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Previous Events
Learning Futures Festival '09
This years event included a series of online events to feed forward to a face-to-face event on Thursday 8th January 2009 at the Walkers Stadium. Read more...
Engaging employers using video pod files
April 22nd 11:00 - 13:00
Stephen Gomez, University of the West of England
Gartree & Rutland Room, 4th Floor, Charles Wilson Building, University of Leicester
Employability is high on the agenda of all universities at the moment. A key element of this agenda is the employer. Involving employers in HE is problematic as they often do not have the time to visit the university on a regular basis to speak with students. We were tasked with finding creative ways in which to draw on employers’ advice and experience to help students with their employability skills. We use video pod files (a modified approach to pod- or vodcasts) to support lectures and we wondered if this approach could be applied to employer engagement. The presentation will show the results of our approach and demonstrate a flexible system for delivering short audio and video pod files in a controlled virtual environment.
Using eportfolios and blogs as transition 'spaces' into and out of the University
Julie Hughes and Emma Purnell, University of Wolverhampton
The University of Wolverhampton was the first UK HEI to make an eportfolio system, pebblePAD, available to all students and staff in September 2005 following a pilot year in four academic schools. This work draws upon practitioner and student narratives from 2004 to 2007 and considers how the use of this new technology in a School of Education might enhance both teaching and learning experiences. Specifically, this presentation will consider and explore the vital role that technology can play in supporting the, at times painful, transitions into the university and into the workplace in groups of Foundation Degree and PGCE students.
Eportfolios and blogs, as web communication tools, and community landscapes are increasingly well established. However, their use as a technological learning space within HE is under theorised. This presentation will contribute to this debate by considering how a creative, reflective learning community may be formed, fostered and exploited through modelling and ementoring.
This presentation will offer examples from practice, drawing upon the use of metaphor and multimedia, and offer suggestions on how these practices might be transferred to other PDP/CPD learning contexts within a dynamic and responsive Higher Education sector.
Julie created a Webfolio for the event to enable us to revisit the key concepts.
Beyond Distance Research Alliance Learning Futures conference
'The Campus and Beyond'
8-9 January 2008
The 2007 Beyond Distance conference focussed on 'Learning Futures' - spotting future trends and learner expectations, and how practitioners can ride the surf to improve learning and teaching.
It built on the 2005 and 2006 conferences which were concerned with setting the e-learning research agenda. The hallmark of the BDRA conferences is the provision of space, time and ideas for those involved in elearning teaching and learning to come together to exchange ideas and think through the development of concepts, theories and rigorous and appropriate methodologies, good practice and models of change. An important aim has been to shift the focus to improving student learning from concentration on learning technologies.
The 2008 conference is firmly focussed on Learning Futures: spotting future trends and learner expectations, and riding the surf to improve learning and teaching. The aims are:
- To articulate and surface key transferable e-learning ideas and models for consideration in different contexts
- To develop stronger relationships promoting research on innovative teaching in inter-disciplinary, intradisciplinary, cross professional, multi institutional ways through building principles and models for testing through work in practice and context
- To continue to shift the focus to improving student learning from learning technologies, with a particular emphasis on those renewing distance learning programmes