The next Scottish e-Portfolio Forum will be held on the 3rd December 2009 at the offices of RSC Scotland South & West (Todd Campus).
Delegates representing learning providers from all over Scotland will be in attendance so it will be a great opportunity to compare notes, experiences and ideas from like minded professionals.
The meeting will include a presentation from Jannette Hillicks from JISC InfoNet to discuss the recently updated e-Portfolio infoKit. The meeting will also be an opportunity to discuss a joint PDP/e-Portfolio forum meeting in the new year to explore the use of PDP and e-portfolios in transition into and between tertiary education.
We are still looking for suggestions for agenda topics and/or speakers so please contact us if there is anything in particular you would like this meeting to cover.
Time: Meeting 10:00–12:30 Light lunch available from 12:30.
Date: Thur 3rd Dec 2009
Cost: Free
Venue: RSC Scotland South & West (Todd Campus)
Booking: To book a place at this event please email support@rsc-sw-scotland.ac.uk.
Posted on the October 27, 2009 by Martin Hawksey
Filed Under Events, Forums, e-Portfolios |
Alistair Young, Senior Software Developer at UHI, has won a prize in JISC MOSAIC Developer Competition. The competition, which attracted international attention, was established to investigate how user data can be used. Balviar Notay from the JISC Environment Team said, “the MOSAIC project is investigating the possibilities for data covering user activity such as book circulation across UK Higher Education libraries. In summer 2009, the project ran the Developer Competition to see what applications might be imagined and built on such data, looking for innovative approaches in terms of applications, query and display interfaces. Entries were required to use data released under Creative Commons licence by the University of Huddersfield, containing circulation records linked to the course affiliations of the borrowers.”
Alistair’s entry called the ‘iLib, the Course Book Finder’ uses different searches to find relevant books relating to a specific course. The application also allows users to add books to their personal reading list which can be shared with others. The application including a video summary is explained in Alistair’s cakeBlog.
The judges received 6 working applications which will be featured in a series of workshops over the next month at the Universities of Edinburgh, Sheffield, Sussex and the Open University. This document contains links and details of the working applications.
The applications will also be featured at the concluding MOSAIC event at the University of Wolverhampton on Wednesday 18 November, which will inform the project recommendations to JISC and to the SCONUL Shared Services project on the opportunities relating to activity data and recommendation services that might be pursued within the sector. More information on JISC MOSAIC including event details is available here.
Posted on the October 27, 2009 by Martin Hawksey
Filed Under Competition, JISC, Libraries |
The Guardian recently published an article (An online university – with no fees) on the creation of the International University of the People (UoPeople). This is a virtual institution established to give students who wouldn’t traditional contemplate university study, because of financial, geographic or personal reasons, the opportunity to gain a higher education.
UoPeople has been founded by Shai Reshef, who has been involved in the ‘online study community’ Cramster.com. Through this site Shai saw how willing people were to help others in their studies for free in return for commendation and community status, in the case of Cramster ‘karma points’.
It still very early days for UoPeople. As part of the first months rollout they have enrolled almost 180 students studying one of two courses, business administration or computer science. Another major stumbling block is that neither of these courses are accredited.
The use of fully online higher education isn’t a new concept and the failure of UKeU probably hangs over any such idea for the UK, but the emergence of UoPeople is perhaps an indication of why Lord Mandelson is backing a more consumer-led approach to education.
Posted on the October 27, 2009 by Martin Hawksey
Filed Under HE, Online Learning |
As part of International Open Access Week (October 19 – 23, 2009) JISC is today launching a definitive guide to its 15 years of work in Open Access, tracking the changes in UK policy, opinions and what the future will look like.
The guide has been created to showcase the work JISC has achieved for scholarly communications in the UK and is supported by electronic resources including interviews with experts from across education and research. This suite of information is being launched to support UK researchers in opening up their work for better returns on taxpayers’ investment.
Open Access Week is being led by SPARC the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, which is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system.
Click here for the Open Access for UK Research guide
Click here for the full JISC press release
Posted on the October 27, 2009 by Martin Hawksey
Filed Under JISC, Report, Research |
Moodle.org are looking for entries to this year’s Cool Course Competition. The competition has five categories including: best application of Moodle activities; best use of media; and examples from tertiary education. Entry is open until 19th December 2009 and there are various prizes to be won.
Click her to visit The Cool Course Competition for more information
Posted on the October 27, 2009 by Martin Hawksey
Filed Under Competition, Moodle |
A project which trains paramedic students online through real-life scenarios has won JISC’s outstanding ICT initiative award at the Times Higher Awards, owing to its potential implications for other universities.
Emily Conradi, project manager at St George’s University London and award winner said: “The online environment evolved from issues that St George’s tutors were having with recreating paramedic work situations, which are impossible to simulate realistically in the classroom, and also with managing face-to-face meetings between students and tutors when the learners are spending time in work placements.
“The tutors developed an island in the virtual environment Second Life to allow students to work together as a paramedic team on different emergency scenes. They interact with patients by questioning, examining and treating them and the scenario unfolds in response to the students’ actions. Handover notes are emailed to their tutor for feedback.”
St George’s work was funded as part of the PREVIEW project was highlighted in the RSC Scotland N&E Higher Education blog, MASHe, last November. As part as of an overview of the PREVIEW project HE Advisor Martin Hawksey also created a demonstration video, shown below, which features in the PREVIEW publicity material:
Click here for the full JISC THE Award press release
Posted on the October 27, 2009 by Martin Hawksey
Filed Under HE, JISC, Virtual Worlds |
As regular readers to NewsFeed may have gathered we like anything that is free. EduApps is free, the JISC Winter Fayre is free, this newsletter is free.
A man after our own heart is Ollie Bray National Advisor for Learning and Teaching Scotland. As part of a recent conference presentation Ollie highlighted a number of tools and resources to quickly create engaging content and/or activities.
Click here for Ollie’s list of ‘free tools’ and presentation
Posted on the October 27, 2009 by Martin Hawksey
Filed Under Resources |
JISC Digital Media are providing fortnightly one-hour online help and support sessions to answer any queries you have regarding digital media. Queries regarding any aspect of still images, moving images (including video), audio and how they can be used for teaching and learning are welcome. Technical, workflow related or general queries will be answered and there are no limit to the number of queries that can be asked. No query is too simple to be explored.
Even if you are not able to make it to one of the online sessions an archive including questions and answers will be made available.
Each of the sessions begin with a short presentation on a specific topic and then the rest of the session will be free for questions and answers (not limited to the session’s topic). The schedule or past and future sessions is:
- 23/09/2009 – Recording audio podcasts
- 07/10/2009 – Camera skills/techniques
- 21/10/2009 – Using screencasting
- 04/11/2009 – Digital lifecycle 1
- 18/11/2009 – Basic mic technique and placement
- 02/12/2009 – Using Flickr
- 16/12/2009 – Choosing a recording space
Click here for more information about JISC Digital Media Online Surgeries
Posted on the October 27, 2009 by Martin Hawksey
Filed Under JISC Digital Media, Online Learning |
