Traditional versus open university teaching methods: A cost comparison

The paper attempts to throw light on the direct (instructional) cost of OU teaching methods as against conventional “live” instruction. The variable cost per student-course is with one exception lower in the OU than elsewhere. This constitutes a strong case for the use of existing OU packages in campus universities, especially as campus universities might feel able to dispense with the costs of the summer schools. It also constitutes a case for expansion of existing courses at the OU. As regards the development of new OU packages, the paper shows the Foundation courses to be much cheaper than equivalent provision de novo at the same scale in campus universities. Measured by the breakeven number of students, second-level courses in a given faculty are cheaper than foundation level courses. But they also have fewer students and some are operating at levels which, if there were no interdependence between courses, might be considered expensive. If however they were used by more students either at the OU or at campus universities they could be economic, even when taken on their own. The paper does not cost student time but, if this is cheaper when OU teaching methods are used, this is a further argument in their favour.

     

The New Curriculum for the Teaching of English——With Which Dialectical Knowledge in Education Is Raised

The paper ,with a theory of Action Research and especially dialectical knowledge, gives a brief analysis and disussion of the New English Standard Syllabus(aim called the New Curriculum) and also points out the difference between the New Curriculum and the traditional syllabus of the basic English course. It is also theoretically and practically designed with some excellent suggestions on how to study the New Curriculum and make good use of English teaching.     

论外语教学行动研究的重要性

This article mainly gives a brief introduction to the general idea of Action Research and the wayshow it can be applied in the foreign languages teaching. A very practical teaching approach can be derived fromthe study of Action Research,and so we can do something better to manage how to teach to learn and how tolearn to teach well in the real situation.     

Pandemic Stories: Rhetorical Motifs in Journalists’ Coverage of Biomedical Risk

This paper argues that journalists’ discursive actions in an outbreak context manifest in identifiable rhetorical motifs, which in turn influence the delivery of biomedical information by the media in such a context. Via a critical approach grounded in rhetorical theory, I identified three distinct rhetorical motifs influencing the reportage of health information in the early days of the H1N1 outbreak. A public-health motif was exhibited in texts featuring a particular health official and offering the statements of such an official as a mechanism of reassurance. A concealment-of-information motif was exhibited in texts emphasizing the importance of the transparency of health officials, and in texts demonstrating ambivalence about information provided by socially-sanctioned sources. Finally, in texts mythologizing the outbreak to the exclusion of other functions of the text (e.g., conveying who is at risk, protective behaviours, symptoms), I identified a pandemic motif. Each motif differs in the conclusions it offers to audiences seeking to gauge relative levels of risk, and to receive information about protective behaviours. I suggest that one means of interpreting the manifestation of distinct rhetorical motifs in the context of a high-risk health threat is the certainty that this context alters moral responsibilities, consequently influencing the manifestation of narrative role.

     

The Democratising Potential of Dialogical Focus in an Action Enquiry

This article considers the role of classroom‐based action research in the development of media education in British schools. The first part of the article offers some general observations on the contribution of action research in this field, and on the relationship between action research and broadly ‘ethnographic’ approaches within media and cultural studies. It identifies shared dilemmas in the politics of such research, and in the relationships between researchers and their subjects. The second part of the article develops these themes through brief accounts of two contrasting forms of classroom practice, drawn from collaborative research between an academic (DB) and a classroom teacher (JSG) in a largely working‐class North London comprehensive school. First, there is an examination of the difficulties of ‘reading’ students’ creative media productions, with particular emphasis on questions of gender and subjectivity. Secondly, there is an account of classroom work in which students themselves carried out research projects on aspects of media consumption, using both quantitative and qualitative methods.