Manchester Metropolitan University

The OU has decided to make many of its online learning materials freely available for learners and teachers. Find out more at the Open Learn. There are many topics already available, with a commitment to make 5000 hours worth available by April 2008. Please let us know if you are interested in using any of the materials.

The Higher Education Policy Institute has published a survey of students in English universities which asked about the number of hours of study students undertake (both timetabled hours and independent work). The results are interesting and are bound to provide a useful basis for debate on the nature of face to face teaching and independent study, particularly as the authors go on to look at possible relationships between contact hours and student satisfaction.

There is no mention of the role played by online or blended learning in study, which is interesting – this might vary considerably between institutions and time spent in properly organised distance learning might be much more beneficial than undirected independent study…..

You can find links to the report at the HEPI website.

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The study was funded by the HE Academy.

The University of Sussex is running a Plagiarism Awareness week in November. They have circulated the programme in the interests of letting other institutions know what they are doing and sharing good practice. It makes interesting reading, especially the request for all staff to include a 10 minute presentation on plagiarism in all teaching sessions during the week.

Newsfilm Online is a collaboration between the British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC) and ITN, funded by JISC. 3,000 hours of television news and cinema newsreels, taken from the huge collection of the ITN/Reuters archive, is being made available online in high quality format for teaching, learning and research. Newsfilm Online will be a gateway of unmatched richness to nearly one hundred years of news, from the 1910s to the present day.

Newsfilm Online is an academic resource with the added dynamic of moving pictures and sounds. Content is downloadable, allowing the user to edit material to suit their needs. It is being made available under an ‘in
perpetuity’ licence meaning that these newsfilms can be embedded in UK Higher and Further Education for years to come.

Newsfilm Online will be released as a resource for the UK Higher and Further Education community in Spring 2007. It will be supported by an extensive database, with clear and comprehensible searching. 450,000 pages of newsfilm bulletin scripts are also being digitised and will be available as part of Newsfilm Online

Available now is a ‘demonstrator’ web site making some fifty news clips (approximately one hour of material) freely available for downloading to all users. These clips are arranged by theme and decade. The main delivery of 3,000 hours will be in Spring 2007.

James Taylor, the projects Education and Outreach Officer is visiting Higher and Further Educations Institutions across the UK in order to demonstrate the resource to Academic and Support staff and answer questions about it. If you would be interested in him visiting your institution, please contact him by phone (020 7430 4580) or email.

The Guardian reports this morning on the increasing use of technology to track lecture attendance. . I’m not sure that this is fundamentally different from asking students to sign in, although it is presumably quicker to implement than a sign-in sheet. The article mentions the published benefits to retention from the scheme, but quotes the NUS as saying that the tactics are ‘draconian’ and that “more should be done to address the underlying reasons behind poor attendance.” The article doesn’t say what these reasons might be: other commitments, early mornings, poor lectures…?

The HE academy has announced details of research projects for 06/07, each of which falls under one of the HEA’s themes of innovations in the curriculum and student support, quality management, assessment of student learning, and academic leadership.

This comes from the ELTHE jiscmail list:

Encoding Digital Video for Streaming and Network Delivery – Introduction
Date: Thursday 12th October, 2006
Presenters: Greg Newton-Ingham (University of East Anglia) and Murray Weston
(BUFVC)
Venue: BUFVC, 77 Wells Street, London W1T 3QJ

This one-day course provides an introduction to solving the problems and issues relating to digitising moving images for online delivery, and will cover:

* copyright status and educational exceptions
* video content – producing new content or reusing existing footage
* analogue and digital formats, telecine
* encoding, storing and networking content
* forms of delivery and use

Participants will not be expected to have had prior experience in handling
moving images in an IT environment.

Encoding Digital Video for Streaming and Network Delivery – Advanced
Date: Friday 13th October, 2006
Presenter: Greg Newton-Ingham (University of East Anglia)
Venue: BUFVC, 77 Wells Street, London W1T 3QJ

This one day course is offered in response to demand for an in-depth
programme and follows on from the Introductory course, outlined above. It
will provide detailed technical instruction on the following:

* considerations when producing moving image content
* system software and file formats for moving images
* compression; comparing codecs and tools for use
* storage and networking
* server technology, backing up and archiving

Although this is offered as a one-day course, it is recommended that participants have previously attended the Introductory level course or have experience of delivering time-based media via the web.