Wednesday, July 26, 2006

#6 Reusability Cultures

Are you the sort of person who will send a colleague a website bookmark? Do you discuss and share ideas with your colleagues? Do you ask your colleagues for their help in finding useful information? Most of us like helping each other. But do we share our work and actively seek out opportunities for reuse of materials? The main feature this week discusses this. 'In Brief' flags up the question "Sould we record lectures?" and the LTA Gem considers our use of MySpace and Facebook social networking environments.
Can we do more in Higher Education to share and reuse resources? Academia tends to have a culture where we share and develop our ideas together as exemplified in the practice of joint research and educational conferences. But when it comes to making and sharing resources could we do better? The main feature this week is a discussion with Dave Binney, Susannah Diamond, Lynne Dawson, Susan Curtis and myself on this topic.
In 'In Brief' I ask, "Should we record lectures?"
The LTA Gem from Angie Donoghue of Sheffield Hallam University's Virtual Learning Centre team proposes we should take a look at MySpace and Facebook social networking sites.

If you're not familiar with these social bookmarking sites take a look. Registration is free. You may be puzzled about why they have become such a powerful social phenonemon - but perservere! If you're over 25 and in higher education it may give you insight to how our students increasingly like to communicate and support each other.



Contact: email lta-podcast "AT" shu.ac.uk


Friday, July 07, 2006

#5 The International Student Experience

This week I'm taking a slightly different approach to previous programmes - we'll be focussing on just one topic: The experience of the International Student. In the first half of the programme I'll be speaking to Viv Thom the International Student Adviser in Sheffield Hallam's Student Services Centre.
We spoke shortly after the International Consortium for Educational Developers Conference that took place in Sheffield this year. At the ICED conference Viv was joined by about 10 international students who answered questions from the international audience about their experience.
Photos from the plenary session are below.







Contact: email lta-podcast "AT" shu.ac.uk