eRes: Innovative E-learning with E-resources

There has been an explosion in the use of electronic resources by students; this existing high usage of e-resources will be intensified as virtual learning environments (VLEs) become the primary means of interaction between students and universities. The challenge facing academic libraries is to provide appropriate resources in electronic form and through interfaces meeting the expectations of the Digital Natives. This paper examines the marketplace for e-books and reports on Bournemouth University’s innovative response to this challenge: leading a national tender not only for general collections of e-books, but also for bespoke subject collections; integrating existing resources into the VLE and creating new resources; exploiting the VLE and federated search technology. It also reports on Bournemouth’s current Higher Education Academy-funded pathfinder project, Innovative E-Learning with E-Resources (eRes), to develop innovative pedagogic frameworks and an e-reading strategy

An exploration of concepts of community through a case study of UK university web production

The paper explores the inter-relation and differences between the concepts of occupational community, community of practice, online community and social network. It uses as a case study illustration the domain of UK university web site production and specifically a listserv for those involved in it. Different latent occupational communities are explored, and the potential for the listserv to help realize these as an active sense of community is considered. The listserv is not (for most participants) a tight knit community of practice, indeed it fails many criteria for an online community. It is perhaps best conceived as a loose knit network of practice, valued for information, implicit support and for the maintenance of weak ties. Through the analysis the case for using strict definitions of the theoretical concepts is made

Redesigning Information Resources for Digital Natives

The influx of Digital Natives into higher education, combined with the introduction of virtual learning environments as the primary means of interaction between students and universities, will have a transformational effect on learning and on library services. This paper examines the e-book market-place and the main UK responses to it (the Southern Universities Purchasing Consortium’s tender and the JISC E-Books Observatory project). Within this context the innovative measures already taken by Bournemouth University are discussed, as are plans to develop innovative pedagogic frameworks and an e-reading strategy through a Higher Education Academy-funded pathfinder project, Innovative E-Learning with E-Resources (eRes)

Virtual university: is online learning changing higher education?

By allowing students to "attend" class when and where they choose, online learning is changing higher education.Education ; Universities and colleges

SAP-Related Education - Status-Quo and Experience

Integrating Enterprise Systems solutions in the curriculum of not only universities but all types of institutes of higher learning has been a major challenge for nearly ten years. Enterprise Systems education is surprisingly well documented in a number of papers on Information Systems education. However, most publications in this area report on the individual experiences of an institution or an academic. This paper focuses on the most popular Enterprise System - SAP - and summarizes the outcomes of a global survey on the status quo of SAP-related education. Based on feedback of 305 lecturers and more than 700 students, it reports on the main factors of Enterprise Systems education including, critical success factors, alternative hosting models, and students’ perceptions. The results show among others an overall increasing interest in advanced SAP solutions and international collaboration, and a high satisfaction with the concept of using Application Hosting Centers