Maximising Social Interactions and Effectiveness within Distance Learning Courses: Cases from Construction

Advanced Internet technologies have revolutionised the delivery of distance learning education. As a result, the physical proximity between learners and the learning providers has become less important. However, whilst the pervasiveness of these technological developments has reached unprecedented levels, critics argue that the student learning experience is still not as effective as conventional face-to-face delivery. In this regard, surveys of distance learning courses reveal that there is often a lack of social interaction attributed to this method of delivery, which tends to leave learners feeling isolated due to a lack of engagement, direction, guidance and support by the tutor. This paper defines and conceptualises this phenomenon by investigating the extent to which distance-learning programmes provide the social interactions of an equivalent traditional classroom setting. In this respect, two distance learning case studies were investigated, covering the UK and Slovenian markets respectively. Research findings identified that delivery success is strongly dependent on the particular context to which the specific distance learning course is designed, structured and augmented. It is therefore recommended that designers of distance learning courses should balance the tensions and nuances associated with commercial viability and pedagogic effectiveness

Maximising social interactions and effectiveness within distance learning courses : cases from construction

Advanced Internet technologies have revolutionised the delivery of distance learning education. As a result, the physical proximity between learners and the learning providers has become less important. However, whilst the pervasiveness of these technological developments has reached unprecedented levels, critics argue that the student learning experience is still not as effective as conventional face-to-face delivery. In this regard, surveys of distance learning courses reveal that there is often a lack of social interaction attributed to this method of delivery, which tends to leave learners feeling isolated due to a lack of engagement, direction, guidance and support by the tutor. This paper defines and conceptualises this phenomenon by investigating the extent to which distance-learning programmes provide the social interactions of an equivalent traditional classroom setting. In this respect, two distance learning case studies were investigated, covering the UK and Slovenian markets respectively. Research findings identified that delivery success is strongly dependent on the particular context to which the specific distance learning course is designed, structured and augmented. It is therefore recommended that designers of distance learning courses should balance the tensions and nuances associated with commercial viability and pedagogic effectiveness

Virtual communities and professional learning across a distributed remote membership

Headteachers, or Principals, of schools work in isolation from each other yet share common practice and domain of leadership and management. They exhibit the characteristics of a community of practice yet are remote from other members of their community. Similar communities of practice can be identified for other types of school leaders, subject co-ordinators for example, and for professionals in other disciplines – consultant registrars in health, optometrists working in dispensing opticians, museum curators, and so on. This paper explores ways of using virtual communities to develop professional learning in these communities of practice. We discuss our work in the context of education and formal and informal learning communities of school leaders and explore how the lessons learnt have general application. We present a model for professional learning through online collaboration and communication, and look, in particular, at the concept of time and its effects in the virtual community

Basins of Attraction, Commitment Sets and Phenotypes of Boolean Networks

The attractors of Boolean networks and their basins have been shown to be highly relevant for model validation and predictive modelling, e.g., in systems biology. Yet there are currently very few tools available that are able to compute and visualise not only attractors but also their basins. In the realm of asynchronous, non-deterministic modeling not only is the repertoire of software even more limited, but also the formal notions for basins of attraction are often lacking. In this setting, the difficulty both for theory and computation arises from the fact that states may be ele- ments of several distinct basins. In this paper we address this topic by partitioning the state space into sets that are committed to the same attractors. These commitment sets can easily be generalised to sets that are equivalent w.r.t. the long-term behaviours of pre-selected nodes which leads us to the notions of markers and phenotypes which we illustrate in a case study on bladder tumorigenesis. For every concept we propose equivalent CTL model checking queries and an extension of the state of the art model checking software NuSMV is made available that is capa- ble of computing the respective sets. All notions are fully integrated as three new modules in our Python package PyBoolNet, including functions for visualising the basins, commitment sets and phenotypes as quotient graphs and pie charts

Transactional distance in a blended learning environment

This paper presents a case study that describes and discusses the problems encountered during the design and implementation of a blended learning course, largely taught online through a web-based learning environment. Based on Moore's theory of transactional distance, the course was explicitly designed to have dialogue at its heart. However, the reality of systemic behaviours caused by delivering such a course within a group of conventional further and higher educational institutions has led to an entirely unanticipated reversion to structure, with unpleasant consequences for both quality and quantity of dialogue. The paper looks at some of the reasons for this drift, and suggests that some of the disappointing results (in particular in terms of the quality of the students' experience and associated poor retention) can be attributed to the lack of dialogue, and consequent increase in transactional distance. It concludes with a description and evaluation of steps currently being taken to correct this behaviour

Lecturer--student views on successful online learning environments.

While many are enthusiastic about the promises of online learning as a flexible form of learning, others are cautious and concerned with the quality of teaching and learning rendered in such environments. In response, this article reports on the findings of a study conducted to better understand the issues related to the nature of learning in online environments and how learning in such environments can be successfully facilitated. Ten online lecturers and their students were surveyed at the Faculty of Education, University of Waikato. Successful online teaching and learning was characterised as a social interactive process such as that embodied within learning communities. Teaching practices and responsibilities associated with four lecturer roles were crucial to this process-pedagogical, managerial, social and technological. Considering these multiple roles is argued to be a productive framework in enabling online lecturers to understand and act on each role's required responsibility, tasks and practices and adapt them to their particular teaching context

Can virtual seminars be used cost‐effectively to enhance student learning?

This paper describes a virtual seminar initiative designed to investigate the extent to which computer‐mediated communication (CMC) can cost‐effectively strengthen staff‐student interaction and enhance student group discussion, and thereby improve collaborative learning. After setting the scene by means of a brief review of the discursive potential of CMC, the establishment of an asynchronous bulletin board system on three modules in the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester using industry standard software is described. Detailed time diaries kept by all staff involved revealed that organizing and running the virtual seminars were very much less time‐consuming than running face‐to‐face seminars. However, analysis of the students’ access to and mage of the virtual seminars indicates that some of them were disadvantaged by CMC and that they favoured face‐to‐face contact with lecturers over virtual seminars. The latter should therefore be part of a portfolio of teaching techniques rather than the sole form of collaborative learning. The conclusion is that a significant obstacle to benefiting from CMC is the further demand on staff time that results from adding virtual seminars as a supplement to existing teaching practices. Even though these extra demands may be modest, effectively deploying the discursive potential of CMC to enhance student learning increases staff effort rather than reducing it, as many have hoped or promised it would

Asynchronous techniques for system-on-chip design

SoC design will require asynchronous techniques as the large parameter variations across the chip will make it impossible to control delays in clock networks and other global signals efficiently. Initially, SoCs will be globally asynchronous and locally synchronous (GALS). But the complexity of the numerous asynchronous/synchronous interfaces required in a GALS will eventually lead to entirely asynchronous solutions. This paper introduces the main design principles, methods, and building blocks for asynchronous VLSI systems, with an emphasis on communication and synchronization. Asynchronous circuits with the only delay assumption of isochronic forks are called quasi-delay-insensitive (QDI). QDI is used in the paper as the basis for asynchronous logic. The paper discusses asynchronous handshake protocols for communication and the notion of validity/neutrality tests, and completion tree. Basic building blocks for sequencing, storage, function evaluation, and buses are described, and two alternative methods for the implementation of an arbitrary computation are explained. Issues of arbitration, and synchronization play an important role in complex distributed systems and especially in GALS. The two main asynchronous/synchronous interfaces needed in GALS-one based on synchronizer, the other on stoppable clock-are described and analyzed