Learning Design for Student Retention

Student retention is an issue of increasing interest to higher education institutions, educators and students. Much of the work in this area focuses on identifying and improving interventions that occur during the presentation of a course. This paper suggests that these represent only one set of factors that can influence student withdrawal, and equally important are design based factors that can aid retention throughout the course. The main research question addressed by the paper is what design-related factors impact on student retention. An analysis of student withdrawal at the UK Open University conducted by the researchers produced a synthesis of seven key factors in the design phase that can influence retention. These factors have been given the ICEBERG acronym: Integrated, Collaborative, Engaging, Balanced, Economical, Reflective and Gradual. Examples of how these factors can be implemented are provided, and conclusions focus on how the model has been embedded in the module production process at the Open University

Framing systems thinking in practice competencies: report on systems thinking in practice competencies workshop 10 June 2017

On 10 June 2017, fourteen stakeholders from across the UK came together in Camden, London to engage in a collaborative inquiry on the framing of Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP) competencies as part of ongoing work that seeks to better support professional and institutional recognition of STiP skill-sets and capabilities. Phase 1 of this current inquiry comprised a series of online conversations with six prominent systems thinking practitioners. Phase 2 sought to extend the inquiry with a selective invitation to engage with a one-day workshop in London. Phase 3 will seek to deepen and widen the conversations on framing STiP competencies and capabilities with a view towards developing and enacting a platform for managing systems thinking in practice capabilities through ongoing development of competency frameworks associated with STiP. During the workshop reported on in this paper, stakeholders examined several existing and emerging competency frameworks in the systems thinking domain and explored issues of mutual interest and concern, whilst envisaging how to co-operate over the framing and enactment of competencies and capabilities in STiP

Data-driven Urban Design: Conceptual and Methodological Interpretations of Negroponte’s ‘Architecture Machine’

Nicholas Negroponte and MIT’s Architecture Machine Group speculated in the 1970s about computational processes that were open to participation, incorporating end-user preferences and democratizing urban design. Today’s ‘smart city’ technologies, using the monitoring of people’s movement and activity patterns to offer more effective and responsive services, might seem like contemporary interpretations of Negroponte’s vision, yet many of the collectors of user information are disconnected from urban policy making. This article presents a series of theoretical and procedural experiments conducted through academic research and teaching, developing user-driven generative design processes in the spirit of ‘The Architecture Machine’. It explores how new computational tools for site analysis and monitoring can enable datadriven urban place studies, and how these can be connected to generative strategies for public spaces and environments at various scales. By breaking down these processes into separate components of gathering, analysing, translating and implementing data, and conceptualizing them in relation to urban theory, it is shown how data-driven urban design processes can be conceived as an open-ended toolkit to achieve various types of user-driven outcomes. It is argued that architects and urban designers are uniquely situated to reflect on the benefits and value systems that control data-driven processes, and should deploy these to deliver more resilient, liveable and participatory urban spaces

The Architecture Machine Revisited: Experiments exploring Computational Design-and- Build Strategies based on Participation

This article summarises a series of experiments at the Architectural Association between 2011 and 2017, which explore the intellectual notion of ‘the architecture machine’ as introduced by Nicholas Negroponte and the Architecture Machine Group at MIT in 1967. The group explored automated computational processes that could assist the process of generating architectural solutions by incorporating much greater levels of complexity at both large and small scales. A central idea to the mission of the Architecture Machine Group was to enable the future inhabitants to participate in the decision-making process on the spatial configurations. The group aimed to define architecture as a spatial system that could directly correlate with human social activities through the application of new computer technologies. Our research presented here focuses on technologies and workflows that trace and translate human activities into architectural structures in order to continue the research agenda set out by Negroponte and others in the 1970s. The research work discusses new scenarios for the creation of architectural structures, using mobile and low-cost fabrication devices, and generative design algorithms driven by sensory technologies. The research question focuses on how architects may script individual and unique processes for generating structures using rule-sets that organise materiality and spatial relationships in order to achieve a user-driven outcome. Our explorations follow a renewed interest in the paradigm where the architect is a ‘process designer’, aiming to generate emergent outcomes where the inherent complexity of the project is generated towards specific performance criteria related to human activities and inhabitation

Framing professional competencies for systems thinking in practice: final report of an action research eSTEeM inquiry

The Open University eSTEeM project (The OU Centre for STEM Pedagogy) was a 12-month inquiry beginning March 2017 building on an initial eSTEeM project (2014-2016) entitled ‘Enhancing Systems Thinking in Practice in the Workplace’ reported on in Reynolds et al (2016). The initial report highlighted the challenges of enacting systems thinking in practice (STiP) in the workplace after qualifying with STiP core modules at The OU. Expressions of interest were manifest amongst systems thinking practitioners and employers for having some kind of formalised externally validated ‘competency framework’ for professional recognition of systems thinking in practice. The primary aim of the inquiry was to provide STiP alumni with externally recognised institutionalised professional backing for their newly acquired skill-sets associated with systems thinking. The project aimed to design a learning system – through the idea of an action learning lab – for developing a competency framework associated with systems thinking in practice. The project was carried out by a core team of three academics – Reynolds, Shah, and van Ameijde, associated with the Applied Systems Thinking in Practice (ASTiP) Group in the School of Engineering and Innovation, along with advice and support from other ASTiP colleagues – most notably Ray Ison and Chris Blackmore. The inquiry comprised some desktop research on competency framings, a series of online interviews, the drafting of an interim report, a video recording of employee/ employer interaction regarding application of STiP competencies in the workplace, a workshop held in London Regional Office in June 2017, and follow-up reporting and conversations arising from the workshop. One significant outcome from this activity led to ideas and consultations with Employer representatives, professional bodies and the Institute for Apprenticeships to initiate a Trailblazing Committee for a new Systems Thinking Practitioner apprenticeship Standard

Роль органічних речовин води Нафтуся у її фізіологічній активності

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