineering enterprise

Constructing knowledge: an experience of active and collaborative learning in an ICT classroom

This paper reports on the impact of the implementation of active and collaborative practices in ICT (information and communication technologies) classrooms. Both of these approaches convey a lot of responsibility from the teacher to the students and the hoping, as backed up by the literature, is to promote deeper learning and reasoning skills at a higher level. The question is: how do you do all that? This research describes a specific environment that makes use of collaborative tools, like wikis and forums within an e-learning platform and of specific CRM (customer relationship management) software. In order to analyze how this learning environment gets learners actively involved in learning and working together in productive ways, students were surveyed by responding to questionnaires. Several cause-effect relations underlying the teaching-learning methodology and the students’ performance are discussed

Criminal intent or cognitive dissonance: how does student self plagiarism fit into academic integrity?

The discourse of plagiarism is speckled with punitive terms not out of place in a police officer's notes: detection, prevention, misconduct, rules, regulations, conventions, transgression, consequences, deter, trap, etc. This crime and punishment paradigm tends to be the norm in academic settings. The learning and teaching paradigm assumes that students are not filled with criminal intent, but rather are confused by the novel academic culture and its values. The discourse of learning and teaching includes: development, guidance, acknowledge, scholarly practice, communicate, familiarity, culture. Depending on the paradigm adopted, universities, teachers, and students will either focus on policies, punishments, and ways to cheat the system or on program design, assessments, and assimilating the values of academia. Self plagiarism is a pivotal issue that polarises these two paradigms. Viewed from a crime and punishment paradigm, self plagiarism is an intentional act of evading the required workload for a course by re-using previous work. Within a learning and teaching paradigm, self plagiarism is an oxymoron. We would like to explore the differences between these two paradigms by using self plagiarism as a focal point

LawSync: navigating the ‘blue oceans’ within the ‘emerging’ legal services markets

Change, it is said, is the only constant. Whilst it cannot be avoided, the worlds of legal education and legal services have arguably enjoyed an extended period where the impact of change has been comparatively minimal. Today, these worlds face significant changes due to a combination of market and regulatory forces. True, such changes are likely to be accompanied by challenges but with these challenges come opportunities. There is no reason why Law Schools and Law students cannot help to shape these changes and benefit from them. LawSync™ is a project that seeks to enable such influence and attract such benefits at Sheffield Hallam University. See http://www.lawsync.com and http://twitter.com/lawsync for more details

Student responses to activities designed to develop generic professional skills

This paper reports on student responses to a range of assessment activities in a final-year engineering unit. Existing assessment activities were supplemented with new activities, the overall aim being to link the assessment activities more effectively to the material being studied, and to develop a range of generic skills important in professional engineering practice. A class survey was undertaken at the beginning of the semester to establish the initial attitudes to the new assessment activities. This was followed up with an end-of-semester survey to determine the change in perceived value of the assessment activities, and to collect student feedback regarding the activities. The perceived value of the assessment activities was determined using a Likert rating scale, while student feedback was collected using open-ended questions. The assessment activities evaluated were group work, case study investigation, report writing, oral presentation, group self-assessment, industrial interviews, and written reflective journals. The responses indicate that engineering students value a range of assessment activities. They value highly visits to real engineering organizations, and&mdash;contrary to popular belief &mdash;value and enjoy oral presentation exercises.<br /

Special Libraries, July-August 1977

Volume 68, Issue 7-8https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1977/1005/thumbnail.jp

Inquiry Based Learning Module to Empower Cooperation Skills

The education in the 21st century focuses on knowledge and encourages students to generate information and encourage developing new skills. The framework of 21st century learning skill is communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and innovation. Cooperation skills in the world of education is an important thing to be done in learning. Therefore, a solution is needed to optimize student empower cooperation skills process by using the teaching material in the form of module. The objective of this research is to know the effectiveness of inquiry based learning module to empower cooperation skills. This research was conducted in one of high school in Surakarta, Indonesia. The research method is quasi experiment, used pretest and posttest design by using two randomly selected classes those were experimental class used an inquiry based learning module and control one used a modules made by biology teachers in Surakarta. The results showed that there were significant differences of learning outcomes between the control and the experimental classes based on the independent samples t-test test results, also seen with the n-gain scores that obtained at 0.78 (middle) in the control class and 0.87 (high) in the experimental class. As the study concluded, using inquiry based learning module in the learning process in effective to empower cooperation skills