How research informs educational technology decision-making in higher education: the role of external research versus internal research

Educational technology research and development - Research use in educational decision-making has been encouraged and well documented at the K-12 education level in the United States but not in...     

Problem-Based Learning for Foundation Computer Science Courses

The foundation courses in computer science pose particular challenges for teacher and learner alike. This paper describes some of these challenges and how we have designed problem-based learning (PBL) courses to address them. We discuss the particular problems we were keen to overcome: the purely technical focus of many courses; the problems of individual learning and the need to establish foundations in a range of areas which are important for computer science graduates. We then outline our course design, showing how we have created problem-based learning courses. The paper reports our evaluation of the approach. This has two parts: assessment of a trial, with a three-year longitudinal follow-up of the students; reports of student learning improve-ment after we had become experienced in full implementation of PBL. We conclude with a summary of our experience over three years of PBL teaching and discuss some of the pragmatic issues around introducing the radical change in teaching, maintaining staff support, and continuing refinement of our PBL teaching. We also discuss some of our approaches to the commonly acknowledged challenges of PBL teaching.     

Leap of Faith: An Interview with Max Velthuijs

The now late great Max Velthuijs was filmed in April 2004 discussing his work with Victoria de Rijke and Howard Hollands, who began the interview expecting Max to be working under certain artistic and cultural influences, none of which seemed to be the case! Max describes what brought him home to Andersen Press, the freedom of children’s picturebooks and his particular way of working, the irony of the white canvas, his attachment to certain symbolic motifs such as apples and blackbirds, and his affinity with the creatures that make up the universally popular and internationally acclaimed Frog series.This piece draws on many voices: those of Max Velthuijs, (represented here in italics), the interview questioners Victoria de Rijke, Howard Hollands & camerawoman Rebecca Sinker (in bold type), and comments (in ordinary type) drawing upon Joke Linders’ biography Ik Bof dat ik een Kikker Ben (Glad to be a Frog) Leopold, 2003, kindly translated into English by Lena Winter.