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Sept–Nov 2003

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Please note - Some links and content within this document may now be out of date.

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EditorialMorag Gray, reader and senior teaching fellow, Head of Curriculum Development, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, and Fred Percival, Director of EdDev, contribute a joint editorial on:

Scottish quality enhancement strategies: and current Napier thinking

In preparing this editorial we turned to an old favourite, the LTSN, for some inspiration! The LTSN defines quality enhancement as ‘a deliberate process of change that leads to improvement. Enhancing something is fundamentally about trying to make the world a better place’. So it’s a process in which everyone who is engaged in teaching, facilitating learning, guiding and supporting students is involved.

There are a couple of particularly interesting articles relating to quality enhancement available on the LTSN website. The first one entitled Principles to promote quality enhancement by Norman Jackson (2002a)1 includes a number of principles but for the purpose of this paper we’ll highlight three:

• the primary goals of quality enhancement in higher education are to improve student learning and their learning experience, and to improve the responsiveness of HE to the needs and interests of society

• quality enhancement is associated with both regulatory and developmental processes

• the idea of quality enhancement cannot be divorced from the context or the purpose. What can be achieved is also conditioned and constrained by the available resources.

The second article by Norman Jackson (2002b)2 is entitled Understanding enhancement. We highlight this paper because he outlines what enhancement may mean for academics:

• abandoning something that is not working

• doing existing things better/more efficiently

• making better use of something

• expanding something that is considered to be desirable

• adding new things to existing things

• connecting things to make different things

Contents2 Editorial

5 Eureka!

6 Reports

9 Review corner

10 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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looking at efficiency and effectiveness of assessment. This includes:

• types of assessment

• feedback (its value to students and staff)

• honours classification

• diversity and accessibility.

In the responding to student needs group the primary focus will be on the first year experience and, again, consideration is being given to the effectiveness and efficiency of evaluating student experience and enhancement of inclusive student induction/support systems.

Both groups are currently looking at institutional models of good practice and are in the process of identifying experts (both national and international) who will be invited to Scotland to lead debates, seminars, workshops and so on with the sector as a whole and to act as catalysts for change. The aim really is to debate issues in order to provide a range of possible solutions to areas which are currently challenging academics and students.

So when will the sector see some action? Well, there will be an official launch in Autumn 2003, through a conference(s) for both academics and students as well as the development of an enhancement website which will keep the sector informed of developments, activities and areas of good practice.

Developments at Napier

In parallel with these national developments, Napier has articulated a formal University Strategy for Quality Enhancement. During the development of the strategy, a number of key assumptions were agreed, including:

• that it does not replace (or duplicate) current work in progress. In this sense it represents a statement of both focus and general intent rather than replicating the detail of the work being done to implement the Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy, Learning Information Services and Student Support strategies

• that it is not yet another review or audit strand

• that it takes an approach to quality enhancement that works at all levels across the academic community, operating at the level of the individual member of staff and reflected in school and institutional activities.

• doing entirely new things which replace or complement existing things

• improving capacity to do something different or new in the future.

One of the key messages from the paper is that enhancement involves the management of change implementation which in itself is about identifying what direction one wants to move in, and making a plan, devising an implementation strategy and setting up evaluation mechanisms.

As you may already know Morag Gray represents the university on one of the steering groups set up by QAA Scotland and SHEFC. It may be useful at this point to provide some background.

Background

Quality Enhancement Engagement is one of five aspects of the new Scottish Quality System. Two themes are identified each year and a steering committee for each theme will devise a programme of activities designed to support the sector. The current themes are:

• assessment

• responding to student needs.

The first two themes are very broad and it is anticipated that subsequent ones with be more focused. Rao Bhamidimarri, Dean of Engineering and Computing, serves on the responding to student needs group and Morag serves on the assessment group. There are wider consultation groups and our members on these are: Veronique Johnston and Grant Mackerron on responding to student needs and Jim Wise on assessment.

The key messages to share with you about the quality enhancement steering groups are:

• that the enhancement themes, style of engagement and outcomes will be sector led and owned

• that challenges to be addressed include academic cynicism and suspicion, effective communication, addressing real needs, making a difference to learning and students

• that there is significant funding from the QAA/SHEFC for these two themes alone.

So how will this money be used?

In the assessment group there is agreement about

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The principal value underpinning Napier’s approach to quality enhancement is a focus on critical self-evaluation leading to a culture of continuous quality enhancement, especially including external referencing with peers. Self-evaluation should, of course, apply to all our activities, but will be focused on a number of specific themes (strongly influenced by SHEFC/QAA national themes).

Examples of critical self-evaluation can include:

• adding new perspectives/examples to existing practice (eg identifying new/practical applications)

• adopting new approaches which replace or complement existing approaches (eg new methods of delivery/ assessment)

• learning from others (eg within the school/faculty/ university or from external contacts and agencies)

• embracing a self-critical approach (eg openness to peer review/comment).

It is intended that the focus of Napier’s quality enhancement approach at individual, school and university level will be closely aligned. Keeping sight of the core principle of critical self-evaluation means that activity within appropriate themes and issues will be prioritised, structured and disseminated.

The university’s quality committee in co-ordination with its LTA sub-committee, schools, faculties, QES and EdDev will be involved in operationalising and implementing the strategy.

Watch this stage – we will all be involved!

References(note that clicking on the links will open new browser windows)

1Jackson N (2002a) Principles to promote quality enhancement [online] Available from: http://www.ltsn.ac.uk/application.asp?app=resources.asp &process=full_record&section=generic&id=148 [last accessed September 2003]

2Jackson N (2002b) Understanding enhancement (version 2) [online] Available from: http://www.ltsn.ac.uk/application.asp?app=resources.asp &process=full_record&section=generic&id=147 [last accessed September 2003]

Further reading Handbook for enhancement-led institutional review: Scotland (2003) [online] Available from: http://www.qaa.ac.uk/public/scottish%5Fhbook/scottish_hbook_home.htm [last accessed September 2003]

Williams P (November 2002) Anyone for enhancement? in Higher Quality 11 [online] Available from: http://www.qaa.ac.uk/public/hq/hq11/hq11%5Fcontents.htm [last accessed September 2003]

Williams P (2003) QAA Strategic plan 2003-05 [online] Available from: http://www.qaa.ac.uk/aboutqaa/strategic_plan_2003/strategic.htm [last accessed September 2003]

LTSN Generic Centre, Quality Enhancement area [online] Available from: http://www.ltsn.ac.uk/genericcentre/index.asp?id=17105 [last accessed September 2003] •

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Eureka!Dr Peter Honey, the keynote speaker at June’s Napier Teaching Fellows/EdDev conference, Engaging our Students, kindly contributes this quarter’s eureka discoveries with ‘a dozen reasons to love learning’.

Be inspired and follow this up by self-assessing and defining your own attitudes to learning. Then try making up a ‘reasons to love learning’ list of your own!

Honey’s website focuses on learning and behaviour and contains information on a host of development tools and self-assessment questionnaires, including an interactive version of the famous Honey and Mumford Learning Styles Questionnaire.

A dozen reasons to love learning!

Human beings are built to learn. The biggest single difference between us and all other animals is that we are born with fewer ready-made reflexes and are therefore more dependent on learning.

However, it is easy to be lulled into taking learning for granted and into assuming that it is a totally ‘natural’ process that doesn’t require attention or maintenance. It is safer to assume that learning is a skill which, like any other, needs to be worked at and constantly practised to keep it in trim.

Here are twelve reasons why it is worth making learning your number one priority.

• Learning is the only skill that can never ever become obsolete. All your other skills are in danger of being overtaken by events and passing their sell-by date, but learning? Never! Human beings will always need to learn.

• Your learning provides the gateway to everything else you want to do. Everything you want to know, you have to learn. Everything you want to do, you have to learn to do. Learning is the way to achieve your dreams and your potential.

• Learning makes life much more interesting. It keeps you on your toes, fuels your curiosity and helps you to be more enthusiastic. Learning is the key to leading a more fulfilled and purposeful life.

• Learning makes you more employable. It isn’t realistic to count on one career anymore. The way to make yourself attractive to employers is to demonstrate that you are constantly updating your skill base, being adaptable and staying ‘with it’.

• The more you learn the better placed you are to help other people with their learning. You can do this by being a role-model for learning and by openly sharing what you’ve learned with others. Sometimes people worry that this would be too helpful to potential rivals (‘knowledge is power’). But if you are learning all the time, you’ll keep ahead of any competition.

• Learning helps you meet the demands of change. There is nothing permanent except change and the only way to ride the waves is to make sure that your rate of learning exceeds the rate of change.

• Learning equips you to make informed decisions. In our democratic society we are faced with lots of choices. We are likely to make more responsible choices if we keep learning how to weigh up the pros and cons of different courses of action.

• Learning increases your self-awareness. It helps you to sort out who you are and why you are here. It helps you to take stock of your talents and capabilities and to come to terms with your limitations.

• Learning is a way of converting troublesome mistakes into something worthwhile. Inside every mistake there are lessons waiting to get out. Learning digs out those lessons and ensures that there is gain from the pain. It also prevents you making the same mistake over and over again.

• Learning helps you become more independent, more self-sufficient. It helps you take responsibility for yourself and for your own learning and development. Taking charge of yourself is a far better option than waiting for other people to provide you with opportunities. You might wait for ever!

• Learning boosts your self-confidence and helps you feel really good about yourself. Low self-esteem is a horrible, energy-sapping feeling. Learning is the way to avoid it.

• Learning to learn — the ultimate life-skill. Finally, (and the best has been saved until last!) you can turn learning in on itself and use your learning skills to help you learn how to become an increasingly effective learner. Learning to learn provides the key to enhancing all the above benefits. •

© Dr Peter Honey

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ReportsThree reports in this edition of the tfj from conferences close to home and further afield

Napier Teaching Fellows/EdDev conference, ‘Engaging our Students’ by Andrew Cumming, lecturer and teaching fellow, School of Computing

ILTHE annual conference ‘What works?’ by Sandra Cairncross, senior lecturer and teaching fellow, School of Computing

ISAGA 2003 annual conference held in Chiba, Japan by Fred Percival, Director of EdDev

Napier Teaching Fellows/EdDev conference ‘Engaging our Students’ by Andrew Cumming

On 18 June 130 members of staff enjoyed the 2003 Teaching Fellows/EdDev staff conference ‘Engaging our Students’, held this year at Sighthill. As ever, the conference was the ideal opportunity to meet old and new friends from across faculties, and attracted a mixture of familiar faces and newcomers. The timely and topical theme ‘student engagement’ has been the subject of several initiatives across the university this session. Within the School of Computing the problem of student engagement (or rather the issue of student disengagement) had been raised at a number of the boards and meetings preceding the conference. Several initiatives over recent years have produced results, but we are still having problems with poor attendance and the poor performance that inevitably ensues.

The conference began with a flourish. After an introduction from Vice Principal Gill Tucker, Dr Peter ‘learning styles’ Honey provided an engaging and thought-provoking keynote address in which he challenged many commonly held assumptions. One of the most controversial was that ‘compulsion’ is not such a wicked thing. His interactive address had delegates shouting out words to describe tasks we loved and tasks we hated.

The 18 sessions on offer included a highly topical presentation on WebCT from Grahame Steven (School of Accounting and Economics), and an interesting and interactive session on learning styles from Judy Goldfinch (Centre for Mathematics and Statistics), in which pairs of participants were invited to analyse

their own assessments to see if they advantaged groups of students with particular learning styles.

Norrie Brown (School of Community Health) gave us an insight into a very scholarly piece of work concerning student-centred approaches to teaching. He illustrated his theme with a description of two teaching events both of which seemed initially to be admirable models of student centredness — however he demonstrated that they were, in fact, at opposite ends of a more subtle continuum.

Fred Percival (Director of EdDev), in the closing address, reminded us of the aspects of the LTA strategy which are designed to encourage active engagement by promoting a learner focus. Members of the audience were invited to contribute ‘wow!’ factors; Jim Wise (Associate Dean, Quality) offered the graduation ceremony as a ‘wow!’ moment; for Gill Tucker, it was the design degree shows and the concerts put on by the Ian Tomlin School of Music. Tom Grassie (School of Engineering) recounted an entertaining ‘ow!’ moment where his students gained direct experience of the effectiveness of solar heaters!

Other highlights of the conference included two very well attended poster sessions in which 16 interesting and wide-ranging posters from across faculties and services were showcased. The School of Computing was well represented, with three posters on topics ranging from WebCT (Sally Smith) and systems methodology (Jyoti Bhardwaj) to interaction design (Sandra Cairncross).

Many of our colleagues, who do much of the teaching within the university, never attend events like these — they are perhaps the group who could benefit most from learning and teaching conferences. We should make a point of encouraging our colleagues to sign up; perhaps the emailed invitation and reminders are seen as yet more pieces of unsolicited mail unless those of us who are regular delegates back them up with the ‘personal approach’. We should make a point of asking as many colleagues as possible ‘are you coming to the Teaching Fellows conference?’

Editor’s note: The conference website (clicking on this link will open a new browser window) now includes information about this conference including details of keynote presentations, full papers, workshop material, poster showcase, evaluative data, and a discussion forum.

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ILTHE annual conference, ‘What works?’ by Sandra Cairncross

This year’s ILTHE annual conference, held at the University of Warwick in July, was entitled ‘What works? Reviewing good practice for learning and teaching in higher education’.

This was my first ILTHE conference and it struck me immediately how different it was from other conferences I have attended — the emphasis was very much on discussion and interaction rather than presenting. Interactive sessions were divided into 90-minute workshops or 45-minute discussions and the instructions for presenters emphasised that participants should be actively involved for most of the session.

I was keen to find out how to make my teaching more interactive so I signed up for Phil Race’s pre-conference workshop on ‘What works in workshops?’ Phil, leading by example, took us through a highly interactive 90 minutes in which we explored how people learn, why people learn, how to get workshops going, keeping them going and on track and, perhaps most importantly, how to bring them to a timely end. I came away armed with a number of techniques to try, not just in workshops proper but in lectures and tutorials too. For example, one of Phil’s suggestions is for participants to write down their expectations on Post-its®, swap them around, then read out each other’s expectations. This could easily be adapted for a programme or a module induction.

A recurring conference theme was responses and reactions to the recent English Government White Paper (we have the Scottish equivalent). Sally Brown in her opening plenary (after entertaining us all with a very practical demonstration of how the conference bags worked!) explored ‘What does it mean to excel?’ in the context of the proposed new Higher Education Academy encouraging us to reflect on ‘What defines excellence?’ Asking ‘What is the difference between excellence and good or best practice?’ she then went on to look at ways in which excellence may be recognised. Teaching Fellow schemes are one response (and we should be proud of ours at Napier). There is also the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS) which gives out a number of awards each year worth £50,000. Unfortunatley the NTFS is not national in the UK sense as the Welsh and Scottish funding councils don’t participate. Centres of excellence are also proposed in the white paper although it is not yet clear what they will comprise.

The implications for the ILTHE of the new Higher Education Academy were explored further in a Question Time-style panel debate chaired (very ably) by Peter Hobday (journalist, broadcaster and former presenter of Radio 4’s Today programme). My only criticism was that with the exception of Mandy Telford, president of the NUS, the panel, including all representatives of the proposed new academy, was entirely male. I trust that this will not be representative of the academy itself. The debate was followed by a straw poll in which we were asked to vote on whether the ILTHE should join the new academy or not. (Napier members should watch out for the formal ballot during semester one.)

All ITLHE members will be able to vote for real in the autumn — and I would urge all ILTHE members reading this to use your vote and to encourage colleagues to do likewise — this is too important an issue to ignore.

A highlight for me and many others was the keynote by Tom Angelo (founding director of the US Institute for Teaching and Learning) on ‘Finding out how well they’re learning what we’re teaching’ in which he demonstrated how asking questions on what students know prior to coming to a class or what they have learned during a class can be powerful motivational technique. Again delegates came away with a number of simple but potentially powerful techniques to try in their own classes.

A personal favourite was the ‘Collective wisdom’ session. This was an opportunity for delegates to brainstorm strengths and weaknesses of different teaching situations, for example small groups or elearning or lecturing. (Outcomes from the brainstorming will be published by the ILTHE later in the year.) It came at the end of long day but attracted over 50 delegates, all of whom left refreshed and reinvigorated for the evening’s entertainment which included the now legendary conference ceilidh.

There was plenty to choose from in the parallel sessions, with up to 12 slots at a time. I decided on handling diversity as a theme as this seemed to have parallels with my own session on widening access. This proved useful and has given me much to think about for next session.

Final thoughts: two main things struck me at the conference:

• firstly many of the speakers were familiar to me from staff conferences and other events at Napier.

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We are fortunate to have these opportunities but equally we should be ‘going out’ and letting people know what we are doing (which increasingly colleagues are doing).

• secondly, how very different the Scottish context is from the context elsewhere in the UK at a whole number of levels — different funding arrangements for institutions and students, national schemes that are not national in the UK sense, the NTFS, different credit frameworks between Scotland and elsewhere in the UK and so on. Scottish education is distinctive and it will be interesting to see how this distinction is recognised and maintained in the new academy.

Editor’s notes: 2003 ILTHE conference information is available at http://ilt.ac.uk/conference [last accessed September 2003]

The full report of the Question Time-style panel debate chaired by Peter Hobday is available at http://www.ilt.ac.uk/news/n20030710a.html [last accessed September 2003]

The Universities Scotland committees (Shirley Earl is our learning and teaching representative) are watching the Scottish/Higher Education Academy interface carefully.

ISAGA 2003 annual conference ‘Social Contributions and Responsibilities of Simulation and Games’ by Fred Percival

I attended the 34th Annual Conference of ISAGA (the International Simulation and Gaming Association) together with Helen Godfrey, School of Psychology and Sociology, my co-convenor of the previous annual conference held at Napier in 2002. The 2003 conference in Chiba, Japan, on 25–29 August attracted over 200 papers from around the world under the overarching conference theme of ‘Social Contributions and Responsibilities of Simulation and Games’. (The conference proceedings, published before the event, resembled the size and shape of a fat telephone directory.)

Jointly hosted by the Science Council of Japan (SCJ) and the Japan Association of Simulation and Gaming (JASG), the conference had obviously received a large amount of government and organisational sponsorship – we had a message from the Japanese Prime Minister at the start of proceedings and a somewhat over-political opening address from the former Prime Minister!

Each morning of the conference was devoted to keynote addresses, with the afternoons and evenings given over to parallel sessions of papers and activity sessions.

An interesting keynote from Cathy Greenblat (Rutgers University, New York), one of the founder members of ISAGA, traced the development of gaming and simulation as an activity over the past 30 years and identified features of gaming activities which, in her experience, had proved to be landmarks. Another keynote from Professor Rei Shiratori (Tokai University, Japan) called for simulation and gaming to evolve from a methodological technique within a wide range of disciplines and at a variety of educational and training settings, into a research discipline within its own right. He gave a 9-point plan about how this vision could be progressed. While there was some sympathy with this view, many were sceptical of this concept. The UK tradition of simulation and gaming, for example, has always been practical and activity-based; one of the ‘tools for the job’ rather than a research subject in which learners are a secondary consideration.

A diverse selection of papers and sessions made choice for afternoon sessions difficult. I particularly enjoyed papers by Vincent Peters (Holland) on transfer of knowledge and skills using simulation and gaming techniques, and Dmitri Kavtaradze (Russia) on environmental games produced and published by his students in Moscow: there were several simple but powerful ideas here which could be repackaged for different purposes and levels (I’ll definitely be using one idea that uses matchboxes!) Helen Godfrey gave a well received paper on the needs of international students attending higher education in the UK, and explored a range of interactive approaches in providing support.

On the cultural side, we had a trip into the mountains (Nikko) to visit a fantastic Shinto temple, and a day out in Tokyo where we sampled a Japanese flea-market and ate noodles in a back-street café. Things I won’t forget about Japan include the local people, who despite obvious language problems were only too keen to help in any way they could, the food, the integrated transport system and last but not least, the heated toilet seats in the conference hotel!

Next year’s ISAGA conference will be held closer to home in Munich from 6—10 September, 2004. Details will be circulated in due course and made available on the EdDev website.

Anyone who would like to look at the conference

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programme or proceedings is welcome to contact me.

Editor’s notes: ISAGA 2003 (Japan) annual conference information is available at http://isaga2003.org/e/ [last accessed September 2003]

ISAGA 2004 (Munich) conference information is

available at http://www.sagsaga.org/isaga2004 [last accessed September 2003]

ISAGA 2002 (Edinburgh) conference information is available at http://www.ed.napier.ac.uk/isaga_sagset [last accessed September 2003] •

Review cornerThis quarter’s book review is contributed by Mark Huxham, Teaching Fellow and Lecturer, School of Life Sciences

Winning Research Funding Abby Day Peters (2003) Aldershot: Gower ISBN 0 566 08459 7 pp232 £25

Most really important skills in life cannot be learnt from books. Navigating off the Cairngorm plateau in a blizzard, avoiding romantic humiliation, developing into a tolerable or even decent human being; all these things require lived, and usually painful, experience. I had always bracketed winning research funding in the same category of difficult life adventures. Before reading this book, I anticipated that the author’s first and most difficult task would be to convince me, and others like me, that there was something useful to be learnt from a book on this subject. The second major challenge would be catering for every performer in the vast carnival that constitutes modern ‘research’ — a subject stretching from participant observation to polysaccharide purification and beyond. Abby Day Peters briskly and cheerfully hurdles the first problem, but falls painfully at the second.

The book is well written and divided into short, easily digested chapters. There are four key themes:

• your research focus

• identifying your research partner

• building the research partnership

• maintaining the research partnership.

These reflect a central message of the book; that research funding should be seen as a partnership between researcher and funder. In the second page of the preface, the author states ‘funders are not doing

researchers a favour …’ and she returns to this theme throughout. I found this emphasis helpful; like most people, I hate being a supplicant, and often the pursuit of research funding can feel like the most abject (and unsuccessful) beggary. But of course, funders rely on researchers to make good applications — they would be failing in their jobs if they did not dispose of their cash. Remembering this simple truth can make a profound psychological difference when filling out those application forms.

It is in this capacity, as a kind of ‘research life-trainer’ that the author succeeds best. She reminds the reader of rather simple, but often forgotten, rules of behaviour that should help the research process. Another example of this is her emphasis on the need for good communication between researcher and funder before, during and after the research. Although research-funding organisations often appear to be faceless bureaucracies, they nevertheless consist of people with fully functioning faces who are often happy to discuss proposals.

The emphasis on simple advice does not prevent this book tackling some big issues, such as ‘what makes good research?’, ‘what is research worth?’ and ‘why do we need funded research?’ As the author argues, all of these questions should be asked before the start of the application process. Maybe the research you are considering does not need external funding or maybe, in all honesty, it is not worth funding? This last issue is difficult and painful for researchers — why cannot these ignorant funding bodies, who keep sending me rejections, understand the brilliance of my proposals? Perhaps it’s because you’re not spending the time to really target the needs of those organisations, as well as your own desires to pursue your pet interests? Once again, the author’s simple advice, illustrated with examples, to really focus on the objectives of your funder is well put and well taken, and is sufficient in itself to repay the effort of reading this book and to answer the first of my anticipated challenges.

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But what of the second challenge, of successfully addressing all relevant researchers? The author has a social science background, and she makes little effort to explore other disciplines. I found myself checking the title and cover blurb — perhaps somewhere it said ‘winning research funding in the humanities and social sciences’? But no, it does (implicitly) claim to be relevant to natural scientists like me. So why are nearly all the examples in the book drawn from social science areas? Occasionally, the author forgets herself and writes sentences like ‘... this might be determined less by our theoretical knowledge as sociologists, and more by how we listen …’ But some of us are not sociologists! This narrow focus not only limits the range of examples that the author gives, but also leads her to make statements that are highly contested or simply wrong. An example in the first category is her claim that ‘… good research … seeks to engage people. It is accessible to all sorts of people’. That is not a criterion that the editors

of Nature or Science use when reviewing a paper in molecular biology, astrophysics or quantum dynamics. The frontiers in these and many scientific fields engage a tiny number of specialists, and this in no way diminishes their status as ‘good’ research.

An example of a mistake is the author’s happy claim that ‘… there is no discernable intended or even unintended bias against women, ethnic minorities or researchers from newer universities ...’ Unfortunately, this is not true, at least in science. I cannot apply for funding for PhD students from the major government source simply because my department does not have a track record deemed acceptable — this is a quite deliberate bias against new universities such as Napier.

In conclusion, I would recommend this book to any new researcher in the social sciences, but I would also recommend that the publisher changes the title, to make it clear that not all researchers are catered for here. •

Web spotlight

Are you confused by the quantity (and quality!) of resources available for your subject area?

Haven’t got the time to trawl through all the material available?

Then here’s a one-stop-shop of useful web and print materials to support your learning, teaching and research that will help to take some of the irksome and time-consuming effort out of finding suitable resources for your subject area.

The web spotlight falls on the series of Resource Guides available from JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee).

The JISC Resource Guides are divided into seven subject areas:

• arts and humanities

• engineering, mathematics and computing

• geography and the environment

• health and life sciences

• hospitality, leisure, sport and tourism

• physical sciences

• social sciences.

and are arranged into six categories:

• bibliographic, reference and research information

• publications online

• subject gateways

• data services

• learning and teaching

• support services.

Each guide has been compiled by a Resource Guide Adviser and comprises key resources in both print and web format. Free print copies can be ordered from the website.

Bookmark this useful, labour-saving, JISC resource for future reference! •