The Academic Library in the Information Age: Changing Roles

This booklet addresses three important areas. First, expectations for the academic library in today's information age. It seemed critical to examine requirements for the library itself, before exploring what would be needed from its staff. Second, an array of new functions and partnerships for library staff that flow from changes to the university and the library. A group of illustrative scenarios suggest some of the roles library staff will assume in the information age. Third, the implications that these changes within the library will have for all parts of the academy. What will the changes mean for students, faculty, academic administrators, technical staff, and library staff themselves

Fair Use of Copyrighted Works: A Crucial Element in Educating America

This pamphlet addresses three important points. First, higher education will benefit by the formation of a national alliance focused on fair use. Second, the effectiveness of higher education requires a thorough understanding of the fair-use doctrine. Finally, faculty, in particular, necessarily apply the fair-use doctrine as they perform their work

Ownership of New Works at the University: Unbundling of Rights and the Pursuit of Higher Learning

This booklet offers a framework for present and future discussions of issues surrounding the ownership of intellectual property. It addresses three concepts which are important for education and for the creation and use of information. First, the initial ownership of newly created intellectual property in traditional university settings, and the subsequent disposition of the associated ownership rights, often has been unguided—sometimes to the detriment of teaching, learning, and research. Second, the effectiveness of higher education requires a better understanding of how ownership rights associated with new intellectual property promote the mutual benefit of faculty, staff, students and their learning communities. Third, new models for the allocation of intellectual rights must be considered and designed which anticipate the influence of new technologies on teaching, learning, research, and creative activity in American universities

Collaborative Educational Systems

This paper starts describing the key concepts of collaborative systems and the impact of this to educational systems. There are presented the main properties and quality characteristics for the collaborative educational systems. For the main quality characteristic, like portability and complexity are presented different types of indicators for an educational system. The article analyzes different ways to increase the efficiency and the performance level in collaborative educational systems.

Big data for monitoring educational systems

This report considers “how advances in big data are likely to transform the context and methodology of monitoring educational systems within a long-term perspective (10-30 years) and impact the evidence based policy development in the sector”, big data are “large amounts of different types of data produced with high velocity from a high number of various types of sources.” Five independent experts were commissioned by Ecorys, responding to themes of: students' privacy, educational equity and efficiency, student tracking, assessment and skills. The experts were asked to consider the “macro perspective on governance on educational systems at all levels from primary, secondary education and tertiary – the latter covering all aspects of tertiary from further, to higher, and to VET”, prioritising primary and secondary levels of education

Reusing adaptation strategies in adaptive educational hypermedia systems

Due to the difficulty and thus effort and expenses involved in creating them, personalization strategies in learning environments have to demonstrate a higher return-on-investment (ROI), if they are to be a viable component of the learning setting of the future. One feature that can increase this ROI is the reusability of adaptation strategies in Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems. This research looks into various ways of enhancing this reusability. Using multiple modular adaptation strategies (MAS) with a controlling meta-strategy is proposed as a more efficient way of authoring adaptation strategies. This renders the reuse of adaptation strategies faster and easier for course authors. A method for semi-automatically breaking down complex adaptation strategies into smaller modular adaptation strategies is described. Potential problems with using multiple strategies are described and ways to solve them are discussed. Finally, some evaluation points are illustrated, conclusions are drawn and further research areas are identified

Work, education and scientific and technological development knowledge and training

A new facet of the productive structures is the accrued importance of the component "knowledge and training". Indeed, knowledge and training become parts of the productive process from the beginning to its marketing, the traditional vocational training being a limited part of the activities regarding knowledge and transfer inside the working place. At the same time, educational systems come more and more to resemble productive systems; first of all, because their employees are, in many countries, the most relevant part of the working force, secondly, because their "products" are quite often evaluated by the market; thirdly, because part of these educational systems are integrated in the productive system itself. As productive systems, educational systems are facing the same problems as any other productive system: skilling and deskilling, introduction of technologies, explosions hierarchization, etc.peer-reviewe

School Systems and Efficiency and Equity of Education

How students should be allocated to schools to achieve educational goals is one of important debates on the construction of school systems. Promoters of comprehensive and selective school systems fail to reach a consensus on implications of each system for efficiency and equity of education. This paper examines impacts of different systems of student allocation on educational goals, using a simple economic model. It argues that how a selective system is designed matters a great deal in a comparison between comprehensive and selective systems: different designs of a selective system can yield widely different educational implications compared with those from a comprehensive system. A judicious use of a selective system can at times achieve educational goals better than a comprehensive system. Given our finding that different households prefer different school systems, we suggest that by offering multiple subsystems, the educational planner can enhance educational attainments of households beyond those achieved by a single national system.Education, Comprehensive and Selective School Systems