A sound education: using podcasts to develop study skills

Coping with the demands of academic study at university level can be a challenging experience for many students, and effective study skills are crucial in achieving academic success. However, librarians and teachers in higher education will know that it is not always easy to engage students in developing their study skills. How can we find new ways of stimulating the interest of our students? An innovative approach to teaching and the exploitation of new technologies can provide solutions and ideas. Podcasting has been very popular in recent years for delivering entertainment, news and other information, but podcasts are also extensively used in education, enabling students to watch or listen at a time that suits them – at home, at work or while travelling. The Skills for learning website was established over ten years ago as part of the library service at Leeds Metropolitan University to support the teaching and learning of study skills. The website offers students a wide range of resources including topics such as academic writing, time management, group skills, reflection and how to do research. There is also a team of tutors who provide workshops and tutorials. We felt that a podcast series could provide an alternative and flexible way of delivering study skills support that might appeal to a new audience. The podcasts could also be used as a stimulus in classroom teaching. As they are usually released episodically, we hoped that subscribers or visitors to our podcast page would become ‘hooked’ on the series and want to tune in to future podcasts. All the podcasts were created in-house by members of the Skills for learning team

Learning archetypes as tools of Cybergogy for a 3D educational landscape: a structure for eTeaching in Second Life

This paper considers issues of validity and credibility of eTeaching using a 3D Virtual World as a delivery medium of eLearning pertaining to the transfer of authentic real life skills. It identifies the game like qualities perceived therein, recognising that these very attributes may, when experienced superficially, be a contributing factor to the potential educational demise of the platform. It goes on to examine traditional educational theories in the light of the affordances of a virtual world seeking to adapt and apply them to the construction of a new conceptual framework of a pedagogy reflecting the affordances and understanding of on-line learning which incorporates the implementation of Learning Archetypes (models of activities) to maximise the essence of a virtual world, in as much as it is able to facilitate learning experiences delimited by physical world constraints. It builds upon these ideas to develop a working model of Cybergogy and Learning Archetypes in 3D with a view to making it available to people who wish to demonstrate theoretically robust lesson and course planning. The model is then applied to three examples of eTeaching, developed as Case Studies for the purpose of critically evaluating the model, which is found to be operationally effective, accurate and flexible. Conclusions are drawn that identify the merits and challenges of implementing such a model of Cybergogy into eTeaching and eLearning conducted in Second Life®

Cubist Algebras

We construct algebras from rhombohedral tilings of Euclidean space obtained as projections of certain cubical complexes. We show that these `Cubist algebras' satisfy strong homological properties, such as Koszulity and quasi-heredity, reflecting the combinatorics of the tilings. We construct derived equivalences between Cubist algebras associated to local mutations in tilings. We recover as a special case the Rhombal algebras of Michael Peach and make a precise connection to weight 2 blocks of symmetric groups

When the game becomes serious: what are the rights and responsibilities of the learner’s avatar in the virtual world?

“I am my avatar; my avatar is me. I am beholden by any promises my Avatar makes on my behalf and my Avatar will honour any contract I make.” There is an ever-increasing use of virtual worlds such as Second Life™, OpenSim and SmallWorlds in which learners explore, experience, communicate and act. In these 3D immersive (3Di) environments the learner adopts an avatar and becomes the new persona they devise. The appearance, actions and location of the avatar are under the control of the owner but are also affected by objects in the environment and other avatars. The immersive element results directly from the cognitive, dextrous, social and emotional aspects of the experience. Virtual worlds are becoming the home for serious learning as well as still retaining their more vicarious activities<br/

General runner removal and the Mullineux map

We prove a new `runner removal theorem' for $q$-decomposition numbers of the level 1 Fock space of type $A^{(1)}_{e-1}$, generalising earlier theorems of James--Mathas and the author. By combining this with another theorem relating to the Mullineux map, we show that the problem of finding all $q$-decomposition numbers indexed by partitions of a given weight is a finite computation.Comment: 40 page

The structure of glucose-fructose oxidoreductase from Zymomonas mobilis: an osmoprotective periplasmic enzyme containing non-dissociable NADP

AbstractBackground The organism Zymomonas mobilis occurs naturally in sugar-rich environments. To protect the bacterium against osmotic shock, the periplasmic enzyme glucose-fructose oxidoreductase (GFOR) produces the compatible, solute sorbitol by reduction of fructose, coupled with the oxidation of glucose to gluconolactone. Hence, Z. mobilis can tolerate high concentrations of sugars and this property may be useful in the development of an efficient microbial process for ethanol production. Each enzyme subunit contains tightly associated NADP which is not released during the catalytic cycle.Results The structure of GFOR was determined by X-ray crystallography at 2.7 å resolution. Each subunit of the tetrameric enzyme comprises two domains, a classical dinucleotide-binding domain, and a C-terminal domain based on a predominantly antiparallel nine-stranded β sheet. In the tetramer, the subunits associate to form two extended 18-stranded β sheets, which pack against each other in a face to face fashion, creating an extensive interface at the core of the tetramer. An N-terminal arm from each subunit wraps around the dinucleotide-binding domain of an adjacent subunit, covering the adenine ring of NADP.Conclusions In GFOR, the NADP is found associated with a classical dinucleotide-binding domain in a conventional fashion. The NADP is effectively buried in the protein-subunit interior as a result of interactions with the N-terminal arm from an adjacent subunit in the tetramer, and with a short helix from the C-terminal domain of the protein. This accounts for NADP's inability to dissociate. The N-terminal arm may also contribute to stabilization of the tetramer. The enzyme has an unexpected structural similarity with the cytoplasmic enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD). We hypothesize that both enzymes have diverged from a common ancestor. The mechanism of catalysis is still unclear, but we have identified a conserved structural motif (Glu–Lys–Pro) in the active site of GFOR and G6PD that may be important for catalysis