Manchester Metropolitan University

From the Plagiarism mailing list, an endless source of eye-opening information…a link to a press release issued on behalf of an Essay Bank offering money for (old) coursework. It makes a change from seeing them on eBay, I suppose. The company concerned claims to check for plagiarism – if they use Turnitin for this, let’s hope you’ve passed ALL your assignments through it before, to stop them being used again!

Oh, of course it says on its site that “With the help of this site you will be able to pinpoint exactly what you need to support you with your next assignment. ” – of course students wouldn’t attempt to submit any of these old assignments. I’m quite concerned that Ahmed, Manchester Metropolitan University says that “I never thought of an easier way to make money, really! ” And that the approval of the work is “conducted by tutors from some of the top UK universities.“.

These kinds of sites are there and it’s important that we know about them. For ideas on making it difficult for students to buy anything useful from them, have a look at the LTU plagiarism resource (see FAQ).

A new call for Fellows in Academic Practice has been published by the Learning and Teaching Unit. A Fellowship can last up to one year. For this call, applicants might like to plan projects that commence at any time after the start of the Summer term, but no later than 1st September. The closing date for this round of applications is Friday 23rd March 2007. You can find out more about existing projects here.

Beyond the Search Engine, being held on March 23rd 2007 continues the successful ‘Beyond…’ series of speeches and debates hosted by the Learning Technologies Group at the University of Oxford. This year the conference examines how students learn, what advice they are given, how academics can help students through appropriate guidance on use of material.

Speakers in the debate include the designer of Turnitin Plagiarism Detection System, a representative of the UK’s leading essay bank service, the Founder President of the US Centre for Academic Integrity and an UK Academic lawyer.

For more details and booking visit: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/events/beyond2007/

In an article entitled “Courses Vs. Content: Online Offerings From Major Institutions Are Not Created Equal” Stephen Downes suggests that the material offered by MIT (which generally consists of a syllabus, reading lists and assignment briefs) should not be compared with the actual online courses offered by the Open University at its OpenLearn project, which we’ve mentioned before. Have a look for yourself…

Eagle eyed readers will know that the Definitive Document template has been modified to include a requirement to explain “how the programme addresses the Academic Board’s recommendation of the anonymous marking of all summative coursework as a matter of principle.” The LTU has produced some guidance on this which suggests some possible exemptions and exceptions. Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

Prompted by the success of a short workshop on Developing a Framework for e-Learning (as part of the 7th HEA-ICS Annual Conference in Dublin), this one day workshop for, and by, Educators and Researchers, will take place at the University of Greenwich, London, on Wednesday 6th June 2007 as part of the 1st eCentre Conference (6-8 June 2007), details here and here.

WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES

This workshop aims to make sense of the domain by attempting to answer a range of questions. Suggested themes:

a.. General Issues (State of the Art, e-Learning Standards, Learning Objects and Repositories, Digital Games)

b.. Technical Issues (Knowledge Management, Multimedia and ICTs in Education, Collaborative Learning/Groupware)

c.. Pedagogical and Didactic Issues

d.. Design for Learning: The way forward?

PARTICIPATION

Participation in the workshop is open to all interested parties by registering for the workshop via the University of Greenwich website ecentre.cms.gre.ac.uk. Note that it is possible for delegates to attend the workshop (cost £75) without registering for the conference. To stimulate discussion on the day, participants are invited to submit thoughts, essays, and provocative and reflective statements, as well as position papers. Before, and during the workshop, these will be available for open viewing and response on the workshop website ecentre.cms.gre.ac.uk. On the day of the workshop we hope to have an interesting and focused debate.

Abstracts for Position papers (maximum of 500 words), essays, thoughts and statements should be submitted, preferably in word or pdf format, to D.Graham@gre.ac.uk. Contributors of selected abstracts will be contacted and asked to submit posters or position papers in full and to present these at the workshop. Papers and posters will be published in the conference proceedings. General enquiries can be directed to D.Graham@gre.ac.uk and k.fraser@ulster.ac.uk.

Important dates:

1st February 2007 Call for participation
1st March 2007 Deadline for receipt of abstracts
1st April 2007 Deadline for responding to abstract contributors requesting full posters or papers
1st May 2007 Deadline for receipt of posters or full papers
23rd May 2007 Deadline for early conference registration
1st June 2007 On-line registration for conference and workshops closes

Conference website

Workshop website here and here

Staffordshire University warmly invites you to attend this one day international conference at Staffordshire University on the 30th May 2007

This conference is focussed on learners and learning in Higher Education and exploring the challenge of retaining that focus amidst the unavoidable wave of new technologies to support learning. It will be of interest to Higher Education academic developers, managers and policy makers. Its aim is to explore key paradigms emerging from eLearning in order to help both Universities and practitioners understand and shape the future presented by nascent technologies such as “Web 2.0″ tools.

Conference Themes

• eLearning paradigms for practice: guiding the present, informing
  the future
• sloughing the ‘e’? How do we continue to shift the focus towards
  learning and submerged technologies as new, challenging technologies
  emerge?
• Balancing learner autonomy and learning communities: pedagogy,
  quality, ownership and control

The conference will be opened by Professor Christine King; Vice
Chancellor, Staffordshire University

Keynote speakers include:

• Professor Gilly Salmon
• Professor John Stephenson
• Professor Mark Stiles

Workshop presenters include

* Professor Robin Mason
* Dr Sian Bayne
* Helen Walmsley
* Professor Steve Molyneux
* Dr Pat Jefferies
* Liz Hart
* Kevin Thompson

To see more of the conference programme and details of how to book your place, please visit the conference website