Before the holidays, I attended part of a lecture by Clare Hutton from the English and Drama department who showcased The Waste Land app to her students. Clare is one of the recipients of a loan iPad and has been trialling it in a Teaching and Learning environment. For students studying TS Elliott’s notable poem,Read more
TurnItIn have released two new tools to support the evaluation of web-based resources; a review of the sources actually used and an interactive tool for the evaluation of resources. These should be useful as tutorial-level discussion pieces and lend some objectivity to assessing the worth of the Web. “Open access to this new interactive rubricRead more
If, like me, you were a teenager in the 1980s, chances are you’ll remember the BBC Micro and the Sinclair Spectrum. These were ‘home computers’ that encouraged a generation of pallid adolescents to try their hand at programming, leading pretty much directly to the British games industry becoming one of the country’s biggest export earnersRead more
A JISC study has found that learners develop a variety of digital literacies often through a social trial-and-error process, without the direct support or advice of their educational institutions. Ben Showers, JISC programme manager, said, “By understanding and recognising students’ hidden behaviours and motivations, JISC is in a position to help universities and colleges developRead more
A recent study by TurnItIn looked at the sources of 110 million content matches over 40 million submissions, and found: 33% of matching text came from Social Networking sites, content sharing sites or question-and-answer sites 25% of matching text came from educational sites 15% of matching text came from cheat sites, and 7% of matchingRead more
The Library, E-learning Team and Students’ Union have just completed a study to find out more about how students are using Web 2.0 sites such as Facebook and YouTube for both their social lives and their studies. An on-line survey was completed by 178 students. The results show that most students use Web 2.0 sites for bothRead more