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Dec 2005–Feb 2006

Journal

This edition of the Teaching Fellows Journal has been restored from an archived online edition, hence the simplified form.

Edinburgh Napier University is a registered Scottish charity. Reg. No. SC018373

ISSN 2050-9995 (Online)

Please note - Some links and content within this document may now be out of date.

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EditorialDr Peter Easy, Vice Principal, Academic Quality and Customer Service, describes the Fresh Talent Initiative

The Fresh Talent Initiative - the view from Napier

The Scottish Executive’s Fresh Talent Initiative (FTI) provides an opportunity for skilled non-European Economic Area nationals to develop their careers in this country. Encouragement to live and work in Scotland is at its core, enabling those who have completed an HND, Degree, Masters or PhD at a Scottish university, and who have lived in Scotland during their studies, to apply to stay and find employment here for up to two years on the completion of their course. After these two years, or earlier, such graduates can transfer into work-permit employment or other legal immigration paths.

Announcing the FTI scheme on 25 February 2005, the First Minister, Jack McConnell, highlighted the fact that Scotland’s population is falling at a faster rate than anywhere else in Europe. Without action, he said, our population will continue to decline and, critically, fall below a viable five million by 2009. By 2007, there could already be a quarter of a million fewer people working than at present. Although emigration from Scotland is comparatively insignificant, immigration to it is also slight. As a consequence, the Executive calculates that, between 2005 and 2009, Scotland needs an additional 8000 residents per year to remain vibrant. There are plans therefore to:

• retain home-grown talent

• encourage Scots who have emigrated to return

• attract fresh immigrants from the rest of the UK, from the EU and from further afield (hence the introduction of the FTI).

In pursuing the FTI, the First Minister and Executive depict Scotland as a dynamic country wishing to grow, and as a diverse and cosmopolitan country that holds opportunities for present and future generations. In particular, they are promoting our schools and universities, countryside, transport links and public services.

Napier University became an active member of the FTI scheme on 22 June 2005 and is involved in a similar way to other Scottish universities. We cannot place graduands who wish to join the FTI

Contents2 Editorial

4 Eureka!

5 Reports

7 Review corner

8 Web spotlight

Edition Editors

Angela BenziesSenior Teaching Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Academic Practice

Coordinator of the Teaching Fellowship Scheme

Margaret Nairntfj Web Editor and Publications Officer

Educational Development, Bevan Villa,Craighouse Campus, Edinburgh

Current enquiries to:Office of the Vice Principal (Academic)Sighthill Campus, Sighthill Court,Edinburgh EH11 4BN

Email: tfj@napier.ac.uk

http://www.url.napier.ac.uk/tf

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There is now emerging anecdotal evidence that shows increased enquiries and applications to Scottish institutions. Napier’s International Office has certainly seen an increase in interest from students during its overseas visits – most specifically in India where the FTI is becoming one of the major factors in the students’ choice of location and course. On this evidence, the First Minister believes that the FTI can make a real and lasting difference.

At Napier we acknowledge that the FTI is still in its infancy. Having seen the scheme launched in June 2005 we were just able to use it for some of our previous year’s graduates. It is pleasing that these students are now amongst some 600 already granted permission to stay. We find ourselves dealing now with an increasing number of visa applications from students for the FTI:WIS, and we expect to see a greater number of applications from amongst students who are currently studying with us and due to graduate in June/November 2006.

Our present students also have more awareness of the FTI and the options it offers:

When we graduate we want to stay and get some more experience in the UK before returning to India. (Two MSc Accounting and Finance students)

When I have completed my course I’d like to stay here for up to two years and then return to China. (MSc International Tourism Management student)

The FTI:WIS therefore seems to be promising benefits for all those involved, and Napier University is happy to participate in it.

Editor’s note: Useful information and application forms for the FTI are available from the Home Office website Fresh Talent: Working in Scotland scheme and from the Scotland is the place website. •

in employment. We can, however, help them with Fresh Talent Initiative: Working in Scotland (FTI:WIS) application forms and submissions to the Home Office. We also have connections with other managed migration initiatives (for example, the points-based Highly Skilled Migrant Programme). The British Council and Scottish Development International offer other support to students, and have created a combination package that already has 10% of eligible students applying.

Applicants for the FTI:WIS do not need to have a firm job offer. They must, however, be seeking employment and must show that they can maintain and accommodate themselves and any dependents without recourse to public funds. Assessment of an application takes relevant issues such as resources and the level of effort being undertaken in the search for employment into account. Each applicant is expected to use the living costs incurred whilst studying as a basis for realistic assessment of future and potential living costs. Cash funding is available to help with job searches, and smaller reserves are allocated to those who have firm contracts or provisional offers of employment that enable them to start earning more immediately. Postal FTI applications cost £155; personal applications cost £250.

Some English universities currently oppose Scotland’s FTI. They claim it gives our universities and colleges preferential treatment through what amounts to a two-year extension of a UK visa. Together with some Scottish opponents of the scheme, they also point to prospective NHS and housing costs. Defenders of the scheme, however, point to the long-established and continuing costs of the exodus of Scottish-trained medical and nursing graduates, to national need, and to historical bias with a disproportionate Commonwealth presence in the London area. The Executive promises full Race Equality Scheme monitoring of the FTI.

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Eureka!ACTIVpanel: the missing link?

Grahame Steven, Lecturer and Teaching Fellow, School of Accounting and Economics, offers eight tried-and-tested tips for getting started with ACTIVpanel

Introduction

Much has been predicted in recent years about the benefits of communication and information technology (C&IT). Unfortunately, C&IT hasn’t always delivered. However, the recent development of managed/virtual learning platforms such as WebCT may take us towards the promised land! But will the new technologies change the chalkface?

Napier has made a major investment in state-of-the-art audiovisual equipment and WebCT. Most lecture and (larger) teaching rooms across the university now have a pc, data projector, screen, video player and ACTIVpanel. While the first four items will create a better teaching environment, it is ACTIVpanel that opens up new possibilities since it enables users to:

• create material on a multiple page electronic flipchart – no need to rub things out to create space for more material!

• flip between projected images and the electronic flipchart to make or illuminate a point

• annotate the projected image – Microsoft® Excel, Word … anything – from whatever source eg web, WebCT, Napier’s network etc

• save materials created on the electronic flipchart and make them available to students via WebCT or for future class use.

ACTIVpanel is consequently the missing link that will create an engaging classroom experience for students and provide, in conjunction with WebCT, integrated blended teaching and learning opportunities. It is also important to remember that many schools are using this technology and today’s students have high expectations in relation to C&IT provision.

Here are eight tips to help get you started with ACTIVpanel.

1. A good place to start Print out page 7 of the comprehensive guide to

ACTIVpanel which identifies the buttons and features associated with ACTIVpanel Toolbox icon.

2. Find an electronic ‘chalkface’ While ACTIVpanel can be set up on a staff pc, it is not the same as using the tablets in teaching rooms since they are touch-sensitive. So, find an empty teaching room, switch on the pc and double click the ACTIVpanel icon with the pen (at the side of the tablet). A double click can be achieved by tapping the tablet twice with the pen or using the raised button near the tip of the pen. Click the higher end to left click and the lower to right click. It’s a little fiddly to begin with, but you’ll soon get used to it!

3. Have some serious playtime All software has innumerable features, bells and whistles that most of us will never use. The best starting place is the flipchart. Click Flipchart to obtain a blank screen, click Pen Tool to start scribbling with the pen. Don’t be frightened, you can rub it out or go to another page if you don’t like your creation. Use Colour Palette to change colour. Other useful buttons include Eraser, Highlighter, Next/Previous Page and Spotlight Tool. The only way to get confident with ACTIVpanel is to play with it. Create some material, amend it, move between pages etc. You’ll soon wonder what that slightly dirty white thing on the wall is now used for!

4. Experiment – you can’t break it! Don’t forget that more features can often be obtained by right clicking on an icon. For example, right click on Pen Tool to obtain the ability to draw straight lines! This is particularly useful for producing graphs.

5. Moving on In order to annotate a projected image, click Annotate over Desktop. This freezes the image and enables the writing tool to be used over that image. Don’t forget that you are still able to flip to and from the electronic flipchart. Click Annotate over Desktop to release the image. While annotations are lost, it is possible to take a snapshot of an annotated image.

6. Use WebCT While ACTIVpanel enables the annotation of projected images, it operates differently in PowerPoint®, Microsoft® Word and Excel when these programs are run outside rather than from within WebCT. While the simple answer is to use WebCT to deliver all files, full ACTIVpanel functionality is obtained if Start is clicked with the pen when running programs outside WebCT.

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(NB It is not possible to do this with PowerPoint® if Slide Show has been selected.)

Another advantage of using WebCT to deliver teaching materials is that it will encourage your students to use WebCT as they will see it as a natural part of the learning environment.

7. Keep it If you have created slides that you wish to use in the future – for example, at another tutorial – the system will ask you when you exit if you want to save your files. Click ‘Yes’ if you wish to save your files and they are then saved to and can be accessed from the My Flipcharts folder in your h:/drive.

If you wish to create, amend or access ACTIVpanel files on your pc, you have to install the software onto your pc. This is done as follows:

• Click Start

• Click ALL Programs

• Click Core

• Click ACTIVPX v3017

• Follow the installation instructions.

While your mouse will act as the pen, it is not as easy to use for writing etc.

C&IT is currently looking at making ACTIVpanel available to students to enable them to access ACTIVpanel files made available by lecturers on WebCT.

8. The others Don’t forget that students will want to use ACTIVpanel too. It’s not there just for the lecturers. Give them a go! And let them use it for presentations.

… and finally … ACTIVpanel can do many things to enrich the classroom environment. The best way to get the most from it is to find an empty classroom, play with it, and then consider how it can be usefully used in relation to teaching and learning. There is no single best way to use this technology, so go and experiment, speak to colleagues about their experiences and talk to your students to find out what works best for your subject.

Microsoft and Powerpoint are either trademarks or registered trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation in the US and/or other countries. •

ReportsED-MEDIA 2005, 17th Annual World conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications report by Sandra Cairncross, Director of Student Experience, Senior Lecturer and Senior Teaching Fellow, School of Computing

Development in Economics and Business Education Conference report by Dr Linda Juleff, East of Scotland Co-ordinator Economics Network, Senior Lecturer and Senior Teaching Fellow, School of Accounting and Economics

ED-MEDIA 2005 report by Sandra Cairncross

ED-MEDIA, one of the oldest and largest educational technology conferences, held 27 June—2 July 2005, attracted over 1000 delegates from 70 different countries. Montreal was the host city this year. The conference coincided with Canada Day celebrations and the Jazz Festival, both added incentives for

attending. The conference is one of three organised each year by the AACE (Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education) that focus on different aspects of learning technologies.

This was my first ED-MEDIA and the first conference I’ve attended for a couple of years. I was attracted partly because of its size which would enable me to get an overview of trends in a number of areas of technologies to support learning. This is undoubtedly a strength of ED-MEDIA but also a potential weakness in that the choice of sessions can be overwhelming, especially if it’s your first conference. However the organisers recognise this and run welcome sessions for first-time attendees.

Each day opened with a keynote speaker (starting at 8.30!) followed by coffee then a series of parallel sessions, including a question and answer session with the keynote speaker.

The keynotes were very varied. Jeremy Cooperstock from McGill University opened the conference with

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an interesting session on Engaging Technology(ies) for Effective Interaction in which he demonstrated how current bandwidth limitations can get in the way of meaningful interaction. Hillel Weintrub sought to present an interactive session to illustrate how mobile technologies can be both playful and educational. Unfortunately not all the technology worked and instead of providing live feedback via wireless communication the audience wrote comments on paper artefacts (eg planes) that we then circulated (don’t ask!). The session was interesting but ultimately unsatisfying – there was lots happening and I picked up some ideas which I could adapt to use with students but I, along with other delegates I spoke to, were left wondering ‘what have we learnt?’

The final keynote, Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation, was a complete contrast. He spoke for an hour without the aid of any technology (not surprisingly given his intellectual stance he could not give a PowerPoint® presentation). This was totally engaging and a useful reminder that our goal should be engaging our students at a cognitive level and that technology is not always necessary. I wasn’t wholly convinced by Stallman’s arguments but they were well presented and certainly provoked much discussion amongst delegates – indeed discussions continued well into evening sessions at the Jazz Festival, fuelled by pitchers of Canadian beer.

Aside from the keynotes there were full papers, brief papers, roundtable discussions, best practice sessions, and symposia to name but a few. I found that the standard of these was variable – ranging from excellent and highly informative to rather less. Some presentations set out to be provocative – including questioning the reliance on PowerPoint® and arguing against learning objects with discussion spilling over into coffee and lunch breaks.

The best presentations tended to describe good teaching and learning practice in which the use of technology was transparent: this is how it should be. The focus was not just on higher and further education; developments in schools were also reported, providing an interesting, different perspective.

The poster sessions were very well organised – taking place after the main sessions on each of the first two days with nearly 100 posters being displayed each day. Delegates could walk round and talk to the presenters and others about topics of interest. This resulted in many impromptu discussions with delegates sharing their experiences.

Another feature that I enjoyed was the Topic Lunch at which you discussed pre-defined topics with your

dining companions, basing your table selection on the topic assigned to that table. Slightly artificial, but given the size of the conference a useful way to meet new people whom you might not otherwise have met.

All in all I enjoyed the conference and came away with much to think about. Keynote and invited speaker presentations are now available from the conference website.

The next conference is in Orlando, Florida and the deadline for submissions is 19 December 2005.

Powerpoint is either a trademark or registered trademark of the Microsoft Corporation in the US and/or other countries.

Development in Economics and Business Education Conference report by Dr Linda Juleff

The Developments in Economics and Business Education Conference, organised by the Economics Network of the Higher Education Academy, was held in the Møller Centre, Cambridge in September 2005 and attracted 115 delegates. One keynote speaker, Professor Monojit Chatterji of the University of Dundee, challenged his audience to tear up their lecture schedules and start again from a blank page, while a second keynote speaker, Professor Charles Holt of the University of Virginia, brought the new developments in experimental economics across from the US to an interested audience. The usefulness of case studies as a learning and teaching method was the focus of the third keynote speaker, Sir John Vickers, Chairman of the Office of Fair Trading, who explained how competition law case studies could be used to teach economics.

The experimental economics/activity-based learning theme carried on throughout the conference with a range of workshops covering both online and paper-based games and simulations, problem-based learning and the issues involved in relation to the use of e-Learning. Many of the games were very much enjoyed by the delegates!

The conference also provided a showcase for the work in progress in relation to HEFCE’s FDTL5 Learning and Teaching Projects in economics and the Economics Subject Centre of the Higher Education Academy (ESCHEA) 2004-05 mini-project round, including the work by Rebecca Taylor at Nottingham Trent University on how to incorporate mathematics successfully into the economics curriculum; my own funded research – in association with Sarah Wise of the Employment

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Research Institute – on Second Year Student Retention; and the work currently being undertaken by ESCHEA and the London School of Economics in relation to the development of entrepreneurial skills in economics undergraduates.

Editor’s note: Keynote and workshop presentations, and a photo gallery, are now available from the conference website. •

Review cornerKaren Thomson, Lecturer in Higher Education, Educational Development, reviews The Good Supervisor: Supervising Postgraduate and Undergraduate Research for Doctoral Theses and Dissertations by Gina Wisker (2005)

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 1403903956 400pp £18.99

The greatest growth area in higher education at the moment and over the last ten years is in the postgraduate area. This is true not only in the UK but in Europe, the USA and Australasia and, as a result, interest in the process of research supervision and the perceived need for guidance is growing. Gina Wisker, Director of Learning and Teaching Development at Anglia Polytechnic University, addresses this burgeoning market in her most recent book The Good Supervisor. She describes herself as a ‘supervisor, educational developer and researcher’ and these strands of her working personality come through in this publication.

The book is structured in a way that suggests that it can be used for reference at various points along the research supervision journey rather than (or as well as) being read from cover to cover. The contents are divided into four stages. Stage one deals with the business of supervision, getting started and establishing and maintaining good supervisory practices. Stage two discusses the establishment of research processes and practices with such topics as the research questions, conceptual frameworks and methodologies. Stage three includes a consideration of the issues for supervisors in working with students and, although the book in the main focuses on face-to-face postgraduate supervision, acknowledgement is made of the changing demographics of our postgraduate population in this country by including a chapter on supporting international students and associated issues such as supervision at a distance. Some trickier situations are not shirked in this section with the inclusion of a chapter on gender and supervision and the potentially vexed issue of supervising colleagues. Stage four, as you would expect, considers managing the research project to

completion with chapters on support through the whole examination process and beyond into the realms of support into publication.

The book emphasises the value of research for learning and the key role of the supervisor in supporting this. Wisker states that the book relies on three different sources and paradigms to underpin its advice, namely, research-based evidence, the narrative paradigm and a logically oriented ’good practice’ paradigm. The book relies most heavily on the narrative paradigm (where stories and interviews enact theories in practice for sharing and consideration which leads to development) and it was difficult to draw a distinction with the ‘good practice’ paradigm. Perhaps the finer academic differences between these two paradigms are not important in the context of the value of engaging in dialogue in order to explore good practice. The focus is very much on the work of the supervisor, mapped onto the stages of student research. There is much pragmatic advice to this end and the focus is clear despite some practical or reflective activities or tasks which are designed for the student. The initial emphasis in each chapter is on the supervision of postgraduate students, and undergraduate and masters supervision is considered separately where Wisker feels they present significant differences from the postgraduate experience.

Overall I would say this is a comfortable and comforting book to have on your shelf, offering an introduction to a complex topic with its emphasis on easily assimilated narrative accounts of areas of good practice. It offers a lot of pragmatic advice right down to a possible format for the best way to keep a note of supervisory meetings. This book fulfils the function of a handbook of reference to the author’s humanities and social science experience of what makes effective supervisory practices and serves to encourage reflection and dialogue about what may be the most appropriate practices in other situations.

Editor’s note: Staff undertaking Napier’s new Research Degree Supervision module may wish to include this book amongst their reading. •

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Web spotlightThe web spotlight falls on the BUBL Information Service

BUBL Information Service is run by the Centre for Digital Library Research, based at the University of Strathclyde. The BUBL catalogue brings together Internet resources in all academic subject areas, catalogued using the Dewey Decimal Classification system.

The subject menu, from Accounting through to Zoology, is simple and easy to use as is the alphabetic subject listing: for example under ‘m’ the subject list ranges from ‘Macedonia’ to ‘mythology’: under ‘t’ the list is from ‘Taiwan’ to ‘twentieth century music’.

The site is attractive, quick and easy to use. Students and staff alike will find this a good starting point for research so why not bookmark this site for future reference?•