Evaluation of arts across the curriculum

This is the final report on the evaluation of the Arts Across the Curriculum (AAC) project, prepared bythe evaluation team in the Quality in Education Centre (QIE) at the University of Strathclyde, who were commissioned by the Scottish Government (formerly Scottish Executive) Education Department.Arts Across the Curriculum is a three-year pilot project sponsored by the former Scottish Executive'sFuture Learning and Teaching (FLaT) programme1, the Scottish Arts Council, and seven localauthorities in which the initiative is being piloted. In order to be eligible to participate in AAC, localauthorities had to have a Creative Links Officer in post. The seven Creative Links Officers were responsible for the management of the AAC project in their local authority

Evaluation of North Lanarkshire's cooperative learning programme

This is the final report by the Quality in Education Centre (QIE) at the University of Strathclyde of anevaluation of the North Lanarkshire cooperative learning project. The project and the evaluation arefunded as part of the Scottish Executive's Future Learning and Teaching (FLaT) Programme(http://www.flatprojects.org.uk/). Cooperative learning was introduced in North Lanarkshire in 2002 as part of a wider programme toraise aspirations and achievement and attainment (Raising Achievement for All,North Lanarkshire Education Department, 1998). The authority have made the commitment that all teachers and supportstaff will be trained in cooperative learning, if they wish, over a period of at least 5 years. Since theintroduction of A Curriculum for Excellence, the authority has been emphasising the strengths ofcooperative learning in supporting the development of the four capacities (successful learners,confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors to society). They also believe that it provides a suitable medium for taking forward other national initiatives such asAssessment is for Learning and Enterprise in Education

Mobile Learning and the Future of Learning

An interview article with Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, covering the meaning of mobile learning, its relationship to other types of technology-supported learning, the role of students and the impact on teachers. A section of the interview deals with applications in foreign language acquisition and other disciplines. Finally there are reflections on successful implementations, institutional issues, and the role of research in informing practice and policy development

Learning fast: broadband and the future of education

Educational institutions have always had a central place in the online age. Before the advent of high-speed broadband, other communications technologies and services also played a big role in education.  University researchers were among the first Australian users of what became known as the Internet. When the domain name system was deployed in the mid-1980s, the .au domain was delegated to Robert Elz at the University of Melbourne. When the Australian Vice-Chancellor’s Committee decided to set up a national communications network to support research, Geoff Huston transferred to its payroll from ANU to work as technical manager for AARNet, whose current chief executive, Chris Hancock, is interviewed by Liz Fell in this issue. When a 56 kbps ARPANET link with Australia was made by NASA and the University of Hawaii via Intelsat in June 1989, the connection was established in Elz’s University of Melbourne laboratory. (Clarke 2004: 31) In earlier times, the postal service made learning-at-a-distance possible by ‘correspondence’, particularly in remote areas of Australia. Advances in radio communications made it easier and the interactivity more immediate. Television sets and later video cassette and DVD players and recorders made it more visual. The telephone provided a tool of communication for teachers and learners; the best of them understood that most people were both at different times. Then simple low bandwidth tools like email and web browsing provided new ways for students, teachers and their institutions to communicate and distribute and share information. Learning management systems like Blackboard have been widely deployed through the education sector. Information that was once housed in libraries is now available online and social media platforms are providing new ways for students to collaborate. Ubiquitous, faster broadband and mobile access via smartphones and tablets promise further transformations. &nbsp

Machine Learning and the Future of Realism

The preceding three decades have seen the emergence, rise, and proliferation of machine learning (ML). From half-recognised beginnings in perceptrons, neural nets, and decision trees, algorithms that extract correlations (that is, patterns) from a set of data points have broken free from their origin in computational cognition to embrace all forms of problem solving, from voice recognition to medical diagnosis to automated scientific research and driverless cars, and it is now widely opined that the real industrial revolution lies less in mobile phone and similar than in the maturation and universal application of ML. Among the consequences just might be the triumph of anti-realism over realism

Mobile language learning now and in the future

The widespread ownership of mobile devices such as cellphones, personal media players, personal digital assistants (PDAs), smartphones and wireless laptops means that ‘mobile learning’ is no longer in the preserve of technical experts and researchers with specialist knowledge. Teachers and learners have begun to integrate mobile technologies into everyday practices and there is evidence of efforts to invent exciting new scenarios of use. Language learning is one of the disciplines that looks set to benefit from these developments. Learners can make good use of the facilities to record and to listen to audio at any time, supported by the rising availability of podcasts and the ‘always on’ characteristics of portable devices which encourage spontaneous interactions. Mobile learning promises to deliver closer integration of language learning with everyday communication needs and cultural experiences

Towards a strategy for workplace learning: Report to HEFCE by CHERI and KPMG

The study, undertaken between March and November 2005 aimed to inform HEFCE thinking on developing a strategy for workplace learning by: exploring the nature, purposes and outcomes of workplace learning; considering workplace learning within the broader relationships between the worlds of work and learning; exploring emerging changes in higher education which may impact on workplace learning in the future; identifying structural issues that currently enable or inhibit workplace learning, and identify future opportunities

Distributed Learning System Design: A New Approach and an Agenda for Future Research

This article presents a theoretical framework designed to guide distributed learning design, with the goal of enhancing the effectiveness of distributed learning systems. The authors begin with a review of the extant research on distributed learning design, and themes embedded in this literature are extracted and discussed to identify critical gaps that should be addressed by future work in this area. A conceptual framework that integrates instructional objectives, targeted competencies, instructional design considerations, and technological features is then developed to address the most pressing gaps in current research and practice. The rationale and logic underlying this framework is explicated. The framework is designed to help guide trainers and instructional designers through critical stages of the distributed learning system design process. In addition, it is intended to help researchers identify critical issues that should serve as the focus of future research efforts. Recommendations and future research directions are presented and discussed

Innovating for Learning: Designing for the Future of Education

Teaching has moved online as the world has moved online and learning is losing its sense of physical location with the availability of many different options from mobile to MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). The impact of online learning is not confined to distance learning; when a student attends a campus university they are now as likely to meet with their fellow learners virtually as face to face. The education sector has yet to fully adapt to what this means, and indeed there strong signs of a built in resilience from providers, employers and students themselves which may mean an apparent evolution is more likely than a revolution. At the same time, there are some quiet changes underway that mean we should be preparing to innovate for the revolution to come. Some of those changes are considered in work undertaken at The Open University that has been disseminated in a series of Innovating Pedagogy reports. These reports allow the academic authors to be more speculative than is usual practice and engage in considering the future, while remaining based on a view of what is happening in the sector. In particular they adopt a position focused on pedagogy that balances technology-based futurology that can dominate yet fail to resonate with those actually involved in the teaching process. The annual Innovating Pedagogy reports cover 10 topics each, with some deliberate overlap from year to year and development of themes that show innovations moving into teaching practice. This is illustrated by two cases, the impact of MOOCs and the application of learning design and analytics. The development of MOOCs demonstrates the value of reviewing pedagogy that aligns with technology. While the use of learning design and learning analytics demonstrates how improvements in the way we describe our learning processes and the way we understand learner behaviour is helping determine how choices in pedagogy impact on student satisfaction, progression and success