Repurposing resources as open content: studying the experiences of new providers

Much educational content sits within institutional systems protected from global access, this proprietary approach restricts opportunities for informal learning and the exchange of materials between cultures. One response to reducing this particular digital divide is to open up access to existing courses by providing them as free to use Open Educational Resources (OERs). This is being addressed through work on OpenLearn (the open content initiative from The Open University developed with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation) and POCKET (The Project on Open Content for Knowledge Exposition and Teaching, supported by JISC under the repositories and preservation programme). The approach is evaluative considering transfer of lessons from work on the reworking of distance learning materials (within the OpenLearn initiative) to the reworking of material from campus-based universities (supported by the POCKET project). Analysis will include the role of supporting artifacts (guidelines, examples, tools) and the process support required (shared aims, workshops, structure). Evaluation tools that are being applied include logging of experience, stake holder interviews, and analytics data. We are building on existing evaluation of the OpenLearn initiative that has revealed models for learner use of open educational resources and studied the reuse of released open resources. Results include the need for a range of reworkable formats, support and time pressures on voluntary use – these results are supported by case study information and overall usage statistics. Further data that will be available from POCKET by September 2008 will include reflections from participants, workshop outcomes and initial stakeholder interviews, full evaluation of POCKET will be complete by April 2009. This paper will have examined our understanding of the process by which content can be transformed from existing learning materials to freely available open educational resources. Conclusions at this stage will focus on the process of adoption and transfer from OpenLearn and the effectiveness of the evaluation and project approach. Comparison will be made with the advantages and disadvantages of the self supported approach adopted initially in OpenLearn and suggestions given for structures that enable collaboration in producing open educational resources

Criminal Responses and Financial Misconduct in Twenty-first Century Britain: tradition and points of departure, and the significance of the conscious past

The Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill 2013/14 (hereafter Banking Reform Bill) is set to introduce a new criminal offence of reckless misconduct by senior bank staff. The introduction of such an offence was recommended in the Final Report of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards (PCBS) Changing Banking for Good, published 19 June 2013; as part of a ‘package of recommendations to raise standards’. This particular recommendation had been widely anticipated. A short time before this Report, the PCBS Chair, Andrew Tyrie MP, had bemoaned the lack of ‘orange jumpsuits’ being donned by bankers. Equally, press reportage that ‘reckless bankers’ could ‘face jail’ had started to appear from as early as the close of 2011. 4 Government endorsement of the PCBS recommendations followed quickly from the publication of the latter’s report. On 8 July 2013 the Government Response to the Report to this effect signalled that this would be achieved by adding amendments to the Banking Reform Bill 2013/14, first introduced in Parliament 4 February 2013. This has now transpired, by virtue of amendments to the Bill introduced on 9 October 2013. Like the initial PCBS recommendation, government support for the new criminal offence was also widely anticipated. Government favour for such a measure had been strongly signalled in the Treasury Consultation Sanctions for the Directors of Failed Banks, published in July 2012. It had been signposted earlier still by very public declarations of support from Matthew Hancock, MP, a close ally of George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. At one level, this new criminal offence is intended to be very narrow in application, and enforced only very exceptionally. In other respects, analysis of it through the current proposals show it to be a manifestly important measure which will alter the longstanding course of criminal liability for ‘financial sector’ crime in Britain. It is also part of the discourse of the post-crisis regulatory environment encouraging reflection on the past in configuring responses for the future; including suggestions that too little attention has been paid to ‘lessons of history’. In exploring aspects of both these distinctive angles, attention is paid to how nineteenth-century responses were themselves informed by contemporary Victorian understanding of a ‘conscious past’. Little work has been undertaken on how Victorian responses to financial crime were influenced by a conscious past and the article considers why the introduction of the reckless conduct in banking offence creates such an appropriate juncture for doing so. This is in the light of our own awareness of how criminal law has responded to financial misconduct for over 150 years, and what new approaches might be required to respond to the regulatory challenges of the early twenty-first century

A pharmacological cocktail for arresting actin dynamics in living cells.

The actin cytoskeleton is regulated by factors that influence polymer assembly, disassembly, and network rearrangement. Drugs that inhibit these events have been used to test the role of actin dynamics in a wide range of cellular processes. Previous methods of arresting actin rearrangements take minutes to act and work well in some contexts, but can lead to significant actin reorganization in cells with rapid actin dynamics, such as neutrophils. In this paper, we report a pharmacological cocktail that not only arrests actin dynamics but also preserves the structure of the existing actin network in neutrophil-like HL-60 cells, human fibrosarcoma HT1080 cells, and mouse NIH 3T3 fibroblast cells. Our cocktail induces an arrest of actin dynamics that initiates within seconds and persists for longer than 10 min, during which time cells maintain their responsivity to external stimuli. With this cocktail, we demonstrate that actin dynamics, and not simply morphological polarity or actin accumulation at the leading edge, are required for the spatial persistence of Rac activation in HL-60 cells. Our drug combination preserves the structure of the existing cytoskeleton while blocking actin assembly, disassembly, and rearrangement, and should prove useful for investigating the role of actin dynamics in a wide range of cellular signaling contexts

Investing in Native Youth: Grantmaking Trends from the Native Youth and Culture Fund

In this report, First Nations highlights a snapshot of grant requests under our Native Youth and Culture Fund from 2010 through 2014

Discovering New Variable Stars at Key Stage 3

Details of the London pilot of the `Discovery Project' are presented, where university-based astronomers were given the chance to pass on some real and applied knowledge of astronomy to a group of selected secondary school pupils. It was aimed at students in Key Stage 3 of their education, allowing them to be involved in real astronomical research at an early stage of their education, the chance to become the official discoverer of a new variable star, and to be listed in the International Variable Star Index database, all while learning and practising research-level skills. Future plans are discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur