Investigating the emerging generic features of the blog writing task across three discrete learner groups at a higher education institution

Increasingly universities have supported several innovative flexible learning projects over the past few years, and there exists a small but enthusiastic group of staff who have demonstrated that something is possible. Our task is to suggest additional strategies that can realize some of the strategic goals set for flexible learning over the next few years. This paper is based upon the assumption that a strategic direction has already been chosen and suggests some strategies to ensure practical and realistic outcomes.

Création d'une communauté virtuelle de troisième cycle universitaire: apprentissage de conduites d'évaluation.

Durant plusieurs années un nombre croissant d'universités ont soutenu de nombreux projets innovants d'apprentissage flexible et il existe des groupes restreints mais enthousiastes d'enseignants qui ont démontré que l'on peut faire quelque chose. Notre tâche est de suggérer des stratégies complémentaires qui permettent d'atteindre certains des objectifs fixés pour les apprentissages flexibles dans les prochaines années. Cet article est fondé sur l'hypothèse qu'une direction stratégique a déjà été choisie et suggéré certaines stratégies pour obtenir des résultats pratiques et réalistes.

Erstellen einer virtuellen Gemeinschaft für Absolventen: Lernantrieb durch Einstufung

In zunehmendem Maße haben Universitäten in den letzten Jahren verschiedene innovative Projekte für Flexibles Lernen unterstützt. Es gibt eine kleine aber begeisterte Gruppe von Mitarbeitern, die gezeigt hat, daß auf diesem Gebiet durchaus etwas möglich ist. Unsere Aufgabe ist, zusätzliche Strategien vorzuschlagen, die einige der strategischen Ziele, die für Flexibles Lernen gesetzt sind, in den nächsten Jahren erreichen helfen. Dieses Papier geht von der Annahme aus, daß es schon eine strategische Richtung gibt und schlägt einige Taktiken vor, um praktikable und realistische Resultate sicherzustellen.     

Dimensions of conflict: reflections on the higher education experience from an access education perspective

Given the widening participation agenda and associated enrolment targets, mature students who enter higher education by non-traditional pathways look set to become an increasingly prominent cohort who bring with them valuable skills, experiences and personal attributes that can and do enrich the learning environment. However, the Australian case study reported here indicates that those same attributes can present particular challenges for educators and for the students themselves, not least of which is the challenge inherent in the need for students to transform the procedural knowledge of their prior experience into the corresponding propositional form required by academic contexts. In relating the experiences of ‘Judy’, who had both successfully completed a comprehensive access programme and who began her undergraduate studies equipped with richly relevant life experience, this account provides evidence of some of these challenges, the potential for tension and conflict that they present, and the negative impact they can have on the first year higher education experience. Their effects can however be mitigated, we suggest, by: closer collaboration between support services and academic faculty; raising awareness in prospective lecturers and tutors; and ensuring, through training and professional development initiatives, that staff are adequately equipped to respond effectively and appropriately.     

Foreign language learning, hyperlexia, and early word recognition

Children with hyperlexia read words spontaneously before the age of five, have impaired comprehension on both listening and reading tasks, and have word recognition skill above expectations based on cognitive and linguistic abilities. One student with hyperlexia and another student with higher word recognition than comprehension skills who started to read words at a very early age were followed over several years from the primary grades through high school when both were completing a second-year Spanish course. The purpose of the present study was to examine the foreign language (FL) word recognition, spelling, reading comprehension, writing, speaking, and listening skills of the two students and another high school student without hyperlexia. Results showed that the student without hyperlexia achieved higher scores than the hyperlexic student and the student with above average word recognition skills on most FL proficiency measures. The student with hyperlexia and the student with above average word recognition skills achieved higher scores on the Spanish proficiency tasks that required the exclusive use of phonological (pronunciation) and phonological/orthographic (word recognition, spelling) skills than on Spanish proficiency tasks that required the use of listening comprehension and speaking and writing skills. The findings provide support for the notion that word recognition and spelling in a FL may be modular processes and exist independently of general cognitive and linguistic skills. Results also suggest that students may have stronger FL learning skills in one language component than in other components of language, and that there may be a weak relationship between FL word recognition and oral proficiency in the FL.     

Using a situative perspective to gain a deeper understanding of how children’s strengths are related to social context

Over the last twenty-five years, there has been an increase in the availability of published checklists and schedules which allow practitioners to identify the strengths of children and young people, including those with special educational needs. While helpful, these assessments are unable to tell us about the nature of contextual factors which support the expression of particular strengths. In this study, we took a situative perspective to explore how specific classroom practices facilitated strengths. A multiple case study design was used to analyse practices nominated by three children/young people with special educational needs. Qualitative analysis revealed how aspects of practice afforded the opportunity for each child to participate in ways which they equated with their strengths. This style of strength-based assessment led to a more sustained examination of supportive practice features than would have been achieved through interview alone.