60 | NEWS | EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
ACROSS SPACE AND TIME: ONLINE EDUCATION FOR ALL?
By Helen Fiton, British Universities Film & Video Council
Whether you call it virtual, distance or digital learning: how much education do you think happens online? Digital technologies have
opened up countless possibilities for teaching and learning across higher and further education, and we are seeing constant new developments that are shaping the e-learning experience.
Info at your fingertips
Virtual learning environments
are now almost ubiquitous across HE, providing an online space to support teaching and learning. The flexibility of the VLE system is a huge benefit, of course, as it can be used either to administer a whole online course, or as a way of supporting traditionally taught curriculum. Massive open online courses
(MOOCs) are the new revolution within the landscape of digital education. The MOOC model gets universities to put on free short courses online, allowing anyone to take part and aiming to achieve unlimited levels of global participation. The rise of MOOCs in the US led Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Thomas Friedman to make the bold claim that: “Nothing has more potential to lift more people out of poverty,” though there are certainly still some critics questioning the system’s role within education. Wherever you stand on this
debate, it is clear that digital technologies have hugely shaped the delivery of education, and are continuing to do so. We will be discussing this at the BUFVC’s next event, our annual general meeting on Friday 28 November in central London. Come and hear what those shaping e-learning have to say, and join in the debate. Find out more and book your place online at
bufvc.ac.uk/events
Digital launch from Blackwells
UK book retailer academic bookseller Blackwell’s has launched a new digital learning service that promises to solve all your book dramas. Free to access, the service will make the
journey of finding and accessing textbooks as simple as possible. It will work anywhere, on any device, including tablets, computers, smartphones and Blackwell’s is planning an app for the new Apple Watch when it launches. Students can buy and download
digital textbooks, then use study tools to add bookmarks, annotations, and search for terms and phrases.
Moreover, Blackwell’s is to highlight
books that feature in its Top 100 best-selling titles for university students in shops if they are available digitally. ‘Shelf talkers' in shops include URLs and QR codes that point customers to where they can purchase these titles on their phone and tablet. Blackwell’s is already working on NFC-
enabled shelf talkers and an app for when the Apple Watch launches in Summer 2015 using the NFC (Near Field Communication) chip and the new Apple Pay function. This will also support Android NFC- enabled devices when this happens.
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