Governments recognize that workers in the twenty-first century need to keep pace with increasingly technical employment environments in order to remain competitive in the global market. The Australian government has developed a set of policies to address impending shortfalls in high-level technicians and paraprofessionals across many professions.…

The FPA Speakeasy parent course is a UK initiative with the aim of helping parents to talk with their children about sex and relationships. The nationally accredited course is delivered in a variety of community settings and supports parents to be more confident, knowledgeable and open in talking about a range of matters relating to sex and…

This article sets out the findings of an exploratory study which looked at the impact of the Hampshire Agreed Syllabus, "Living Difference", on teaching and learning in religious education. The research was carried out in Hampshire, Southampton, and Portsmouth, UK, between April and June 2008. Twenty teachers were interviewed, all of…

Purpose: This paper seeks to describe and analyse an approach to course design as part of a strategic, technology-inspired, cross-university intervention to widen participation. A curriculum framework was developed for students who wished to make their work the focus of their study and could not readily access current university provision. A…

Courses for non-statistics majors (service courses) play an integral role in teaching statistics and pose some unique challenges. In these courses, students are often undermotivated on the one hand while on the other hand the syllabus frequently is overly crowded. In this manuscript we target the issues arising from the latter problem by making…

It is argued that Humboldt's original definition of "scholarship" ("Wissenschaft"), as well as Humboldt's concept of the purpose of a university, continue to be relevant--with appropriate adaptations. They should be extended to include not only a unity between the practice of teaching and learning and research into teaching and…

This paper presents a new laboratory-based module for embedded systems teaching, which addresses the current lack of consideration for the link between hardware development, software implementation, course content and student evaluation in a laboratory environment. The course introduces second year undergraduate students to the interface between…

This paper critically reviews the use of video documentaries in the assessment of human geography field courses. It aims to contribute to recent debates about the role of visual methods for developing active and deep learning in student-centred teaching. Based on four days of group work in Crete, 30 third-year students produced individual…

This case study focuses on two learners who took part in an intensive online German course offered to intermediate level students in the Department of Languages of the Open University. The course piloted the use of a Moodle-based virtual learning environment and a range of new online tools which lend themselves to different types of language…

In response to concerns about the place and nature of dance history in British higher education curricula, a database was compiled of representative but significant examples of modules which focused directly on the teaching and learning of history, or had history as a key component. An analysis is presented of these modules in terms of the place…

This study reports on the pedagogic rationale, didactic design and implications of an AHRC-funded doctoral training scheme in collaborative and digital multimedia in the humanities. In the second part of this article we discuss three areas of provision that were identified as particularly significant and/or controversial. These include (1) desktop…

The Educational Doctorate (EdD) at the University of Wolverhampton offers educational practitioners the opportunity to design a research enquiry based in, on or around their professional work. The cohort, reported on here, embarked upon their EdD studies during the 2007/08 academic year. This study reports on seven participants' learning…

Purpose: This paper aims to demonstrate how science and engineering graduates can be recruited and trained to Masters level in precision engineering as an aid to reducing the skills shortage of mechanical engineers in UK industry. Design/methodology/approach: The paper describes a partnership between three UK academic institutions and industry,…

Cosmology education has become an integral part of modern physics courses. Directed by National Curricula, major UK examination boards have developed syllabi that contain explicit statements about the model of the Big Bang and the strong observational evidence that supports it. This work examines the similarities and differences in these…

This paper discusses some traditional approaches to the teaching of evolutionary theory at pre-university level, criticising in particular some of the more commonly used models and exemplars. Curricular demands are described and an alternative approach is suggested, using the emerging story of human evolution. Recent discoveries help to illustrate…