Constructive thinking

Discusses the House of Lords ruling in Cobbe v Yeoman's Row Management Ltd on whether the doctrine of constructive trust, as an alternative to proprietary estoppel, could be invoked by a property developer under the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989 s.2(5) where an agreement for the acquisition of an interest in land failed to comply with s.2(1), but where the developer had incurred expenditure obtaining planning permission to develop the property. Reflects on whether there are circumstances in which the courts will find a constructive trust in order to avoid the effects of s.2(1).

Thinking inside the box: the World Bank position on the private and public sector

An analysis of how the World Bank has maintained a position supportive of mutlinational strategies for privatisation of water. (Brief version).

Thinking inside the box: why the World Bank is not learning

An analysis of how the World Bank has maintained a position supportive of multinational strategies for privatisation of water.

Learning styles, personalisation and adaptable e-learning

Common Learning Management Systems (for example Moodle [1] and Blackboard [2]) are limited in the amount of personalisation that they can offer the learner. They are used widely and do offer a number of tools for instructors to enable them to create and manage courses, however, they do not allow for the learner to have a unique personalised learning experience. The e-Learning platform iLearn offers personalisation for the learner in a number of ways and one way is to offer the specific learning material to the learner based on the learner's learning style. Learning styles and how we learn is a vast research area. Brusilovsky and Millan [3] state that learning styles are typically defined as the way people prefer to learn. Examples of commonly used learning styles are Kolb Learning Styles Theory [4], Felder and Silverman Index of Learning Styles [5], VARK [6] and Honey and Mumford Index of Learning Styles [7] and many research projects (SMILE [8], INSPIRE [9], iWeaver [10] amonst others) attempt to incorporate these learning styles into adaptive e-Learning systems. This paper describes how learning styles are currently being used within the area of adaptive e-Learning. The paper then gives an overview of the iLearn project and also how iLearn is using the VARK learning style to enhance the platform's personalisation and adaptability for the learner. This research also describes the system's design and how the learning style is incorporated into the system design and semantic framework within the learner's profile.