Higher Education - Border or Boundary? Can Theatre in Education Help Promote a University Education?

With the expansion and increased availability of Higher Education the progression to study for an undergraduate degree has been viewed as a simple stepping stone with examination success a straight - forward border pass. Changes in the funding of degree courses has established a series of more challenging boundaries to entry which demand a rigorous assessment of the benefits of Higher Education. The Widening Participation Unit at The University of Worcester has sought to ease this border crossing for pupils whose parents have not been to university. Their experience from previous projects was that school pupils more easily relate to undergraduate students whose experience of Higher Education is recent and relevant. With this in mind they commissioned the Drama and Performance Department to create a Theatre in Education programme that introduced an awareness of post sixteen options and future choices to challenge Higher Education stereotypes. As a result of this collaboration Why Bother? was created, directed by myself and devised and researched with four students who were studying drama. Their own experiences were used to inform the character development and dealt with worrying as a mature student about integration into full – time education, loss of income after working, the pressures of emotional commitments to partners and being away from home. The programme toured to two thousand year 9 – 11 pupils in Worcestershire and Herefordshire schools in January and May 2011. Devising and touring Why Bother provided students with an opportunity to work as a professional paid TIE team that it is not possible for them to do as part of their undergraduate degree course. My initial research looks at the effectiveness and limitations of this project based on pupil questionnaires and the experiences of the team which are explored within the broader context of TIE and its potential for affecting attitudinal change. This has given rise to a number of questions that need consideration in the development of a new TIE programme aimed at raising the awareness of sixth form students who are about to make the decision whether to apply to university or not. Collaboration with university students in exploring the value of an education that they have subscribed to raises issues of bias and whether their powers of persuasion actually prevent pupils from making their own individual decision. The ethics of promoting a “free” university education seem much less complex than the decision required now which involves balancing the real value against the high financial cost suggested in the working title of Is it Worth it? This paper will present my first attempts to develop research methods and methodologies that will enable me to evaluate the success of this and future TIE.

E-Bau: Aktives Lernen und Arbeiten in der Baubranche

UNITRACC, Underground Infrastructure Training and Competence Center, ist eine moderne E-Learning-Lösung mit dem Schwerpunkt Leitungsbau und Leitungsinstandhaltung. Die Zielgruppe stellt die gesamte Breite der in diesem Bereich des Tiefbaus tätigen Personenkreise dar: Facharbeiter, Techniker, Ingenieure in Ingenieurbüros und öffentlichen Verwaltungen, Studierende in Universitäten und Fachhochschulen, Teilnehmer in Aus- und Weiterbildungsinstituten sowie Auszubildende in Berufsschulen. Momentan erfolgen Berufsausbildung, Umschulung und Weiterbildung in der Bauindustrie im Rahmen der Präsenzlehre noch in speziell dafür eingerichteten Ausbildungszentren, Berufsförderungswerken und Berufsschulen. Eine der Zielsetzungen von UNITRACC ist die Entwicklung eines komplementären Angebots, das flexibel und individuell einsetzbar ist und im Hinblick auf Zeit und Kosten die Präsenzausbildung optimiert und ergänzt. Die Möglichkeit der Dezentralisierung des Lernens unterstützt die Bildung von neuen Ausbildungswegen und eine Verselbständigung des Lernens, da eine Integration in den aktiven Arbeits- und Entscheidungsprozess realisiert wird. In jeder Phase des Arbeitslebens wird UNITRACC als Informationszentrale für den Praktiker ein Arbeits- und Hilfswerkzeug sein: in der Ausbildung wie im Studium und in der Fortbildung, so auch in der Berufsausübung und als Kommunikationsplattform zwischen Unternehmen, Universitäten, Schulen und Institutionen.(DIPF/Orig.)

Das Labor im Rucksack – mobile computing in der psychologischen Grundlagenausbildung

Mobile Notebooks, die einen campusweiten Zugriff auf das Hochschulnetzwerk erlauben, eröffnen neue Möglichkeiten der Integration netzbasierter Ressourcen in die reguläre Lehre. Es wird über Entwicklung und gebündelten Einsatz netzbasierter Tools in der psychologischen Grundlagenausbildung berichtet. Spezifische Funktionalitäten mobiler Notebooks wurden in vielfältigen Anwendungen – von Online-Feedback-Instrumenten bis zum virtuellen Experimentallabor – zur Förderung von Lehr-Lern-Prozessen nutzbar gemacht. Sie fördern die individuelle Wissenskonstruktion, indem sie selbstreguliertes und kooperatives Lernen vernetzen, unmittelbares Feedback gewährleisten sowie darüber hinaus die Entwicklung sozialer Bezugsnormen unterstützen. So schaffen sie einen Rahmen, in dem die Studierenden – dem Cognitive Apprenticeship Ansatz folgend – auf ihrem Weg in die wissenschaftliche Community experimentell arbeitender Psychologen von Mitlernenden und Lehrenden unterstützt werden. Innerhalb nur eines Semesters konnten mobile Notebooks und netzbasierte Tools erfolgreich in die reguläre Lehre integriert werden. Die kognitiven und affektiven Grundlagen einer nachhaltigen Verbesserung der Lehr-Lern-Qualität durch den Einsatz derartiger Instrumente werden diskutiert.(DIPF/Orig.)

Digital technology policies in Canada and Australia: an analysis of new rules for ‘new tech'

As mobile touch screen digital devices (MTSD) have moved into a more prominent position in classrooms and schools, the development of new policies to address these devices have also emerged at a rapid pace. While policy documents aimed at MTSD usage in schools are evident at range of levels, from school-based to education ministries and departments, there is relatively little research that examines such documents or their impact on teaching and learning. This paper reports on initial analyses of educational digital media and MSTD policies in education departments and schools in Victoria, Australia and Alberta, Canada. We examined these policy documents in relation to implications for resourcing, usage and teaching practice, as a part of a large-scale Canadian-funded comparative research project studying digital tools and practices. Schools must mediate and negotiate complex entangled environments that are all at once enabling and dis-abling of innovation, in relation to digital technologies. These complex environments are made visible through a closer reading of artifacts such as policy documents guiding technology use in schools and classrooms. Our paper will interrogate such documents, across both countries (Canada and Australia) and regions (Victoria and Alberta), in relation to several emergent themes: private vs. school funded ownership, attitudes towards ‘bring your own device' (BYOD) initiatives and "co-contributions", equity and access, and surveillance and control. As well, we will address how hopes and fears and understandings of digital literacy are represented, described and enacted through such policies. Our analyses will also contextualize our data in terms of the broader cultural, political and educational considerations that framing and undergirding policies in both countries, and, finally, we will address the different (and similar) assumptions that are communicated within the digital policy documents.

Teaching Through Technology – the Experience of Bulgarian Teachers

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2016

Assessment in education : principles, policy and practice

The English examination system provides a market in which a limited number of providers are accredited to offer curriculum-based examinations in many subject areas and at several levels. The most significant are the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and the General Certificate of Education, Advanced (A level). Because these examinations are used for high-stakes purposes, including higher education and employment selection for individuals and programme evaluation for institutions, it is desired that scores from various exams be ‘comparable’ in several respects: across syllabuses and examination boards within a subject area, across years, and even across subject areas. Just how to accomplish this goal has been a topic of continual research and debate for over 50 years, through many changes of examination and institutional structures. But ever year, tens of thousands of scores must be reported, and every year, users expect them to ‘be comparable’ and use them as if they are.

Promoting creativity in education : from policy to practice : an Australian perspective

In the 21st century, our global community is changing to increasingly value creativity and innovation as driving forces in our lives. This paper will investigate how educators need to move beyond the rhetoric to effective practices for teaching and fostering creativity. First, it will describe the nature of creativity at different levels, with a focus on personal and everyday creativity. It will then provide a brief snapshot of creativity in education through the lens of new policies and initiatives in Queensland, Australia. Next it will review two significant areas related to enriching and enhancing students’ creative engagement and production: 1) influential social and environmental factors; and 2) creative self-efficacy. Finally, this paper will propose that to effectively promote student creativity in schools, we need to not only emphasise policy, but also focus on establishing a shared discourse about the nature of creativity, and researching and implementing effective practices for supporting and fostering creativity. This paper has implications for educational policy, practice and teacher training that are applicable internationally.

Elliptic curve algorithm integration in the secure shell transport layer

This document describes algorithms based on Elliptic Cryptography (ECC) for use within the Secure Shell (SSH) transport protocol. In particular, it specifies Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) key agreement, Elliptic Curve Menezes-Qu-Vanstone (ECMQV) key agreement, and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) for use in the SSH Transport Layer protocol.

Creating cultural change in education : A proposal for a continuum for evaluating the effectiveness of sustainable schools implementation strategies in Australia

Networks are increasingly recognised as advantageous when creating and embedding cultural change within organisations. This paper explores andproblematises ideas around networks for education for sustainability (EfS), Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative (AuSSI), a national, whole-school approach to EfS. In three Australian states - New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland – AuSSI has been implemented in different ways. In examining the use of products, facilitators and networks to embed initiatives such as AuSSI in Australian schools, we propose a “continuum of cultural change strategies” as a framework for thinking about each of these approaches to creating organisational and cultural change for sustainability. We anticipate that such a framework may assist where choices need to be made in relation to the kinds of capacity building processes that might best achieve “deep and wide” change within schools hoping to engender significant cultural change.

A grounded theory study of technology appropriation in anaesthesia

The human-technology nexus is a strong focus of Information Systems (IS) research; however, very few studies have explored this phenomenon in anaesthesia. Anaesthesia has a long history of adoption of technological artifacts, ranging from early apparatus to present-day information systems such as electronic monitoring and pulse oximetry. This prevalence of technology in modern anaesthesia and the rich human-technology relationship provides a fertile empirical setting for IS research. This study employed a grounded theory approach that began with a broad initial guiding question and, through simultaneous data collection and analysis, uncovered a core category of technology appropriation. This emergent basic social process captures a central activity of anaesthestists and is supported by three major concepts: knowledge-directed medicine, complementary artifacts and culture of anaesthesia. The outcomes of this study are: (1) a substantive theory that integrates the aforementioned concepts and pertains to the research setting of anaesthesia and (2) a formal theory, which further develops the core category of appropriation from anaesthesia-specific to a broader, more general perspective. These outcomes fulfill the objective of a grounded theory study, being the formation of theory that describes and explains observed patterns in the empirical field. In generalizing the notion of appropriation, the formal theory is developed using the theories of Karl Marx. This Marxian model of technology appropriation is a three-tiered theoretical lens that examines appropriation behaviours at a highly abstract level, connecting the stages of natural, species and social being to the transition of a technology-as-artifact to a technology-in-use via the processes of perception, orientation and realization. The contributions of this research are two-fold: (1) the substantive model contributes to practice by providing a model that describes and explains the human-technology nexus in anaesthesia, and thereby offers potential predictive capabilities for designers and administrators to optimize future appropriations of new anaesthetic technological artifacts; and (2) the formal model contributes to research by drawing attention to the philosophical foundations of appropriation in the work of Marx, and subsequently expanding the current understanding of contemporary IS theories of adoption and appropriation.

Economic growth, inequality and technology adoption in transitional economies

The stylized facts that motivate this thesis include the diversity in growth patterns that are observed across countries during the process of economic development, and the divergence over time in income distributions both within and across countries. This thesis constructs a dynamic general equilibrium model in which technology adoption is costly and agents are heterogeneous in their initial holdings of resources. Given the households‟ resource level, this study examines how adoption costs influence the evolution of household income over time and the timing of transition to more productive technologies. The analytical results of the model constructed here characterize three growth outcomes associated with the technology adoption process depending on productivity differences between the technologies. These are appropriately labeled as „poverty trap‟, „dual economy‟ and „balanced growth‟. The model is then capable of explaining the observed diversity in growth patterns across countries, as well as divergence of incomes over time. Numerical simulations of the model furthermore illustrate features of this transition. They suggest that that differences in adoption costs account for the timing of households‟ decision to switch technology which leads to a disparity in incomes across households in the technology adoption process. Since this determines the timing of complete adoption of the technology within a country, the implications for cross-country income differences are obvious. Moreover, the timing of technology adoption appears to be impacts on patterns of growth of households, which are different across various income groups. The findings also show that, in the presence of costs associated with the adoption of more productive technologies, inequalities of income and wealth may increase over time tending to delay the convergence in income levels. Initial levels of inequalities in the resources also have an impact on the date of complete adoption of more productive technologies. The issue of increasing income inequality in the process of technology adoption opens up another direction for research. Specifically increasing inequality implies that distributive conflicts may emerge during the transitional process with political- economy consequences. The model is therefore extended to include such issues. Without any political considerations, taxes would leads to a reduction in inequality and convergence of incomes across agents. However this process is delayed if politico-economic influences are taken into account. Moreover, the political outcome is sub optimal. This is essentially due to the fact that there is a resistance associated with the complete adoption of the advanced technology.

"Criatividade na Educação e Formação de Talentos" (Creativity in Education and Development of Talent)

Historically, 'Creativity' has had a complex set of meanings. Not long ago, 'Creativity' had a kind of marginal or peripheral status, being seen as the province of a gifted few; in many cases it was associated almost exclusively with the arts and with artists. But these traditional attitudes to creativity are changing. Mainstream businesses are employing people with creative skills as diverse as writing, directing, graphic design and event management. So what we’re beginning to see is an innovation framework and creative content adding value not just to SMEs, but to traditional industries such as manufacturing and mining, and to wider service industries. And this is why Education is such an important element, particularly with a focus on innovation, and on creative people and the contributions they make across different parts of the economy.