Putting The University Online

Their book will help sensitize policy makers, academics, university managers, and students to the limits to, and implications of, the pursuit of a virtual future for higher education."--BOOK JACKET.

This is the first book that addresses the genesis and career of the modern day enterprise system in a comprehensive and robust manner. It does so through setting out a new approach for the study of packaged solutions and presents novel empirical studies based on in-depth ethnographic and longitudinal research conducted within supplier organisations

Is access to higher education really open to all? How does the experience of higher education vary between social groups? Are graduate jobs harder to find for some than for others? The transformation of higher education from an elite experience to a mass system delivering advanced education to a socially mixed clientele has often been conflated with a process of equalization through wider access. But is this really the case? Andy Furlong and Fred Cartmel fear not, arguing that young people from social and economically disadvantaged families suffer from unfair access arrangements, have a poorer student experience and have limited contact with their middle class peers. Moreover, students from less advantaged families who successfully complete their courses tend to face greater difficulty securing graduate jobs and may be left with higher levels of debt. Taking a holistic approach that focuses on access to higher education, experiences in higher education and gains derived from participation, the book explores the barriers that impede the progress of young people from less advantaged families and outlines the various forms of stratification that help limit the possibilities for social mobility through education. Higher Education and Social Justice provides essential reading for anyone who has an interest in higher education or a concern for social justice, including lecturers, administrators and policy makers in higher education.

·What is the policy background to current interest in retention and student success? ·What causes students to leave institutions without completing their programmes? ·How can theory and research help institutions to encourage student success? Retention and completion rates are important measures of the performance of institutions and higher education systems. Understanding the causes of student non-completion is vital for an institution seeking to increase the chances of student success. The early chapters of this book discuss retention and student success from a public policy perspective. The later chapters concentrate on theory and research evidence, and on how these can inform institutional practices designed to enhance retention and success (particularly where students are enrolled from disadvantaged backgrounds). This book draws upon international experience, particularly from the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa and the United States. Retention and Student Success in Higher Education is essential reading for lecturers, support staff, and senior managers in higher education institutions, and for those with a wider policy interest in these matters.

How can we design networked e-learning courses to ensure students participate in them and engage in quality learning outcomes? What happens in an e-learning course that is designed to foster group work and a sense of ‘community’? How can we research e-learning practice in ways that will enhance the processes of learning and teaching? This book outlines approaches to networked e-learning course design that are underpinned by a belief that students learn best in these contexts when they are organised in groups and communities. As such, the book is one of the first to provide a detailed analysis of what goes on in e-learning groups and communities. But how do students react to working in e-learning groups and communities? What determines their willingness to adopt new forms of learning in order to participate in these new courses? What actually happens in an e-learning community, and what impact does this have on students and tutors? This book examines these key questions through a variety of research approaches aimed at exploring the experience of e-learners as they participate in successful e-groups and communities. It also offers ways in which learning outcomes may be achieved in these communities and outlines the specific skills that students would develop through e-learning. E-learning Groups and Communities is essential reading for teachers, trainers, managers, researchers and students involved in e-learning courses as well as people interested in improving the quality of the learning experience.

The Australia Director at Human Rights Watch shares her experiences defending human rights – from human trafficking in Nepal to the 'drug war' in the Philippines to treatment of detainees in Papua New Guinea and in Australia – offering an extremely involving personal account of how far we’ve come, and how far we’ve got to go. Growing up in Perth, Elaine Pearson always dreamt of the wider world. Her British father and Singaporean-Chinese mother meant that her family extended beyond our shores, but it wasn’t until later in life that she fully understood how her professional calling might have been influenced by personal history: she learned that her beloved maternal grandmother had been sold to an opera troupe as a child to save the family from starvation. As soon as she could, Elaine followed her interest in women’s rights and people-trafficking, interviewing sex-workers and victims of trafficking on the streets of Bangkok and Amsterdam’s red light district. Her experiences in Nepal and Nigeria profoundly shaped her understanding of how governments and NGOs need to protect the rights of victims, as well as how poverty, corruption and war drive trafficking in the first place. Elaine’s story takes us on a panoramic survey of human rights across the world – into the UN committee rooms of New York and Geneva, as well as to the front-lines of Sri Lanka’s search for those who disappeared in the country’s civil war, examining death squad killings on the Philippines island of Mindanao and the detention of asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea. And her work on the appalling treatment of prisoners, many of whom are Aboriginal, vividly demonstrates that human rights abuses are something that happens at home as well as out in that wider world. In exploring human rights abuses and governments’ failure to address them, Chasing Wrongs and Rights sometimes shows humanity at its worst. Just as often, though, we see people at their best – compassionate, resilient, determined. Deeply informative and inspiring, Elaine Pearson’s story will leave you understanding how much needs to change, and how individuals can make a difference.