Vibrant and engaging online social learning: an innovative response to threatened part-time study in Higher Education

Austerity measures and increased tuition fees place heightened pressures on universities to provide sustainable, cost effective, high quality provision. This paper analyses how a team of staff in a School of Education at a UK University are leading collaborative work with partner colleges, to deliver a model that ameliorates the financial pressures, whilst developing high quality student-centred engagement for part-time students. When face-to-face teaching sessions were significantly reduced, an online academic social network for tutors and students was introduced to encourage collaboration, peer support and ‘coffee room’ discussion. Feedback from participants through focus groups and surveys confirmed a social support network as important for engagement and was perceived as supporting achievement, even by those who were reluctant to join the network. Recommendations include: more time face-to-face at the beginning of the course, more online tutor presence and scaffolded activities to build confidence in using an academic social network

'No research is insignificant': implementing a Students-as-Researchers Festival

There are increasing demands for Higher Education (HE) students to play a role in research-active communities and, similarly, for College Based Higher Education (CBHE) lecturers to develop their research practices. A cross-consortium Student Research Festival was designed to create a collaborative 'community of discovery' (Coffield and Williamson, 2011) and enable final year students to disseminate their research studies to a wider audience. The Festival drew on current HE pedagogies to build an open communicative space in which the three dimensions of practice architecture (Kemmis et.al., 2014) were embodied. The Festival was evaluated through a Collaborative Action Research project in order to establish how the sharing of research contributed to the participants' identity as researchers. Data were analysed using the a priori categories afforded by the practice architecture framework. Valuable insights emerged into the students' conception of research, as detached from the 'real' world and belonging to the privileged few. These views were challenged by the experience of the Festival, which narrowed the gap between student and researcher and unsettled existing roles. Recommendations include widening the scope of the Festival to include other stakeholders and embedding further research building opportunities in the undergraduate curriculum

Career-Faring Policy: The Use of Graphic Elicitation and Visual Representations to Analyse Life Course Narratives of Teaching Assistants in Pursuit of a Teaching Career.

Unstable, expensive and complex routes for mature students in part-time higher education remain a barrier to hidden potential and talent that could serve to address current teacher shortages. This study assesses the effect of transient policies on inequities in access and success in the educational career routes of eight teaching assistants in pursuit of a teaching career, alongside celebration of their concomitant persistence and ingenuity. By employing Bourdieuian based Careership theory with\ud the novel use of graphic elicitation and visual representation techniques, it introduces and enhances methods that draw out nuances affecting people in a variety of contexts at different times in the life course. The focused attention on temporal influences significantly enrich the life course narratives educed from the semistructured interviews. Findings indicate interrelationships in temporal, agentic, cultural and structural dimensions in the participants’ ever-changing contexts. Consistencies were seen in socio-cultural dimensions, particularly through recognition, by managers, peers and family. Acknowledgement of their value, contribution and potential, supported their tenacity to reach their goal. Common challenges were in having to be constantly alert to risk factors: in the length of time to acquire qualifications, financial sustenance and work/life balance issues alongside expected financial gain, personal satisfaction and meeting of affective needs. Results enabled by the novel methods, show findings that contribute to a call to enable stable yet flexible career routes to teaching that are designed for access across the life course. The research suggests that lowering the risk threshold of entry to teaching and raising the reward between investment and work/life balance requires policy makers to recognise diverse lifelong rights of entry to the profession

Confidence, risk, and the journey into praxis: work-based learning and the teacher education curriculum

Aim: This paper aims to explore notions of confidence and risk in the context of professional knowledge and practice for trainee teachers in the lifelong learning sector. It will argue that the inculcation of confidence through risk-taking is an imperative for an emancipatory journey into praxis. Content: This paper explores notions of confidence and risk in the context of professional knowledge and practice for teachers in the lifelong learning sector. It draws upon Marianna Papastephanou’s (2006 and forthcoming), work on school teachers and discourse, who argues for the “accommodation of risk in the teacher–pupil relationship and against the managerial narrowing of educational endeavour to the sphere of the secure and the predictable” (2006: p48). She also raises important points about risk in education more generally, “What is missing from such discourses is the acknowledgement of unpredictability and non-calculability (true risk, that is) as an inherent, disruptive and creative force of teaching and learning, as many educational philosophers have convincingly pointed out” (2006: p50). In this respect confidence, whether imbued in the self or inculcated by the processes and products of continuing professional development, correlates with both the developing teacher’s capacity to take risks and their vulnerability when submitting to both course assessment and work-based audits of practice. The paper suggests a tension between learner participation in a higher education course of study, and corresponding participation in skills development in the workplace for trainee teachers, whether on placement or in-service. In this respect the nature of professional knowledge and practice, confidence, and work based learning (WBL) are discussed. This paper will argue that the inculcation of confidence through risk-taking is an imperative for the journey into praxis. The role of HE in teacher education: It explores the tension between learner participation in a higher education course of study, and corresponding participation in skills development in the workplace. While the focus is on teacher education in the Lifelong Learning sector, colleagues in the school sector will recognise these tensions, and the discussions relating to confidence and risk for trainee teachers and their journey into praxis. Hoped for impact on practice: It is hoped that the discussions will cause colleagues to strive for a greater emphasis on the inculcation of confidence and risk-taking between the workplace (placement or in-service), and the teacher education curriculum as an imperative for an emancipatory journey into praxis. The country/ies to which the presentation relates: England and Wale

The ABC130 barrel module prototyping programme for the ATLAS strip tracker

For the Phase-II Upgrade of the ATLAS Detector, its Inner Detector, consisting of silicon pixel, silicon strip and transition radiation sub-detectors, will be replaced with an all new 100 % silicon tracker, composed of a pixel tracker at inner radii and a strip tracker at outer radii. The future ATLAS strip tracker will include 11,000 silicon sensor modules in the central region (barrel) and 7,000 modules in the forward region (end-caps), which are foreseen to be constructed over a period of 3.5 years. The construction of each module consists of a series of assembly and quality control steps, which were engineered to be identical for all production sites. In order to develop the tooling and procedures for assembly and testing of these modules, two series of major prototyping programs were conducted: an early program using readout chips designed using a 250 nm fabrication process (ABCN-25) and a subsequent program using a follow-up chip set made using 130 nm processing (ABC130 and HCC130 chips). This second generation of readout chips was used for an extensive prototyping program that produced around 100 barrel-type modules and contributed significantly to the development of the final module layout. This paper gives an overview of the components used in ABC130 barrel modules, their assembly procedure and findings resulting from their tests.Comment: 82 pages, 66 figure