Innovation is male dominated?
Times Higher Education reports that in the UK only one in 10 university spin-out companies has a female founder, analysis suggests. And these companies are much less likely to attract investment too, raising concerns that innovation is becoming too male-dominated.
Open Educational Resources
BYU researcher John Hilton has published a new study on OER, student efficacy, and user perceptions – a synthesis of research published between 2015 and 2018. Looking at sixteen efficacy and twenty perception studies involving over 120,000 students or faculty, the study’s results suggest that students achieve the same or better learning outcomes when using OER while saving a significant amount of money, and that the majority of faculty and students who’ve used OER had a positive experience and would do so again.
Digital Literacy
A National Survey fin Wales in 2017-18 showed that 15% of adults (aged 16 and over) in Wales do not regularly use the internet. However, this figure is much higher (26%) amongst people with a limiting long-standing illness, disability or infirmity.
A new Welsh Government programme has been launched which will work with organisations across Wales, in order to help people increase their confidence using digital technology, with the aim of helping them improve and manage their health and well-being.
Digital Communities Wales: Digital Confidence, Health and Well-being, follows on from the initial Digital Communities Wales (DCW) programme which enabled 62,500 people to reap the benefits of going online in the last two years.
See here for more information
Zero Hours Contracts
Figures from the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency show that in total almost 11,500 people – both academics and support staff – working in universities on a standard basis were on a zero-hours contract in 2017-18, out of a total staff head count of about 430,000, reports the Times Higher Education. Zero-hours contract means the employer is not obliged to provide any minimum working hours
Separate figures that only look at the number of people who are employed on “atypical” academic contracts (such as people working on projects) show that 23 per cent of them, or just over 16,000, had a zero-hours contract.
Hi Graham,
I really enjoyed taking part in your show for “guerillas in education” 😉 . Sorry for being a DAU ( dümmster anzunehmender User) for not switching off the radio when talking to you – but I also was quite a bit nervous, this being my first time on the radio 😉
I hope I did not give the impression that MOSEP was a problem for the participants, not at all, we had a great time together struggling with philosophy, technology, material load but working together in this group brought a lot of benefits for all of us and put us “on the move” hopefully.
For anyone intested in the MOSEP project, here is the linK:
http://www.mosep.org/
Graham has contributed valuable content with his videos- one even in German!! Thanx again!
Sigi
Well, it took me quite a while to be able to write a short feedback but life being a new father can be pretty busy!
Anyway, I just wanted to thank you Graham since it has been rather fun and interesting to talk on a live web radio show through a skype phone with rolling waves background. A short update on the Iniziative Giovani experience: through the simple cooperative interface of our forum (www.iniziativegiovani.eu) we were able to train 4 groups of youngsters on how to write an application for the Youth In Action Program and projects have been submitted the first of June. I will let you know if they will be approved. Funny thing is that one group’s idea is the building of a youth web radio. 🙂
Ciao for now.
Jan