Retention and progression of online global students: a pilot approach

Higher education institutions are making increasing use of online course delivery as part of their standard offering. E-learning can support the move toward global student bodies and the possibility of more responsive teaching and learning environments. The Open University Business School has offered online distance learning courses for over 10 years and supports thousands of students each year. As student numbers have grown, the capacity to provide truly personalised academic, pastoral and administrative student support is clearly affected. This case study describes a pilot approach to delivering more intelligent and proactive intervention to students registered on an online, open entry, level 3 undergraduate programme. We briefly outline the programme and existing comparative data on known differences between the retention and final achievements of students receiving support solely online compared to those receiving a more traditional blended means of course delivery and tuition support. The study goes on to describe the developing work of the pilot team in setting in place a number of key interventions thought most likely to support the student through their study journey and optimise their chances of completion. The Open University in the UK, like other HE institutions, knows a great deal about its students before they start to study, and, perhaps like others, has not always fully exploited this information. The pilot team is now using profiling data to identify key student characteristics which suggest that additional pre-course contact would be helpful. This may be a discussion of how we might best support the student whilst on course, or may include advice about transferring to another course more suited to their experience or circumstances given the open entry nature of the courses.Systems have been developed and refined which allow the team to track student behaviour once the course has begun, and since the courses within the pilot make heavy use of a Moodle-based Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), there is much that is transparent to us. Each course has a number of defined milestones which have been agreed to be key or at least facilitative to the students' eventual completion and success. Our systems help us to work closely with course tutors and students to trigger additional contacts from the support team. Other support activities are designed to complement this ongoing work and will be described more fully in the paper. It is crucial that all of the work has the potential for automation and scalability – currently the pilot team is working with over 800 students in around 30 countries. This paper aims to demonstrate that the piloted levels of intervention are both achievable in the long term and cost-effective. Results from the first 2 pilot presentations will be shared alongside results from a comparator cohort

Eighteenth-century Quakerism and the rehabilitation of James Nayler, seventeenth-century radical

Although the first Quakers aligned with history superfluous tradition, detrimental to true appreciation of the inward voice of God, by the early eighteenth century they had produced their first histories as a defence against Anglican allegations of continued disorder and enthusiasm. At the same time, pressure to publish the collected works of James Nayler, a convicted blasphemer, proved particularly contentious. Leo Damrosch has sought to understand what Nayler thought he was doing in the 1650s; this study considers what motivated later Quakers to censor his works and accounts of his life, and demonstrates how English Friends in particular sought to revise the popular image of Quakerism by rewriting history

A Catholic Looks at Quakerism

In this article Michael Mullet first sketches the well-advertised dissimilarities between Catholicism, the epitome, for many, of \u27conservative\u27 Christianity, and Quakerism, which brought to a high point of development the religious radicalism implicit in the Reformation. However, Mullett argues that, underlyingly, relatively superficial dissonances over such issues as church order and (more significantly) sacrament, Tridentine Catholicism and Quakerism shared, in opposition to the Reformation\u27s key principles of justification by faith alone and its corollary predestination, an abiding, soteriological and anthropological acceptance (grounded in the Epistle of James) of the role of free will and of justification and sanctification by works as well as faith and grace. Comparisons of texts from Robert Barclay (1676) and the Canons of the Council of Trent (1545) sustain his argument

Consensual Discourse and the Ideal of Caring

In this paper, I discuss the extent to which caring for others involves relinquishing our own perspective and assuming the viewpoint of the one for which we care. I argue that there is no need to shed one's perspective, but that even in contexts in which the cared-for is the victim of political oppression there are occasions when caring might call for confrontation.Dans cette communication, je discute le point de vue selon lequel être bienveillant envers son prochain implique l’abandon de sa propre perspective pour adopter le point de vue de celui ou celle qui fait l’objet de cette bienveillance. Selon moi, il n’est pas nécessaire d’abandonner sa propre perspective, et il me semble que même lorsque le bénéficiaire de notre bienveillance est victime d’oppression politique, il est parfois nécessaire de le ou la confronter avec une autre perspective