How will tourism and hospitality education have to change in 5, 10 and 15 years' time for the global citizen student?

Higher Education within the UK is experiencing many changes, one of which is the changing nature of graduate profiles (Higher Education Academy, 2014). Traditionally Tourism and Hospitality education was predominately composed of home students. In recent years this has changed to include more international students. Our longitudinal research study of four years indicated that those international students’ encounter challenges when adapting to the UK University teaching systems, developing employability skills and integrating within the community. To address these challenges the lecturing team created a conceptual framework named The Learning, Assessment, Pastoral (LAP) conceptual Framework, which provides for a theoretical model perpetuating the concepts of incremental learning, critical thinking; volunteering, competitive spirit and mentoring. The entrenched framework formulation enables students to build confidence and a sense of belonging as well as an appreciation of the teaching, learning and assessment styles

The Academic: a profession with ethics and care for the digital age student.

As a result of the changing social-economic environments; the number of undergraduate degree completions in the UK has increased by 45% in just 15 years, whilst in the same period post graduate completions have more than doubled (HESA, 2015) Government, students and industry demand “one click” visibility of quality standards, students’ surveys and publications (Buckley et. al., 2015). As such, with performance data available to all, the institutions are under pressure to respond to these demands and are moving away from an employment pattern which could be associated with the public sector, towards incorporating private-sector elements (Kanuga, 2014; Weert, 2001). Ongoing government changes are pushing universities towards more target driven business strategies both for student recruitment and research grants (Williams, 2008). Academics research outputs, quality and effectiveness of teaching are being measured through performance targets (Weert, 2001). Academics are under pressure to deliver the expectations of the digital age students, to meet performance targets set by non-academic line managers as well as publish their research (Williams, 2008; Deerlove, 2002; Weert, 2001). This study explores to which extend academics are able to meet the ethical care they are aiming to provide to students whilst staying true to their self-understanding of academe as a profession. When comparing it to literature, perhaps the definition of the academic profession remains inconclusive. Practitioners feel it is a profession because of social status whilst literature, through tracing its history, classes it a profession because of specialist knowledge. This specialist knowledge is however not linked to any specific qualifications or accreditation. It is perhaps for this reason that neither literature nor practice clearly link the role to a duty of ethical care. If academics were required to complete a course which corresponds with the profession then this might encourage more professional attitude. An alternative or addition to this could be to ask academics to become fellows of the Higher Education Academy and to aim for senior or associate fellow. To do so they would need to provide evidence of their practices, perhaps even change these (Higher Education Academy 2015). They would go through panel interviews and need to reflect on their ethical care towards students. If academics became certified and members of a professional body, then this would remove the debate if it constitutes a profession and if this profession is focused on research or teaching

Shared leadership: individual reflections

This study considered individual reflections on shared leadership, practiced by three academics working at a London based university, each share course leadership with three or our four colleagues. The positions were created by their field leader in support of the universities strategic goals which focus on meeting student needs; developing leaders and enabling more research to take place. The findings show that these goals are certainly met, although not clearly recognised and supported by the senior management team of the institution who follow the traditional hierarchal leadership framework. It is further recommended that the key elements identified in the literature which are needed for shared leadership to occur; also consider time as an element

Cloud seeding experiment using common salt

An experiment on artificial stimulation of rain using a warm cloud seeding technique was undertaken in three nearby climatologically similar regions, Delhi, Agra and Jaipur in northwest India. Analysis of the data from 18 experiment-seasons has suggested a positive trend of the result, which is found significant by statistical tests

When We Demand Our Share of This World”: Struggles for Space, New Possibilities of Planning, and Municipalist Politics in Mumbai

This dissertation presents an urban history of Bombay/Mumbai from the perspective of a politics of plurality, arguing that while the city has emerged from governmental control and planning, its development has also been shaped by myriad popular productive forces of urban society. The dissertation traces the uneven development of the city through significant planning policies, popular movements, and lived experiences of various struggles against regimes of developmentalism—the governing ideologies of development, techniques, policies, and rules of law through which the city has been planned and governed. These ideologies and practices have shifted over time, but since the earliest days of Bombay’s urban development, they have marked the space of the city. Colonial and imperial projects were based on planned abandonment and the governance of differentiated vulnerability that was inherently anti-democratic and depoliticizing (even as it used the rhetoric and machinery of democracy). Myriad popular cultures of the city have nonetheless marked the space of city with a variety of political responses to developmentalist projects. This selected history, indeed the often-antagonistic interplay between two histories of the city, allows us to understand that planning has long been a terrain of struggle over not only the city’s development but also the city’s functional democracy. It shows that planning and development are the domains of both state and popular practice, however uneven and divergent those practices are. Through in-depth ethnography, this dissertation connects the historical investigation of Mumbai’s development to the contemporary politics animating a range of urban movements in recent years that have mobilized working-class and populist visions of the city, its past, and present and possible futures. This dissertation chronicles a five-year popular cycle of struggle to establish a more hopeful vision of the future for the city by responding to, and seeking to reshape, the municipal government’s official twenty-year Development Plan 2014–2034. In the process, a spirited municipalist politics has emerged in Mumbai undergirded by a rupture of those experiences and knowledges that define the dominant regime of urbanization. These politics demonstrate that the prospect for dismantling the anti-democratic forms of developmentalism that plan and govern the city emerges from attempts to forge collectivist and popular urban consciousness. By tracing this history, the dissertation argues that Mumbai’s contested cultures of planning offer important insights into the heterogeneity and plurality of the city’s futures. In so doing, the dissertation places Mumbai as a significant site for the investigation of the diverse trajectories in which the developmental futures of capital emerge. Finally, the dissertation calls for renewed theorization of the Indian city from the perspective of urban movements—the places of social mobilization, spatial politics, and articulations of social subjectivity and heterogeneity

Learning teaching and assessment strategy for graduate level international student

Part of the University of West London (UWL)'s vision is to reach out to students of all ages, abilities and backgrounds, which is underpinned by the institutions’ value on diversity: "celebrated through a rich social and ethnic mix" and achieved by one of its core strategic objectives: to improve international recruitment, raise our international profile and target markets that will match our current and emerging academic strengths (TVU strategic plan, 2010 cited in Kanuga, 2010). In 2008/2009 the UK saw a growth rate of international students studying at postgraduate level of 17% on the previous year (UKCISA, 2010 cited in Kanuga, 2010). As part of the PGCERT; lectures from different faculties of UWL carried out limited research amongst teachers and students on the challenges faced in this context. The research concluded the need for an alternative learning, teaching and assessment strategy. A phased strategy was developed inspired by learning strategies offered by Kolb (1984) and Baker (2010) and the e-moderating model of Salmon (2004). The strategy aimed for students to build the necessary employability skills within seven weeks, through the use of blended learning involving an e-learning environment, in this instance pebblepad (Kanuga, 2010). The pilot resulted in 90% pass rate of a cohort of 48 students passing at the first attempt compared to a 45% pass rate of a previous cohort

Blue cone monochromacy: causative mutations and associated phenotypes.

PurposeTo perform a phenotypic assessment of members of three British families with blue cone monochromatism (BCM), and to determine the underlying molecular genetic basis of disease.MethodsAffected members of three British families with BCM were examined clinically and underwent detailed electrophysiological and psychophysical testing. Blood samples were taken for DNA extraction. Molecular analysis involved the amplification of the coding regions of the long (L) and medium (M) wave cone opsin genes and the upstream locus control region (LCR) by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Gene products were directly sequenced and analyzed.ResultsIn all three families, genetic analysis identified that the underlying cause of BCM involved an unequal crossover within the opsin gene array, with an inactivating mutation. Family 1 had a single 5'-L-M-3' hybrid gene, with an inactivating Cys203Arg (C203R) mutation. Family 3 had an array composed of a C203R inactivated 5'-L-M-3' hybrid gene followed by a second inactive gene. Families 1 and 3 had typical clinical, electrophysiological, and psychophysical findings consistent with stationary BCM. A novel mutation was detected in Family 2 that had a single hybrid gene lacking exon 2. This family presented clinical and psychophysical evidence of a slowly progressive phenotype.ConclusionsTwo of the BCM-causing family genotypes identified in this study comprised different hybrid genes, each of which contained the commonly described C203R inactivating mutation. The genotype in the family with evidence of a slowly progressive phenotype represents a novel BCM mutation. The deleted exon 2 in this family is not predicted to result in a shift in the reading frame, therefore we hypothesize that an abnormal opsin protein product may accumulate and lead to cone cell loss over time. This is the first report of slow progression associated with this class of mutation in the L or M opsin genes in BCM

The role of the ER stress response protein PERK in rhodopsin retinitis pigmentosa

Mutations in rhodopsin, the light sensitive protein of rod cells, are the most common cause of dominant retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a type of inherited blindness caused by the dysfunction and death of photoreceptor cells. The P23H mutation, the most frequent single cause of RP in the USA, causes rhodopsin misfolding and induction of the unfolded protein response (UPR), an adaptive ER stress response and signalling network that aims to enhance the folding and degradation of misfolded proteins to restore proteostasis. Prolonged UPR activation, and in particular the PERK branch, can reduce protein synthesis and initiate cell death through induction of pro-apoptotic pathways. Here, we investigated the effect of pharmacological PERK inhibition on retinal disease process in the P23H-1 transgenic rat model of retinal degeneration. PERK inhibition with GSK2606414A led to an inhibition of eIF2α phosphorylation, which correlated with reduced ERG function and decreased photoreceptor survival at both high and low doses of PERK inhibitor. Additionally, PERK inhibition increased the incidence of inclusion formation in cultured cells overexpressing P23H rod opsin, and increased rhodopsin aggregation in the P23H-1 rat retina, suggesting enhanced P23H misfolding and aggregation. In contrast, treatment of P23H-1 rats with an inhibitor of eIF2α phosphatase, salubrinal, led to improved photoreceptor survival. Collectively, these data suggest the activation of PERK is part of a protective response to mutant rhodopsin that ultimately limits photoreceptor cell death

The Men's Safer Sex (MenSS) trial: protocol for a pilot randomised controlled trial of an interactive digital intervention to increase condom use in men

Sexually transmitted infections (STI) are a major public health problem. Condoms provide effective protection but there are many barriers to use. Face-to-face health promotion interventions are resource-intensive and show mixed results. Interactive digital interventions may provide a suitable alternative, allowing private access to personally tailored behaviour change support. We have developed an interactive digital intervention (the Men's Safer Sex (MenSS) website) which aims to increase condom use in men. We describe the protocol for a pilot trial to assess the feasibility of a full-scale randomised controlled trial of the MenSS website in addition to usual sexual health clinical care