Learning to use the Internet as a study tool: a review of available resources and exploration of students' priorities

Background: The Internet is a valuable information tool, but users often struggle to locate good quality information from within the vast amount of information available. Objectives: The aim of the study was to identify the online information resources available to assist students develop Internet searching skills, and to explore the students' priorities in online guides. Methods: A qualitative approach was adopted with two phases. The first was a structured search of available online study skills resources. The second comprised 10 group interviews with a total of 60 students at all stages of five undergraduate health and social care related courses at a UK university. Results: The study found that there were good online guides available, but that, perversely, the better guides tended to require the best searching skills to locate them. A few students were enthusiastic about using online support, however the majority felt that if they had the skills to locate such resources they wouldn't use a study guide to improve these skills, and if they did not have the skills they would not think of using an online guide to develop them. Conclusions: Students wanted assistance when they had problems or questions, rather than sites that offered structured learning experiences. Personal support rather than virtual support was also considered to be most important to the students in this study

Student reactions to online tools for learning to use the Internet as a study tool: outside the comfort zone?

The Internet is a valuable source of health related information, however students are not maximising their use of this resource. A study was undertaken to see what resources were already available to help them develop the necessary skills, and to identify the elements of an Internet study guide that were of importance to the students. An extensive search of the Internet, using a variety of search terms in Google and Yahoo located numerous study support sites. Ten focus groups were held with a total of 60 students on a variety of health and social care related courses at an English university. Rather than finding what the students were looking for in an online study guide the research found that using an online support system took the majority of students outside of their comfort zone, resulting in them rejecting online support and expressing a preference for personal or hard copy support and materials. The way online materials are structured into courses is explored as a possible reason for these difficulties and a flow chart to help students identify resources is presented

Reading the Anthropocene through science and apocalypse in the selected contemporary fiction of J.G. Ballard, Kurt Vonnegut, Cormac McCarthy and Ian McEwan

This thesis examines how six contemporary novels variously intervene in the current crisis of climate change. Through close readings of J G Ballard’s The Drowned World (1962) and Hello America (1981); Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006); Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle (1963) and Galapagos (1985); and Ian McEwan’s Solar (2010), the thesis aims to identify how the narrative and generic resources of contemporary fiction might help readers to think through and beyond the consequences of anthropocentric ways of thinking about the biosphere. Drawing upon the concept of the Anthropocene – and in particular the account of this concept provided by the historian Dipesh Chakrabarty – the thesis suggests that these novels raise profound questions about how climate change is represented and understood. If accounts of the human history of modernity have until recently overlooked the complex ways in which both the human species and its contemporary fossil fuel cultures are intertwined with the geologic history of the planet, how has contemporary fiction attended to this oversight? What light can imaginative apocalyptic future histories of the biosphere, such as those presented in the fiction of Ballard, Vonnegut and McCarthy, shed on predominant understandings of climate change? How has fiction highlighted the ways in which the insights offered by the Anthropocene complicate the promises of scientific ‘reason’ to explain and provide solutions to anthropogenic climate change? How do fictions such as those of Vonnegut and McEwan contribute to a more nuanced account of the limits of such reasoning? To address these questions, the thesis draws upon Martin Heidegger’s account of the anthropocentric enframing of nature through technology, and suggests a re-thinking of Louis Althusser’s account of ideology through which we can begin to understand how anthropocentric perspectives are naturalised in ways that illuminate some of the difficulties identified by Chakrabarty. By bringing these three perspectives together, the thesis seeks to develop a distinct critical approach to reading the responses of these literary fictions to climate change.The first section of the thesis examines how the generic resources of apocalyptic fiction defamiliarise assumed relationships between the human subjects and societies of industrial modernity and the biosphere. Chapter 1 suggests that J G Ballard’s novel The Drowned World (1962) imaginatively connects geologic and human history in order to disrupt key anthropocentric assumptions concerning the relationship between humanity and the biosphere, whilst his later novel Hello America (1981) foregrounds the anthropocentric inscription of industrial modernity through a self-consciously hallucinatory re-imagining of American history. Chapter 2 examines Cormac McCarthy’s recent novel The Road (2006), and suggests that the text presents a particular form of apocalyptic narrative that complicates the anthropocentric sub-text of traditional apocalyptic narratives.The second section of the thesis examines how the fictional representation of science and scientists can help to illuminate the ways in which an anthropocentric faith in the technoscientific promise of human power over nature serves to legitimate an illusion of human mastery over the biosphere. Chapter 3 considers how Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle (1963) offers a counterpoint to this faith by ironically depicting scientist characters whose assumptions of beneficial technoscientific progress are undermined by complex interconnections between individuals and the biosphere – connections that have apocalyptic consequences. Such complex interactions are also a feature of the insights offered by ecology and evolutionary science. Reading Vonnegut’s fiction after the Anthropocene underlines the ways in which Vonnegut’s literary techniques can help readers to think through and beyond the complex connections between natural and human history that these scientific disciplines begin to elucidate. As chapter 3 suggests, Vonnegut’s later novel Galapagos (1985) provides a particularly imaginative account of this complexity through its fictional narrative of an evolutionary future history across the longue durée of geologic time.Building on the insights developed in chapter 3, chapter 4 considers the significance of Ian McEwan’s ironic depiction of a fictional scientist who is unable to restrain his own overconsumption of resources in his novel Solar (2010). In my reading, McEwan’s scientist figure functions as an allegory for the paradoxes of a technoscientific culture that seems unable to apply scientific reason in meaningful responses to the dangers of the Anthropocene. In so doing, the chapter illustrates how the use of allegorical codes and irony in Solar draw attention to the ways in which a faith in technoscientific reason to provide solutions to anthropogenic climate change is misplaced. This misplaced faith also naturalises the on-going enframing of nature as a resource, with potentially apocalyptic consequences.The apocalyptic narratives of the Ballard and McCarthy novels can be understood as quasi-scientific literary speculations, which disrupt anthropocentric assumptions through the experimental futures they depict. Similarly, the ironic depictions of scientists and scientific thinking in the Vonnegut and McEwan novels draw attention to the anthropocentric limitations of conventional scientific thinking for fully understanding and productively responding to the apocalyptic implications of climate change. In bringing these readings together, the thesis attempts to provide valuable and timely insights into the techniques through which the literary fiction of Ballard, Vonnegut, McCarthy and McEwan can help readers to think differently about the complex relationship between human life and the biosphere. These readings also trace how such fiction can draw attention to the ways in which anthropocentric patterns of thought contribute to the catastrophic climatic implications of technoscientific culture

Evaluating student expectations online through SUE @ BU

In order to gain feedback on units of delivery at Bournemouth University (BU) students are provided with the Student Unit Evaluation (SUE) to complete. This mechanism enables the University to review the effectiveness of their units of delivery under several frameworks and programmes. The SUE project has involved investigation into appropriate technologies, such as the use of the Blackboard and Waypoint survey tools, to support the process during the last three years of implementation, resulting in a transition away from traditional paper based survey methods to completion in an online environment that mirrors the world that will be encountered in the NSS. The Procurement process in early 2009 resulted in the use of Waypoint for a second consecutive year. The 2009/ 2010 academic year has also seen a greater emphasis on increasing SUE response rates, and the Learning Technologists were crucial in providing support for the project. Notably this was in providing support in lab sessions. In addition internal restructuring at Bournemouth University has led to an increased opportunity to work collaboratively. Those Learning technologists supporting SUE have become part of a wider team as part of Library and Learning Support. This means that Learning Technologists are able to work in conjunction with Subject Librarian teams to support students completing SUEs and promote the importance and value of doing so, with the aim of increasing response rates as a result. In order to increase the accuracy of data, the University is discussing the possible development of an in-house system for 2010. The benefits of an in-house solution complement the reporting requirements of key stakeholders within the Schools. It will provide potential opportunities to increase efficiency and flexibility in deploying surveys whilst being grounded within the continuous evaluation of the SUE process across the University. This poster will demonstrate the transition through the different stages of our project designed to improve student response and the quality of the information gathered

Inspiring learning through technology. 2nd ed.

This chapter explores: the shift to Technology Enhanced Learning useful contemporary digital frameworks and toolkits and the main technologies used in TEL practices Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) refers to the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to support and achieve improvements in teaching and learning. As a vehicle for change, TEL has ‘a way of addressing much broader and deeper changes in pedagogy, curriculum, physical infrastructure and in some cases, what it actually means to be a student or teacher in a digital environment’ (Cullen, 2014, p.9)

Student reactions to online tools for learning to use the Internet as a study tool: Outside the comfort zone?

The Internet is a valuable source of health related information, however students are not maximising their use of this resource. A study was undertaken to see what resources were already available to help them develop the necessary skills, and to identify the elements of an Internet study guide that were of importance to the students. An extensive search of the Internet, using a variety of search terms in Google and Yahoo located numerous study support sites. Ten focus groups were held with a total of 60 students on a variety of health and social care related courses at an English university. Rather than finding what the students were looking for in an online study guide the research found that using an online support system took the majority of students outside of their comfort zone, resulting in them rejecting online support and expressing a preference for personal or hard copy support and materials. The way online materials are structured into courses is explored as a possible reason for these difficulties and a flow chart to help students identify resources is presented