The arrival of MOOCs: Massive Open Online Courses

Summary: Internationally, a number of emerging technologies and associated developments are becoming available that could have far‐reaching effects on the delivery of tertiary education. One of these developments is Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The opportunities MOOCs present include the ability for institutions to extend their brand and reach to large international audiences, experiment with innovative pedagogical approaches, an ability to offer niche provision at scale, and a potential reduction of costs. Its challenges and risks include that they are not widely recognised as formal qualifications, the absence of an established business model, and their pedagogical approaches. We have developed this paper as the start of a conversation between and among government agencies, institutions, employers and learners on the appropriate policy settings and ways to support the introduction of these emerging technologies in the delivery of tertiary education. This paper also supports the 2014 Innovations in Tertiary Education Delivery Summit, being held in Auckland on 5 and 6 June 2014, which looks at the future of tertiary education and the role of technology in it

E-Learning in the workplace: an annotated bibliography

Provides an overview of the literature relating to e-learning in workplaces in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Summary The key findings of this annotated bibliography are: E-learning can provide flexible learning options for employees and allow them to upskill more rapidly. E-learning in the workplace can decrease the costs of upskilling a workforce through reducing travel and employee time away from work. E-learning is particularly useful for a geographically-dispersed workforce because it can deliver a consistent training experience. The uptake of e-learning in the workplace is increasing. Many New Zealand firms have the systems and infrastructure to support e-learning, but often lack the capability to implement it successfully. To overcome design inadequacies in e-learning courses, new skills and personnel are required in the teams charged with developing and delivering it. Firms need to have strategies and plans in place to support their e-learning which integrate or align with their overall plans and strategies. Support by managers for  e-learning in the workplace (including allocating sufficient time for it) is critical to success. Large organisations are more likely to adopt e-learning than small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) because they have better infrastructure and systems and can more readily achieve economies of scale and return on investment. SMEs can form collaborative networks to share knowledge, resources, and expertise to overcome the cost and relevance barriers they face when implementing e-learning. E-learning is most often used in workplaces to supplement traditional delivery (blended learning). Blended learning can contribute to significant gains in learner achievement. The focus in workplace e-learning has moved from ‘courses’ to learning content that is available to employees as and when needed. E-learning is more effective when people can access it in small ‘chunks’, reflect on it, and then apply it immediately. E-learning supports informal learning in the workplace because it makes it easier to codify information and knowledge and make this available to the organisation and its external stakeholders. The most common technologies and systems used to support workplace e-learning are learning management systems, video, mobile devices, social networking tools, wikis, weblogs, simulations/virtual reality, CD-ROMs, and DVDs. Some of the main barriers to implementing e-learning in the workplace are: high up-front costs that include new and/or upgraded systems, training the trainers, and developing interactive and/or personalised content employee resistance to e-learning organisations not having an appropriate learning culture in place lack of management support adopting technologies and systems that are difficult to use and access, are unreliable, and/or lack technical support employees and trainers lacking the skills and capabilities to teach and learn in e-learning environments irrelevance to real-time work tasks and not integrated with business processes

Government and sector-level tertiary e-learning initiatives

This report gives an overview of the literature published between 2004 and 2013 relating to government and sector-level tertiary e-learning initiatives in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Key findings The key findings of this annotated bibliography are: New Zealand established the e-Collaborative Development Fund (e-CDF) in 2003. The e-CDF improved e-learning systems and the capability of participating institutions, but did not do so for staff and there were no immediate or lasting benefits for the sector as a whole. The e-CDF was disestablished as part of the Government’s rationalisation of funding streams in 2008.  The Tertiary Accord of New Zealand involves several polytechnics co-developing and co-hosting e-learning programmes. New Zealand institutions are also involved in MOOCs and other international consortia including playing a leading role in establishing the OER universitas initiative. Australia had fewer government tertiary e-learning initiatives than the other jurisdictions. Australia’s Flexible Learning Framework involved the Commonwealth and state/territory governments working with the vocational training and education sector. The Framework was successful in content development, but less so in staff and systems development. Australia has a MOOC consortium run by Open Universities Australia. The Australasian Council on Open, Distance and E-learning includes all the New Zealand universities and the University of the South Pacific. That initiative has led to a set of e-learning benchmarking guidelines. In Canada the federal government tertiary e-learning initiatives appear to have all been disestablished. But those operating at the provincial level have lasted longer. For example, British Columbia successfully established a province-wide virtual campus. At a sector-level, the Canadian Virtual University allows students to mix, match, and transfer courses between members. The UK had more government tertiary e-learning initiatives than the other jurisdictions probably because they had a dedicated agency, the Joint Information Services Committee (JISC), to support them. JISC’s initiatives included a series of effective practice guides, standards development, managing and developing the JANET network, and a substantial research and publication programme. Other UK government tertiary e-learning initiatives include a code of practice developed by their Quality Assurance Agency and “Learn Direct” which is targeted at the workplace. The UK has a MOOC consortium led by the Open University. In the US, the federal government has dedicated strategies and plans for e-learning and also supports content development. Their inter-state initiatives allow students to study degree-level provision in states outside their home one. While many US state governments have been active in e-learning, Florida, New York, and Texas appear to have the largest number of initiatives – including virtual campuses and a course redesign project. The major difference between the US and the other jurisdictions is the strong involvement of non-government organisations which run national surveys, support MOOC and workplace e-learning initiatives, and provide resources and support for institutional e-learning efforts. The UK government is the only one that has supported a formal OER programme. There are a number of large international OER consortia including the OpenCourseWare consortium, GLOBE, and OER Commons. One of the core roles of these consortia is to act as OER repositories, but they also share and develop materials, knowledge, and expertise. The scale of MOOCs is unprecedented with the three largest consortia (Coursera, edX, and Udacity) having millions of enrolments. Unlike previous online learning ventures, these consortia were established by US elite institutions. Coursera and edX are also partnering with state governments to support their tertiary education efforts. Some commentators think MOOCs will have a large impact on tertiary education because of their ability to ‘unbundle’ teaching and learning processes and services, provide more customised courses, extend institutional presence and reach, allow economies of scale to be achieved, and make large amounts of detailed data available to support an improvement in learner support, performance, and outcomes. Critics of MOOCs cite the lack of an established business model and revenue streams as well as the lack of accreditation, staff resistance, and the uncertainties about how they would be appropriately quality assured. They also point to the very low completion rates in MOOCs which may not be sustainable. They note that many MOOC learners already hold a degree or postgraduate qualification rather than being new students. A smaller group, while agreeing that there is unlikely to be a large short-term impact, thinks MOOCs are too new for their longer-term effects to be predicted with certainty

Nanoscale structural and chemical analysis of F-implanted enhancement-mode InAlN/GaN heterostructure field effect transistors

We investigate the impact of a fluorine plasma treatment used to obtain enhancement-mode operation on the structure and chemistry at the nanometer and atomic scales of an InAlN/GaN field effect transistor. The fluorine plasma treatment is successful in that enhancement mode operation is achieved with a +2.8 V threshold voltage. However, the InAlN barrier layers are observed to have been damaged by the fluorine treatment with their thickness being reduced by up to 50%. The treatment also led to oxygen incorporation within the InAlN barrier layers. Furthermore, even in the as-grown structure, Ga was unintentionally incorporated during the growth of the InAlN barrier. The impact of both the reduced barrier thickness and the incorporated Ga within the barrier on the transistor properties has been evaluated theoretically and compared to the experimentally determined two-dimensional electron gas density and threshold voltage of the transistor. For devices without fluorine treatment, the two-dimensional electron gas density is better predicted if the quaternary nature of the barrier is taken into account. For the fluorine treated device, not only the changes to the barrier layer thickness and composition, but also the fluorine doping needs to be considered to predict device performance. These studies reveal the factors influencing the performance of these specific transistor structures and highlight the strengths of the applied nanoscale characterisation techniques in revealing information relevant to device performance.</jats:p

Polyamines Are Required for Virulence in Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium

Sensing and responding to environmental cues is a fundamental characteristic of bacterial physiology and virulence. Here we identify polyamines as novel environmental signals essential for virulence of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, a major intracellular pathogen and a model organism for studying typhoid fever. Central to its virulence are two major virulence loci Salmonella Pathogenicity Island 1 and 2 (SPI1 and SPI2). SPI1 promotes invasion of epithelial cells, whereas SPI2 enables S. Typhimurium to survive and proliferate within specialized compartments inside host cells. In this study, we show that an S. Typhimurium polyamine mutant is defective for invasion, intracellular survival, killing of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and systemic infection of the mouse model of typhoid fever. Virulence of the mutant could be restored by genetic complementation, and invasion and intracellular survival could, as well, be complemented by the addition of exogenous putrescine and spermidine to the bacterial cultures prior to infection. Interestingly, intracellular survival of the polyamine mutant was significantly enhanced above the wild type level by the addition of exogenous putrescine and spermidine to the bacterial cultures prior to infection, indicating that these polyamines function as an environmental signal that primes S. Typhimurium for intracellular survival. Accordingly, experiments addressed at elucidating the roles of these polyamines in infection revealed that expression of genes from both of the major virulence loci SPI1 and SPI2 responded to exogenous polyamines and was reduced in the polyamine mutant. Together our data demonstrate that putrescine and spermidine play a critical role in controlling virulence in S. Typhimurium most likely through stimulation of expression of essential virulence loci. Moreover, our data implicate these polyamines as key signals in S. Typhimurium virulence

Dental Treatment in a State-Funded Primary Dental Care Facility: Contextual and Individual Predictors of Treatment Need?

OBJECTIVE:This study examined individual and contextual factors which predict the dental care received by patients in a state-funded primary dental care training facility in England. METHODS:Routine clinical and demographic data were extracted from a live dental patient management system in a state-funded facility using novel methods. The data, spanning a four-year period [2008-2012] were cleaned, validated, linked by means of postcode to deprivation status, and analysed to identify factors which predict dental treatment need. The predictive relationship between patients' individual characteristics (demography, smoking, payment status) and contextual experience (deprivation based on area of residence), with common dental treatments received was examined using unadjusted analysis and adjusted logistic regression. Additionally, multilevel modelling was used to establish the isolated influence of area of residence on treatments. RESULTS:Data on 6,351 dental patients extracted comprised of 147,417 treatment procedures delivered across 10,371 courses of care. Individual level factors associated with the treatments were age, sex, payment exemption and smoking status and deprivation associated with area of residence was a contextual predictor of treatment. More than 50% of children (<18 years) and older adults (≥65 years) received preventive care in the form of 'instruction and advice', compared with 46% of working age adults (18-64 years); p = 0.001. The odds of receiving treatment increased with each increasing year of age amongst adults (p = 0.001): 'partial dentures' (7%); 'scale and polish' (3.7%); 'tooth extraction' (3%; p = 0.001), and 'instruction and advice' (3%; p = 0.001). Smokers had a higher likelihood of receiving all treatments; and were notably over four times more likely to receive 'instruction and advice' than non-smokers (OR 4.124; 95% CI: 3.088-5.508; p = 0.01). A further new finding from the multilevel models was a significant difference in treatment related to area of residence; adults from the most deprived quintile were more likely to receive 'tooth extraction' when compared with least deprived, and less likely to receive preventive 'instruction and advice' (p = 0.01). CONCLUSION:This is the first study to model patient management data from a state-funded dental service and show that individual and contextual factors predict common treatments received. Implications of this research include the importance of making provision for our aging population and ensuring that preventative care is available to all. Further research is required to explain the interaction of organisational and system policies, practitioner and patient perspectives on care and, thus, inform effective commissioning and provision of dental services

Expanding the diversity of mycobacteriophages: insights into genome architecture and evolution.

Mycobacteriophages are viruses that infect mycobacterial hosts such as Mycobacterium smegmatis and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. All mycobacteriophages characterized to date are dsDNA tailed phages, and have either siphoviral or myoviral morphotypes. However, their genetic diversity is considerable, and although sixty-two genomes have been sequenced and comparatively analyzed, these likely represent only a small portion of the diversity of the mycobacteriophage population at large. Here we report the isolation, sequencing and comparative genomic analysis of 18 new mycobacteriophages isolated from geographically distinct locations within the United States. Although no clear correlation between location and genome type can be discerned, these genomes expand our knowledge of mycobacteriophage diversity and enhance our understanding of the roles of mobile elements in viral evolution. Expansion of the number of mycobacteriophages grouped within Cluster A provides insights into the basis of immune specificity in these temperate phages, and we also describe a novel example of apparent immunity theft. The isolation and genomic analysis of bacteriophages by freshman college students provides an example of an authentic research experience for novice scientists

E-learning provision, participation and performance

This report compares provision, participation, and student performance in courses delivered by e-learning methods with courses that do not use e-learning. This is analysed at a system, sub-sector, and field of study level, as well as by ethnicity, age, full-time, part-time, and extramural status. The report will examine: provision of e-learning courses at the system, qualification and sub-sector levels (Chapter 3) student e-learning participation at non-degree, degree and postgraduate levels by ethnicity, age, full-time, part-time, and extramural status (Chapter 4) student performance in e-learning courses at the system and sub-sector levels, and by ethnicity, age, full-time, part-time, and extramural status (Chapter 5), and provision of, and student performance in, e-learning courses by field of study (Chapter 6).&nbsp

Transportation Boundaries of Slug-flow in a Horizontal Pipeline

An experimental program was established to investigate boundaries in low-velocity slug-flow pneumatic conveying. A straight horizontal pipeline of L=21m and D=60.3mm ID was set up for actual conveying trials and a simple rig was designed and built specifically to simulate the boundaries of slug-flow. After running several tests in the simulation rig with a sample of the product, the slug-flow were able to be determined with good accuracy. Combined with the theoretical correlations developed to determine pressure drop in slug-flow, reliable operating conditions can be predicted. Good agreement was achieved after the predicted results were compared with the experimental results from the large-scale pipeline