Resource music for teaching American history

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Helping design educators foster collaborative learning amongst design students

This paper discusses the development of online teaching resources that enable design educators to foster collaborative learning amongst students in the design disciplines. These online teaching resources will be made available through the Design Collaboration website. This website was recently set up by Northumbria University, a UK based institution, to provide an online resource for design educators wishing to develop collaborative pedagogies in design education. It currently contains case studies of collaborative student projects but lacks practical teaching resources. As a result, a research project was set up to compliment the current case studies by creating a suite of design-specific tools and resources that will help foster team management and development. Although various institutions have addressed the subject of group work and collaborative learning, there has been no online resource dedicated to the development of practical teaching tools to help design students work and learn together. This paper focuses on showcasing the range of teaching tools and resources developed through classroom-based trials. These resources have been developed specifically in consultation with Northumbria University's design educators and trialled with undergraduate and postgraduate students from different design disciplines. In addition, issues surrounding the translation of these tools into a practical, easy to use and accessible in an online format is discussed. The Icograda World Design Congress 2009 Education Conference is the ideal international platform to share these tools with the wider design education community. More importantly, we hope to grow the website by encouraging other design educators to submit case studies to the website, using it not only as a means of sharing good practice but also as a tool for reflection. The research value is two-fold (a) translating implicit knowledge of collaborative learning into a practical teaching resource and, (b) helping tutors improve their teaching practice, by linking the teaching resource to real experiences through case studies and interviews

Teaching sustainable resource management in uncertain environment

Dynamic evolutions of resource stocks with stochastic elements in the transition equation are in general very difficult to master. Their handling requires a deep understanding of control theory, probability theory and sometimes even of game theory due to strategic interaction of 'agents'. But without strong mathematical backgrounds, students from adjacent research fields have a hard time with control theory. The same is true for probability theory and game theory. One way to avoid this problem is to change the aim: instead of target function optimization, guarantee the continuance of the system within certain boundaries. The latter relates to Viability theory. Unfortunately, even Viability theory requires more mathematics than the 'average' student is prepared for. The paper at hand will demonstrate how Excel can help here. Excel is applied since it is a widespread tool and most students are familiar with its basic features. Therefore students can concentrate on how to implement a dynamic system in a spreadsheet and how to simulate probability distributions and approximate the distribution of the target function - given different control rules. This enables them to assess opportunities and risks associated with these control rules. One topic appropriate to demonstrate the idea is renewable resource management. As many studies state, there is a deficit in sustainable learning not only in economics (Salemi and Siegfried 1999; Walstad and Allgood 1999) , but particular in system dynamic models (Moxnes, E. 2000; Pala and Vennix 2005). This is due to the complexity associated with long run- and feedback effects, and the complexity becomes even harder when stochastic development is included. The purpose of this paper will be to inspire students and to encourage them to solve stochastic dynamic problems later on their own with the simple tools at hand presently.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Russell Square: a lifelong resource for teaching and learning

A quarter of a century ago, in 1978, Birkbeck College’s Faculty of Continuing Education (FCE, then the Department for Extra-Mural Studies of the federal University) moved to the offices that it now occupies in numbers 26 and 25 Russell Square. Then, as now, FCE was the one of the largest and most active extra-mural departments of any British university, with an enormous range of courses covering virtually every subject taught in ‘internal’ university departments and many more besides 1. Some of these courses have, from time to time, used Russell Square as a learning resource. Many more staff and students alike have (along with thousands of local workers, tourists and residents) used the square’s gardens for relaxation and recovery, without reflecting on its origins or present significance. This Occasional Paper examines the past and present fabric of Russell Square (‘the Square’) as a resource for teaching and learning. It is a composite narrative assembled by FCE staff whose disciplines range from nature conservation through garden history and architectural history to social policy. It deconstructs the Square as an entity and attempts to decipher some of its ‘meanings’ that provide links between subjects taught within FCE. We hope that it will stimulate discussion about the way this single ‘place’ – our Square - can be ‘seen’ or interpreted in different ways for diverse purposes, and about the way that it can be used as a resource for teaching and learning across disciplines

Resource music for teaching American history

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Turning an Idea into a Valuable Teaching Resource and Research Output

This paper describes the journey of a teacher who became an author in Higher Education. The journey began with a simple idea about a fundamental resource book, designed to improve teaching in design and illustration classes with ever increasing numbers of novice fashion students, back in 1991. This resource was a taxonomy of fashion, designed to increase the awareness of garment shapes, context, proportion, terminology, construction, production and finish with a view to improving student knowledge, design and visual communication skills. The paper reflects upon the subsequent publications that built on the previous resource, as outputs of rigour, significance and integrity in shaping the author‘s approaches to teaching and research in fashion and other disciplines. It describes the development of the original idea and the subsequent acceptance of this for publication and illustrates how this one idea allowed for further opportunities for publications in a partnership with a global publisher. There are resource issues around gathering content for publications of rigour and originality and there have been challenges around communicating in the publications themselves due to technological and economical constraints. There are also practical resource issues around creating and designing the publications as well as the need for the development of personal skills when keeping up with changes in technology and the fashion industry. Each publication requires careful planning and needs to have unique reasons for being‘ that make it different to the competition. It describes the positive aspects of working with a colleague who brings similar skills and understanding, but a different handwriting and point of view to the publications. It looks at the impact of updating original editions and keeping the works contemporary. It also looks at personal and practical insights learned across almost 20 years of being an author with the same publisher

Social mobilization and institutional development approach and strategy

Institutional development, Water users associations, Training, Capacity building, Water resource management, Irrigated farming, Farm Management, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,