Faculty-librarians collaboration in an e-learning experience : resources management and training in Open University of Catalonia (UOC)

The traditional model of learning based on knowledge transfer doesn't promote the acquisition of information-related competencies and development of autonomous learning. More needs to be done to embrace learner-centred approaches, based on constructivism, collaboration and co-operation. This new learning paradigm is aligned with the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) requirements. In this sense, a learning experience based in faculty' librarian collaboration was seen as the best option for promoting student engagement and also a way to increase information-related competences in Open University of Catalonia (UOC) academic context. This case study outlines the benefits of teacher-librarian collaboration in terms of pedagogy innovation, resources management and introduction of open educational resources (OER) in virtual classrooms, Information literacy (IL) training and use of 2.0 tools in teaching. Our faculty-librarian's collaboration aims to provide an example of technology-enhanced learning and demonstrate how working together improves the quality and relevance of educational resources in UOC's virtual classrooms. Under this new approach, while teachers change their role from instructors to facilitators of the learning process and extend their reach to students, libraries acquire an important presence in the academic learning communities.

Collaboration strategies and technological innovation: a contractual perspective of the relationship between firms and techonological centers

In this paper, a theoretical framework for analyzing the selection of governance structures for implementing collaboration agreements between firms and Technological Centers is presented and empirically discussed. This framework includes Transaction Costs and Property Rights’ theoretical assumptions, though complemented with several proposals coming from the Transactional Value Theory. This last theory is used for adding some dynamism in the governance structure selection. As empirical evidence of this theoretical explanation, we analyse four real experiences of collaboration between firms and one Technological Center. These experiences are aimed to represent the typology of relationships which Technological Centers usually face. Among others, a key interesting result is obtained: R&D collaboration activities do not need to always be organized through hierarchical solutions. In those cases where future expected benefits and/or reputation issues could play an important role, the traditional more static theories could not fully explain the selected governance structure for managing the R&D relationship. As a consequence, these results justify further research about the adequacy of the theoretical framework presented in this paper in other contexts, for example, R&D collaborations between firms and/or between Universities or Public Research Centers and firms.

Business-science research collaboration under moral hazard

I analyze, in the context of business and science research collaboration, how the characteristics of partnership agreements are the result of an optimal contract between partners. The final outcome depends on the structure governing the partnership, and on the informational problems towards the efforts involved. The positive effect that the effort of each party has on the success of the other party, makes collaboration a preferred solution. Divergence in research goals may, however, create conflicts between partners. This paper shows how two different structures of partnership governance (a centralized, and a decentralized ones) may optimally use the type of project to motivate the supply of non-contractible efforts. Decentralized structure, however, always choose a project closer to its own preferences. Incentives may also come from monetary transfers, either from partners sharing each other benefits, or from public funds. I derive conditions under which public interventio

How collaboration could contribute to make Catalan journals visible on the Internet?

Cooperation between libraries is a universal language spoken in different dialects. In 1996 the libraries of the state-funded universities and the National Library of Catalonia (Spain) formed the Consortium of Academic Libraries of Catalonia (CBUC) to act as a channel for cooperation. The organization and activities of CBUC are an example of how this universal language has been adapted to the specific characteristics of the Libraries of Catalonia. Catalonia is an autonomous region of Spain with 7 million inhabitants with its own language, history and traditions and with a strong feeling of own identity that facilitates the cooperation. Thanks to this (and also to the hard work of the member libraries), since then, CBUC has created a union catalogue, an interlibrary lending program, the Digital Library of Catalonia, a cooperative store, different cooperatives repositories and other cooperation programs. One of these cooperatives repositories is RACO (Catalan Journals in Open Access, www.raco.cat) where can be consulted, in open access, the full-text articles of scientific, cultural and scholar Catalan journals. The main purpose of RACO is to increase the visibility and searches of the journals included and to spread the scientific and academic production published in Catalonia. This purpose makes specific in three aims: encourage the electronic edition of Catalan journals; be the interface that allows the whole search of all the journals and provide the instruments for its preservation. There are currently 244 journals in RACO, that includes more than 85.000 articles (80% in OA) from 50 publishing institutions. Since it got into operation it has had more than 4 millions of queries. These 244 journals offer the full-text of all the published issues. Nevertheless, some journal can have a delay between the introduction of the table of contents and the full-text for the recent issues. From 2005 we have a plan of retrospective digitization that has allowed to digitize more than 350.000 pages of back issues. The RACO repository works with the open source program OJS (Open Journal Systems, http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/) and uses Dublin Core Metadata and the interoperability protocol created by Open Archives Initiative (OAI) which allows to increase the visibility of the articles published in journals offering oneself together with other international repositories.

The effects of teacher talk on students’ oral productions

The present study is a brief personal enquiry into the teaching and learning of EFL in the classroom with an orientation to action and personal professional development. It focuses on teacher talk, making special emphasis on questions, as well as on students’ resulting oral productions. The research contains samples of empirical data, which include their interpretations in the light of relevant research literature, and a more personal overall reflection of the teaching practice. Both the analysis and the reflections derive to a large extent from the self-observation paper 1 (SO1) and the Practicum portfolio (PP) developed within the TED Masters Degree practicum stages

Teacher strategies to elicit knowledge from students in the CLIL classroom: the purpose of questions in controlled patterns of teacher-student interaction

This Master Dissertation comprises two parts: a personal reflection and an empirical study. The personal reflection reviews the process of professionalization undergone by its author throughout the Master. The empirical study tackles teacher strategies to elicit knowledge from students in the CLIL classroom and more specifically the purpose of questions in controlled patterns of teacher-student interaction. The theories of relevant authors such as Vigotsky, Mercer and Tsui are used as a framework to analyze the data presented. The analysis shows the different strategies to elicit knowledge used by the teacher and the appropriateness of her questions in the analyzed interaction

The first steps of a secondary school teacher: experiences and studies of a student-teacher

This dissertation aims at fostering the professional development of the EFL teacher. This document compiles two small scale empirical studies carried out during the practicum periods of the TED's course. The first one is based on the role of the teacher's talk in the EFL classroom and the second one focuses on students’ small group talk, analysing the impact of cooperative learning in the EFL classroom by examining students' conversation. The following section gathers the teacher's personal reflections upon the process of professionalization. The paper concludes with a summary of the major findings and further professional improvement proposals

Disseny i optimització metològica de sistemes telemàtics interactius per a la millora de la docència universitària : l'entorn BSCW i nous recursos docents

Aquest projecte de dos anys de durada, ha tingut com a objectius: el disseny i la creació de recursos multimèdia, així com, l’optimització de metodologies d'aplicació de sistemes telemàtics interactius per a la millora de la docència universitària. Com a entorn telemàtic s’ha utilitzat la plataforma de treball cooperatiu BSCW (Basic Support for Cooperative Work). S'ha dissenyat i produït un recurs multimèdia enfocat a l'alumnat de l'assignatura troncal Ciències naturals i la seva didàctica de la diplomatura de Mestre d'Educació Primària, que porta per títol 'Alimentació i nutrició humanes i la seva didàctica’ i es pot consultar a: http://www.ub.edu/didactica_ciencies/mqd06/. Aquest material està format per dues unitats: a) Alimentació i nutrició; b) L'ensenyament-aprenentatge de la digestió humana des d'una perspectiva constructivista. Les unitats s'han orientat a la millora de la formació inicial dels futurs mestres i tenen un enfocament de clar caire constructivista, amb exercicis interactius de detecció de concepcions alternatives, així com organitzadors previs, posteriors nodes expositius i d'obtenció d'informació, exercicis interactius destinats al canvi conceptual i una interactivitat d'avaluació final amb un cert caràcter sumatiu. Cada unitat es tanca amb un mapa conceptual dels continguts tractats. La metodologia emprada en la seva elaboració és una evolució de la que l'equip de la Universitat Pompeu Fabra va encetar en la web ‘Aracné. Ciència en xarxa’: http://www.edu365.com/aulanet/aracne/ (usuari i contrasenya: guest100), i va perfeccionar a 'Idees i vincles en el segle XX. La ciència': http://www.xtec.es/aulanet/seglexx/ (cal permetre que s'obrin finestres emergents), en ambdós casos hi ha col·laborat professorat del nostre grup d'innovació docent de la UB.

Teacher training in "multicultural" Sweden

This paper builds on the experience of the on-going, mainly ethnographic, research project called Teacher training in’ multicultural’ Sweden. Class, gender and ethnicity. In this multi-disciplinary project a number of scholars conduct research through participant observation in, and through the study and analysis of documents from, a number of teacher training colleges in Sweden. In this paper I will use empirical material gathered from two teacher training colleges to discuss this basic issue. One college is situated in a suburb outside Stockholm and it consciously portrays itself as a college for ‘multicultural’ students who will later teach in ‘multicultural’ suburbs. The other college is situated in a small town and although ‘multiculturalism’ is seen as important in the educational system students with mainly ‘Swedish’ background are recruited. In the first college ‘differences’ are lauded and students are encouraged to ponder upon and develop their ethnic profile. In the second ‘similarities’ are more taken for granted. I will argue, however, that within these colleges ‘differences’ and ’similarities’ are not only discussed but actually created against a backdrop of macro-constraints which are not much scrutinized within these colleges.

OER as a Model for Enhanced Teaching and Learning

This article presents preliminary findings from a research study conducted by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education on the role of open educational resources (OER) in transforming pedagogy. Based on a study of art and humanities teachers participating in an OER training network, the study reveals how exposure to OER resources and tools support collaboration among teachers, as well as new conversations about teaching practices. These findings have implications for engaging teachers in adopting new OER use practices, and for how OER can be integrated as a model for innovation in teaching and in resource development.

The Öresund region: A dynamic region in Europe due to inter-regional collaboration?

El cluster Medicon Valley es troba a la regió d'Oresund binacional que s'estén per Dinamarca i Suècia, inclosa la Universitat de Lund, ciutat i tercera ciutat més gran de Suècia, Malmö (veure figura 1). El 2000, aquestes dues parts nacionals estaven connectades físicament per l'establiment dels 18 quilòmetres de longitud, enllaç fix del Øresund (ponts i túnels).

Free-and open source software for a course on network management: authoring and enactment of scripts based on collaborative learning strategies

This paper describes a Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) case study in engineering education carried out within the context of a network management course. The case study shows that the use of two computing tools developed by the authors and based on Free- and Open-Source Software (FOSS) provide significant educational benefits over traditional engineering pedagogical approaches in terms of both concepts and engineering competencies acquisition. First, the Collage authoring tool guides and supports the course teacher in the process of authoring computer-interpretable representations (using the IMS Learning Design standard notation) of effective collaborative pedagogical designs. Besides, the Gridcole system supports the enactment of that design by guiding the students throughout the prescribed sequence of learning activities. The paper introduces the goals and context of the case study, elaborates onhow Collage and Gridcole were employed, describes the applied evaluation methodology, anddiscusses the most significant findings derived from the case study.

Learning design twofold strategies for teacher-led inquiry andstudent active learning

This workshop paper states that fostering active student participation both in face-to-face lectures / seminars and outside the classroom (personal and group study at home, the library, etc.) requires a certain level of teacher-led inquiry. The paper presents a set of strategies drawn from real practice in higher education with teacher-led inquiry ingredients that promote active learning. Thesepractices highlight the role of the syllabus, the importance of iterative learning designs, explicit teacher-led inquiry, and the implications of the context, sustainability and practitioners’ creativity. The strategies discussed in this paper can serve as input to the workshop as real cases that need to be represented in design and supported in enactment (with and without technologies).

The Impact of Industry Collaboration on Academic Research Output: A Dynamic Panel Data Analysis

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of university knowledge and technology transfer activities on academic research output. Specifically, we study whether researchers with collaborative links with the private sector publish less than their peers without such links, once controlling for other sources of heterogeneity. We report findings from a longitudinal dataset on researchers from two engineering departments in the UK between 1985 until 2006. Our results indicate that researchers with industrial links publish significantly more than their peers. Academic productivity, though, is higher for low levels of industry involvement as compared to high levels.