Enhance Chinese students’ initial motivation through communicative activities based on Cefr and Elp purposes. Case study at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China

This article describes how French language tutors at The University of Nottingham Ningbo China have used different tools to shape the French language curriculum to improve communicative language competences and motivation. The French curriculum used the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages as its organizing principle to promote students’ self-study development and make them aware of the key objectives of the European Language Portfolio

How online video platforms could support China’s independent microfilm (short film) makers and enhance the Chinese film industry

As with the US and EU media landscapes, the Chinese film industry is dominated by platforms similar to Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, most notably in the form of the BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) companies that according to He (2015) are ‘taking over the film industry’. These have been described as ‘imperialistic’ in the monopolization of their respective markets and in the use of their financial muscle to squeeze content creators’ incomes (Jin, 2015). While in the western market this undermines the mainly middle-class professionals who drive creativity (Timberg,2015), in China it limits the opportunities for new talent to grow. This paper will, therefore, give an overview of the Chinese microfilm (online short movies) industry and investigate how Chinese BAT companies and other online video providers could enhance the Chinese film industry by developing infrastructure to direct revenue of microfilms to the creators

International TV series distribution on Chinese digital platforms: marketing strategies and audience engagement

The relationship between online media platforms in China and fan groups is a dynamic one when it comes to the distribution of international TV series and other media content, as media platforms incorporate user-generated content to encourage or foster audience engagement. Through a series of case studies, this article investigates how international TV series are acquired, distributed, marketed and curated on Chinese online video platforms. This helps to identify specific strategies and themes used by these platforms to promote international content and engage users. These marketing techniques, however, are not always as successful as expected, suggesting the need for a closer examination of the types of engagement sought by media platforms, and the ways in which Chinese audiences have responded within their cultural context

Engaging and Empowering Student Representatives as Agents of Change at The University of Nottingham Ningbo China

The Learning Community Forum (LCF) at The University of Nottingham Ningbo China is a student-led forum where views regarding the provision of teaching and learning in general are collected and voiced. While the LCF may potentially identify issues that are otherwise overlooked by university-sanctioned surveys, it is confronted with various challenges. This paper investigates into the challenges and problems as encountered by the LCF student representatives by looking at two case studies: the LCFs of the Language Centre (LC) and of the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering (MMME) at UNNC. The study aimed at identifying areas that worked well and those that needed improvement through interviews with student representatives to provide input for the design of a Nottingham Advantage Award (NAA) module. The NAA, as an instrument to address those identified challenges and problems, provides the following: 1) formal recognition of student contribution to teaching and learning, 2) training and relevant skills to empower student representatives as agents of change, and 3) increased future employability through encouraging active reflection on their experience

HS3 Solvent Aspen Plus Model Validation Using Tiller Pilot Plant Data

The HS3 solvent is an innovative blend for CO2 capture made up of a primary (3-amino-1-propanol, AP) and a tertiary (1-(2-hydroxyethyl) pyrrolidine, PRLD) amine studied in the H2020-funded Realise project. The thermodynamic framework has already been validated using experimental observations. The proposed thermodynamic model has been built into Aspen Plus V11 using the ENTRL (Electrolyte Non-Random Two Liquid) package and, then, finalized by including a mass transfer model and kinetics. The resulting full flowsheet simulation model has been validated using experimental measurements from Tiller semi-industrial pilot plant (Trondheim, Norway). The experimental campaign succeeded in demonstrating lower energy requirement and liquid recirculation compared to conventional monoethanolamine (MEA) at 30% w/w. The present contribution aims at presenting the validation procedure of the developed model over experimental data from the large-scale facility at Tiller and showing that the HS3 solvent is a promising blend to mitigate energy consumption in the CO2 capture process. All KPIs of the CO2 capture plant (CO2 capture rate, CO2 flow released in the stripper and temperature profiles inside the two columns) are predicted with an Absolute Average Relative Deviation (AARD) lower than 5% and with an Average Relative Deviation (ARD) close to zero. This statistical analysis demonstrates that the developed HS3 Aspen model can be used for simulation, energy analysis, and techno-economic assessment purposes

Transmedial projects, scholarly habitus, and critical know-how in a British university in China

‘Transmedial’ education programs are still in their infancy, and what conceptual shifts they require to function and whether they aid in learning and teaching continues to be up for debate. This article evaluates employing a ‘transmedial project’ assessment and incorporating ‘transmedia pedagogies’ to assist students to become creators of knowledge within the cultural milieu of a British University situated in Mainland China. The ‘Transmedial Projects’ are inspired by Transmedia Storytelling, which media scholar Henry Jenkins defines as “the unfolding of stories across multiple media platforms, with each medium making distinctive contributions to our understanding of the world” (2006, 293). This article primarily interrogates group discussions among teaching staff, which draw on participant observation notes (gathered between 2014 - 2016). Student Evaluation of Modules (SEM) and Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) commentary also inform the discussion, as do two focus groups with students. We will also discuss the culturally-specific ‘scholarly habitus’ and move towards ‘critical know-how’ which were the conceptual starting points that inform the transmedial approach which we employed. We subsequently explore a number of issues and benefits which we felt arose from our implementation of this transmedial approach. For example, while some students ‘reverse-engineered’ projects to fit taught theories and perpetuate a tradition of teacher-led training, there was also the emergence of more autonomous learning accomplished by ‘thinking through making’

Students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover

This article reports on an undergraduate software engineering project in which, over a period of two years, four student teams from different cohorts developed a note-taking app for four academic clients at the students’ own university. We investigated how projects involving internal clients can give students the benefits of engaging in real software development while also giving them experience of a student-staff collaboration that has its own benefits for students, academics, and the university more broadly. As the university involved is a Sino-Foreign university located in China, where most students are Chinese and most teaching staff are not, this ‘student as co-producer’ approach interacts with another feature of the project: cultural distance. Based on analysis of notes, reports, interviews, and focus groups, we recommend that students should be provided with communicative strategies for dealing with academics as clients; universities should develop policies on ownership of student-staff collaborations; and projects should include a formalised handover process. This article can serve as guidance for educators considering a ‘students as co-producers’ approach for software development projects

Identité, altération de l identité, métamorphoses et thématiques transsexuelles

L idée centrale de cette thèse est que l on peut considérer la littérature de la métamorphose comme une représentation de l identité. Sur la base de cette idée, l objectif de cette étude est de donner une description à la fois historique, culturelle et anthropologique de cette littérature où le concept d identité est central et examiné en fonction des contraintes imposées par le changement. L analyse de ces deux problématiques, permanence et changement, nous conduit à découvrir les caractéristiques de la représentation de l identité dans la littérature de la métamorphose langage, corps et regard de l autre et leur rôle dans la construction de l identité. Tout cela permet de répondre à la question centrale de ce travail : de quelle manière les textes à thématique transsexuelle ont modifié le concept d identité et la relation à l autre, par rapport aux textes de la littérature de la métamorphose des XIXe et XXe siècles, en se référant au texte fondateur d Ovide ?The central argument of this dissertation is that it is possible to read the literature of metamorphosis as a representation of identity. Based on this idea, we aim at giving a description of this literature, from historical, cultural and anthropological points of view. The concept of identity is central and analyzed according to the constraints imposed by change. The analysis of the two principal issues, permanence and change, enables us to describe the characteristics of the representation of identity in the literature of metamorphosis language, body and gaze and their role in the structuring of identity. The argument finally make us able to answer the central question of this dissertation: how does transsexual literature change the concept of identity and the relationships with the other as formerly discussed in the literature of metamorphosis in the 19th and 20th centuries, or in relation with Ovid s original text?PARIS3-BU (751052102) / SudocSudocFranceF

Niccolò Bruna's ethical process as social engagement: upholding human stories against a backdrop of globalization

Born in Turin, Italy, Niccolò Bruna is an independent filmmaker and producer who has been experimenting with the expressive tools of documentary-film since attending the EICTV (Escuela Internacional de Cine y Television) in Cuba in 1999. He moved to Barcelona in 2014 adding his name to the Italian phenomenon known as the ‘fuga dei cervelli’ (a “brain drain” that saw thousands of well-educated, creative and innovative Italian people leave the country because of a lack of opportunities, poor working conditions, and high living costs). Associated with this, his growing body of films highlight the effects of moving bodies and shifting identities undergoing, in one form or another, migration in-between different nation states. In this chapter we take the opportunity to view Bruna’s documentary corpus holistically, asking of it what it means to be an ethical documentary filmmaker in the epoch that the Mexican-Argentine philosopher Enrique Dussel calls the age of “globalisation and exclusion.” Certainly, Bruna’s work is that of a global itinerant, foregrounding human-interest stories against a backdrop of prejudicial globalization. Although this demands that he research and record in a radically diverse range of global locations (that now includes Italy, Brazil, India, China, Cuba, and Ethiopia), we can still identify a loose yet consistent series of themes, tropes, and motifs that define his expanding body of heterogeneous (and heteroglossic) work. These can be broadly adumbrated here as being linked to 1) the director’s preference for a dispersed mode of storytelling that leads to a polycentric view of a given milieu or event 2) an ethically “withdrawn” or absented auteur persona, which foregoes any authoritative “voice over” conventions, while allowing framing, editing, and the characters themselves to build the multi-aspectual stories instead; and 3) a tropological favouring of female perspectives and characters with regard to the various events presented