EduSpaces news :: Blog

Hi,  

 

I work at the DIUS in the UK.  Part of what I do is to raise awareness online about a Higher Education (HE) ‘debate’ which we have ongoing here in the UK at the moment (http://www.dius.gov.uk/policy/he-debate.html). 

 

This HE debate was initiated by John Denham, the Secretary of State with responsibility for universities, when he invited a number of individuals and organisations to make contributions on a number of specific HE related themes.  The intention being that these contributions will inform thinking on this issue leading to a formal public consultation on a policy framework for HE in the autumn.  

 

He also said that he’d like to hear from a wider audience of those with an interest in HE  –  particularly those already discussing these issues online – so that these views can be fed into the policy review process in parallel.   

 

Since this is an education focused community focusing amongst other things on HE I thought I should let you know that this is happening and tell you how you can provide input if you wish to.   

 

On our behalf JISC Involve is hosting a blog on the broad HE debate (http://hedebate.jiscinvolve.org/).  As you can see the blog is divided into nine individual parts on which comment is possible.  The blog is only a few days old and will be live for about seven or eight weeks.  As you can see it is early days yet but already we’re starting to see some interesting points raised, and we’re keen to broaden the debate further. Some of the issues being discussed 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?

While this is obviously a UK focused exercise many of the issues are relevant across the globe.  Demographic changes, part-time study, the internationalisation in HE, etc.  Input from anyone on these issues regardless of location would be welcome.  Broader experiences help I think with a better understanding of the issues.  

 

Thanks for reading and I look forward to reading your comments.  

 

Vincent McGovern

Hi All,

We are in the process of testing out the next generation of Elgg (the software which powers this network) and are looking for people to help with the testing. If you fancy helping out, send us an email to: info@curverider.co.uk

Cheers.

My blog seems to have stopped being updated from an external source. I've had to change the feed (it seemed to go off the last one).

The feed that I'm now using is showing the posts if I look at it via " View Content". I've ticked the "publish to blog" - (and checked that the tick is still showing). However, it doesn't seem to be picking it up.

Clearly the function is still working, as I can see the multiple posts in Portuguese on the home page, as we've commented about before, so it's clearly me. Any suggestions? 

Anyone in our around San Antonio next week (the NECC 2008 conference is being held there this year) who would like to get together an chat (about Elgg in education, or just Elgg in any context), check out this Ning group. http://www.necc2008.org/group/elgg

Jim Klein and I will be there for sure and it would be great to chat with any others.

./tim

Is there a way in which a user can do all of this essential backup stuff in one fell swoop? If so, is it in a user-friendly file format?

 Thanks, Bill

Digam de vossa justiça

Two days ago I attended one of the LMN’s meeting about web 2.0. One of the interesting highlights of the evet was Malcolm Raggett’s presentation on the evaluation of Google applications at SOAS. They have decided to offer Google services to their students…well Email and Calendar services to start with in Sept 2008. Then Google Docs and Chat later, this is to allow them to cope better with training and support.  

Malcolm also mentioned that JISC has awarded £200k for a project involving all Bloomsbury Colleges. The Appropriate and Practical Technologies for Students, Teachers, Administrators & Researchers (APT STAIRS) project will explore the application of innovative technologies to enhance collaborative teaching and learning practices. They will be working with Google to evaluate the potential of Google Docs within the UK Higher Education sector. 

For more info see their site http://www.bloomsbury.ac.uk/apt

Aulas sem professores e com formadores,como nós,o que achas???

Today Gunter and I presented our first Connect evaluation at the Heads of eLearning Forum in Coventry. Please find a copy of our full evaluation report, here: Connect evaluation 2008.doc

It was very interesting meeting Andy Syson from the University of Coventry, who talked about Elgg integration with WebCT. I also really enjoyed Richard Millwood's presentation.  

Over at the University of Brighton, Stan Stanier (whose footsteps we followed) set up an HE Elgg user community, you can come and join the discussion here  http://community.brighton.ac.uk/elgguser/profile/

I thought it might be useful to have a thread dedicated to reporting things we find that don't work so all the info and feedback is in one place. Probably best to keep 'wish list' type items elsewhere so as not to muddy the waters here but there is likely to be some overlap. Anyway, here's a couple to kick off with:

1. I have just discovered an area under my 'Your Network' tab for invitations received to join communities. http://eduspaces.net/terry/communities/invitations. Is this new? I found an invitation there that I did not know about. Could or should invitations issued in this way generate a notification in some way, say via email?

2. When listing 'View all posts' and selecting the 'with comments' filter you only get one screen full. If you click on the 'back' link <wishlist> which would be better as 'previous'</wishlist>  the next page produces a 'page cannot be found' message. I think this is a known problem.

No sweat. Life goes on. Just thought it would be useful to collect these things.