Carole Roberts

Enhancing the early student experience

This paper is concerned with identifying how the early student experience can be enhanced in order to improve levels of student retention and achievement. The early student experience is the focus of this project as the literature has consistently declared the first year to be the most critical in shaping persistence decisions. Programme managers of courses with high and low retention rates have been interviewed to identify activities that appear to be associated with good retention rates. The results show that there are similarities in the way programmes with high retention are run, with these features not being prevalent on programmes with low retention. Recommendations of activities that appear likely to enhance the early student experience are provided.

Optimisation as a statistical estimation tool: an example in estimating the AIDS treatment‐free incubation period distribution

The identification of the AIDS incubation period distribution, together with its parameters, is a vital component of any epidemiological model designed to portray scenarios concerning future trends in reported AIDS cases or to evaluate intervention strategies. The Transfusion-Associated dataset of AIDS cases in the U.S.A. can be utilised in this identification process. By employing an appropriate system dynamics software tool an optimisation approach to the fitting process has been conducted. However, although the task of interpreting a best fit using parametric methods is hampered because, in particular, the data are right-censored, the results do provide a template against which to judge the effects of recent treatment advances in delaying progression to AIDS. As a case study in system dynamics optimisation, this demonstrates the need to use a powerful tool with care: considerations other than the best objective function, together with its resultant parameter set, have to be taken into account. The results show that a three-stage distribution, with unequal phases at each stage, is an appropriate incubation time model to employ in situations where projections of future AIDS incidence are being attempted. The work is also an affirmation of the utility of the system dynamics approach insofar as real-world complications can be easily handled in model formulation. Copyright

A strategic evaluation of capacity retirements in the steel industry

Over the past twenty-five years there has been a significant reduction in UK iron and steel making capacity. This has happened primarily as a result of a deliberate strategy which places emphasis on maintaining or improving financial performance. An unanticipated but possible scenario of the consequences of this strategy is offered by means of a system dynamics model. It considers both short and long term effects and represents an aid to learning in the face of the complexity which characterises manufacturing operations.

Models for Infectious Human Diseases: Relating a transmission model of AIDS spread to data: some international comparisons

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A role for system dynamics in modelling the spread of AIDS

System dynamics has a role to play in modelling the spread of infectious diseases. Its utility for this purpose is illustrated through a model of the spread of AIDS in the homosexual population of the UK. By virtue of its constituent diagramming tools, style of equation formulation and special-purpose computer software, system dynamics offers a means of rendering epidemiological models more transparent to the client than many of the mathematical models published to date. In respect of the AIDS spread model, the relative ease of adding (i) a heterogeneous sexual-activity profile, and (ii) a variable infectivity profile onto a base model, is described. Finally, results are reported from an optimisation experiment applied to the most complex model. The best fit obtained allows an estimate of the (unknown) HIV population to be made.

Collaborative Learning: A Connected Community Approach

Collaborative Learning in group settings currently occurs across a substantial portion of the UK Higher Education curriculum. This style of learning has many roots including: Enterprise in Higher Education, Action Learning and Action Research, Problem Based Learning, and Practice Based Learning. As such our focus on Collaborative Learning development can be viewed as an evolutionary. This collaborative and active group learning provides the foundation for what can be collectively called connectivist ‘Learning Communities’. In this setting a primary feature of a ‘Learning Community’ is one that carries a responsibility to promote one another’s learning. n nThis paper will outline a developmental collaborative learning approach and describe a supporting software environment, known as the Salford Personal Development Environment (SPDE), that has been developed and implemented to assist in delivering collaborative learning for post graduate and other provision. This is done against a background of much research evidence that group based activity can enhance learning. These findings cover many approaches to group based learning and over a significant period of time. n nThis paper reports on work-in-progress and the features of the environment that are designed to help promote individual and group or community learning that have been influenced by the broad base of research findings in this area.

Developing a Supportive Environment for Teaching and Learning: A case study in a pre‐1992 UK university

This paper analyses the journey of one pre‐1992 UK university towards the creation of an environment that supports teaching and learning effectively. This includes both a culture that values the scholarship of teaching and learning and pedagogic research and that provides a supportive environment for its students development. It investigates the key internal events along this journey, demonstrating which of these have facilitated institutional‐wide development. In order to do this, use is made of Cowan and Heywoods model of the curriculum development and renewal process. Conclusions are drawn on the characteristics of the events that have been most effective and on the general lessons learned.

Collaborative learning: A connected community for learning and knowledge management

Collaborative Learning in group settings currently occurs across a substantial portion of the UK Higher Education curriculum. This style of learning has many roots including: Enterprise in Higher Education, Action Learning and Action Research, Problem Based Learning, and Practice Based Learning. As such our focus on Collaborative Learning development can be viewed as an evolutionary step. This collaborative and active group learning provides the foundation for what can be collectively called connectivist ‘Learning Communities’. In this setting a primary feature of a ‘Learning Community’ is one that carries a responsibility to promote one another’s learning. It goes further: Senior managers are mature and experienced learners; practitioners that are seeking to link experiential learning with the application of interesting concepts that aid analysis and understanding of real issues. This is collaborative and dynamic demand‐pull learning and not static supply‐push. Should we not aim in HE to combine learning...