Supporting the research process

Research is a pivotal part of Higher Education, all universities do research to some extent, even if it is research into their teaching that never get published in peer reviewed journals.

Free universities?

In the age of increasing fees and sale of Higher Education , there has been another university set up that will offer courses for free as reported by the BBC ....

Sharing Practice conference 2012

The call is out for posters around sharing practice around teaching and learning.  Deadline for abstracts 20th April 2012

Digital Literacy in Higher Education

What is digital literacy?  Do we need to expand our definitions to include new social media interactions? What are we talking about?.. What does digital literacy mean to you?

Sitting on the shelf: Do we really need to disseminate our research?

Most research ends up sitting on the shelf in a library or behind some publishing companies pay wall.  Even with  the current rise in open access, hardly anyone outside of a university ever hears about our research.  Do we really need to disseminate our research to the wider public? And if we do how do we break it down so they can understand it? With the current pressures on academics is it worth our time to condense, simplify and disseminate our research to the lay person?....

New learners of the 21st century!

A good blog and short video on new learners of the 21st century.
Key points are embracing change, learning to join (there is usually already a community of practice to join.) and the power of play. 


http://learnstreaming.com/tinkering-with-john-seely-brown/
http://video.pbs.org/video/1767466213

The social value of universities

How do universities contribute to the wider community?  Well Uclan is one of the biggest employers in Preston, as well as being involved in community engagement projects! 
 Interesting article by Faiza Shaheen in the Impact of Social Sciences blog, 
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/09/05/billions-of-pounds-in-social-value/