Developing an interdisciplinary collaboration center in an academic Health Sciences Library

This article describes the evolution of the Health Sciences Library's plans for an interdisciplinary, technology-enhanced collaboration center, from a technology-driven space to one with a vision of support for peer-to-peer learning and research. The center offers an exciting opportunity to be an essential partner in collaborative and interdisciplinary programs such as the new Carolina Center for Exploratory Genetic Analysis. The Library is a centrally located and neutral place, which helps minimize geographical and territorial obstacles to effective collaboration. The collaboration center raises the Library's visibility and allows staff to demonstrate the value of knowledge resources, services, technology expertise, infrastructure, and facilities for group study and collaboration.     

Parental Participation: Essential Partners in Guidance

The relationship between parents and schools has in recent years been a controversial and contradictory one. Here Barrie Irving discusses one dimension that impinges on this relationship—vocational guidance—and how interactions between teachers and parents could be made more productive, particularly from the perspective of parents. Having suggested that often the interchange of information and ideas is limited by the attitudes and perceived interests of both schools and parents, Irving goes on to focus on a particular issue, the fact that although parents are given information about their children, they are rarely if ever given the means to develop on this.     

Report on the CSEET '99 Workshop: “Establishing a Distance Education Program”

The objectives of the workshop were to examine five particular aspects relevant to software engineering distance education: how to turn existing courses into distance mode, the implications of cultural issues in establishing the program and in the delivery of material, how to ensure the quality of courses, how to ensure comparability of experience for students, and the range of delivery mechanisms which have been tried and assessed. The two-staged operation and results of the workshop are reported. Initial position statements are detailed and the analysis from five separate subgroups that addressed a case study as stage one of the process is presented. The second stage, of different subgroups addressing the four operational scenarios, is described and the feedback obtained from these groups is then presented. Finally a summary of the major work-shop findings is given, along with some overall conclusions.     

Effect of the Learning Consortium: One District's Journey

The Learning Consortium has provided the conditions for Consortium partners to construct a more meaningful approach to instructional change. Those conditions focus on four opportunities: (1) to build on individual accomplishments; (2) to create a broader view of the educational picture; (3) to share and interact with wider audiences; and (4) to re‐focus on the future. This article applies those conditions to illustrate the Durham Board of Education's efforts to extend the instructional practices of their teachers. The major message is that extending the instructional practices of teachers requires an intensive effort over time.     

Development,Evaluation and Use of a Student Experience Survey in Undergraduate Science Laboratories: The Advancing Science by Enhancing Learning in the Laboratory Student Laboratory Learning Experience Survey

Student experience surveys have become increasingly popular to probe various aspects of processes and outcomes in higher education, such as measuring student perceptions of the learning environment and identifying aspects that could be improved. This paper reports on a particular survey for evaluating individual experiments that has been developed over some 15 years as part of a large national Australian study pertaining to the area of undergraduate laboratories—Advancing Science by Enhancing Learning in the Laboratory. This paper reports on the development of the survey instrument and the evaluation of the survey using student responses to experiments from different institutions in Australia, New Zealand and the USA. A total of 3153 student responses have been analysed using factor analysis. Three factors, motivation, assessment and resources, have been identified as contributing to improved student attitudes to laboratory activities. A central focus of the survey is to provide feedback to practitioners to iteratively improve experiments. Implications for practitioners and researchers are also discussed.