No place for remote students? Navigating transitions of hybrid co-presence in seminar rooms and lecture halls

Webcasting and recording of university lectures has become common practice. While much effort has been put into the development and improvement of formats and codecs, few scientist have studied how to improve the quality of the signal before it is digitized. Lecture halls or seminar rooms are not professional recording studios. Good quality recordings require full-time technicians to setup and monitor the signals. This paper describes a tool that eases studioless voice recording by automatizing several tasks usually handled by audio technicians. The expert system measures the quality of the sound hardware used, monitors possible hardware malfunctions, prevents common user mistakes, and provides gain control and filter mechanisms.KeywordsExpert SystemAutomatic Gain ControlSpeech EnhancementLecture HallSound CardThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

It can be argued that technological advances and increasing familiarity with technology in the general population has created a huge potential for expansion of online learning (OL) across the educational spectrum. The growth of OL at the university level over the last few years has brought with it an increasing need to understand the learning processes and social processes involved in the ‘cyber’ or ‘virtual’ lecture hall and seminar room by asking questions such as: What are ‘virtual universities’? How – or more critically whether – virtual learning environments are different from face-to-face (F2F) ones? In other words, there is a critical need to explore how students relate to each other and their lecturer(s) in a literal ‘school without walls’? This paper explores the development of a virtual community within a wholly online MA in Applied Linguistics program within the framework of online community development proposed by Haythornthwaite et al (2000).

Effect of design and operational strategies on thermal comfort and productivity in a multipurpose school building

The building meets precisely the bill of requirements initially provided by the faculty. It has 18 lecture halls, a main lecture hall, a ceremonial hall, which also serves for public lectures, a library, dean's office, secretariat, chapel, seminar rooms, reading and living rooms, as well as ample corridors providing adequate space for large masses of students. The project is located in an excellent site, and is outstanding for the fine harmony of the spatial arrangements and correct differentiation of indoor environments, which are carefully adjusted to the nature of teaching requirements.

California Institute of Technology dedicated a new research laboratory and a new accelerator at separate ceremonies held in Pasadena last month. The five‐story Alfred P. Sloan Laboratory of Mathematics and Physics, converted from Caltech's old high‐voltage experimentation laboratory, will provide 50 000 square feet of floor space for the school's fast‐growing mathematics program and for expanding work in theoretical and experimental physics. The building houses a new low‐temperature laboratory and a new accelerator laboratory, and the upper three floors contain offices for faculty members and graduate students in mathematics, as well as conference and seminar rooms, a lecture hall, and a library. The new structure was made possible by a gift to Caltech from the Sloan Foundation of New York.

The relationship between research and teaching has possible benefits and inherent tensions. Exploring the potentially beneficial relationship is of interest and possible value to faculty, students, and stakeholders. Much of the existing literature has described approaches using a vocabulary derived from the soft/applied social science fields of study, a view-point which may in some ways be problematic. This paper examines the relationship between research and teaching in the undergraduate curriculum from a perspective of the computing disciplines. It compares and contrasts evidence of the beliefs and experiences of faculty about the relationship between research and teaching. It presents and analyses the result of surveys which gathered data to explore their understandings inter-relationship of research and teaching; in the curriculum; and as it is delivered, and experienced in the lab, seminar room and lecture hall. This research builds on existing work developed in a preliminary study which examined ways in which synergies between research and teaching could be achieved, particularly in the 'hard/applied' areas of the curriculum. It analyses data from the 'research-intensive' and the 'teaching-intensive' institutions. Having identified typical activities in the computing disciplines, it places them in the context of existing theoretical models.

The wealth of material now available in electronic form includes a vast range of resources on medieval literature. The “world of Chaucer,” so ably presented in traditional printed form by Derek Brewer (2000) can now be usefully supplemented by the “World Wide Web on Chaucer,” while a large corpus of other important Middle English texts have also appeared with attendant background and critical commentary (for a review of useful sites and discussion of possibilities and pitfalls, see Semper 2005: 607–19). As a result, those who teach medieval texts, including Chaucer and his literary and linguistic contexts, face the challenge of making this web-based material not only accessible but also meaningful to students. Having texts, images and sounds readily available removes many of the traditional restrictions on course design, and also promises to allow students to tailor their studies and pursue their individual interests as independent learners. On the other hand, there is a real possibility that the quality of course delivery is compromised if there is no correlation between the kinds of material students access on the Web and those which they encounter in more traditional teaching and learning scenarios: the lecture hall, or the seminar room, or the library.KeywordsLearning StyleBlended LearningFourteenth CenturyElectronic ResourceVirtual Learn EnvironmentThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

membership corner from the society 7th International Conference of the IBS to be held in Bayreuth, Germany The International Biogeography Society and local host Dr. Carl Beierkuhnlein are pleased to an‐ nounce that the 7th Biennial Conference of the IBS will take place at the University of Bayreuth in northern Bavaria, Germany, in early January 2015. The University of Bayreuth hosts many na‐ tional and international conferences and work‐ shops throughout the year. Founded in the 1970s, Ecology and Environmental Sciences are a particu‐ lar strength of the University. Its lecture halls, seminar rooms and the cafeteria are all in close proximity to each other. Bavaria has an extraordinary variety of land‐ scapes ranging from continental dry basins over limestone hills to siliceous mountains. The Franco‐ nian Alb (20 minutes from Bayreuth) with its karst geology is one of the biodiversity hotspots in Ger‐ many. This landscape also hosts the highest den‐ sity of breweries worldwide, some with more than 500 years of tradition. The Fichtelgebirge (30 min‐ utes from Bayreuth) is famous for nordic ski sports. Bayreuth is world famous for the annual Richard Wagner Festival. Stay tuned for more in‐ formation as it develops following the IBS Miami meeting. Daniel G. Gavin VP for Conferences dgavin@uoregon.edu upcoming events BES Annual Meeting 2012 IAVS 2013 18–20 December 2012 – Birmingham, UK Vegetation patterns and their underlying processes http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/meetings/ 26–30 June 2013 – Tartu, Estonia http://iavs2013.ut.ee/ 6th International Conference of the IBS 9–13 January 2013 – Florida, USA 98th ESA Annual Meeting http://www.biogeography.org/ Sustainable Pathways: Learning From the Past and Shaping the Future 7th Annual Meeting of the Specialist Group on Macroecology of the GfO 13–15 March 2013 – Gottingen, Germany 4–5 August 2013 – Minneapolis, USA http://www.esa.org/minneapolis/ http://www.macro2013.uni‐goettingen.de/ INTECOL 2013 Ecology: Into the next 100 years Evolution 2013 18–23 August 2013 – London, UK 21–25 June 2013 – Snowbird, USA http://www.evolutionsociety.org/meetings.asp http://www.intecol2013.org/ If you want to announce a meeting, event or job offer that could be of interest for (some) bio‐ geographers, or you want to make a call for manuscripts or talks, please contact us at ibs@mncn.csic.es and frontiersofbiogeography@gmail.com. © 2012 the authors; journal compilation © 2012 The International Biogeography Society — frontiers of biogeography 4.3, 2012

The retirement of a valued teacher and colleague brings with it an admixture of joy and regret-joy in the accomplishments of many years of theological endeavour, regret that this endeavour will no longer be pursued as self-evidently in our midst as it has been. Such is certainly the case with the retirement this year of David Demson as Professor of Systematic Theology at Emmanuel College in the Toronto School of Theology. Apart from brief sabbaticals, David has taught theology at Emmanuel without interruption since 1964 when he was first appointed Lecturer in Christian Doctrine. This he has done with an unflagging passion for that understanding which Christian faith rightly seeks. For many of us who encountered David in both lecture hall and seminar room over the years, it was precisely this impassioned quaerens which in us first kindled, and then repeatedly re-kindled, an ardour for the ratio of the gospel of God.

This chapter provides a necessarily rudimentary outline of what were world-changing events, particularly focusing on the intellectual and political milieu of what is framed as the Enlightenment’s Empire. In this intellectual and political milieu is an all-pervasive critique of religion which will entirely transform education; one which will make the very conjoining of religion and education entirely contentious. Yet, within and beyond classroom and lecture hall, seminar room and tutorial, pervasive rationalism and progressivism seem to have led Enlightenment’s Empire to an equally pervasive existential angst. Following Arendt’s prescient Preface to The Origins of Totalitarianism, this same modernity seems to have brought human civilization to the brink, a hardly spectral apocalypse, one rather possessed of the far-from-abstract realities of atomic science and nuclear warfare, that is, apocalyptic modernity.

Innovation and inspiration in education.

This chapter examines the introduction of Electronic Voting Systems (EVS) at a UK university with the aim of promoting and supporting the student learning experience and moving from an ‘ad hoc’ and individual basis for the use of EVS at the local school level to offering support for using and developing their use on a wider institutional basis. Following discussion of the research into EVS adoption and use, the authors propose a framework to be used by those academics and managers in higher education institutions (HEI) who are interested in introducing specific technologies to support learning, such as the EVS. The framework incorporates a three-way focus on the development of a robust technology infrastructure, the provision of support and training for those using new technologies, placed within the context of sound change management principles and thus supported by the research into these areas. Previous studies in Europe, the United States and Canada into the use of EVS as, for example, in the REAP (Re-Engineering Assessment Practices) project (Nicol & Draper, 2009) have indicated that students are enthusiastic about their use in the lecture hall and seminar room and that the creative use of EVS by academics enhances their use to stimulate and support a number of classroom interactions. To date, however, there has been a lack of research studies on institutional deployment of EVS. This work is intended to outline the salient issues and start that conversation.

Creating video content for online courses that is dynamic is not just about using technology, but about serving student learning goals. As professional historians, we have the skills to create and disseminate content that will enable student learning in any teaching modality. While technological skills are needed to translate this expertise to the screen rather than the lecture hall or seminar room, focusing on content and course design rather than video recording and editing technology shows why courses taught by experts in their field are valuable for student success.

October 3rd 2010, a lovely fall day in Germany, and the people are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the German reunification. On the same day, many people from all over the world came to the beautiful city of Potsdam (next to Berlin) for the 10th biannual meeting of the German Society for Cognitive Science. When people think about the city of Potsdam, they almost immediately come up with statements about Schloss Sanssouci. This impressive castle with its widespread park and the botanical garden is definitely worth a visit, but it is also of great interest for people like me working in the domain of spatial cognition, especially on landmarks. Even though it would be interesting to discuss the history of the castle and other historic events that took place in Potsdam, I should better focus on the conference at the University of Potsdam (October 3rd–October 6th 2010). The building in which the conference was held is located a few kilometers away from Sanssouci but is close to the famous Babelsberg film studios. This modern and comfortable university complex is ideal for research and scientific discourses. During the meeting, the outgoing president of the German Society for Cognitive Science, Markus Knauff (University of Giesen, Germany), stated that the society reached the mark of ten biannual meetings in just 16 years (since 1994), which is probably a unique incident. Almost 300 scientists from 19 different countries—covering four continents—participated in and contributed to this year’s conference. They provided a total of 168 oral presentations (symposia talks not included) and about 40 posters. Five invited symposia were held on Complex Cognition; Decisions: Perspectives from Philosophy, Neuropsychology, and Cognitive Science; New Theories of Rationality; Optionality of Information Structure; and Symbolizing Emotions. Additionally, six regular symposia offered topics with the foci on Adaptivity of Hybrid Cognitive Systems; Cognitive Modeling in Human–Machine-Systems; Frames: A General Format of Representation?; Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Memory; Perspectives for Cognitive Ethnology in the Cognitive Sciences; and Visual Attention and Gestures in Language Processing. The majority of talks were presented in paper sessions covering research from Analogical Reasoning and Applied Cognitive Science to topics such as Spatial Cognition and Visual Perception. In order to realize such an enormous amount of research within 3 days only, parallel sessions had to be offered. Questions could be raised right after the talks, and there was some room for discussion. However, in many sessions—I not only experienced this in the session on Spatial Cognition where I presented my current wayfinding and landmark research—the discussions were continued right after the sessions in the lecture halls, in the seminar rooms, or (which was probably the best way to do it) in the foyer during the coffee breaks. The volunteers of the University offered plenty of beverages and snacks so that quite a few people had a hard time finishing the coffee breaks in order to reach the following presentations. But such breaks were excellent for personal meetings and maybe talking about future cooperations. On Monday late afternoon—right after the Presidential Address and before the Members Meeting—the hallway was very crowded, since the posters were presented at that time. Unfortunately, the authors only had 1 hour for K. Hamburger (&) Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Otto-Behaghel-Str 10F, 35394 Giessen, Germany e-mail: kai.hamburger@psychol.uni-giessen.de URL: www.uni-giessen.de/cms/cognition/hamburger

lar SCS mailings. But we do not want this information exchange to be a one-way communication; the SCS Committee on Teaching welcomes your input: questions about (and answers to) common teaching problems, effective strategies for teaching all sorts of cinema courses, resources that you've found useful or have devised yourself, and teaching topics for general discussion among the membership. A partial list of issues might include course development; curricular design; textbook selection; essay, true-false, or multiple choice exams; term paper topics; the canon and multiculturalism; race/gender/class/sexual orientation issues; techniques for facilitating discussion; professor-student dynamics; motion picture, videotape, and laserdisc resources; the role of computers and new technologies in the film classroom or library; the role of theory in film production classes (and vice-versa); research facilities and databases; and interpersonal aspects of communicating in a lecture hall or seminar room. These questions represent only a partial list of concerns that could provoke revived interest in teaching cinema studies for both newcomers to the profession and senior faculty members. So, please read our articles, attend our workshops, and join us in sharing pedagogical resources and techniques.