TALL blog

As the latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Assessment Report is released, it is a good time to find out more about the science behind it. Over the last few years we have developed two courses through climateeducation.net a project in conjunction with the Met Office Precis team and climate scientists here in Oxford, that aims to encourage the sharing of high quality information about climate science, modelling and the interpretation of climate change modelling experiments.  This project has used online learning explicitly to target students in the developing world, aiming to reach areas where face to face training has not been able to make a widespread impact – although being online they are available to anyone anywhere so everyone can benefit.

To do this we developed a free course ‘An introduction to the science of climate and climate change‘  so far this has see just under 4000 students enrol, and this number is growing all the time. When last analysed we had students from 171 different countries and about 45%  of these were from the developing world.  This has been followed up by a second course ‘Constructing and Applying High Resolution Climate Scenarios‘ which enables small cohorts of fee paying students to learn more advanced content in small groups supported by a tutor. This again has achieved a truly global audience with students from Eritrea to Nepal, definitely reaching people who could never come to Oxford for a face to face course.  With so much of the scientific understanding on climate based around modelling, understanding how this actually works is information everyone can benefit from – and with our second course due to run next  on the 28th October, there is still time to sign up.

Each year, the University of Oxford holds its OxTALENT Awards ceremony to recognise and reward excellence in teaching and learning supported by IT. This year’s event, hosted by Anne Trefethen, Melissa Highton and Dave Walters, was held on 18 June 2013.

It is always a pleasure to meet up with colleagues from learning technology teams around the University and to get the opportunity to see examples of how academic staff, researchers and students from across the University are making innovative use of technology and to have the opportunity to discuss their work with them. This year’s competition was no exception and saw prizes offered in the following categories:

Use of Technology for Outreach and Engagement
Use of WebLearn (the University’s VLE) to Support a Course or Programme of Study
Research Poster
Digital Image
Infographic
Open Education Initiative
Use of IT in the Classroom
Student IT Innovation

We would like to pass on our congratulations to all the 2013 OxTALENT award winners and mention in particular the part-time tutors of the Department for Continuing Education’s Weekly Classes Programme and our colleagues in the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Centre who both won prizes.

The Weekly Classes tutors were runners up in the Open Education Initiatives category for their contribution to the Jisc-funded Sesame project. This project, which was led by TALL, saw over 150 part-time tutors learn about open educational resources (OER) for teaching and learning and the creation of the open.conted.ox.ac.uk site, which contains a growing collection of over 2,000 online resources. The CPD Centre was runner up in the Use of WebLearn to Support a Course or Programme of Study category for their innovative use of the VLE to allow students to interact as peer reviewers on each other’s essay assignments.

For further information about all the 2013 winners and runners up, take a look at the OxTALENT blog.

We are about to start the RECIPROCATE (REgional Climate International: PRoviding Online Climatological Applied Training and Education) project. Funded by the NERC Knowledge Transfer scheme, this  is a joint project between the Department for Continuing Education (CPD and TALL), the Climateprediction.net team at the Department of Physics’ Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics group and the UK Met Office‘s PRECIS (Providing REgional Climates for Impacts Studies) team.

The project aims to directly address the knowledge gap in developing countries about climate change, and the risks associated with it, by developing innovative online learning materials. These will enable scientists, climate practitioners and policy makers in non-governmental organisations (NGOs), industry and governments to understand and exploit regional climate predictions. As a result they will be better informed about the importance of climate and climate change and how they can engage in the mitigation of behaviour which could cause dangerous climate change and adaptation to the effects of climate changes to which have already been set in train.

Coupling climate prediction expertise from the University of Oxford and the UK Met Office’s PRECIS team with the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education’s expertise in developing innovative and effective education and training solutions, the project will:

• Create an online learning programme and community for sharing knowledge and practice for personnel working in government, industry and NGOs to understand and use regional climate prediction models and data;
• Develop a global community that will provide support, information exchange, training updates and a communication network on climate modelling and the use and interpretation of climate model outputs in the developing world context;
• Provide climate prediction training to more than 1,000 individuals worldwide over three years;
• Build capacity for sustainable climate prediction communities of practice in both the UK and the developing world.

We are launching a number of Continuing Professional Development courses, this Autumn including 2 new courses.

24th September

Introduction to Electronics

Patient-Based Evidence (NEW)

1st October

Perl for Bioinformatics

22nd October

Key Concepts in Health Care for People Experiencing Homelessness

5th November

Effective Online Tutoring (NEW)

For more information on these courses or to enroll on a course visit http://cpd.conted.ox.ac.uk/