Genome Consortium for Active Teaching: meeting the goals of BIO2010

The Genome Consortium for Active Teaching (GCAT) facilitates the use of modern genomics methods in undergraduate education. Initially focused on microarray technology, but with an eye toward diversification, GCAT is a community working to improve the education of tomorrow's life science professionals. GCAT participants have access to affordable microarrays, microarray scanners, free software for data analysis, and faculty workshops. Microarrays provided by GCAT have been used by 141 faculty on 134 campuses, including 21 faculty that serve large numbers of underrepresented minority students. An estimated 9480 undergraduates a year will have access to microarrays by 2009 as a direct result of GCAT faculty workshops. Gains for students include significantly improved comprehension of topics in functional genomics and increased interest in research. Faculty reported improved access to new technology and gains in understanding thanks to their involvement with GCAT. GCAT's network of supportive colleagues encourages faculty to explore genomics through student research and to learn a new and complex method with their undergraduates. GCAT is meeting important goals of BIO2010 by making research methods accessible to undergraduates, training faculty in genomics and bioinformatics, integrating mathematics into the biology curriculum, and increasing participation by underrepresented minority students.     

A simple e-mail mechanism to enhance reflection, independence, and communication in young researchers

Providing undergraduates with mentored research experiences is a critical component of contemporary undergraduate science education. Although the benefits of undergraduate research experiences are apparent, the methods for mentoring young scientists as they first begin navigating the research lab environment are reinvented in labs all over the world. Students come to research labs with varied skills, motivations, needs, and dispositions, placing each student and mentor in a unique relationship. How can we help students become aware of their own intellectual progress? How can we encourage our students to take initial steps toward independent investigation? When do we need to let setbacks happen? We have developed a simple mechanism to address these common problems. Each week, students in our labs answer a series of five questions by e-mail that improve lab communication and help students develop into mature scientists without taxing an instructor's already busy schedule. Our observations, experiences, and student feedback indicate that this approach is a useful mechanism to help faculty who mentor young scientists in the research lab.     

Do League Tables Contribute to the Development of a Quality Culture? Football and Higher Education Compared

The increasing use of league tables to summarise the relative performance of universities suggests an explicit analogy with association football. The extent to which this analogy is useful is explored through a comparison between the operation of the Premier and Nationwide Football Leagues and Universities and Colleges in England and Wales. This comparison considers issues such as what the league tables actually measure, how performance is linked to rewards or penalties, what mechanisms are available for improving performance, and what similarities there are between the locations of more or less successful football clubs and universities.     

A perplexed story

This piece of life‐story—or, to give it its grand title, auto‐ethnographic research—owes its initial impetus in becoming a written project to a photograph someone took of me in a London secondary school staffroom early on in my teaching career. The young man in the photograph peers out at me from my office wall. Sometime last year, he began to compel me to dig around in filing cabinets for the journals, occasional poems and other dusty relics of a teaching life; it seems he has helped me to recollect the social and historical experiences that have affected my development.     

It's installed ... now get on with it! Looking beyond the software to the cultural change

This case study looks at the lessons learned from the ultimately successful implementation of the Blackboard Managed Learning Environment at Northumbria University and explores how these are now being applied to the matching implementation at a local further education college, which we are supporting. The study identifies key aspects that emerged from Northumbria's experience—the application of models of innovation from both educational and business worlds, the need to take account of the impact of cultural change, the need for effective staff development for all stakeholders, the need for a ‘road map’ for the development, and the need for ongoing dialogue with clients (staff) and customers (students). It reflects upon how Northumbria's approach has led to the emergence of a learning organisation that is adaptive and responsive and how a business approach can be applied to higher and further education innovations.     

Report on the Modalities of External Evaluation of Higher Education in Europe: 1995‐1997

Several elements make up this report. It begins with a study of policy issues concerning academic quality assessment and accreditation based primarily on a questionnaire sent to thirty‐eight European countries, interviews with key individuals in the field, and a bibliography of pertinent professional literature. The questionnaire is itself reproduced along with a synthesis of the answers received. A short listing of general conclusions suggests that there should be greater agreement on the meaning of terms and on the role and place of autonomy in the structuring of evaluation systems. Also, some suggestions are made in regard to possible roles for CEPES in the area of quality assurance and assessment. A substantial bibliography is provided.