MiRTLE (Mixed-Reality Teaching and Learning Environment): from prototype to production and implementation

This position paper focuses on our efforts to implement and evaluate a Mixed Reality Teaching and Learning Environment (MiRTLE) in higher education institutions and other organisations, our current technical research to streamline and improve the utility of the system, and potential pedagogical developments for MiRTLE in the future

Simplification of Health and Social Services Enrollment and Eligibility: Lessons for California From Interviews in Four States

Explores state officials' and advocates' views on issues involved in streamlining enrollment and eligibility processes, including the importance of staff buy-in, community partners' outreach efforts, and technological challenges and lessons learned

Reading Lists in Cambridge: A Standard System?

In June 2008 a committee of librarians from across the University convened to investigate ways of improving library services, with particular regard to elearning and the provision of services to undergraduates. Reading lists quickly emerged as the major factor in undergraduate library use, as influential on the types of resources used by undergraduates, and as an area where there was potential for an improvement to the student experience. One of the committee’s recommendations was that an application be made for an Arcadia Fellowship to investigate issues surrounding the adoption of a standard system for dealing with reading lists. The proposal was felt to map well onto the core issues highlighted by the Arcadia Programme – particularly Changes in Higher Education, New generations of library users, Technology and Changing academic workflows. This report is the result of that Fellowship.The Arcadia Programme has been generously funded by a Grant from the Arcadia Fund http://www.arcadiafund.org.uk

Engagement with virtual learning environments : a case study across faculties

Original article can be found at: www.herts.ac.uk/blip Copyright University of HertfordshireThe Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) at the University of Hertfordshire (UH) not only supports institutional and national strategies in learning and teaching, but represents a significant investment in capital. Studies show that VLEs offer a variety of pedagogical benefits and usage of such systems can be effectively measured through the analysis of a system’s log files. However, although the increase in engagement with the VLE at UH as a whole has been considerable over recent years, there appears to be a wide variation in engagement across faculties, suggesting that tutors of some faculties could benefit from increased support to improve engagement. For example, during each of the academic years under study, the range of student engagement between two particular faculties dif-fered by at least 290%. Having identified faculties that show consistently low VLE engage-ment, we need to ask why this is, and ask whether there needs to be further investigation into the reasons behind this disparity.Peer reviewe

A virtual practice community for student learning and staff development in health and social work inter-professional education. Mini-project evaluation report.

Interprofessional education (IPE) has been widely advocated and developed as a means to encourage effective collaboration in order to improve public sector services. An IPE curriculum was introduced at Bournemouth University from 2005 for all nursing branches, midwifery, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, operating department practice and social work students (n=600). Challenges of this ambitious and large scale project included facilitating meaningful interprofessional learning while balancing structural complexities of professional body requirements and the logistics of large student numbers and multi-site teaching. A web-based simulated community was created, known as Wessex Bay, as a learning resource to facilitate interprofessional learning around case scenarios. An evaluation of student and staff experiences of IPE over two years, focusing principally on the use of technology in the education process was implemented. Student and staff data were collected via e-surveys, focus groups and open-ended questionnaires with additional feedback from external reviewers specifically on Wessex Bay. Qualitative data were subjected to thematic analysis. Whilst the findings are not claimed to be representative, they provide a rich insight into student and staff experiences of technology enhanced learning in IPE. The richness and complexity of data has led to a number of project outcomes with wide-ranging implications for interprofessional education. This research has led to the identification of three major territories of praxis in which individuals, both students and tutors, are operating in IPE, namely professional differences and identity, curriculum design and learning and teaching strategies, and technology enhanced learning. For the purposes of this report, we will discuss the findings related to student and staff experiences of technology enhanced learning in IPE. The evaluation of the findings highlighted three issues; the level of student and staff knowledge and skill in using learning technologies impacted significantly on learning; there was a need to capitalise on the use of web-based learning resources by increasing interactivity within the scenarios; and finally student and staff experiences of the learning resources was enhanced by a positive learning culture to facilitate creative use of materials. All project aims and objectives were met, and whilst more focused staff and student development in using learning technology is required, a culture of working interprofessionally among students and academic staff has begun to develop, leading to the sharing of ideas about content and learning processes. Recommendations resulting from the project include the introduction of assessed development of student and staff learning technology skills; development of more interactive web-based learning embedded within the case scenarios; and streamlining of the scenarios to provide fewer, but more developed, cases

A Virtual Practice Community for Student Learning and Staff Development in Health and Social Work Inter-Professional Education; Changing Practice Through Collaboration

This Mini Project has been funded by the Health Sciences and Practice Subject Centre of the Higher Education Academy Available on-line at HEA website: http://www.health.heacademy.ac.uk/publications/miniproject/scammell08.pd

It's Not a Matter of Time: Highlights From the 2011 Competency-Based Learning Summit

Outlines discussions about the potential and challenges of competency-based learning in transforming the current time-based system, including issues of accountability, equity, personalization, and aligning policy and practice. Includes case summaries

Fast parallel volume visualization on cuda technology

In the medical diagnosis and treatment planning, radiologists and surgeons rely heavily on the slices produced by medical imaging scanners. Unfortunately, most of these scanners can only produce two dimensional images because the machines that can produce three dimensional are very expensive. The two dimensional images from these devices are difficult to interpret because they only show cross-sectional views of the human structure. Consequently, such circumstances require highly qualified doctors to use their expertise in the interpretation of the possible location, size or shape of the abnormalities especially for large datasets of enormous amount of slices. Previously, the concept of reconstructing two dimensional images to three dimensional was introduced. However, such reconstruction model requires high performance computation, may either be time-consuming or costly. Furthermore, detecting the internal features of human anatomical structure, such as the imaging of the blood vessels, is still an open topic in the computer-aided diagnosis of disorders and pathologies. This study proposed, designed and implemented a visualization framework named SurLens with high performance computing using Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA), augmenting the widely proven ray casting technique in terms of superior qualities of images but with slow speed. Considering the rapid development of technology in the medical community, our framework is implemented on Microsoft .NET environment for easy interoperability with other emerging revolutionary tools. The Visualization System was evaluated with brain datasets from the department of Surgery, University of North Carolina, United States, containing 109 datasets of MRA, T1-FLASH, T2-Weighted, DTI and T1-MPRAGE. Significantly, at a reasonably cheaper cost, SurLens Visualization System achieves immediate reconstruction and obvious mappings of the internal features of the human brain, reliable enough for instantaneously locate possible blockages in the brain blood vessels without any prior segmentation of the datasets

Aiming for service excellence: Implementing a plan for customer service quality at a blended service desk

This article discusses a public service review and redesign that resulted in a blended service desk combining reference and circulation functions, staffed by nonlibrarians. The redesign implements a number of organizational structures that encourage service excellence, as found in the business literature and in examples of nonlibrary organizations that excel in customer service. The article identifies key organizational structures that have been shown to support or hinder good service and discusses the process of implementing these structures in practice and the results of an assessment process designed around determining success