No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The workdescribed here was undertaken at the University ofBrighton between 1986 and 2006 in order to assist Computer Science students to acquire practical software development skills, primarily in the areas of real-time systems and object-oriented programming. The contribution to knowledge represented by this work is the development of a set of design principles for educational software, and a variety of software artefacts which demonstrate the applicability ofthese principles. The publications span two decades and describe artefacts covering a number of areas in the curriculum related to software development. They address a range of topics within Computer Science due to the rapidly-evolving nature of the discipline, but they have led to the development of a common philosophy towards the development of educational software, and they each provide an original approach to the topics they address. The success of this philosophy and the originality of the work is evidenced by the fact that they have each been adopted by other educationaf institutions, have been widely praised by students and educators, and have in many cases led to related work by others. This critical appraisal concentrates on describing the evolution of a coherent educational rationale which underpins the various artefacts described here, and on placing this more firmly within the context ofestablished educational theory.

The first part of the thesis outlines and discusses governmental policy and strategy relating to work-based learning (WBL) programmes in Higher Education (HE) in England. It draws on key policy documents, the literature on WBL, and interviews with government policy advisors. The thesis then turns to a case-study based overview of the operation of such programmes at postgraduate level in three universities, and. academics, students and employer representatives experiences of, and attitudes towards, su~h programmes. A number of positive aspects were identified, including flexibility, student career developmen\ and' student's enhanced influence over the learning process and content. On the other hand, there were also instances of a disjuncture between government policy and practice, a lack of awareness and interest in such programmes, resistance, and implementation constraints. The conclusions examine the policy issues and implications of the research for the development of WBL within British higher education.

No description available.

No description available.

The continuing salience and exacerbation of the plagiarism problem within UK higher education provokes concern that current strategies for dealing with student plagiarism have not been adequate. This thesis aims to contribute to the debate and research in the area of plagiarism in the academic writing ofNNS (non-native speaker) students in three main ways. . Firstly, it presents a comprehensive theoretical discussion of the concept and contexts of plagiarism and its historical evolution in the West. This is critical to safeguarding against rigid beliefs and simplistic conceptualisation of plagiarism which are increasingly seen as some of the major culprits in the failure to solve the plagiarism problem to date. Secondly, this thesis offers a critique of on-line student-oriented plagiarism prevention guidelines provided by British higher education institutioris. This is particularly beneficial in alerting the academic community to its plagiarism-related assumptions which, as shown in this work, can be problematic. . Thirdly, this doctoral work seeks to develop our understanding on NNS students~ plagiarism by addressing two Research Questions. The first one concerned an investigation into NNS students' reasons for plagiarism. This was accomplished through conducting an open-ended questionnaire survey among 140 participants. The three major findings of this survey were, firstly, the prominent status of the 'Content problems' category in relation to other groups of reasons, secondly, almost non-existent references to the deliberate nature of plagiarism (which suggests that most plagiarism might happen without students consciously intending to transgresslilCademic conventions), and thirdly, the fact that culture did not appear to be a determining factor in NNS students' plagiarism. The second Research Question posed in this doctoral work concerned identification of plagiaristic practices that occur in NNS students' academic writing. In order to achieve this, an original Plagiarism Identification Model was developed and applied to authentic NNS student writing samples. The results signalled a large amount of plagiarism present in the analysed samples (this plagiarism had not been identified by an electronic plagiarism detection tool used . prior to the application of the model). Another key observation emerging from this study was the extent of inaccurate source documentation which, although not constituting plagiarism, still represents poor academic practice which requires pedagogical attention. Alth~ugh further work needs to be undertaken to establish whether the results of these studies would be consistent across larger student populations, the value of empirical research undertaken in this doctoral work cannot be denied. In terms of practical implications, this thesis provides valuable suggestions and concrete advice for the higher education community (EAP teachers, subject tutors and lecturers, and education authorities) regarding plagiarism and its prevention, with a special focus on helping NNS students meet the expectations of the academic community. It is hoped that theoretical and empirical research in this doctoral work will help increasingly cul~rally diverse UK HE institutions to become truly internationally minded.

No description available.

No description available.