An Evaluation of the Informedia Digital Video Library System at the Open University

The past decade has seen the evolution of physical educational resource collections into digital libraries, a process which has opened up a whole new range of uses beyond the traditional ones of reference and individual study in a fixed location. It is becoming more common for institutions of learning to regard their teaching and learning resource materials as important assets that can be shared, incorporated into new courses and accessed remotely by students. With the inclusion of multiple media (text, video and audio), the potential of digital libraries is further enhanced. Early adopters of this technology are information specialists and authors of learning materials, and in some cases, students. Evaluations of digital libraries that are currently underway at various institutions are aiming to determine whether the technology is usable and cost‐effective. We also see a focus on the kinds of learning activities that can be supported with digital resources and the best ways of organising and describing them. The evaluation described in this paper is primarily concerned with issues of usability and identifying potential areas of use. A planned second phase of the project will delve more deeply into costs and benefits for users in specific contexts of use.     

Student teachers’ attitudes towards cooperative learning in inclusive education

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Past research points to cooperative learning as a potentially effective means of fostering the academic and social development of students in inclusive...     

Impact of a school consulting programme aimed at helping teachers integrate students with behavioural difficulties into secondary school: actors’ points of view

A collaborative school consulting programme model, using functional assessment and applied behavioural techniques, was offered to secondary school teachers in two modalities: individual consultation and small-group consultation. The objective was to facilitate the integration of students with behavioural difficulties into mainstream secondary school classes. Both consulting programme modalities shared the same postulates. This article presents the stakeholders’ perceptions of the consulting model and its impacts on teachers and students. Presented here are the results of semi-structured interviews conducted with teachers (N = 42), resource persons accompanying individuals or groups (N = 11) and school managers (N = 8) in the programme’s first year of implementation. According to qualitative analysis of the interviews, these two models seem to have had positive impacts on teachers, especially in relation to their perceptions of students with behavioural difficulties and their understanding of behavioural problems. However, the group model is the one that elicited the most adhesion in all groups of actors.     

The Potential of Systems Thinking in Teacher Reform as Theorized for the Teaching Brain Framework

The teaching brain is a dynamic system that is in constant interaction with the learning brain. If we fail to explore the teaching brain we will continue to design educational reform policies that ignore the most important lens in the classroom: the teachers'. Master teachers recognize their perspective and leverage their teaching brains to embody a systems thinking view of their practice. If all teachers were taught how to recognize themselves as self‐created, organized systems existing within the larger teaching–learning interaction, they would understand how their context and intentions affect the teacher–student interaction. Education reform must acknowledge and understand more about the teaching brain, how master teachers practice systems thinking and the mutually interacting brains of teacher and student if we hope to truly improve how we educate children.     

A Bibliometric Snapshot of The Journal of Higher Education and Its Impact on the Field

In recent decades the field of higher education has grown exponentially; however, little research examines a particular journal and its impact on the field. The purpose of this study was to conduct a brief bibliometric analysis and discuss the impact of The Journal of Higher Education (1998–2002), a premier journal in the discipline.     

Integrating Information Literacy into Teacher Education: A Successful Grant Project

Information literacy has gained importance over the last few decades, not only among librarians, but also with higher education faculty. Information literacy instruction is important for all college-level students. However, it is essential for teacher education students who must not only be information literate themselves, but also be able to teach information literacy in their K-12 classrooms. This article describes the implementation and evolution of an information literacy instruction program for teacher education students at a large public Midwestern university.