Studies of metamaterial structures

Imperial Users onl

Learning landscapes for universities: mapping the field [or] Beyond a seat in the lecture hall: a prolegemenon of learning landscapes in universities

This is the first in a series of project working papers. Its aim is to commence the development of a shared vocabulary so that visioning learning landscapes can be realised in the appropriate development of academic estate. The paper explores first, how the terminology of learning landscapes has been employed elsewhere. Secondly, its connections with university conceptualisations past and present are explored as this project aims to retain the strengths of traditional academic environments together with new designs. The impetus to its emergence is next reviewed , its constituent elements and any evidence of estates-related literature. Finally a definition is essayed. Includes an abbreviated version (p.11-14)

What lessons can be transferred to higher education learning landscapes from the leadership, governance and management processes of school design projects?

This review reports experiences from the schools sector in involving stakeholders in the processes of managing school building design. Its aim was to see if any of this could offer guidance for higher education as their learning landscapes are reconceptualised. School architects and designers have gradually accepted grater stakeholder involvement especially from pupils and to a lesser extent from teachers and many innovative ways have been found to make their participation authentic. These could be adapted in higher education together with teacher education in new pedagogies and better liaison with governors

Social conflict in the contemporary French roman noir

Conflict is by definition at the heart of the crime novel: most evidently in the usually violent conflict between victim and perpetrator but also in a more abstract, though equally important, way in the conflict between the perpetrator and the social order that s/he has transgressed. The classic detective story that Tzvetan Todorov classifies as the “whodunit” in his typology of detective fiction (1977, p. 43), in which the mystery of a crime, usually a murder, and the circumstances leading up to it are investigated and resolved by an authoritative detective figure, is one in which the criminal is the enemy of a social order, often that of bourgeois or upper-class society, that he or she has disrupted. Contemporary French crime writer Dominique Manotti (2009) opposes the essentially reassuring nature of the roman policier—similar in its structure to Todorov’s ‘whodunit’—as a form which is “by definition a novel of order”, to the roman noir she espouses. The roman noir, akin to Todorov’s “thriller” (1977, p. 47) offers little reassurance. In this type of fiction, the disorder engendered by criminal acts, symptomatic as they are of a permanently disordered society, is dispelled only to return

When worlds collide - examining the challenges faced by teacher education programmes combining professional vocational competence with academic study, lessons from further education to higher education

This paper examines the challenges faced by higher education institutions in designing, teaching and quality assuring programmes of study which, of necessity, must combine the gaining of professional vocational competence with academic study. The paper gives recognition to the policy framework in which these programmes fit – with particular reference to teacher education. It presents the challenges at each stage, from ensuring that curriculum design meets the needs of the profession, to the quality assurance mechanisms which ensure standards and compliance. Initially the paper draws on published research to examine how and why these policy decisions have been taken in much of the developed world. The paper goes on to present a new perspective, however, by comparing current teacher education mechanisms with those that have developed in the past twenty years in further education, looking at the parallels and addressing how far we can learn from the experiences of further education colleagues to ensure that we manage to combine the two different worlds of academia and vocational training without compromising either. It suggests ways in which higher education institutions can learn from further education to tackle the challenges to ensure that concentration on training students to be good teachers is done without compromising personal growth and intellectual development, and examines how far it is possible to meet the demands of higher education quality controls which are applied with differential emphases

State and Local Environmental Information Centers, Facilities, and Services

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has already kindly provided the first edition of a catalog of state and local environmental libraries. 1 However, I wish to provide more than such a catalog. As you may have read in Schneiderman's paper, there are both active and passive library roles to be played. I will concentrate on discussing the possible active roles of an environmental library after I dismiss a few of the passive items. Browsing through the EPA listing will give you an idea of the range of libraries dealing both generally and specifically with environmentally related materials. Naturally, each state library will collect some environmental journals, books, and conference proceedings. Some state governments which have established either a natural resources department or an environmental research agency have started environmental collections (e.g., Arkansas, Delaware, Michigan, and Illinois). Small, local public libraries try to collect mostly nontechnical, lay reading material on the environmental crisis. In addition to these types of libraries, we must remember to take advantage of all those special collections which may be considered national or regional, but which are also frequently local. For example, unless one lives in Santa Barbara, California, the Oil Spill Information Center there may be unknown. Another narrow subject area is dealt with by the eutrophication program at the University of Wisconsin's Water Resources Center. (A future edition of EPA's directory might contain a subject listing of special collections.) Without assuming to speak for all special libraries, one may say that most of them are happy to serve by phone or mail. Professional associations and foundations ranging from the Conservation Foundation in Washington, D.C., to the American Foundrymen's Society in Des Plaines, Illinois usually have libraries or information centers with very specific environmental information available.published or submitted for publicatio

"Citrus slices" self care WellBeing x BU Libraries poster

WellBeing and BU Libraries created the posters to encourage students to practice self-care through healthy habits