Distributed Teaching

The central phenomenon that this entry seeks to explore is that people with the job title of “teacher” are almost never the only teachers in a learning transaction, and autodidacts are almost never solely responsible for their own learning. As well as designated teachers and students, text book authors, editors, illustrators, exam boards, curriculum designers, governments, timetablers, classroom designers, architects, learning management system managers, counselors, career advisors, makers of YouTube videos, discussion forums, friends, family, and very many other individuals and groups can and do play an active and often highly significant teaching role in guiding, supporting, and managing the learning process. Online learning, especially when it involves a team of specialists working on a course, makes the distributed nature of the process very visible, and the relative autonomy of online learners makes it more likely that they will seek additional or alternative supports for learning, but virtually all conventional in-person teaching involves multiple teachers too, from peers to textbook authors and, most especially, the learners themselves

Integrating GHG dynamics in biomass-based products LCA

International audienc

Transactional distance in a blended learning environment

This paper presents a case study that describes and discusses the problems encountered during the design and implementation of a blended learning course, largely taught online through a web-based learning environment. Based on Moore's theory of transactional distance, the course was explicitly designed to have dialogue at its heart. However, the reality of systemic behaviours caused by delivering such a course within a group of conventional further and higher educational institutions has led to an entirely unanticipated reversion to structure, with unpleasant consequences for both quality and quantity of dialogue. The paper looks at some of the reasons for this drift, and suggests that some of the disappointing results (in particular in terms of the quality of the students' experience and associated poor retention) can be attributed to the lack of dialogue, and consequent increase in transactional distance. It concludes with a description and evaluation of steps currently being taken to correct this behaviour

Quelques faits concernant les organismes génétiquement modifiés produits et exploités jusqu'ici

International audienceEssayer « d’aller plus nettement au fond des choses, de clarifier tenants et aboutissants, et d’inciter au débat », disait Patrick Legrand dans son édito du n° 531. L’article qui suit s’inscrit parfaitement dans cette nouvelle ligne éditoriale du Courrier. À première vue, il est vrai, cette compilation de faits d’origines diverses et d’apparence hétéroclite pourrait laisser supposer l’inverse. C’est pourtant, justement, par ce rapprochement de faits scientifiques, technologiques, industriels, juridiques, sociaux que se dessinent sous nos yeux les contours d’un objet socio-technique complexe, les OGM. D’aucuns trouveront cette compilation incomplète et subjective, certes ; mais entre une approche unilatérale, même exhaustive et objective, et celle proposée ici, même imparfaite, Le Courrier de l’Environnement de l’INRA préférera toujours celle qui met la science dans la société

The dialogue in Italian in the sixteenth century

In this study I propose to make what will merely be a beginning in the investigation of a subject of considerable importance in the history of Renaissance literature in Italy. By "the Dialogue" I mean that peculiar literary form which consists in the setting down of a real or imaginary conversation between two or more persons - exclusive of dramatic dialogue deliberately written for acting purposes. This form certainly has always enjoyed some popularity among the world's writers, from earliest literature down to such modern authors as Walter Savage Landor with his Imaginary Conversations, but nowhere at any time has it flourished so vigorously and so prolifically as it did in Italy in the sixteenth century. Curiously enough, it appears to be in that century only that it was cultivated to such an extent in Italian. A number of earlier dialogues were written in Italy, but written usually in Latin. A few dialogues were written in Italian later than that century, among the most important being those of Galileo Galilei and those of Leopardi (the Operette Morali). But within the limits of the sixteenth century were published dialogues by many of the most noted writers of the times, as well as many more by authors who nowadays are almost or entirely forgotten. It is with this great spate of dialogues that I wish to deal.Besides this limitation of time, I must impose yet another limitation on my subject: I shall deal only with the dialogue in prose. This is a minor restriction, verse dialogues being rare, but one in which I am upheld by no less an authority than Tasso, who, in his study of the art of dialogue, recommends prose as the only fit medium for this form (although he himself wrote a few dialogues in verse). And if we consider that dialogue should be a reproduction of conversation, this recommendation is logical.First of all, then, I present a brief discussion of the causes and extent and variety of the prose dialogue in Italian in the sixteenth century; then a list of the writers of dialogues, their works, and, so far as possible, some indication of their significance

Lost in social space: Information retrieval issues in Web 1.5

This paper is concerned with the application of Web 2.0 technologies within a conventional institutional learning setting. After considering the affordances of Web 2.0 technologies vs Web 1.0 technologies and a framework for viewing social software in terms of groups, networks and collectives, we describe an instance of trying to use Elgg, a rich social application, to support a distance-taught course within a conventional face-to-face university. A number of issues are identified, some of which are related to Elgg’s interface but the biggest of which relate to the tensions between top-down and bottom-up control and the shifting contexts of personal, group, network and collective modes of engagement. These problems suggest that, in their current form, social technologies pose intractable difficulties in information organisation and retrieval when used for formal learning. We propose a range of solutions that make use of the wisdom of the crowd combined with human intervention. This paper addresses and extends themes explored in SIRTEL 07