What is driving university teachers’ flexible integration of information and communication technologies?

In this article, we outline three forces driving university teachers’ flexible integration of ICT. They are (i) pressure from web2.0/3.0 native peers and learners leading to a need for flexible autonomy in university teachers (ii) teacher professional development resulting in flexible options in teaching and learning; and (iii) mobile learning collaboration and sharing triggering flexible partnership and cooperation among educational institutions. These three driving forces have an underlying thread: they impact on teacher’s flexible integration of emerging technologies in tertiary education

What is driving university teachers’ flexible integration of information and communication technologies?

In this article, we outline three forces driving university teachers’ flexible integration of ICT. They are (i) pressure from web2.0/3.0 native peers and learners leading to a need for flexible autonomy in university teachers (ii) teacher professional development resulting in flexible options in teaching and learning; and (iii) mobile learning collaboration and sharing triggering flexible partnership and cooperation among educational institutions. These three driving forces have an underlying thread: they impact on teacher’s flexible integration of emerging technologies in tertiary education

Current issues in English Language Education: Perspectives, directions and innovations

Guest Editoria

“PhD, meet QPR”: The quality in postgraduate research conference and the development of doctoral education

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the relationship between the quality in postgraduate research conference (QPR) and the developing doctoral education agenda, as well as serving as an introduction to this special edition of the International Journal for Researcher Development. Design/methodology/approach The paper adopts a conceptual and rhetorical approach. Findings The paper argues that, over its two decades of existence, the QPR conference has been at the forefront of developments in doctoral education and has also influenced practice and policy in the area. Originality/value The paper is the first to review the QPR conference and its place in the development of doctoral education

Loss of the CBX7 protein expression correlates with a more aggressive phenotype in pancreatic cancer

Polycomb group (PcG) proteins function as multiprotein complexes and are part of a gene regulatory mechanism that determines cell fate during normal and pathogenic development. Several studies have implicated the deregulation of different PcG proteins in neoplastic progression. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is an aggressive neoplasm that follows a multistep model of progression through precursor lesions called pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PanIN). Aim of this study was to investigate the role of PcG protein CBX7 in pancreatic carcinogenesis and to evaluate its possible diagnostic and prognostic significance. We analysed by immunohistochemistry the expression of CBX7 in 210 ductal pancreatic adenocarcinomas from resection specimens, combined on a tissue microarray (TMA) including additional 40 PanIN cases and 40 normal controls. The results were evaluated by using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis for the selection of cut-off scores and correlated to the clinicopathological parameters of the tumours and the outcome of the patients. Expression of E-cadherin, a protein positively regulated by CBX7, was also assessed. A significantly differential, and progressively decreasing CBX7 protein expression was found between normal pancreatic tissue, PanINs and invasive ductal adenocarcinoma. Loss of CBX7 expression was associated with increasing malignancy grade in pancreatic adenocarcinoma, whereas the maintenance of CBX7 expression showed a trend toward a longer survival. Moreover, loss of E-cadherin expression was associated with loss of CBX7 and with a trend towards worse patient survival. These results suggest that CBX7 plays a role in pancreatic carcinogenesis and that its loss of expression correlates to a more aggressive phenotype

Architecture for Affective Social Games

Abstract. The importance of affect in delivering engaging experiences in entertainment and education is well recognized. We introduce the Koko architecture, which describes a service-oriented middleware that reduces the burden of incorporating affect into games and other entertainment applications. Koko provides a representation for affect, thereby enabling developers to concentrate on the functional and creative aspects of their applications. The Koko architecture makes three key contributions: (1) improving developer productivity by creating a reusable and extensible environment; (2) yielding an enhanced user experience by enabling independently developed applications to collaborate and provide a more coherent user experience than currently possible; (3) enabling affective communication in multiplayer and social games.