Access to Core Course Materials Project: report of the needs analysis interviews

This report outlines the findings of the Access to Core Course Materials needs analysis interviews. Interviews were conducted with academics in thirteen departments (including one pilot interview). Individuals were asked to identify core materials in their subject, the specific needs of their department, their use of and attitudes towards the current teaching support services and their requirements for a future electronic service

Access to Core Course Materials Project: DigiCOMS: report of the pilot service

One of the objectives of the Access to Core Course Materials Project was to set up, run and evaluate a pilot electronic study pack service. The needs analysis demonstrated that the service needed to encompass a range of materials and so the service was broadened to include a variety of electronic course materials. The service included the production of electronic study packs, but also offered a digitisation service for other types of course materials; in particular a facility to make available in-house produced publications such as course handbooks and lecture notes. Related to this work was a separate project funded by a grant from the Sub-Committee on Innovation in Learning, Teaching and Assessment (SCILTA) in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health. The Project Officer was involved in setting up an intranet site to distribute a range of electronic course materials. The Department were particularly keen to include online assessment and for this reason it was decided to build the site using WebCT. This gave the Access Project direct experience of using virtual learning environment software, which could be compared to the simple course material system that was devised in-house. A full report of this project is available; however, the issues of relevance to the DigiCOMS service and an outline of the work is also discussed within this report

Access to Core Course Materials Project: Teaching Collection Experiment report

This report documents the third phase in the Access to Core Course Material project, known as the Teaching Collection Experiment. The work began in March 2001 and was completed in September 2001. The Teaching Collection is the name given to the printed reserve at UCL. It contains off-prints of essential course readings that are kept behind issue desks at both the Main and Science Library. Lecturers can place up to five copies of materials in the Collection, which are entered onto the library catalogue and given an unique identifying number. The Experiment investigated the feasibility of digitising a selection of this material and making it available electronically. This report documents the production process and compares the costs and quality of an in-house service with out-sourcing production. This allowed the project team to investigate the feasibility of offering a clearance and/or digitisation service in-house and the costs associated with such activities. The experiment also examined how this service related to the current activities of the Library and might be integrated into existing services. Following on from this experiment, a pilot service known as DigiCOMS was offered to a further 5 departments at UCL. The digitised material produced during the Teaching Collection Experiment was therefore made available through the DigiCOMS service. More details about DigiCOMS are available in a separate report. The Economics Department was selected to participate in this experiment, as they currently use the Teaching Collection to deposit a considerable number of course readings. Using a department from the social sciences also compliments the earlier work for the Dutch Department. It was also important to choose a department whose reading lists contained considerable numbers of published journal articles and chapters from books that required copyright permission from publishers. A selection of material that the department currently deposit in the Teaching Collection was identified, in addition to some material which students had found problematic to get hold of in the past. It should be pointed out at this stage that the distinction between a printed study pack and a teaching collection item in a print environment is significant, in particular for legal reasons, because a set of readings cannot placed within the teaching collection to avoid the copyright costs associated with producing a study pack. However, this distinction is less clear cut once material is made available electronically. Therefore, although the material in the teaching collection did not form a printed study pack, the set of digitised readings are referred to as an electronic study pack. Electronic permissions are also granted by publishers along similar lines to printed study packs, in that the pricing model is based on the length of a particular extract and the number of students on the course

Access to Core Course Materials Project: case study final report

As part of the Access to Core Course Materials Project a questionnaire was distributed to all academic departments at UCL to investigate their attitudes towards and requirements for electronic course materials. This research revealed that a number of departments had already undertaken work in this area and provide access to a range of electronic resources. It was therefore decided to undertake case studies of four innovative departments to compare the set-up and organisation of these systems, the attitudes of staff and students towards them and any problems or considerations that they had encountered. This information would be used to develop a series of models of course materials systems. It would also contribute towards the design of a pilot service that the Project would subsequently launch

Using the concept of rule-governed behaviour to integrate the cognitive and behavioural therapies : a theoretical analysis : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University

The concept of rule-governed behaviour (RGB) was introduced by B.F Skinner (1969) to allow complex verbal behaviour to be amenable to the same types of contingency analysis used in most other areas of applied behaviourism. Inherent in the concept of RGB is the notion that people formulate and follow rules created by themselves and others and that this constitutes a distinct class of operant functioning. As the process of cognitive therapy is primarily undertaken in a verbal fashion, the possibility of employing the concept of RGB to redefine aspects of cognitive therapy from an operant perspective has been considered by several researchers (e.g., Zettle & Hayes, 1982; Poppen, 1989). This form of paradigmatic integration, involving the transplantation of one set of therapeutic techniques into the theoretical body of another epistemological framework, can be termed assimilative (Lazarus & Messer. 1991). The present essay clarifies the aims and content of such an integration as it relates to the concept of RGB and cognitive-behavioural rapprochement, and offers several theoretical advancements in this direction. Errors in rule-following and rule-formulation are discussed in terms of the role they play in cognitive assessment, and the cognitive mechanisms involved in therapeutic change are also analysed in terms of RGB. It is also shown how RGB can be conceptualised as a reciprocally-determined system of responding, similar to that espoused by the cognitive theorist Albert Bandura (1977a). Finally, some of the problems associated with the concept of RGB and psychotherapy integration are reviewed in relation to the present analysis

Developing a New Curriculum for Information Literacy: reflections on our Arcadia Fellowship research

Overview of project design, methodology and execution for a 10-week research fellowship on information literacy

Copyright Literacy in the UK: a survey of librarians and other cultural heritage sector professionals

Based on a survey of UK library and information professionals and those who work in the cultural heritage sector, carried out in December 2014, this research sought to examine the levels of copyright „literacy?. The survey aimed to obtain responses from all sectors, however most responses were received from academic libraries. The research examined their knowledge of national and international copyright issues as well as copyright policies at an institutional level. The survey also explored the need for copyright education for new and existing professionals and suggested topics for inclusion in training activities. The findings suggest that levels of knowledge amongst UK professionals are higher than those in other countries who participated in the first phase of the project. UK institutions are also more likely to have a copyright policy and an individual with responsibility for copyright. The results should be of interest to library managers, library educators and those with responsibility for staff training

A new curriculum for information literacy: executive summary

Information literacy can be defined as a set of skills, attributes and behaviour that underpins student learning in the digital age. It has been linked to graduate employability and increasingly UK universities are developing information literacy strategies to inform how they ensure students acquire these competencies during their undergraduate studies. Information literacy programmes or sessions are often run by academic libraries; however, in order to be most effective, experts recognise that information literacy should be embedded within a subject curriculum and ideally taught in partnership with academic and academic support colleagues, rather than in one-off sessions run by librarians. SCONUL's Seven Pillars of Information Literacy model, widely accepted in higher education, sets out the skills and attributes that an information literate person should have. In practical terms, however, how information literacy is taught varies widely across higher education. In addition, recent research suggests that the information-seeking behaviour and needs of students are changing (CIBER, 2008), largely driven by the changing experiences and expectations of 'the Google Generation' who have grown up with access to the internet being the norm. While the Google Generation and 'Digital Native' terms have been debated and widely criticised (Jones, et al, 2010), it is clear that information literacy programmes over the next five years will need to adapt and respond to the needs of current students. This short project developed a practical curriculum for information literacy that meets the needs of the undergraduate student entering higher education over the next five years. It consulted widely with experts in the information literacy field, and also those working in curriculum design and educational technologies

UK Copyright Literacy Survey: summary report

The Copyright Literacy Survey aimed to gather data of copyright awareness amongst UK librarians and those working in related cultural heritage organisations, such as galleries, archives and museums. The data was gathered in late 2014 following several significant changes to UK copyright law, including several new exceptions of relevance to librarians and those working in the education and cultural heritage sectors. The survey instrument was developed in Bulgaria and findings from phase one of the project from four countries (Bulgaria, France, Turkey and Croatia) were presented at the European Conference of Information Literacy in 2014. In order to allow cross-country comparisons, the questions were devised by the original project team and only minor changes to reflect UK terminology and institutions were made. This report provides a high level summary of the key findings from the UK survey. The researchers will undertake further analysis to compare the findings to other countries and to draw conclusions from the data. Further publications and conference papers are planned later in 2015, but due to the high level of interest in the survey it was considered appropriate to release a summary of the data at this stage