High level student autonomy in a virtual learning environment

This case study explores the experiences of a group of students (the authors) working as a tutor-less group (TLG) that developed during a web-based MEd programme. We describe the development and life cycle of the TLG, the experiences of the students and the effects on those who continued to work in a tutored environment. Members of the TLG demonstrated high levels of autonomy and group work. The relationship between the TLG and communities of practice is considered.

Leading as designing: how educational developers in leadership and management studies can use architectural design to facilitate student learning about delivering innovation

This paper describes a qualitative observational study of how a work based learning masters leadership development programme for middle managers in health and social care in the UK introduced students to key aspects of delivering innovation, through a formative assignment on contemporary architectural design. Action learning and activity theoretical approaches were used to enable students to explore common principles of leading the delivery of innovation. Between 2001 and 2013 a total of 89 students in 7 cohorts completed the assignment. Evaluation lent support for the view that the assignment provided a powerful learning experience for many. Several students found the creativity, determination and dedication of architects, designers and structural engineers inspirational in their ability to translate a creative idea into a completed artefact, deploy resources and negotiate complex demands of stakeholders. Others expressed varying levels of self-empowerment as regards their capacity for fostering an equivalent creativity in self and others. Theoretical approaches in addition to activity theory, including Engeström’s concepts of stabilisation knowledge and possibility knowledge, are discussed to explain these differing outcomes and to clarify the challenges and opportunities for educational developers seeking to utilise cross-disciplinary, creative approaches in curriculum design.

Facilitating student engagement and collaboration in a large postgraduate course using wiki-based activities

This paper investigates the impact of wiki-based activities on student participation and collaborative learning in a large postgraduate international management course. The wiki was used in this study as a facilitator for engagement and collaboration rather than a means of online discussions. Based on both qualitative and quantitative data, we find strong evidence that the use of the wiki facilitated student engagement and collaboration, both inside and outside the classroom. Moreover, student learning had significantly improved as a result of the enhanced learning environment.

Foundation degrees in biomedical science: the student experience

The first cohort of students on a University of Westminster foundation degree completed the course recently. Here, Chrystalla Ferrier, Kelly Brookwell and Paul Quinn employ some reflective practice.

Rethinking gossip and scandal in healthcare organizations

Purpose – The purpose of this viewpoint paper is to argue that gossip is a neglected aspect of organizational communication and knowledge, and an under-used management resource. Design/methodology/approach – The paper challenges mainstream managerial assumptions that gossip is trivial or tainted talk which should be discouraged in the workplace. Instead, gossip is re-framed at an organizational level of analysis, which provides the opportunity for relational knowledge about systemic failure and poor practice in healthcare to surface. Findings – Rather than simply viewing gossip as an individual behaviour and interpersonal process, it is claimed that organizational gossip is also a valuable early warning indicator of risk and failure in healthcare systems. There is potentially significant value in re-framing gossip as an aspect of organizational communication and knowledge. If attended to (rather than neglected or silenced) gossip can provide fresh insights into professional practice, decision-making and relational leadership. Originality/value – This paper offers a provocative challenge to mainstream health organization and management thinking about gossip in the workplace. It offers new ways of thinking to promote patient safety, and prevent the scandals that have plagued healthcare organizations in recent years.

Student Satisfaction Negates Pedagogic Rights, Theirs and Ours!

This article outlines how the potential for students to be co-participants, via a critical education, risks being further co-opted through the marketization of higher education by constructing students as consumers with power over academics to make judgments on pedagogic quality through student satisfaction ratings. We start by outlining the relevant components of marketization processes, and their associated practices of financialization and managerialism that have developed in response to the “legitimation crisis” in HE and argue that these have profoundly altered the university landscape with a significant impact on our working practices. Student engagement is increasingly being appropriated as a quantifiable measurement of “student satisfaction”, which then profoundly alters the teaching and learning experience with different understandings of what acquiring knowledge requires and what it feels like. We draw on our experience of working in the post 1992 sector to describe how we are increasingly working under conditions of “reified exchange” and how this affects our relationships with students, other academics and management, eroding our pedagogic rights and theirs in the process. Specifically, we conclude that marketization is likely to further reduce the institutional space and opportunities for both lecturers and students to exercise their “pedagogic rights” to personal enhancement, social inclusion and civic participation through education.

Projecto suspensão formula student

Trabalho Final de Mestrado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Mecânica

Cultural organizations and communication in portuguese decentralization policy

This paper intends to show the Portuguese municipalities’ commitment, since the first decade of this century, in cultural facilities of municipal management and how it provided 12 of the 18 district capitals of mainland Portugal with cultural equipment, but after all we want to know if this effort resulted in a regular, diverse, and innovative schedule. Investing in urban regeneration, local governments have tried to convert cities’ demographic changes (strengthening of the most educated and professionally qualified groups) in effective cultural demands that consolidate the three axes of development competitiveness-innovation-creativity. What the empirical study to the programming and communication proposals of those equipment shows is that it is not enough to provide cities with facilities; to escape to a utilitarian conception of culture, there is a whole work to be done so that such equipment be experienced and felt as new public sphere. Equipment in which proposals go through a fluid bind, constructed through space and discourse with local community, devoted a diversified and innovative bet full filling development axis. This paper presents in a systematic way what contributes to this binding on the analyzed equipment.

Cultural organizations and communication in portuguese decentralization policy

This presentation intends to show to what extent the Portuguese municipalities’ commitment, from the first decade of this century, in cultural facilities of municipal management and which has provided 12 of the 18 district capitals of mainland Portugal with equipment, resulted in a regular, diverse and innovative schedule. Investing in urban regeneration, local government has tried to convert cities’ demographic changes (strengthening of the most educated and professionally qualified groups) in effective cultural demands that consolidate the three axes of development competitiveness-innovation-creativity. What the empirical study to the programming and communication proposals of those equipment shows is that it is not enough to provide cities with facilities; to escape to a utilitarian conception of culture, there is a whole work to be done so that such equipment be experienced and felt as new public sphere. Equipment in which proposals go through a fluid bind, constructed through space and discourse with local community, devotes a diversified and innovative bet full filling development axis. This paper presents in a systematic way what contributes to this binding on the analyzed equipment.

Relações famílias – organizações socioeducativas - famílias: relato de experiências de intervenção pedagógica em Creche e Jardim de Infância

Relatório da Prática Profissional Supervisionada Mestrado em Educação Pré-Escolar

Jornalismo político na revolução: a imprensa Trotskista em 1974-75.

Dissertação apresentada à Escola Superior de Comunicação Social como parte dos requisitos para obtenção de grau de mestre em Jornalismo.

Ansiedade na performance: causas e possíveis curas

I - Este relatório pretende descrever o estágio especializado em ensino de música realizado no âmbito do mestrado em Ensino de Música na Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa. Este estágio decorreu no Instituto Gregoriano de Lisboa e no Conservatório de Música, de Dança e de Arte Dramática de Lisboa, duas escolas de ensino oficial especializado. Sendo a primeira pública e a segunda privada, estas escolas apresentam realidades muito diferentes do ponto de vista organizacional e de gestão, que resultam em situações heterogéneas e dependentes de vários factores que serão mencionados ao longo deste relatório. A análise SWOT efectuada para cada uma destas organizações descreve mais objectivamente os factores e variáveis que permitiram construir este relatório. Foram caracterizados três alunos, um de cada curso: preparatório, básico e secundário. A Maria M. é a aluna do 2º ano do curso preparatório, o Pedro R. é aluno de 3º grau do curso básico de instrumento e o Diego M. é aluno de 7º grau. Foram aprofundadas as práticas pedagógicas desenvolvidas com cada um dos alunos e os avanços e metas atingidas por cada um destes alunos. Este estágio resulta numa reflexão sobre a prática pedagógica aplicada e as suas motivações.

Projecto de um sistema de transmissão de um veículo de competição formula student

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciência e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Mecânica.

Student performance analysis under different moodle course designs

This work extends a recent comparative study covering four different courses lectured at the Polytechnic of Porto - School of Engineering, in respect to the usage of a particular Learning Management System, i.e. Moodle, and its impact on students' results. A fifth course, which includes a number of resources especially supporting laboratory classes, is now added to the analysis. This particular course includes a number of remote experiments, made available through VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality) and directly accessible through links included in the Moodle course page. We have analyzed the students' behavior in following these links and in effectively running experiments in VISIR (and also using other lab related resources, in Moodle). This data have been correlated with students' classifications in the lab component and in the exam, each one weighting 50% of their final marks. We aimed to compare students' performance in a richly Moodle-supported environment (with lab component) and in a poorly Moodle-supported environment (with only theoretical component). This question followed from conclusions drawn in the above referred comparative study, where it was shown that even though a positive correlation factor existed between the number of Moodle accesses and the final exam grade obtained by each student, its explanation behind was not straightforward, as the quality of the resources was preponderant over its quantity.