The Teaching Community: Recreating university teaching

Over the past 5 years, in two Australian universities, a model for the professional development of university teaching staff has been evolving. In the Faculty of Computing and Information Technology (FCIT) at Monash University and in First Year Engineering at Swinburne University, the Teaching Community approach has resulted in remarkable changes in university teachers' understanding of their role, their teaching skill and, most importantly, their enthusiasm and motivation for the teaching component of their work. At Swinburne the rapid uptake of the model has exceeded expectations, while at Monash FCIT the model continues to grow and evolve years after the initiating project expired. The Teaching Community model has proved effective in bringing educational development and in coping with imposed change. This paper traces the growth of the Teaching Community model, elaborates some of the successes experienced, makes some suggestions as to why it has been so powerful in bringing about change in an area well known for resistance and proposes conditions required for this on-site, low cost approach to improving tertiary teaching.     

Staff Development in Problem-based Learning

It is argued here that for problem-based learning (PBL) to succeed, a sound programme of staff development is required. This paper highlights, from both the literature and from experience, that there is limited research into the process and management of PBL staff development. The current shift towards PBL within higher education suggests that staff development needs to be a key component in any PBL implementation strategy. This paper focuses on the experience of introducing PBL into Nursing and Midwifery curricula at the University of Dundee. It is argued that the staff development described played a key role in the effectiveness of the subsequent implementation of PBL. The key components of such a programme are described with evaluatory evidence to support its efficacy. Recommendations are made for those considering implementing PBL into the curriculum.     

Making Plans for Michael: providing for a student with moderate learning difficulties in a secondary academy

The profile of a student with learning difficulties is described and also the learning context in 2017. Previous models of provision are then described in terms of their aetiology with discussion of strengths and shortcomings. Some influential features of curriculum planning and delivery are identified. A model of provision involving specific literacy teaching and differentiation is advocated.     

MARC to BIBFRAME: Converting the PCC to Linked Data

Abstract

The Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) has formal relationships with the Library of Congress (LC), Share-VDE, and Linked Data for Production Phase 2 (LD4P2) for work on Bibliographic Framework (BIBFRAME), and PCC institutions have been very active in the exploration of MARC to BIBFRAME conversion processes. This article will review the involvement of PCC in the development of BIBFRAME and examine the work of LC, Share-VDE, and LD4P2 on MARC to BIBFRAME conversion. It will conclude with a discussion of areas for further exploration by the PCC leading up to the creation of PCC conversion specifications and PCC BIBFRAME data.     

VizBib

A scan of recent popular, professional, and research publications, films, and other media of interest to visual communicators, artists, and scholars.     

Parental contributions,school‐level finances and decentralization: an analysis of Nicaraguan autonomous school budgets

The Nicaraguan Autonomous School Programme is notable among the growing number of school governance decentralization reforms in the Americas in the degree of control given to parents, especially in decisions regarding the allocation of school resources. Much of schools’ discretionary spending was accumulated through various school charges. This paper analyses rare school‐level budget data to determine the proportion of resources that derived from parental contributions and other school‐based commercial activity. We find the contributions to be significant, highly varied, and correlated with income. The results have implications for many decentralization reforms that encourage local contributions as part of both their financing and accountability strategies.     

The Prague Spring Archive at the University of Texas at Austin

ABSTRACT

There is a noted lack of primary historical documents related to the Prague Spring, one of the key moments in the Cold War, available online. As such, there is a need for an online resource that presents these primary documents in their entirety, allowing researchers and the public to engage with these materials in a user-friendly, open access format. The Prague Spring Archive, a new project at The University of Texas at Austin, fills this gap. This article addresses the development, promotion, and future steps of the project.