Hours wasted compiling this spreadsheet and associated Google Gadget, Motion Chart. The data still needs refining and but for many values it works well giving the user the opportunity to view three different parameters (axis of a graph and relative size of the plot) for related items. In my case, measures of different English universities [...]
As a part of my work on the Coeducate project I recently attended a project day with representatives from 11 other UK HE institutions. As us often the cases at such events the most value to be gained is from the surrounding off topic discussions and in one such conversation with someone from Cambridge University [...]
Work requirements mean that I can no longer resist using Microsoft Office (my convenience not a University of Bolton dictate) and the first step of migration was the relatively simple export and import of contacts. 30 minutes of fiddling with export and import options and the only answer I could find was: 1. export vCard [...]
A requirement of the Coeducate Jisc funded project is that we have a project Blog. The easiest choice and the one I took was to use wordpress.com with the addition of a sub-domain re-direct (WordPress charge $10 to allow this) so that we can use the URL http://coeducate.bolton.ac.uk thereby assuring a little bit of advantage [...]
Most adults feel exams failed to gauge real ability:77 per cent of adults believe that exam results should not be used to judge their suitability for jobs (Via Education Guardian). The overwhelming majority of adults believe school exams do not reflect their true abilities or predict their future success, according to a new report published [...]
Some good suggestions in this report by Paul Ramsden, the chief executive of the Higher Education Academy: Universities should offer ‘pick and mix’ degrees, says report: – build up qualifications from modules taken at different times in several universities – make it easier to switch between full-time and part-time study, possibly by making students pay [...]
UK universities should take online lead: “UK universities should push to become world leaders in online higher education, ministers will say tomorrow, despite the failure of the UK e-University four years ago. The universities secretary, John Denham, is likely to call not for a revival of the UKeU, which collapsed in 2004, but to develop [...]
Rather than fund a whole army of ‘Plagiarism Consultants’ and associated conferences why not re-engineer towards authentic forms of assessment – deal with the root of the problem rather than tinker with the flawed approach of the essay! “ Universities review plagiarism policies to catch Facebook cheats: Universities are reviewing their plagiarism policies to clamp [...]
Should e-learning policies be written to empower staff and students to abandon institutional provision? Two weeks into the semester proper the 7 student researchers recruited for the first cohort are all engaging with the first module. Forced to work outside of the UoB learning platforms (administrative issues), we have concentrated our communications around our WordPress.com [...]
Chapter 2, Understanding the Curriculum in Engaging the Curriculum in Higher Education (2005, Barnett and Coate) is a useful starting point for considering curriculum design in HE. This is complex area, and the slide below summarises seven notions of what might influence the development of curricula. Arguably an eigth dimension could now be added in [...]
