Building capacity in climate change policy analysis and negotiation: methods and technologies

Capacity building is often cited as the reason “we cannot just pour money into developing countries” and why so many development projects fail because their design does not address local conditions. It is therefore a key technical and political concept in international development. Some of the poorest countries in the world are also some of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Their vulnerability is in part due to a lack of capacity to plan and anticipate the effects of climate change on crops, water resources, urban electricity demand etc. What capacities do these countries lack to deal with climate change? How will they cope? What steps can they take to reduce their vulnerability? This innovative and high-profile research project was part of a larger project (called C3D) and conducted with non-governmental organisations in Senegal, South Africa and Sri Lanka. The research involved several participatory workshops and a questionnaire to all three research centres

Dealing with abstraction: Case study generalisation as a method for eliciting design patterns

Developing a pattern language is a non-trivial problem. A critical requirement is a method to support pattern writers with abstraction, so as they can produce generalised patterns. In this paper, we address this issue by developing a structured process of generalisation. It is important that this process is initiated through engaging participants in identifying initial patterns, i.e. directly dealing with the 'cold-start' problem. We have found that short case study descriptions provide a productive 'way into' the process for participants. We reflect on a 1-year interdisciplinary pan-European research project involving the development of almost 30 cases and over 150 patterns. We provide example cases, detailing the process by which their associated patterns emerged. This was based on a foundation for generalisation from cases with common attributes. We discuss the merits of this approach and its implications for pattern development

Aligning First-Year Academic Learning Experiences at a Small Liberal Arts University

First-year academic experiences in post-secondary education have been widely studied (Pampaka, Williams, & Hutcheson, 2012; Kahu & Nelson, 2018). Rapid expansion of student enrolment has impacted the scope of teaching and learning practices at universities (Zepke, 2018; O’Brien & Iannone, 2017). Much of the focus has been on student success, satisfaction, and retention; however, Brownlee, Walker, Lennox, Exley, and Pearce (2009) suggest that more research on the student learning experience is needed. This organizational improvement plan (OIP) expands on this idea to include pedagogy and course design, as they impact student learning, while exploring institutional identity. Using Bolman and Deal’s (2013) four frames analysis, the steady erosion of first-year teaching and learning practices is attributed to pressures both internal and external to the University. Using appreciative inquiry and Kotter’s eight-stage change process model, two empirically supported approaches for change implementation are discussed. After gauging the change readiness of the institution through a critical organizational analysis and using the plan, do, study, act model, two solutions are proposed: 1) authoring Wise Practices and Considerations for Teaching First-Year Courses document and 2) developing professional learning communities. A systematic and strategic change plan is presented, accompanied by a communication plan approach based on the works of Cawsey, Deszca, and Ingols (2016) and Husain (2013). The full range leadership approach to foster transformational leadership is discussed as an approach for implementing the change plan. The OIP proposes a series of recommendations and future considerations that can be adopted by other institutions as a platform for first-year teaching and learning renewal

Tribes & Cultures – Cross-disciplinary Communication: Pinpointing the Issues for eLearning

Effective communication and co-operation across disciplines is needed to create and deploy eLearning systems so that they contribute to enhanced outcomes for students and teachers. Using a Grounded Theory methodology we probed the cultures of the participating tribes: the Educationalists; the Instructional Designers; and the Information Technology Specialists. Six salient themes emerged from the semi-structured interview data of respondents selected from the three tribes, each of which is described in detail in this article. These themes give rise to Six Rules of Thumb to help promote fruitful communication and interaction among the tribes and cultures of eLearning system stakeholders, and thus result in improved eLearning systems

Accessible lifelong learning at higher education:outcomes and lessons Learned at two different PilotSites in the EU4ALL Project

[EN] The EU4ALL project (IST-FP6-034778) has developed a general framework to address the needs of accessible lifelong learning at Higher Education level consisting of several standards-based interoperable components integrated into an open web service architecture aimed at supporting adapted interaction to guarantee students' accessibility needs. Its flexibility has supported the project implementation at several sites with different settings and various learning management systems. Large-scale evaluations involving hundreds of users, considering diverse disability types, and key staff roles have allowed obtaining valuable lessons with respect to "how to adopt or enhance eLearning accessibility" at university. The project was evaluated at four higher education institutions, two of the largest in Europe and two mediumsized. In this paper, we focus on describing the implementation and main conclusions at the largest project evaluation site (UNED), which was involved in the project from the beginning, and thus, in the design process, and a medium-sized university that adopted the EU4ALL approach (UPV). This implies dealing with two well-known open source learning environments (i.e. dotLRN and Sakai), and considering a wide variety of stakeholders and requirements. Thus the results of this evaluation serve to illustrate the coverage of both the approach and developments.The authors would like to thank the European Commission for the financial support of the EU4ALL project (IST-2006-034478). The work at aDeNu is also supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (TIN2008-06862-C04-01/TSI “A2UN@”). Authors would also like to thank all the EU4ALL partners for their collaboration.Boticario, JG.; Rodriguez-Ascaso, A.; Santos, OC.; Raffenne, E.; Montandon, L.; Roldán Martínez, D.; Buendía García, F. (2012). Accessible lifelong learning at higher education:outcomes and lessons Learned at two different PilotSites in the EU4ALL Project. Journal of Universal Computer Science. 18(1):62-85. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/37117628518