5,791 research outputs found

    Universal design for learning : enhancing student's involvement

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    What is Universal design for Learning (UDL)? The underlying idea is that lectures, exercises and evaluations are designed for maximum accessibility right from the start. UDL is an educational framework stating that students assimilate what they have learned in various ways. Therefore students' learning capacities and needs differ widely. Traditional teaching methods do not always take into account students' backgrounds and previous trainings. UDL offers a scientific framework to develop an inclusive learning environment that meets a wide range of needs, strengths, backgrounds and interests of current students. It offers a method to diminish barriers in the learning process without the need to find various solutions for the individual need of each separate student. Project UDL The policy Unit Diversity and Gender (Ghent University) offers its lecturers an UDL-coaching project. The aim is to get teachers from different faculties acquainted with the concept of UDL and to help them to apply the theory to their teaching and evaluation methods. In doing so, the policy unit wants to support teachers in their educational tasks and to bring them together to investigate how to make academic lectures more accessible and effective. The outcome is to enhance the involvement of all students. Together with the coaches, the lecturers will examine the way in which their study material is currently structured and how small adaptations can be made to reach a larger group of students. The participants of the coaching sessions will learn how exercises and lectures can grip and hold the students' attention. Although the project has a central theme, each participant will be able to give UDL a highly personal interpretation, depending on his or her needs and wishes. To guarantee this personal approach the group of participants is limited to 20. Participants come together with the project coach four times a year. During these meetings the principles of UDL are explained and the progress the teachers make is monitored. This coaching project enables lecturers to motivate a large amount of students with various backgrounds. They learn how to make small adjustments to their everyday teaching and evaluation practice. Moreover, by exchanging experiences and ideas about the principles of UDL we hope to bring about an enduring dynamic between the participants

    Corporate Social Responsibility for Social Network Site Providers: Advancing Children’s Rights by Creating and Implementing a Corporate Social Agenda

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    This contribution considers how evolving insights into Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its interplay with human rights can provide a framework for devising strategies that benefit both social network site providers and children and young people in their daily engagement with these networks. Back in 1953, Howard Bowen (1953, p. 6) defined ‘the social responsibilities of the businessman’ as “the obligations of businessmen to pursue those policies, to make those decisions, or to follow those lines of action which are desirable in terms of the objectives and values of our society”. More than half a century later, in 2011, the European Commission adopted “A renewed EU strategy 2011-14 for Corporate Social Responsibility”. In this strategy is it emphasised that human rights are an increasingly significant element in CSR and that companies should implement “a process to integrate social, environmental, ethical, human rights and consumer concerns into their business operations and core strategy in close collaboration with their stakeholders, with the aim of: maximising the creation of shared value for their owners/shareholders and for their other stakeholders and society at large; and identifying, preventing and mitigating their possible adverse impacts” (European Commission, 2011c, p. 6). More specifically, the 2013 UN “Children’s rights and business principles” require businesses not only to prevent harm but also to take steps to safeguard children’s interests, for instance by ensuring that products and services are safe and aiming to support children’s rights through them. For social network site providers this could for instance entail the (further) development of reporting mechanisms with a fast and supportive follow-up, the provision of clear and age-appropriate information in a transparent manner through innovatively designed Terms of Use and privacy policies (Wauters, Lievens and Valcke, 2014) or the implementation of participatory strategies to involve young users in the improvement and identification of elements that should be included in the CSR strategy. Against this background, this contribution will analyse (1) traditional incentives for businesses to adopt corporate social agendas (such as moral obligations, sustainability, license to operate, reputation, and shared value), (2) recent discourse concerning CSR at United Nations and European Union level and (3) current CSR practices in the ICT sector. This will result in a proposal for the identification of key requirements of CSR strategies for social network site providers that are tailored to their specific features and advance the rights of a significant proportion of their current and future users

    Professor Eva Lievens speaks on protecting minors more effectively across media platforms

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