Cost‐effective support for university students learning via the Web?

Academics and other knowledge-owners are creating millions of Webpages that students can use. Universities are teaching more students off-campus because the costs of on-campus provision cannot be met. Offering courses via the Web seems an attractive alternative. Academics (and students) want the courses to be high quality. Yet quality is often lacking. À course outline gets approval, then aims, objectives and content change rapidly during the teaching. Students' and tutors' inputs are seldom monitored. Students join conferences only to discover that few classmates participate actively and the tutors' advice is hard to get. Web courses risk acquiring a poor reputation

A renaissance of audio: Podcasting approaches for learning on campus and beyond

In this paper, we urge practitioners to consider the potential of podcasting for teaching, learning and assessment. Our perspective is drawn from research on IMPALA (Informal Mobile Podcasting And Learning Adaptation), which showed that there is a range of successful podcasting approaches for students on campus. After briefly surveying the background literature, we provide examples of three approaches, from three different universities: 1) helping students to prepare presentations and assessed work, 2) offering feedback from staff on students' assessed work, and 3) assisting undergraduates to make the transition from school or college to university. Finally, we would like readers to consider how podcasting approaches like these can be converted for distance education. On the evidence available to date from IMPALA and other studies, we feel confident in predicting that podcasting will be integrated more and more into distance education, to the immense benefit of the long distance learner

Programmed learning in Central African contexts

A Faculty Occasional Paper on programmed learning in Central Africa.The general history of the development of the programmed learning movement does not need to be rehearsed in full in a publication of this nature. The pioneering work of Sidney L. Pressey in the 1920's drew attention to the possibilities of devices which could afford assistance to the teacher by providing self correction. The work of B. F. Skinner at Harvard, culminating in the publication of his article, “The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching”, in 1954, marked the intrusion of operant conditioning into the classroom. The contribution made by Norman A. Crowder towards the establishment of intrinsic programming, particularly for use in machines, must also be noted. Since 1954, programmed learning as a teaching technique has become the subject of experimental work in most Western countries. Whilst the United States led the way in the early years, educationists in Russia, Great Britain, Western Germany, Australia and many other parts of the world have wished to test the claim made for programmed learning that it is the technique which best applies the basic principles of psychology in the classroom. In Great Britain, for example, research of some kind in the field of programmed learning is proceeding at almost every University. The Government has recognised the potential of the technique by making a considerable grant for the establishment of a Documentation Centre at Birmingham University

Reviews

Seels, Barbara B. and Richey, Rita C, Instructional Technology: The Definition and Domains of the Field, Washington DC, Association for Educational Communications and Technology, 1994. ISBN 0–89240–072–2

Editorial for proceedings papers:ALT-C 2012 Conference Proceedings - A confrontation with reality

Hawkridge, D., Verjans, S., & Wilson, G. (Eds.) (2012). A confrontation with reality - Proceedings of the 19th Association for Learning Technology Conference (ALT-C 2012). September, 11-14, 2012, Manchester, UK.Conference proceedings. Also published as Supplement to Research in Learning Technology, 20. doi:10.3402/rlt.v20i0.1920