How can action learning contribute to social capital?

This paper explores the contribution that action learning can make to the formation of social capital via experiences of action learning projects in NHS Pathology Services in the UK. The paper describes the development of action learning practice in recent years, reviews the notion of social capital and considers how action learning might contribute to its formation. A case study of action learning in the development of a locally unified pathology service is used to illustrate the processes by which actions and learnings may be transferred and extended from sets to contribute to organisational learning in wider systems and networks.     

Metacognition and affect: What can metacognitive experiences tell us about the learning process?

This paper aims at highlighting the importance for learning of one of the facets of metacognition, namely metacognitive experiences (ME) that comprise feelings, judgments or estimates, and online task-specific knowledge. The emphasis is on the affective character of ME, which has received little attention in the past. Unlike online task-specific knowledge, which is conscious and analytic, the other ME are products of nonconscious, nonanalytic inferential processes. Because of their nature, ME can trigger either rapid, nonconscious control decisions or conscious analytic ones. However, ME can make use of both the affective and the cognitive regulatory loops, and this has a series of implications for learning. Evidence is presented regarding the relations of ME with affect and cognition, and the implications of the lack of accuracy of ME for the self-regulation of learning. Particular emphasis is given on judgment of learning, feeling of difficulty, and feeling of confidence. The challenges for future research on metacognition are underscored.     

What can moment-by-moment learning curves tell about students’ self-regulated learning?

Many students in primary education learn arithmetic using adaptive learning technologies (ALTs) on tablets every day. Driven by developments in the emerging field of learning analytics, these technologies adjust problems based on learners' performance. Yet, until now it is largely unclear how students regulate their learning with ALTs. Hence, we explored how learners regulate their effort, accuracy and learning with an ALT using moment-by-moment learning curves. The results indicated that moment-by-moment learning curves did reflect students’ accuracy and learning, but no associations with effort were found. Immediate drops were associated with high prior knowledge and suboptimal learning. Immediate peaks were associated with robust learning and pointed to effective student regulation. Close multiple spikes showed moderate learning and lower initial levels of accuracy but, with system support, these students seemed able to regulate their learning. Separated multiple spikes indicated reduced learning and accuracy and potentially signal the inability of students to regulate their learning. In this light, moment-by-moment learning curves seem to be valuable indicators of accuracy regulation during learning with ALTs and could potentially be used in interventions to support SRL with personalized visualizations.     

Lecturing graphing: What features of lectures contribute to student difficulties in learning to interpret graph?

Some studies suggest that individuals having completed undergraduate science programs are often poorly prepared to use graphs in ways typical of their disciplines. Science and technology studies have identified competency in graphing as being of central importance to the practice of a scientific discipline. Given the centrality of graphing to the practice of science, an important aspect of becoming enculturated into the practices of a scientific discipline is being able to use and interpret graphs in ways that are typical to that discipline. For example, competency in this usage is important to reading, interpreting and understanding journal articles in a discipline. Undergraduate science students spend a considerable amount of time in lectures where graphical representations play a major role in the presentation of subject matter. To gain an understanding of the use of graphs in lectures and how this use contributes to student understanding, this paper provides a microanalysis of graph use in lectures drawn from artifacts compiled from videotaping all lectures and seminars in a thirteen week ecology course. This analysis focused on both the text and the geestural references made in the reading of a graph in an ecology lecture. We conclude that the common ground existing amongst scientists that help them reach an agreed upon interpretation of a graph is missing from the present lectures and then discuss the constraints this places on students, learning about graphs in lectures.     

Crisis? What crisis? The academic professions in the 'knowledge' society

At present, the higher education systems in most highly developed countries find themselves amidst a difficult process of change that will obviously have an impact on the positioning of their principal workers. We live in times of great uncertainties about the future of the academic profession. This article reflects on the analytical problems research on the academic profession has to face and summarizes recent trends and debates on the entrenched profession. Possible future developments of the academic profession are highlighted in the context of four scenarios -- 'key profession', 'academic worker', 'mediator' and 'antiquity'. Selected findings and results of the International Study on the Academic Profession are resumed to discuss the contribution of survey studies to the ongoing debate on the academic profession and to draw some preliminary conclusions on the challenges for further research in this area.     

What is open learning?

The recent change in this journal's title, from Teaching at a Distance to Open Learning, poses obvious questions of definition. What is open learning? And how does it relate to distance education and adult education? In this article, Roger Lewis, Head of Educational Development Unit at North Staffordshire Polytechnic, makes use of his considerable and varied experience of working with the Open University, the Council for Educational Technology, the Open Tech, the National Extension College and other practitioners of open learning in providing some answers. Readers should find the analytical tools and examples included in the article of considerable use in examining their own experiences in the open learning field.     

What can we learn from the electromagnetic spectrum?

Electromagnetic radiation is all around us, and essential for the survival of all lifeforms. It provides valuable information about the physical world around us, feeds us by providing energy to plants, allows us to maintain human metabolism, and cures us of various diseases. This article deals with the various properties of electromagnetic radiation, its sources and detectors, its nature, and its uses. A brief discussion on the absorption spectrum of the Earth’s atmosphere and the atmospheric windows, and celestial objects seen through optical and radio telescopes is also provided.     

What can I do for the Olympic Games?

The 29th Olympic Game will be celebrated in Beijing, China. I!m proud ofthis. Olympic Games are always celebrated in big countries,which means ourcountry is stronger than before.The Chinese government is getting ready for the 2008 Olympic Games.Workers ar…     

What can I do for the Olympic Games?

The 29th Olympic Game will be celebrated in Beijing, China. I!m proud ofthis. Olympic Games are always celebrated in big countries,which means ourcountry is stronger than before.The Chinese government is getting ready for the 2008 Olympic Games.Workers are building many big stadiums which will be used in the 2008Olympic Games.The people in Beijing are getting ready for the OlympicGames.They are learning English hard .When the Olympic Games begin, there will be a lot of athletes who comefrom both our country...     

The curious promise of educationalising technological unemployment: What can places of learning really do about the future of work?

Abstract

University education is full of promise. Indeed universities have the capacity to create and shape, through staff and students, all kinds of enthralling ‘worlds’ and ‘new possibilities of life’. Yet students are encouraged increasingly to view universities as simply a means to an end, where neoliberal education delivers flexible skills to directly serve a certain type of capitalism. Additionally, the universal challenge of technological unemployment, alongside numerous other social issues, has become educationalised and portrayed in HE policy, as an issue to be solved by universities. The idea that more education can resolve the problem of technological unemployment is a political construction which has largely failed to deliver its promise. In this article, we look at educationalisation in hand with technologisation and we draw on a Critical Discourse Analysis of HE policies, to demonstrate the problems arising from taken for granted visions of neoliberal social development related to education, technology, and employment. To disrupt the tired visions of ‘techno-fixes’ and ‘edu-fixes’ we identify in these texts, we call for a radical re-imagining of HE policy. Instead of attributing responsibility for social change to abstract notions of education, market and technology, a new shared vision is needed where more agency is explicitly attributed to the researchers, teachers, and students who are the genuine human future of work.     

What can you see?

案例背景本教学内容是为小学一年级学生自编的一个故事,目的是复习学生学过的动物类和颜色类单词,教学内容在两个课时内完成。故事内容如下:教学步骤Step1.Warming up