Archive | August, 2008

Debating the future of Higher Education

12 Aug

The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) in the process of reviewing how Higher Education works and what government needs to do to ensure that universities stay competitive, and meet the needs of students and employers over the next 10-15 years.

To that end, they have started an online debate via a blog hosted on the JISC Involve service entitled The Future of Higher Education, as well as outlining the process for this review, the online debate will inform the official consultation process which will take place in the autumn.

The Secretary of State, John Denham, has written to a number of key figures in the Higher Education sphere and asked for their contributions, but if you would like to express your views first, then join in the debate at the blog.

Topics up for discussion on the blog include:

  • What will demographic changes mean for the shape and nature of HE?
  • How are higher education institutions currently responding to student expectations?
  • How should HE respond to the fact that adults, often studying part-time will make up an ever-increasing proportion of the home student population?
  • How can the interaction between academia and public policy makers be improved?
  • How do we anticipate the international market for higher education will change over the next 10-15 years?
  • How attractive are research careers to graduates, and what can be done to enhance this?

… or you can sample some of the Web 2.0 side of Higher Education policy via the DIUS YouTube channel.

Intute: Social Sciences features more Internet resources on the issues of Higher Education, Educational Policy and the Public Administration of Education.

Debating the future of Higher Education

12 Aug

The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) in the process of reviewing how Higher Education works and what government needs to do to ensure that universities stay competitive, and meet the needs of students and employers over the next 10-15 years.

To that end, they have started an online debate via a blog hosted on the JISC Involve service entitled The Future of Higher Education, as well as outlining the process for this review, the online debate will inform the official consultation process which will take place in the autumn.

The Secretary of State, John Denham, has written to a number of key figures in the Higher Education sphere and asked for their contributions, but if you would like to express your views first, then join in the debate at the blog.

Topics up for discussion on the blog include:

  • What will demographic changes mean for the shape and nature of HE?
  • How are higher education institutions currently responding to student expectations?
  • How should HE respond to the fact that adults, often studying part-time will make up an ever-increasing proportion of the home student population?
  • How can the interaction between academia and public policy makers be improved?
  • How do we anticipate the international market for higher education will change over the next 10-15 years?
  • How attractive are research careers to graduates, and what can be done to enhance this?

… or you can sample some of the Web 2.0 side of Higher Education policy via the DIUS YouTube channel.

Intute: Social Sciences features more Internet resources on the issues of Higher Education, Educational Policy and the Public Administration of Education.

YouTube for fun or education or both

5 Aug

Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Digital Ethnography at Kansas State University explores the impact of new media on human interaction (and the impact of human interaction on new media).

His YouTube videos, including The Machine is Us/ing Us have been widely viewed and he recently spoke at the Library of Congress providing An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube (55 mins).

It’s well worth an hour of your time as he hurtles through the cultural impact of YouTube, using over 40 minutes of specially created video content – very different from a traditional chalk and talk PowerPoint.

Find out more about his work at http://mediatedcultures.net/ which includes his blog.

If you are interested in the educational potential of online video, then the work of Alex Juhasz will serve as a useful counterpoint to that of Wesch. She taught a course on YouTube, using YouTube and while she encountered many of the same issues as Wesch, she regarded it as a less optimistic experience.

Juhasz blogged about the work of Wesch and it looks like they may be having an interesting dialogue, which we can all learn from.

Intute: Social Sciences features more resources relating to YouTube.

Economics Podcasts from Vox

4 Aug

Vox a policy portal set up by the Centre for Economic Policy Research in conjunction with a consortium of national sites, aims to promote research-based policy analysis and commentary. Vox has marked a year in existence by launching a range of new features including a weekly email, events listings and an archive of their past articles.

It also includes a range of podcasts interviewing economics researchers by Royal Economic Society media consultant Romesh Vaitilingam, with the most popular download being a recent discussion with Stephen Cecchetti on the Monetary policy responses to the financial crisis of 2007-2008 on both sides of the Atlantic.

Download:

Romesh has collaborated with us in the past to produce a range of podcasts available on the Why Study Economics website and here on the Intute: Social Sciences blog podcast archive.

Intute: Social Sciences features more Internet resources dealing with podcasting in economics.

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The calm before the storm?

1 Aug

We’re in a the summer lull of the US Presidential election and despite speeches in Berlin, Vice-Presidential speculation and basically the American equivalent of the British “silly season” the campaigns are preparing themselves for the nominating conventions and hard campaigning in the autumn.

But how does the election actually work? Well luckily the fine folk over at the Common Craft Show have turned their attention away from their usual fare of technology issues – to produce this excellent guide to Electing a US President in Plain English.

So while the various poll of polls data from sites such as Electoral-Vote.com, Gallop and FiveThirtyEight.com show the race is pretty tight, but with Obama maintaining a small but consistent lead over McCain, when this is translated via state by state polls, into a projected Electoral College result, it does not look like being the sort of close election we’ve had in 2000 and 2004.

However, there is plenty of time for this to change and in the meantime, why not sample of some of the best of the web on the US elections – just scroll past the Editor’s Choice selections to get to the latest additions to Intute: Social Sciences.

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