Higher education as formation of the self and citizenship: an ethnography of the University Students from Amman, Jordan

My interest in higher education and citizenship in the Middle East at large and in Jordan in particular is fostered by some of the reflections Eickelman proposed (1992). Being a quite recent phenomenon, intimately linked with the more general topic of state formation it seemed to me more suitable to study it in a little country with a recent history (a field study left almost unexplored until now as far as Jordan is concerned, to the best of my knowledge, since Antoun 1994 focuses on the migration as a quest for higher education). The process of state formation in Jordan is quite studied. I thus intended to study the higher education policies as an attempt both to create a national citizenry and more recently as a way of controlling the more problematic part of the population (youth, which constitutes more than the double of the population. See UNDP and Ministry of Planning 2000). How do the young students enter the university system, and in which way does this system work? How is this system designed, in order to retain social control of the students (since they are usually perceived to be a factor of social and political instability, as in Iran or in Egypt)? Is there any significant difference between different faculties? And if so, why? My conclusions at this stage are that the university system is an integral part of the survival of the regime. The system works quite well, and Jordan has one of the best educational position in the region. Yet there are important distinctions to be made: the access to the better faculties is socially selective while the less valued faculties are left to the poorer and less wealthy youth. This results in a different treatment of the students and of the courses that I analysed. In the better faculties the teaching standards are quite high, and the relationship between professors and students is almost on a same-level base, while in the less privileged faculties the opposite is true. Thus we can observe a concrete politics of divide et impera intended to split the youth in two. For the more privileged there are some freedoms, both within and outside classes, designed I guess at forging them as autonomous individuals. On the opposite the less privileged are kept under tight control, even if also these students are a privileged category among youth at large.

Reaching the Heart of the University : Libraries and the Future of OER

University libraries are well positioned to run or support OER production and publication operations. Many university libraries already have the technical, service, and policy infrastructure in place that would provide economies of scale for nascent and mature OER projects. Given a number of aligning factors, the University of Michigan (U-M) has an excellent opportunity to integrate Open.Michigan, its OER operation, into the University Library. This paper presents the case for greater university library involvement in OER projects generally, with U-M as a case study.

Sustaining OER at the University of Cape Town : free, but not cheap

Open educational resource (OER) initiatives have made the shift from being a fringe activity to one that is increasingly considered as a key component in both teaching and learning in higher education and in the fulfilment of universities' mission and goals. Although the reduction in the cost of materials is often cited as a potential benefit of OER, this potential benefit has not yet been realised in practice necessitating thoughtful consideration of various strategies for new OER initiatives such as the OpenContent directory at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa.This paper reviews the range of sustainability strategies mentioned in the literature, plots the results of a small-scale OER sustainability survey against these strategies and explains how these findings and other papers on OER initiatives were used to inform an in-house workshop at UCT to deliberate the future strategy for the sustainability of OER at UCT.

Open access press vs traditional university presses on Amazon

This study is a comparison AU Press with three other traditional (non-open access) Canadian university presses. The analysis is based on actual physical book sales on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca. Statistical methods include the sampling of the sales ranking of randomly selected books from each press. Results suggest that there is no significant difference in the ranking of printed books sold by AU Press in comparison with traditional university presses. However, AU Press, can demonstrate a significantly larger readership for its books as evidenced by thousands of downloads of the open electronic versions.

Educational innovation in large groups. Design of an experimental study implemented at the Polytechnic University of Madrid

The present paper shows de design of an experimental study conducted with large groups using educational innovation methodologies at the Polytechnic University of Madrid. Concretely, we have chosen the course titled "History and Politics of Sports" that belongs to the Physical Activity and Sport Science Degree. The selection of this course is because the syllabus is basically theoretical and there are four large groups of freshmen students who do not have previous experiences in a teaching-learning process based on educational innovation. It is hope that the results of this research can be extrapolated to other courses with similar characteristics.

Open Educational Resources for Development of University Courses

Open Education Resources are educational materials purposely made available for free use by others. They offer tremendous potential for reducing costs and increasing access to education especially in the developing world. This paper discusses issues of quality, localization, adaptation and integration that need to be addressed in order to make OER adoption a successful strategy.

Document Management in the Open University of Catalunya (UOC) Classrooms

A través dels seus serveis de gestió documental a les aules de la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, UOC), la Biblioteca de la UOC actua com un veritable facilitador de l'aprenentatge i l'ensenyament i té un paper central en el model de aprenentatge de la universitat. A més a més, serveix com un model a seguir per altres biblioteques universitàries en termes del que s'espera d'elles en el marc del nou Espai Europeu d'Educació Superior (EEES) i la creixent necessitat que funcionin com a centres de recursos d'aprenentatge. Contribuint a l'èxit de la biblioteca, el model d'aprenentatge i ensenyament de la UOC crea un entorn d'aprenentatge virtual i asíncron per als estudiants, i permet a la biblioteca de la UOC ser present en totes les seves aules.

Virtual Library Services for a Virtual University : User-Oriented Virtual Sites in an Open Library

La llegada de las tecnologías de la información, y su uso cada vez mayor y generalizado que se está haciendo de ellas, ha permitido para que una nueva situación aparezca que, a su vez, ha originado - de hecho, que ha precipitado - una serie de cambios de gran importancia en todos los niveles, pero especialmente en los niveles sociales, económicos y culturales. Este nueva escena ha tenido una gran influencia en el entorno pedagógico. De hecho, la aparición de nuevos modelos educativos como resultado de este cambio ha estado sucediendo de una manera continuada e ininterrumpida durante la década pasada. Estos cambios recientes en los sistemas actuales de enseñanza y de aprendizaje han significado un aumento y un cambio en el tipo de demandas hechas desde las bibliotecas y los centros de documentación.

Virtual Library Services for a Virtual University

Es presenta el concepte de biblioteca virtual tal com es desenvolupa a la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya una institució d'educació a distància que proporciona educació universitària. La UOC basa l'organització del seu model educatiu en l'explotació del paradigma del Campus Virtual i en l'ús de les darreres tecnologies disponibles en telemàtica, ordinadors personals i multimèdia. En aquest context, la Biblioteca Virtual de la UOC s'ofereix com un nou model del servei de biblioteca, flexible i dissenyat de manera que els usuaris puguin aprofitar-se de les noves tecnologies de la informació i accedir a les dades registrades i emmagatzemades a qualsevol lloc del món.

M-Library in an m-University : changing Models in the Open University of Catalonia

The general perspective of M-technologies and M-Services at the Spanish universities is not still in a very high level when we are ending the first decade of the 21st century. Some Universities and some of their libraries are starting to try out with M-technologies, but are still far from a model of massive exploitation, less than in some other countries. A deep study is needed to know the main reasons, study that we will not do in this paper. This general perspective does not mean that there are no significant initiatives which start to trust in M-technologies from Universities and their libraries. Models based in M-technologies make more sense than ever in open universities and in open libraries. That's the reason why the UOC's Library began in late 90s its first experiences in the M-Technologies and M-Libraries developments. In 1999 the appropriate technology offered the opportunity to carry out the first pilot test with SMS, and then applying the WAP technology. At those moments we managed to link-up mobile phones to the OPAC through a WAP system that allowed searching the catalogue by categories and finding the final location of a document, offering also the address of the library in which the user could loan it. Since then, UOC (and its library) directs its efforts towards adapting the offer of services to all sorts of M-devices used by end users. Left the WAP technology, nowadays the library is experimenting with some new devices like e-books, and some new services to get more feedback through the OPAC and metalibrary search products. We propose the case of Open University of Catalonia, in two levels: M-services applied in the library and M-technologies applied in some other university services and resources.

The deployment of an e-book consultation and loan service : the experience of the Open University of Catalonia Library

La Biblioteca de la UOC (UOC Library) ha ofert durant tres mesos (octubre-desembre 09), en fase de prova pilot, un servei de consulta i préstec de lectors de llibres electrònics (e-readers). Aquest nou desplegament s'ha desenvolupat en consonància amb l'aposta general de la Universitat en innovació en tecnologies aplicades a l'educació, i la voluntat de potenciar les col·leccions de llibres electrònics i l'ús dels dispositius de lectura de llibres electrònics com una extensió més de la tecnologia del Campus 5.0, en el suport a l'aprenentatge dels seus estudiants durant la seva formació a la Universitat. Aquest treball presenta en detall les especificacions de la prova pilot, a més de contenir una anàlisi i avaluació dels resultats obtinguts: punts forts i punts febles, relació dels aspectes a millorar i modificar, de cara a la consolidació final del servei.

What should a virtual University Library environment look like?

Over the past year, the Open University of Catalonia library has been designing its new website with this question in mind. Our main concern has been how to integrate the library in the student day to day study routine to not to be only a satellite tool. We present the design of the website that, in a virtual library like ours, it is not only a website but the whole library itself. The central point of the web is my library, a space that associates the library resources with the student's curriculum and their course subjects. There the students can save the resources as favourites, comment or share them. They have also access to all the services the library offers them. The resources are imported from multiple tools such as Millennium, SFX, Metalib and Dspace to the Drupal CMS. Then the resources' metadata can be enriched with other contextual information from other sources, for example the course subjects. And finally they can be exported in standard, open data formats making them available for linked data applications.

What is Abstinence? Definitions and Examples of Abstinence, to Prevent the Sexual Transmission of the HIV Virus, According to Spanish University Students

Research carried out in several Anglo-Saxon countries shows that many undergraduatesidentify oral sex and anal sex as examples of abstinent behaviour, while manyothers consider kissing and masturbation as examples of having sex. The objective ofthis research was to investigate whether a sample of Spanish students gave similarreplies. Seven hundred and fifty undergraduates (92% aged under 26, 67.6%women) produced examples or definitions of the term ‘abstinence’. Spanish studentsmade similar errors to those observed in the Anglo-Saxon samples, in thatbehaviours that were abstinent from a preventive point of view (masturbating andsex without penetration) were not considered as such, while a number of studentsreported oral sex as abstinent behaviour. The results suggest that the information onrisky and preventive sexual behaviour should cease to use ambiguous or euphemisticexpressions and use vocabulary that is clear and comprehensible to everyone

University and Network Society : research report (synthesis document)

Document de síntesi d'aquest estudi que analitza -seguint una metodologia quantitativa basada en una mostra representativa de 2.093 professors i 23.864 estudiants i reforçada amb elements qualitatius- la transició que es produeix en el sistema universitari públic català cap a un model més adaptat a les noves necessitats de la societat xarxa. Per a això, es posa especial èmfasi en l'anàlisi dels usos que es fa d'Internet (l'eina clau de la societat xarxa) en el món universitari i en les transformacions que es donen o es donaran com a conseqüència d'aquests usos.

Introduction to University and the ICT Sector

The innovative subject “Introduction to ICT” combines a general Introductory Course to the University with elements around the Information and Communication Technologies sector (including the ICT engineer competence profile, market aspects, etc.)This new course has been developed and implemented in three degree programmes offered by the Polytechnic School at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. The course team consists of thirteen teachers,including business professionals, librarians, computer technicians, institutional representatives as well as an educationalist responsible for advising on methodology and study techniques. The subject was designed for a high number of students (260). At the end of the course, we collected quantitative and qualitativeinformation about the students’ satisfaction. The findings show the positive vision that they had about the topics worked during the subject. This paper describes the course, its implementation and evaluation and, of course, the details of the findings that we collected about students' satisfaction.