Manchester Metropolitan University

QAA podcast: ‘Studying at university is not a simple financial transaction…it is a process of education’

In which, Wes and Graeme attempt to stem the tide of consumerism…

To accompany their recent paper (“Rethinking the values of higher education – consumption, partnership, community?), Wes Streeting, President, and Graeme Wise, Political Officer of the NUS have produced a podcast. They explain the ways in which they think that student partnership will be vital to the future of HE – mentioning communities of practice as a model – and defending diversity and experimentation in student experience.

Nice moment where the host imagines VCs listening the the podcast and asking Wes and Graeme where the VCs should start with implementing their ideas…..(answer: read the paper)

The QAA has just published a report from the NUS entitled “Rethinking the values of higher education – consumption, partnership, community?”.

“The character of higher education in Britain is rapidly changing. There are worries over the ‘value for money’ that students get for the fees they now pay, about possible ‘mis-selling’ of university courses. Underlying it all, we believe, is the trend towards market approaches in the way higher education is organised. One of the most important symptoms of this is the increasingly prevalent notion of the student ‘as consumer’.

This notion is situated within a much wider process of change in public services. The aim of a ‘students as consumers’ model is to bring these principles to the higher education environment. It invites students to navigate higher education as a market. QAA has invited the National Union of Students to pursue an exploration of this issue and we want to do so explicitly from the student perspective.”

The report proposes some extreme caricatures of student consumers and uses these to argue for a system of  ‘co-production’ and the sharing of power between students and universities.

Keynote Speaker: Professor John Traxler, Director, Learning Lab, University of Wolverhampton, UK

Conference background and goals

Mobile Learning, a Retrospective Outlook

Since its inauguration in 2005, the IADIS Mobile Learning conference series has provided a forum to present, discuss and promote international mobile learning research.

Past conference themes have focused on pedagogical approaches most suited for mobile learning such as collaborative, contextual, and constructivist which support data collection, context & location awareness and distributed activities. In 2007 the conference aimed to harness an international perspective on the ‘big issues’ in mobile learning by discussing topics such as the conflict between personal informal learning and traditional classroom education, the evaluation of mobile learning and appropriate methods for this setting, the design of mobile learning activities and the integration of mobile devices in the broader educational scenarios, among others. In 2008, our concern was to explore various dimensions of the learners’ mobility for example, physical, conceptual and social, to discern how these in conjunction with mobile and fix technologies may support learning. Last year, the conference debated the increasing phenomenon of user generated content, in particular mobile media.

Five years on, the IADIS Mobile Learning 2010 International Conference seeks to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of mobile learning research which provides a retrospective outlook of the field. We seek contributions under the topics below which illustrate developments in the field.

Format of the Conference

The conference will comprise of invited talks and oral presentations. The proceedings of the conference will be published in the form of a book and CD-ROM with ISBN, and will be available also in the IADIS Digital Library (accessible on-line). The best paper authors will be invited to publish extended versions of their papers in the IADIS Journal on Computer Science and Information Systems (ISSN: 1646-3692) and also in other selected Journals.

Types of submissions

Full and Short Papers, Reflection Papers, Posters/Demonstrations, Tutorials, Panels and Doctoral Consortium. All submissions are subject to a blind refereeing process.

Topics

We invite researchers, practitioners, developers and all those working in the mobile learning arena to submit work under the following topics: . Pedagogical approaches and theories for mLearning . mLearning in formal educational institutions . Integrating mLearning with broader educational scenarios . Informal and lifelong mLearning . Learner mobility & transitions across physical, conceptual, social space and technologies . User Studies in mLearning . Mobile social media & user generated content . Enabling mLearning technologies, applications & uses . Evaluation and evaluation methodologies for mLearning . Tools, technologies and platforms for mLearning . Mobile Web 2.0 applications for mLearning . Mobile game-based learning

Important Dates:

Submission deadline: (1st call extension): 4 December 2009
Notification to Authors (1st call extension): 6 January 2010
Final Camera-Ready Submission and Early Registration (1st call extension): Until 27 January 2010
Late Registration (1st call extension): After 27 January 2010
Conference: Porto, Portugal, 19 to 21 March 2010

Conference Location The conference will be held in Porto, Portugal.

Secretariat IADIS Secretariat
IADIS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE MOBILE LEARNING
2010 Rua Sao Sebastiao da Pedreira, 100, 3 1050-209 Lisbon, Portugal
Email: secretariat@mlearning-conf.org Web site: http://www.mlearning-conf.org/

A national one day conference organised jointly by ALT and JISC TechDis for any staff whose work and role affects learners and learning

Tuesday 9 February 2010 at the National College, Nottingham

Event flyer [~140 kB PDF]

Call for workshop proposals [~35 kB PDF]

If you or your organisation has good practice to share in the inclusive use of technology to support learning, we invite you to submit a proposal to run a 45 minute workshop at the conference.

To submit a proposal, please complete the proposal form by 12.00 noon on Monday 4 December 2009. We will let proposers know the result of the selection process before Christmas, to give those invited to run workshops plenty of time to prepare.

We will meet reasonable travel and subsistence costs for those selected to present; in each case for up to two people involved in the presentation. We will meet the costs of overnight accommodation for one presenter if staying overnight at the National College; the second presenter attending would be at cost.

Depending on the nature of proposals received we may require presenters to run their workshop twice during the day.

If you are not presenting but would like to attend, please note that further information about the conference will be distributed widely later in November.

Book online to attend

Costs to attend
£120 members of ALT
£160 non members of ALT
£100 dinner, bed and breakfast at the National College

To register your interest for the event, and to be kept informed about arrangements, please join the relevant low-volume email announcements list at http://www.alt.ac.uk/lists.html.