Manchester Metropolitan University

You may be interested in this conference running from 28-30 June in Loughborough: eLit2006: Digital literacies and learning in the information society . The conference is for those interested in “information literacy, IT training and the challenges of supporting the wide range of literacies which underpin online education”, which covers a pretty wide area. For more information, see their website.

Thanks to Margaret Kendall and Eddie Higgins for sharing this information about JISC workshops on Planning and Evaluating Effective Practice with e-Learning. The workshops have now finished but the materials are freely available to download. You might be interested in the Innovative Practice with e-Learning guide which contains background material and lots of case studies.

The Joint Information Systems Committee is running an online conference on “Transforming Learning Experiences” from 27-31 March. There are three themes: Designing for Learning, Learner Experiences of e-Learning, and Innovating e-Learning Practice. It looks interesting and there is a good range of presenters.

For those wondering about an online conference, here’s an extract from the website:

What will happen during the conference?

Each keynote presentation will feature for two days and participants will be able to read papers and view the presentations, and have a discussion about the issues raised in which the presenters will participate. Simultaneously, there will be a number of other seminars and discussions, usually backed up with other papers and presentations. A live chat room is also available for participants.

Together with papers and presentations from the open call, there will be wealth of useful material to download, view and discuss.

Cost is £50 per delegate.

The winter edition of Learning and Teaching in Action is now available. The theme of the issue is Widening Participation (WP) and it has been edited by the University’s head of WP, Rob Halsall. With eight articles from MMU staff or visiting fellows it gives an excellent overview of what’s happening at MMU to try to make our programmes more inclusive.

If you are interested in using images to improve the presentation of or to help to illustrate printed or online material, then you should have a look at the Technical Advisory Service for Images site. This JISC funded service provides help and advice on finding and using digital images. From a simple search to technical details about using the images, with a good coverage of copyright on the way, it’s a really useful resource.

We’ve received information from the software company, Horizon Wimba, about a series of online lectures they’re holding during February 2006. A couple of them look interesting for anyone considering using the Voice Tools in their courses or getting a preview of the next version of CourseGenie. Here’s a link to the full schedule. You do need to register for them, but it’s free.

The University of Sussex is holding a plagiarism awareness week next week.

“The main aim of the week is to educate students about what plagiarism is, to promote discussion amongst staff and students and to help people to find out about the resources and support available. During this week students and staff are asked to spend 10 minutes thinking about plagiarism.”

This is a university-wide activity and you can find out more at this link to the Academic Office website.