Facilitating Institutional Curriculum Change in Higher Education

This paper discusses the strategies and processes used within one Higher Education institution to support curriculum design and, change the culture around this activity. The paper provides a brief discussion of two institution wide projects related to curriculum design that have been taking place over the last few years and have been used to support this area of development. The discussion will then identify some of the issues around terminology and barriers to staff engaging in curriculum design as well as processes that had been used by staff and then move to discussing the strategies used to support this activity. Throughout the paper there will also be reference to comments gained from peers during the workshop that took place at the Eighteenth International Conference on Learning in Mauritius in July 2011

Developing a community to disseminate good practice

This paper discusses the development, implementation and evaluation of a fellowship scheme to create a community of practice for enhancing learning and teaching set up in February 2010. The decision to use a community of practice approach is outlined along with how the initial scheme and members were chosen. There is then some discussion of a survey undertaken with the first group of fellows and how they would like the scheme to operate, what they feel they have to offer and what they would like to gain from the scheme. There is discussion of the activities undertaken to date and some of those proposed for the future. Further evaluation of the scheme is proposed at the end of the first year with both existing and new fellows

Reflexive Learning and Performative Failure

In this paper we emphasize the importance of context for student learning. Based on reflective logs and interview data, we explore how students learn outside of the classroom as they undertake an experiential dissertation project. We identify three different forms of reflexive learning and critique, all triggered by some form of performative failure; scholarly critique, engaged critique and engaged action. Drawing on Butler’s theory of performativity we illustrate how reflexivity is not purely the action of any individual student, rather it is a practice that is co-created within a certain context. As such, we contest individualistic understandings of reflexivity and encourage a careful consideration of the places students and managers are encouraged to be reflexive

Lessons in curriculum design and institutional change

Curriculum design and development can be undertaken either as a small or larger scale activity but is often within one or two faculty or school areas. Two projects that the presenters are involved in have been institution wide activities. This has meant that the scale of the projects is large but also diverse and leading to the need for change of both practice and culture. One of the projects which is funded by JISC on curriculum design has been focused on exploring the values and principles staff use when developing their curriculum and the models or frameworks used to support the development. This has been to identify if there are several approaches used within the institution or some key areas that all use. There has also been a desire to explore how staff would like this process to be undertaken and what support could be provided. The other project has been to undertake a review of our virtual learning environment and using stakeholder views and requirements introduce a new strategic learning environment (SLE). The project has then examined the development of using this SLE over the first year and through pilots has looked at how staff have found this change and what support they have required. Through both these projects there has been some pitfalls, challenges and opportunities which the presenters believe can provide some lessons for others. Some of pitfalls, challenges and opportunities were expected but others could not have been predicted. Sharing these lessons will enable some tips to be given on how to avoid some of the issues that occurred for us. During the presentation there will be an opportunity for the audience to consider how the lessons and tips may be useful to them but also to ask us questions

Evaluating the reliability of NAND multiplexing with PRISM

Probabilistic-model checking is a formal verification technique for analyzing the reliability and performance of systems exhibiting stochastic behavior. In this paper, we demonstrate the applicability of this approach and, in particular, the probabilistic-model-checking tool PRISM to the evaluation of reliability and redundancy of defect-tolerant systems in the field of computer-aided design. We illustrate the technique with an example due to von Neumann, namely NAND multiplexing. We show how, having constructed a model of a defect-tolerant system incorporating probabilistic assumptions about its defects, it is straightforward to compute a range of reliability measures and investigate how they are affected by slight variations in the behavior of the system. This allows a designer to evaluate, for example, the tradeoff between redundancy and reliability in the design. We also highlight errors in analytically computed reliability bounds, recently published for the same case study

Carbonate Formation in Non-Aqueous Environments by Solid-Gas Carbonation of Silicates

We have produced synthetic analogues of cosmic silicates using the Sol Gel method, producing amorphous silicates of composition Mg(x)Ca(1-x)SiO3. Using synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction on Beamline I11 at the Diamond Light Source, together with a newly-commissioned gas cell, real-time powder diffraction scans have been taken of a range of silicates exposed to CO2 under non-ambient conditions. The SXPD is complemented by other techniques including Raman and Infrared Spectroscopy and SEM imaging.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to the Proceedings of the First European Conference on Laboratory Astrophysics (ECLA

Effect of doping and pressure on magnetism and lattice structure of Fe-based superconductors

Using first principles calculations, we analyze structural and magnetic trends as a function of charge doping and pressure in BaFe$_2$As$_2$, and compare to experimentally established facts. We find that density functional theory, while accurately reproducing the structural and magnetic ordering at ambient pressure, fails to reproduce some structural trends as pressure is increased. Most notably, the Fe-As bondlength which is a gauge of the magnitude of the magnetic moment, $\mu$, is rigid in experiment, but soft in calculation, indicating residual local Coulomb interactions. By calculating the magnitude of the magnetic ordering energy, we show that the disruption of magnetic order as a function of pressure or doping can be qualitatively reproduced, but that in calculation, it is achieved through diminishment of $|\mu|$, and therefore likely does not reflect the same physics as detected in experiment. We also find that the strength of the stripe order as a function of doping is strongly site-dependent: magnetism decreases monotonically with the number of electrons doped at the Fe site, but increases monotonically with the number of electrons doped at the Ba site. Intra-planar magnetic ordering energy (the difference between checkerboard and stripe orderings) and interplanar coupling both follow a similar trend. We also investigate the evolution of the orthorhombic distortion, $e=(a-b)/(a+b),$ as a function of $\mu$, and find that in the regime where experiment finds a linear relationship, our calculations are impossible to converge, indicating that in density functional theory, the transition is first order, signalling anomalously large higher order terms in the Landau functional

Spatial curvature effects on molecular transport by diffusion

For a substance diffusing on a curved surface, we obtain an explicit relation valid for very small values of the time, between the local concentration, the diffusion coefficient, the intrinsic spatial curvature and the time. We recover the known solution of Fick's law of diffusion in the flat space limit. In the biological context, this result would be useful in understanding the variations in the diffusion rates of integral proteins and other molecules on membranes.Comment: 10 page

Quality of life and building design in residential and nursing homes for older people

Older people living in residential and nursing care homes spend a large proportion of their time within the boundaries of the home, and may depend on the environment to compensate for their physical or cognitive frailties. Regulations and guidelines on the design of care buildings have accumulated over time with little knowledge of their impact on the quality of life of building users. The Design in Caring Environments Study (DICE) collected cross-sectional data on building design and quality of life in 38 care homes in and near Sheffield, Yorkshire. Quality of life was assessed using methods which included all residents regardless of their frailty, and staff morale was also assessed. The physical environment was measured on 11 user-related domains using a new tool, the Sheffield Care Environment Assessment Matrix (SCEAM). Significant positive associations were found between several aspects of the built environment and the residents' quality of life. There was evidence that a focus on safety and health requirements could be creating risk-averse environments which act against quality of life, particularly for the least frail residents. Staff morale was associated with attributes of a non-institutional environment for residents rather than with the facilities provided for the staff. The new tool for assessing building design has potential applications in further research and for care providers