The global campus project: using e-learning to extend access to new polpulations of students.

The Global Campus (GC) project started in May 1999 between the School of Computing Science (SCS) of Middlesex University (MU) and the Regional Information Technology and Software Engineering Centre (RITSEC) in Cairo[1]. RITSEC were keen to further develop their collaboration with Middlesex University and it was decided to launch a complete MSc programme in Distance Learning (DL) mode. This was in line with the University strategy to expand its provision overseas to meet the vast demand for British higher education abroad by offering e-learning supported programmes to provide access to students who would otherwise be unable to benefit due to the prohibitive costs of studying in the UK. At the time there was a worldwide demand for IT/Computing academic qualifications offering good employment opportunities. Professor Mark Woodman, who joined the School from Open University, played a key role in specifying the pedagogy, determining the structure of the Web-based material and choosing the technology for delivering and implementing the e-learning programmes. During the course of the project, GC programmes were delivered to students at seven collaborative partner institutions located in five countries: China, Cyprus, Egypt, Hong Kong and Singapore. These programmes were part of the portfolio of the Business Information Systems (BIS) Academic group of the SCS and the same programmes were also delivered to students at our London campus. All programmes employed the same course management, assessment and quality control procedures so that all students had an equivalent learning experience. These procedures complied with the standards laid down by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) of the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE). The paper is an attempt to analyse our experience once the project came to an end with the start of the Academic year 2007/8

Using e-Learning to extend access to new populations of students and reduce cost of programme delivery

This paper evaluates the Global Campus e-learning programmes offered by the School of Computing. The programmes are delivered to students at seven collaborative partner institutions located in China, Cyprus, Egypt, Hong Kong and Singapore. The same programmes are also delivered to students at our London campus. All programmes employ the same course management assessment and quality-control procedures so that all students ahave an equivalent learning experience. These procedures comply with the standards laid down by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) of the Higher Education Funding Council of of England (HEFCE). Recently a sustainability analysis was completed correlating programme income with staff salary costs for all programmes offered by the University. Using these figures we have been able to estimate the benefits of delivering the programmes with Global Campus e-learning materials in terms both of learning enhancement and cost reduction

E-learning in developing countries: suggesting a methodology for enabling computer-aided assessment

Traditional education has shifted towards new methods of teaching and learning through the proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICT). The continuous advances in technology enable the realisation of a more distributed structure of knowledge transfer. This becomes critically important for developing countries that lack the resources and infrastructure for implementing cutting-edge education practices. The two main themes of technology in education for developing countries focus either on aspects of technological support for traditional methods and localised processes, or on the investigation of how such technologies may assist distance learning. Commonly such efforts are threefold, relating to content delivery, assessment and provision of feedback. This paper focuses on issues regarding the implementation of e-learning in developing countries and particularly those aspects of computer-aided assessment (CAA) that could be tailored to satisfy the needs of a limited educational infrastructure. The primary contribution of this paper is a proposed methodology for supporting both formative and summative CAA

Global Campus: learning to walk with webbed feet

Universities wishing to expand their provision beyond their local catchment areas need to consider whether to bring the students to the tuition or take the tuition to the students. Current-day educational and information technologies make the latter option a much more achievable prospect than it has been in the past. Nevertheless, careful consideration needs to be given to the nature of the distance-learning students' learning experiences and the extent to which these may be comparable with those of the local students. These matters are considered in this paper against the background of the Global Campus project whereby Middlesex University's School of Computing Science sought to take its initial steps in distance-learning provision

Electrical Properties of Phosphate Glasses

Investigation of the electrical properties of phosphate glasses where transition metal oxide such as iron oxide is the network former and network modifier is presented. Phosphate glasses containing iron are electronically conducting glasses where the polaronic conduction is due to the electron hopping from low to high iron valence state. The identification of structural defects caused by ion/polaron migration, the analysis of dipolar states and electrical conductivity in iron phosphate glasses containing various alkali and mixed alkali ions was performed on the basis of the impedance spectroscopy (IS). The changes in electrical conductivity from as-quenched phosphate glass to fully crystallized glass (glass-ceramics) by IS are analyzed. A change in the characteristic features of IS follows the changes in glass and crystallized glass network. Using IS, the contribution of glass matrix, crystallized grains and grain boundary to the total electrical conductivity for iron phosphate glasses was analyzed. It was shown that decrease in conductivity is caused by discontinuities in the conduction pathways as a result of the disruption of crystalline network where two or more crystalline phases are formed. Also, phosphate-based glasses offer a unique range of biomaterials, as they form direct chemical bonding with hard/soft tissue. The surface charges of bioactive glasses are recognized to be the most important factors in determining biological responses. The improved bioactivity of the bioactive glasses as a result of the effects of the surface charges generated by electrical polarization is discussed

The Effects of Silica on the Properties of Vitreous Enamels

Ground coat enamels for low carbon steel that contain silica as a mill addition have been developed to study the changes of their properties. Acid-resistant commercial enamel where silica addition was varied from 0 to 10.0 wt % was used for this investigation. The effects of the addition on the corrosion resistance, thermal properties, electrical properties, and mechanical adherence of the enamel to low carbon steel were studied. The corrosion resistance of the steel enameled coupons was tested using a salt spray (fog) apparatus for time periods reaching 168 h at room temperature. It was found that, although the density was not affected, the adherence decreased with an increase in silica content. As expected, the silica addition decreased the coefficient of thermal expansion, which is directly related to the increasing stress between the glass and steel in accordance with the adherence results. A mill addition of 7.5 wt% of silica to the samples was sufficient to obtain adequate enamel adherence and good corrosion resistance. Furthermore, the addition of silica influenced the electrical conductivity and dielectric permittivity measurements at room temperature and the conductivity measured in a wide frequency range (1 Hz-1 MHz). The dielectric permittivity measured at 1 MHz showed decrease after the addition of up to 7.5 wt% of silica

Model for analysis of environmental impacts of production processes in flooring industry based on LCA

Proizvodnja podnih obloga je, s aspekta utjecaja na okoliš, vrlo kompleksan proces zbog velikog broja utjecajnih parametara - različitih kemijskih emisija, neminovnosti otpada, većeg broja utjecajnih fizičkih veličina poput buke i vibracija, prašine i zračenja, zatim potrošnje energije, recikljivosti itd. Zanimanje za primjenu LCA u području proizvodnje podnih obloga traje već skoro dva desetljeća i postaje sve intenzivnije. Tijekom tog razdoblja evidentirani su različiti pristupi i pokušaji realizacije LCA u ovom širokom području. U ovom radu predstavljen je opći model za ocjenjivanje utjecaja na okoliš procesa proizvodnje podnih obloga zasnovan na LCA. Razvijeni model predstavlja doprinos unapređenju stanja u području i dodatni korak ka standardizaciji LCA analiza u području proizvodnje podnih obloga. Verifikacija je realizirana kroz studiju slučaja utemeljenog na realnom industrijskom postrojenju za proizvodnju PVC podnih obloga.The production of floor coverings, in terms of environmental impact, is a very complex process due to a large number of influential parameters – various chemical emissions, inevitability of waste, a great number of influential physical quantities such as noise and vibration, dust and radiation, energy consumption, recyclability, etc. Interest in the application of LCA within the production of floor coverings has been present for almost two decades and is intensely increasing. During this period different approaches and attempts of LCA implementation have been recorded in this broad field. This paper presents a general model for environmental impact assessment of the production process of floor coverings based on LCA. The developed model represents a contribution to the improvement and a further step towards the standardization of LCA analysis in this field of floor covering production. Verification has been carried out through a case study based on an industrial facility which produces PVC floor coverings

Habitable Climates: The Influence of Eccentricity

In the outer regions of the habitable zone, the risk of transitioning into a globally frozen "snowball" state poses a threat to the habitability of planets with the capacity to host water-based life. We use a one-dimensional energy balance climate model (EBM) to examine how obliquity, spin rate, orbital eccentricity, and ocean coverage might influence the onset of such a snowball state. For an exoplanet, these parameters may be strikingly different from the values observed for Earth. Since, for constant semimajor axis, the annual mean stellar irradiation scales with (1-e^2)^(-1/2), one might expect the greatest habitable semimajor axis (for fixed atmospheric composition) to scale as (1-e^2)^(-1/4). We find that this standard ansatz provides a reasonable lower bound on the outer boundary of the habitable zone, but the influence of obliquity and ocean fraction can be profound in the context of planets on eccentric orbits. For planets with eccentricity 0.5, our EBM suggests that the greatest habitable semimajor axis can vary by more than 0.8 AU (78%!) depending on obliquity, with higher obliquity worlds generally more stable against snowball transitions. One might also expect that the long winter at an eccentric planet's apoastron would render it more susceptible to global freezing. Our models suggest that this is not a significant risk for Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars since such planets are buffered by the thermal inertia provided by oceans covering at least 10% of their surface. Since planets on eccentric orbits spend much of their year particularly far from the star, such worlds might turn out to be especially good targets for direct observations with missions such as TPF-Darwin. Nevertheless, the extreme temperature variations achieved on highly eccentric exo-Earths raise questions about the adaptability of life to marginally or transiently habitable conditions.Comment: References added, text and figures updated, accepted by Ap

Investigation of the Jahn-Teller Transition in TiF3 using Density Functional Theory

We use first principles density functional theory to calculate electronic and magnetic properties of TiF3 using the full potential linearized augmented plane wave method. The LDA approximation predicts a fully saturated ferromagnetic metal and finds degenerate energy minima for high and low symmetry structures. The experimentally observed Jahn-Teller phase transition at Tc=370K can not be driven by the electron-phonon interaction alone, which is usually described accurately by LDA. Electron correlations beyond LDA are essential to lift the degeneracy of the singly occupied Ti t2g orbital. Although the on-site Coulomb correlations are important, the direction of the t2g-level splitting is determined by the dipole-dipole interactions. The LDA+U functional predicts an aniferromagnetic insulator with an orbitally ordered ground state. The input parameters U=8.1 eV and J=0.9 eV for the Ti 3d orbital were found by varying the total charge on the TiF$_6^{2-}$ ion using the molecular NRLMOL code. We estimate the Heisenberg exchange constant for spin-1/2 on a cubic lattice to be approximately 24 K. The symmetry lowering energy in LDA+U is about 900 K per TiF3 formula unit.Comment: 7 pages, 9 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.