Second Life: the seventh face of the library?

Viewpoint/Discussion Paper Purpose This paper gives a brief introduction to Second Life, an outline of how one academic librarian has got involved with using it and reviews the issues that have arisen from a library perspective. Approach It offers a reflection on whether library activities in Second Life are different to library services in the real world and suggests that Second Life is just another ‘face’ of the library. Findings Second Life is still in the very early stages of development. There are various barriers and challenges to overcome before it can be used widely within universities. However, this paper shows it does provide an opportunity to experiment and explore what information resources are required in this environment and how librarianship and librarians need to evolve to cater for users in a three dimensional world. Originality/value This paper is based on personal experience and offers as many questions as answers

Assessment strategy for virtual teams undertaking the EWB Challenge

[Abstract]: The Engineers without Borders (EWB) Challenge has been incorporated into a core first year course in the Faculty of Engineering and Surveying at University of Southern Queensland. This paper examines an assessment strategy which supports developing a team and problem solving process as well as the final outcome for the team. The assessment strategy aims to encourage teams and individual students to develop practices and strategies which can be used in other projects and problem solving situations as well as producing this one team report in one course. The team and problem solving process is critical as the majority of our teams work as virtual teams having no face to face contact with either other team members or facilitator. Significant emphasis is placed on developing strategies for virtual team work and encouraging individual student learning in line with individual learning goals set with consideration of prior knowledge and experience

Learning, literacy and identity: ‘I don’t think I’m a failure any more’

The impact of participation in adult literacy programmes on learners’ identities is examined through an interrogation of their past and current experiences and the assessment of the effect of particular pedagogies. The findings show how learners’ positive experiences in their programmes had caused them to re-evaluate their previous understandings and enabled the construction of new identities as people that are able to learn. These changes had come about through the challenging of negative discourses, the creation of new figured worlds and imagined futures and the use of a learning curriculum where learners’ experiences were utilised as positive resources

Form Follows Function

Natural history. Teaching. Writing. All have form, all have function. But just as no architecture is risk-free, no architecture is neutral. In this personal essay, I explore the surprising connections that develop when university students engage with natural history as way of knowing the ground underfoot

When whiteness is invisible to those who teach: Teacher training, critical professional development, and the intersection of equitable education opportunities

Background Non-White teachers comprise 18% of the teaching force with faster burnout rates than White teachers. Teachers of Color (ToC) are exhausted. Institutionally, pre-service teacher education (TE) and inservice teacher professional development (PD) neglect the experiences and perspectives of non-White teachers. Critical Professional Development (CPD) “frames teachers as politically-aware individuals who have a stake in teaching and transforming society; dialogical; honors relationality/collectivity; strengthens racial literacy; recognizes critical consciousness & transformation as an ongoing process” (Mosely, 2018, p. 271). Q1: What type of critical TE and PD is needed to transform the racialized education system? Q2: What are the benefits of transformational critical TE and PD for educators? Methods I did a systemic literature review of TE and PD in peer-reviewed journal articles. Results The results of the literature review found several themes including a lack of any racial or structural analysis; recruitment of ToC happens simultaneously with the enabling and reifying of racist beliefs; there is no education for ToC helping them navigate the racist educational system and conversations; there is no safe space in schools or the academy, e.g., “White space is unsafe – all schools are white space”; ToC experience racial violence every day in schools. Conclusions White teachers and administrators should listen to and believe ToC; critically and reflectively question their assumptions and biases; become an accomplice, a co-conspirator, not just an ally; become more observant of the ways that race and racism are operating in schools and classrooms; and engage in tough conversations about inequity at work.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/gradposters/1055/thumbnail.jp

Research and student voice

This paper is written partly as a response to a critique from Sally Baker and her colleagues (2006) about an article that John Bamber and I published (Bamber and Tett, 2001) in 2001. Their critique was based on the grounds that we had developed our arguments in a way that depended ‘on an assumption about the\ud veracity of student participants [that] represents a solipsistic retreat into a state of analysis where things are the case because people say they are’ (p 175). Criticism is never comfortable but it did provoke me into thinking about the nature of evidence that is derived from interviews and focus groups with students. Does this imply, as Baker and colleagues argue, that this methodology inevitably means that researchers have ‘not taken a systematically sociologically informed analysis of the nature of institutions or society or the material obstacles to change but have instead relied on the subjective individualised realm of student experiences’ (p 175)? I will argue that this is an over-simplistic interpretation of data that are based on students’ voices and I will draw on findings from a variety of educational provision ranging from universities to informal literacy provision in community settings to examine the role of the researcher in listening to and reinterpreting the detail of people’s lives. There are of course many issues raised by data derived from using student voices as a method of enquiry so I will begin with the problems raised for research that is based on listening to, and interpreting from, interviews with students

Headin' South: The Texas Snowbirds

Hogg Foundation for Mental Healt

Consumer finance: challenges for operational research

Consumer finance has become one of the most important areas of banking, both because of the amount of money being lent and the impact of such credit on global economy and the realisation that the credit crunch of 2008 was partly due to incorrect modelling of the risks in such lending. This paper reviews the development of credit scoring—the way of assessing risk in consumer finance—and what is meant by a credit score. It then outlines 10 challenges for Operational Research to support modelling in consumer finance. Some of these involve developing more robust risk assessment systems, whereas others are to expand the use of such modelling to deal with the current objectives of lenders and the new decisions they have to make in consumer finance. <br/