1,721,102 research outputs found
Opportunities and Threats of the MOOC Movement for Higher Education: The European Perspective
Full text linkWOS: 000380030700003The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) movement is the latest "big thing" in Open and Distance Learning (ODL). MOOCs offer both opportunities and threats that are extensively discussed in the literature, including the potential of opening up education for all at a global scale. On the other hand, MOOCs challenge traditional pedagogy and raise important questions about the future of campus-based education. However, in discussing these opportunities and threats the majority of the literature tends to focus on the origin of the MOOC movement in the United States (US). The specific context of Europe with its diversity of languages, cultural environments, educational policies, and regulatory frameworks differs substantially from the US context. Accordingly, this article offers a European perspective on MOOCs in order to better understand major differences in threats and opportunities across countries and continents, including the use and reuse of MOOCs for regional or global use, via European or non-European platforms. In the context of the EU funded HOME project (Higher education Online: MOOCs the European way), a research initiative was undertaken to identify opportunities and threats of the MOOC movement for European higher education institutions. Three sources of data were gathered and analysed. Opportunities and threats were categorized into two levels. The macro level comprises issues related to the higher education system, European context, historical period, and institutional concerns. The micro level covers aspects related to faculty, teachers, and courses, thus to the operational level. The main opportunities discovered were: the ECTS as a robust system for formal recognition of accomplishments in MOOCs; the trend for institutional collaboration, stimulated by EU-funded programs; and the many innovative and alternative pedagogical models used in MOOCs published in Europe. The main threats mentioned were: implementation problems of the ECTS, difficulties in bridging non/informal and formal education; and too much regulation, hindering experimentation and innovation.European Union under European Commission, DG EAC, under the Lifelong Learning Programme [543516-LLP-1-2013-1-NL-KA3-KA3NW]This research was conducted in the framework of the European Union-funded project HOME Higher education Online: MOOCs the European way (Ref. 543516-LLP-1-2013-1-NL-KA3-KA3NW) under the support of the European Commission, DG EAC, under the Lifelong Learning Programme. The authors wish also to extend their acknowledgements to all the contributors and participants to the conference "Mapping the European MOOC Territory" held in Porto on 27th November, 2014, for their contribution to this study
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Teaching and participatory media
Full text linkHow can diversity of teaching practice be appreciated? Perhaps to appreciate diversity we should consider where we have arrived at a consensus, and hence conformity. It is normally expected that mobile phones should be switched off during lectures. For this talk the speaker will request that all mobiles be turned on (though set to silent). As this is against most orthodox teaching practice it could reasonably be concluded that the speaker is not an authority fit to lecture on the subject. For this reason the speaker will instruct the audience not to learn anything during the talk. Notes should not be taken. Instead listeners will be encouraged to send text messages. These messages will be in the form of single words, short phrases or multiple choice answers to questions (similar to classroom voting systems).
It was recently reported that the UK government is considering introducing Twitter to its primary school curriculum (Guardian, 2009). This paper will evaluate ways in which new participatory media are impacting education. A free tool created by the author will be used during the oral presentation of this paper to show how these technologies allow increased participation in learning scenarios. One of the significant aspects of teaching strategies that are utilising text messaging and micro-blogging is that they are allow for teachers to delegate control to learners whilst keeping the format of learner participation sufficiently constrained for use with groups. This can be seen as an application of education research on the concept of Control and how its negotiation and subsequent delegation can be used to increase the degree of autonomy for a learner within a learning trajectory (Moore, 1993; Dron, J. 2007).
References:
Dron, J. (2007) Control and constraint in e-learning: Choosing when to choose. Idea Group Publishing.
Moore, M. G. (1993) 2 Theory of transactional distance. Theoretical principles of distance education. pp22.
The Guardian (2009) Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary schools shake. 25 March 2009, Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/mar/25/primary-schools-twitter-curriculu
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Rewild my heart: with pedagogies of love, kindness and the sun and moon
Full text linkThe pressing problems we face from wars to pandemics erupt against the less dramatic background of the mundane continued destruction of our planet as a habitable realm. In education, technology can be environmentally destructive in a variety of ways. Educators may feel the urge to address these matters but we also know that EdTech solutionism can create new problems as fast as it fixes old ones. Something in the urgency of the fix may be the problem. It may be that we are too desperate to fill a hole in the world that we only see through a hole in ourselves. Hence, in order to truly escape our colonised and domesticated fates, we need to rewild our very thinking. We need to examine the underlying emotional tones and waves that cause us to act as we do against our own interests and that of our planet. This conundrum is explored here through the device of storytelling using a multimodal speculative auto-ethnography to push into realms beyond mere utility and out into conceptual wilds. No fixes or solutions are offered here for the planet. Lifeless celestial objects such as the sun and moon loom large by contrast. Both have walk-on parts in this tale, and watch us as we watch them, with whatever love and kindness we can
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