Space and time to engage: Mature-aged distance students learn to fit study into their lives

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Lifelong Education on 2014, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02601370.2014.884177Student engagement, a student’s emotional, behavioural and cognitive connection to their study, is widely recognized as important for student achievement. Influenced by a wide range of personal, structural and sociocultural factors, engagement is both unique and subjective. One important structural factor shown in past research to be a barrier for distance students is access to quality space and time. This qualitative study followed 19 mature-aged distance students and their families, exploring how they learned to manage their space and time throughout their first semester at university. Institutions often claim that distance study and the increased use of technology overcomes barriers of space and time; however, the findings from this study suggest it merely changes the nature of those barriers. The ideal space and time for these students was individual and lay at the intersection of three, sometimes competing, demands: study, self and family. A critical influence on success is family support, as is access to financial resources. Learning what constitutes ideal space and time for engagement is an important part of the transition to university. The institution has a vital role to play in aiding this process by ensuring flexibility of course design is maintained, providing more flexible advice and targeting support at this important issue.falsePublishe

Linking academic emotions and student engagement: mature-aged distance students’ transition to university

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Further and Higher Education on 2013, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0309877X.2014.895305Research into both student engagement and student emotions is increasing, with widespread agreement that both are critical determinants of student success in higher education. Less researched are the complex, reciprocal relationships between these important influences. Two theoretical frameworks inform this paper: Pekrun’s taxonomy of academic emotions and Kahu’s conceptual framework of student engagement. The prospective qualitative design aims to allow a rich understanding of the fluctuating and diverse emotions that students experience during the transition to university and to explore the relationships between academic emotions and student engagement. The study follows 19 mature-aged (aged 24 and over) distance students throughout their first semester at university, using video diaries to collect data on their emotional experiences and their engagement with their study. Pre and post-semester interviews were also conducted. Findings highlight that different emotions have different links to engagement: as important elements in emotional engagement, as inhibitors of engagement and as outcomes that reciprocally influence engagement. There are two key conclusions. First, student emotions are the point of intersection between the university factors such as course design and student variables such as motivation and background. Second, the flow of influence between emotions, engagement, and learning is reciprocal and complex and can spiral upwards towards ideal engagement or downwards towards disengagement and withdrawal.Publishe

The engagement of mature distance students

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Higher Education Research and Development in 2013, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/07294360.2013.777036.Publishe

Against Nihilism: Nietzsche and Kubrick on the Future of Man

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A Programme of Professional Self-Development for Teachers in New Zealand Technical Institutes

Since 1973, a Tutor Training Unit (TTU) has provided professional education for teachers newly appointed to full-time teaching positions within the New Zealand Technical Institute system (the equivalent of Australian TAFE colleges). In a twelve-week course, organized into four discrete blocks, nurses and plumbers, accountants and secretaries, artists and technicians, community developers and computer programmers are together given basic instruction in educational thinking, teaching techniques, teaching aids and evaluation procedures. In an attempt to systematically assess the current and future requirements of Technical Institute teachers, a research programme was designed to identify professional skills which, when mastered, would enable them to teach competently in ever-changing circumstances

Reciprocal Recommender System for Learners in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Massive open online courses (MOOC) describe platforms where users with completely different backgrounds subscribe to various courses on offer. MOOC forums and discussion boards offer learners a medium to communicate with each other and maximize their learning outcomes. However, oftentimes learners are hesitant to approach each other for different reasons (being shy, don't know the right match, etc.). In this paper, we propose a reciprocal recommender system which matches learners who are mutually interested in, and likely to communicate with each other based on their profile attributes like age, location, gender, qualification, interests, etc. We test our algorithm on data sampled using the publicly available MITx-Harvardx dataset and demonstrate that both attribute importance and reciprocity play an important role in forming the final recommendation list of learners. Our approach provides promising results for such a system to be implemented within an actual MOOC.Comment: 10 pages, accepted as full paper @ ICWL 201

Identifying Outside the Box: An analysis of identification patterns among members of the German minority in Denmark

On the basis of six qualitative interviews with members of the German minority in Denmark, the article addresses different ways according to which individuals identify themselves as members of the German minority. The analysis shows that the identification with the minority varies from individual to individual. Identity in the German minority is therefore very multi-layered. Furthermore, the analysis illustrates that members of the minority identify beyond national categories on a rather regional level while comprising both German and Danish linguistic and cultural traits

Narrative and constructivism in cyberspace: Instructional design for distance delivery using hypertext on the internet

This explores two aspects of instructional design in the delivery of distance using hypertext on the Internet. It first considers the role of narrative: a fixed sequence of learning experiences organised by the instructor. Secondly it examines the role of learners in constructing their knowledge by interacting with peers, teachers and diverse material on World Wide Web sites on the Internet. The paper concludes with a working model for designing distance education programmes using hypertext on the Internet

„Ein Kunstwerk enthält nicht die geringste Information“. Deleuze, Guattari und die zeitgenössische Kunst

Deleuzes und Guattaris Zurückweisung der Konzeptkunst ist allgemein bekannt und passt so garnicht zur derzeitigen Hegemonie der “post-konzeptionellen” Kunstpraktiken. Genauso unpassend erscheint Deleuzes ontologische und politische Abneigung gegen die Photographie, die „Schnappschüsse“ oder Repräsentationen des Werdens liefert, indem sie Klischeebilder unmittelbar in unserer Gehirne pflanzt, die dann unsere Handlungen und Reaktionen kontrollieren, indem sie uns der Fähigkeit zum kreativen Denken berauben. In Cinema 2 weitet Deleuze diese Argumentation auf das neue “elektronische Bild” aus das, wie auch die Konzeptkunst, die Ebene der Komposition in eine „Schneidetischebene“ oder einen „Bildschirm“ verwandelt, welche Informationen und mit ihnen unsere zu Schnittstellen gewordenen Gehirne einfach nur formatieren. Heutzutage werden Konzeptpraktiken, Photographie und digitale Technologien von der zeitgenössischen Kunst als selbstverständlich angesehen, die auch fröhlich „D&G“ anwendet. Doch verdienen Deleuzes und Guattaris Gedanken nicht eine kritischere Würdigung? Braucht es nicht eine kleinere Kriegsmaschine? Wie sähe die aus im Falle der zeitgenössischen Kunstpraktiken? Unter den diversen Möglichkeiten untersucht der vorliegende Text die sublimen Verzweigungen einer Deuleuzeschen Vorstellung des “Denkens” sowie dessen Position als des „immanent Äußeren“ der post-konzeptionellen Richtung der Kuns

A critical reflection on a research partnership

This critical reflection asks what contributions a research partnership, active between 1997 and 2014, made to knowledge about student learning in higher education. It focuses on three overarching projects. The first, on assessment, addressed ways to empower students in assessment processes and make them fairer for students from diverse backgrounds. The second, on student retention and success, identified ways for students to integrate into higher education while also advocating that institutions adapt their cultures and practices to meet the needs of students from diverse backgrounds. The third, on student engagement, attracted considerable interest for a conceptual organiser of this complex construct. It included ten proposals for action and recognised the impact of non-institutional factors on engagement. It also found that engagement is best researched within institutions. A critical reflection on the influences of the projects suggests that their impact on assessment was negligible. However, the retention and engagement projects have influenced mainstream thinking