Conventions and mutual expectations — understanding sources for web genres

Genres can be understood in many different ways. They are often perceived as a primarily sociological construction, or, alternatively, as a stylostatistically observable objective characteristic of texts. The latter view is more common in the research field of information and language technology. These two views can be quite compatible and can inform each other; this present investigation discusses knowledge sources for studying genre variation and change by observing reader and author behaviour rather than performing analyses on the information objects themselves

Users' trust in information resources in the Web environment: a status report

This study has three aims; to provide an overview of the ways in which trust is either assessed or asserted in relation to the use and provision of resources in the Web environment for research and learning; to assess what solutions might be worth further investigation and whether establishing ways to assert trust in academic information resources could assist the development of information literacy; to help increase understanding of how perceptions of trust influence the behaviour of information users

Searching with Tags: Do Tags Help Users Find Things?

This study examines the question of whether tags can be useful in the process of information retrieval. Participants searched a social bookmarking tool specialising in academic articles (CiteULike) and an online journal database (Pubmed). Participant actions were captured using screen capture software and they were asked to describe their search process. Users did make use of tags in their search process, as a guide to searching and as hyperlinks to potentially useful articles. However, users also made use of controlled vocabularies in the journal database to locate useful search terms and of links to related articles supplied by the database

JISC Preservation of Web Resources (PoWR) Handbook

Handbook of Web Preservation produced by the JISC-PoWR project which ran from April to November 2008. The handbook specifically addresses digital preservation issues that are relevant to the UK HE/FE web management community”. The project was undertaken jointly by UKOLN at the University of Bath and ULCC Digital Archives department

eCPD Programme - Enhanced Learning.

This collection of papers (edited by Kevin Donovan) has been produced by the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) for LSIS. They are based on the summaries used by presenters during workshops at the 2009 launch of the eCPD Programme

MILO: Models of innovation in learning online at Key Stage 3 and 14-19: Final report appendices

This document contains the appendices to the main report, which presents case studies, which reflect a wide range of models of online learning, each of which has been developed for specific reasons, largely in relation to visions of how technology can transform learning, but also to solve practical problems such as re-engaging disaffected learners and coping with rising pupil numbers

Open educational practices in Australia: a first-phase national audit of higher education

For fifteen years, Australian Higher Education has engaged with the openness agenda primarily through the lens of open-access research. Open educational practice (OEP), by contrast, has not been explicitly supported by federal government initiatives, funding, or policy. This has led to an environment that is disconnected, with isolated examples of good practice that have not been transferred beyond local contexts. This paper represents first-phase research in identifying the current state of OEP in Australian Higher Education. A structured desktop audit of all Australian universities was conducted, based on a range of indicators and criteria established by a review of the literature. The audit collected evidence of engagement with OEP using publicly accessible information via institutional websites. The criteria investigated were strategies and policies, open educational resources (OER), infrastructure tools/platforms, professional development and support, collaboration/partnerships, and funding. Initial findings suggest that the experience of OEP across the sector is diverse, but the underlying infrastructure to support the creation, (re)use, and dissemination of resources is present. Many Australian universities have experimented with, and continue to refine, massive open online course (MOOC) offerings, and there is increasing evidence that institutions now employ specialist positions to support OEP, and MOOCs. Professional development and staff initiatives require further work to build staff capacity sector-wide. This paper provides a contemporary view of sector-wide OEP engagement in Australia—a macro-view that is not well-represented in open research to date. It identifies core areas of capacity that could be further leveraged by a national OEP initiative or by national policy on OEP.</p