Coping with a changing world: the UK Open University approach to teaching ICT

The rapid pace of change in the ICT field has affected all HE providers, but for the UK Open University (UKOU), used to print-based courses lasting eight years or more, it has been a particular challenge. This paper will present some of the ways the UKOU has been coping with this problem by discussing the design of three courses, the first developed almost a decade ago. All three are distance learning courses that are either core or optional in a variety of bachelors' degrees, including the BSc programmes in: Information and Communication Technology; IT and Computing; and Technology; as well as the BEng (Hons) engineering programme. The first course, Information and Communication Technology: people and interactions is a level 2 (second year undergraduate) course first presented in 2002. It is predominately a print-based course with an eight year lifetime. The second course Networked Living: exploring information and communication technologies is a level 1 (first year undergraduate) course first presented some three-and-a-half years later in 2005. It is expected to have a course life of five years, and uses a mix of print-based (60%) and computer-based (40%) material. Both these courses use assignments as key tools for annual updating. The third course, Keeping ahead in ICT is aimed primarily at equipping students with advanced information searching and evaluation skills that will serve them well in professional life, and is presented at level 3 (final year undergraduate). It was first presented in 2007 and has an expected course life of 8 years. It uses much less print than in most OU courses, and has a greater reliance on third-party resources such as newspaper, conference and journal articles, websites, and other electronic resources. Some elements in each block are designed to change from year to year, in order to retain currency. Finally, the paper will look forward to the development of a new level 2 course with an expected first presentation in 2010, drawing out the lessons learned about course updating, and predicting the approach that the course team may tak

Ethical decision-making, passivity and pharmacy

Background: Increasing interest in empirical ethics has enhanced understanding of healthcare professionals' ethical problems and attendant decision-making. A four-stage decision-making model involving ethical attention, reasoning, intention and action offers further insights into how more than reasoning alone may contribute to decision-making. Aims: To explore how the four-stage model can increase understanding of decision-making in healthcare and describe the decision-making of an under-researched professional group. Methods: 23 purposively sampled UK community pharmacists were asked, in semi-structured interviews, to describe ethical problems in their work and how they were resolved. Framework analysis of transcribed interviews utilised the four decision-making stages, together with constant comparative methods and deviant-case analysis. Results: Pharmacists were often inattentive and constructed problems in legal terms. Ethical reasoning was limited, but examples of appeals to consequences, the golden rule, religious faith and common-sense experience emerged. Ethical intention was compromised by frequent concern about legal prosecution. Ethical inaction was common, typified by pharmacists' failure to report healthcare professionals' bad practices, and ethical passivity emerged to describe these negative examples of the four decision-making stages. Pharmacists occasionally described more ethically active decision-making, but this often involved ethical uncertainty. Discussion: The four decision-making stages are a useful tool in considering how healthcare professionals try to resolve ethical problems in practice. They reveal processes often ignored in normative theories, and their recognition and the emergence of ethical passivity indicates the complexity of decision-making in practice. Ethical passivity may be deleterious to patients' welfare, and concerns emerge about improving pharmacists' ethical training and promoting ethical awareness and responsibility

A new prescription for empirical ethics research in pharmacy: a critical review of the literature

Empirical ethics research is increasingly valued in bioethics and healthcare more generally, but there remain as yet under-researched areas such as pharmacy, despite the increasingly visible attempts by the profession to embrace additional roles beyond the supply of medicines. A descriptive and critical review of the extant empirical pharmacy ethics literature is provided here. A chronological change from quantitative to qualitative approaches is highlighted in this review, as well as differing theoretical approaches such as cognitive moral development and the four principles of biomedical ethics. Research with pharmacy student cohorts is common, as is representation from American pharmacists. Many examples of ethical problems are identified, as well as commercial and legal influences on ethical understanding and decision making. In this paper, it is argued that as pharmacy seeks to develop additional roles with concomitant ethical responsibilities, a new prescription is needed for empirical ethics research in pharmacy - one that embraces an agenda of systematic research using a plurality of methodological and theoretical approaches to better explore this under-researched discipline

Brief Note: A Currant New to Ohio: Ribes Triste Pall.

Author Institution: Botany Department, Cleveland Museum of Natural Histor

Analysis and correlation of the test data from an advanced technology rotor system

Comparisons were made of the performance and blade vibratory loads characteristics for an advanced rotor system as predicted by analysis and as measured in a 1/5 scale model wind tunnel test, a full scale model wind tunnel test and flight test. The accuracy with which the various tools available at the various stages in the design/development process (analysis, model test etc.) could predict final characteristics as measured on the aircraft was determined. The accuracy of the analyses in predicting the effects of systematic tip planform variations investigated in the full scale wind tunnel test was evaluated

Pennsylvanian Stratigraphy in the Southern Wasatch Mountains, Utah

The area under consideration has a dimension of 8 miles east-west and 4 miles north-south, and includes the canyons of Spring Creek and Hobble Creek, Utah County, Utah. These streams flow off the west flank of a southern portion of the Wasatch Range, and have cut canyons to a depth of over 3,000 feet, exposing sections of upper Paleozoic sediments. Pennsylvanian rocks in the vicinity of the southern Wasatch Mountains have received little attention from stratigraphers. In this paper an attempt is made to describe the sequence of Pennsylvanian rocks in the region

Polarity determination in breast tissue: desmosomal adhesion, myoepithelial cells, and laminin 1

In all epithelial organs, apicobasal polarity determines functional integrity and contributes to the maintenance of tissue and organ specificity. In the breast, the functional unit is a polar double-layered tube consisting of luminal epithelial cells surrounded by myoepithelial cells and a basement membrane. It is far from clear how this double-layered structure is established and how polarity is maintained. Two recent papers have shed some light onto this intriguing problem in mammary gland biology. The results point to desmosomes and laminin 1 as having crucial roles. However, some questions remain

Low-speed inducers for cryogenic upper-stage engines

Two-phase, low-speed hydrogen and oxygen inducers driven by electric motors and applicable to the tug engine were designed and constructed. The oxygen inducer was tested in liquid and two-phase oxygen. Its head and flow performance were approximately as designed, and it was able to accelerate to full speed in 3 seconds and produce its design flow and head. The analysis of the two-phase data indicated that the inducer was able to pump with vapor volume fractions in excess of 60 percent. The pump met all of its requirements (duration of runs and number of starts) to demonstrate its mechanical integrity

Simulation of seismic events induced by CO2 injection at In Salah, Algeria

Date of Acceptance: 18/06/2015 Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank the operators of the In Salah JV and JIP, BP, Statoil and Sonatrach, for providing the data shown in this paper, and for giving permission to publish. Midland Valley Exploration are thanked for the use of their Move software for geomechanical restoration. JPV is a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Early Career Research Fellow (Grant NE/I021497/1) and ALS is funded by a NERC Partnership Research Grant (Grant NE/I010904).Peer reviewedPublisher PD