A Social Learning Space Grid for MOOCs: Exploring a FutureLearn Case

Collaborative and social engagement promote active learning through knowledge intensive interactions. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are dynamic and diversified learning spaces with varying factors like flexible time frames, student count, demographics requiring higher engagement and motivation to continue learning and for designers to implement novel pedagogies including collaborative learning activities. This paper looks into available and potential collaborative and social learning spaces within MOOCs and proposes a social learning space grid that can aid MOOC designers to implement such spaces, considering the related requirements. Furthermore, it describes a MOOC case study incorporating three collaborative and social learning spaces and discusses challenges faced. Interesting lessons learned from the case give an insight on which spaces to be implemented and the scenarios and factors to be considered

Opening Online Academic Development Programmes to International Perspectives and Dialogue

Professional development for academic staff in higher education is receiving increasing attention. The focus has been on providing an opportunity for academic staff to enhance their effectiveness in meeting changing needs and roles in higher education. Inherent in this changing role has been meeting the challenges of technology-infused learning environments available for use today. This chapter explores the potential of online academic development programmes to increase collaboration and dialogue amongst participants through integrating opportunities for online interaction. By spotlighting two particular postgraduate programmes in Ireland and Australia, the chapter reports on present experiences of integrating international guests and considers the future of connecting people and technology for academic development in higher education

Reply to the comment by Carmelo Anile on the paper "Complexity analysis of the cerebrospinal fluid pulse waveform during infusion studies"

Veterinary technology is an emerging profession within the veterinary and allied animal health fields in Australia and affords graduates the opportunity to contribute to the small but growing body of literature within this discipline. This study describes the introduction of a contextualised assessment task to develop students’ research capability, competence and confidence in professional writing, and to engage them with the academic publishing process. Students worked in self-selected dyads to author a scientific case report, of publishable standard, based on authentic cases from their clinical practicum. Intrinsic to the task, students attended a series of workshops that explored topics such as critiquing the literature, professional writing styles and oral presentation skills. Assessment was multi-staged with progressive feedback, including peer review, and culminated with students presenting their abstracts at a mock conference. Students reported the task to be an enjoyable and valuable learning experience which improved their competence and confidence in scientific writing; supported by a comparison of previously submitted work. Linking scientific writing skills to clinical practice experiences enhanced learning outcomes and may foster the professionalisation of students within this emerging discipline

Self- and cohort-directed design in research training tutorials for undergraduate researchers: Increasing ownership and relevance to improve learning outcomes

This paper describes and analyses a method of self- and cohort-directed design of research training tutorials for final-year research-oriented undergraduate students at the University of Queensland, Australia. The design methodology centered on a research skills self-assessment document used at the university, and utilized Personal Response System (PRS) technology to gather the cohort's design decisions. This paper examines the pedagogical framework for this instructional approach, analyses feedback on the students' experiences and performances, and outlines future further developments for this program

Transcultural and postcolonial explorations: unsettling education

This article is based upon my keynote presentation to the 42nd ANZCIES Conference held at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane from November 26 – 28, 2014. It explores the ways in which an assemblage of transcultural and postcolonial theories allow us to productively unsettle Education at a time when dominant neoliberal discourses risk driving us back to conservative, monocultural, Westernized educational policies. Based on my recent book (Manathunga, 2014), this article summarizes the ways in which I drew upon a bricolage of postcolonial, Indigenous, feminist, social and cultural geography theories (which I have loosely categorized as ‘Southern’ theories) about time, place and knowledge to reimagine intercultural doctoral supervision. It demonstrates how I found that assimilationist approaches to supervision are based upon the absence of history, geography and other cultural knowledge, while transcultural pedagogies are founded upon the centrality of place, the presence of past, present and future time and a deep respect for diverse cultural knowledges.

Intercultural postgraduate supervision: Post-colonial explorations and reflections on Southern positionings

Opportunities for intercultural supervision have increased in recent years with more international enrolments in Western countries and more participation of culturally diverse and indigenous students in research higher degrees. While the burgeoning literature on intercultural supervision is helpful, it does not address the complex and rewarding issues of power and identity that emerge when supervisors and students from different cultures work together. This article argues that post-colonial theory offers critical insights into the pleasures and tensions of intercultural supervision, building upon data collected from an Australian university. It also investigates the possibilities offered to supervisors and students working in the global South to work towards decolonising knowledge and methodologies

Teaching as Performance

This chapter takes up the suite of policies that reflect a growing determination of national governments to manage university teaching as a mechanism for building the alignment between higher education and the economy. It examines the policy trajectories of higher education systems in targeting teaching within quality assessment and funding mechanisms. These mechanisms produce what Stronach, Corbin, McNamara and Warne (2002) call an 'economy of performance'. that attends selectively to those aspects most readily made visible and measurable and, at the same time, re-orients the field from 'teaching' to 'learning'

Informing the Design of Collaborative Activities in MOOCs using Actionable Predictions

With the aim of supporting instructional designers in setting up collaborative learning activities in MOOCs, this paper derives prediction models for student participation in group discussions. The salient feature of these models is that they are built using only data prior to the learning activity, and can thus provide actionable predictions, as opposed to post-hoc approaches common in the MOOC literature. Some learning design scenarios that make use of this actionable information are illustrated

Editorial

It is my pleasure to present the second issue of the second volume of Lifespans & Styles: Undergraduate Working Papers on Intraspeaker Variation. This issue includes six papers from nine authors. The first three papers are by undergraduate students in Dr Laurel MacKenzie’s class, Language Change Across the Lifespan, at the University of Manchester. The fourth and fifth papers come from former students of my class, Sociolinguistics, at the University of Edinburgh, and the sixth paper is based on a University of Edinburgh Honours dissertation. As in the two previous issues, Volume 2, Issue 2 offers a breadth of approaches to the study of within-speaker, or intraspeaker, variation

Improving the PhD through provision of skills training for postgraduate researchers

Postgraduate research degrees in some systems, such as the UK, can be almost exclusively research based, with little formal, compulsory taught component. Government reviews recommend 10 days per year training in generic or transferable skills to ensure the suitability of doctoral graduates for employment. Professional bodies stipulate a commitment to continuing professional development as a requirement for chartered or accredited status. This includes The Chartered Society of Forensic Science and the British Association for Forensic Anthropology, as well as institutions for related fields such as The Institution of Engineering and Technology. Increasing numbers of universities therefore offer skills training programmes. Research students were surveyed to investigate their attendance and views on non-mandatory training courses, and only 33% of students agreed that all training needs were covered by their degree. However, in contrast to the recommended training commitment, over a one-year period students attended a mean of 5.5±0.7 training days, with 12% attending no training. Responses indicate a significant demand for increased training in management, consistent with government reviews; however, this work also indicates that provision of technical training should be addressed.Short course availability, design, delivery, promotion and recognition are discussed in relation to improving student uptake to reduce to the discrepancy between attendance levels and recommendations or aspirations