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Hackathon has been growing and taking various industries by storm thanks to its flexibility and ability to fit into them. It has been proven successful and helpful in solving different IT and non-IT challenges. They also serve as an intriguing educational and networking tool, encouraging people to pursue innovative studies and activities. However, a hackathon is like a two-edged sword with its downsides – it requires significant investment and can fail if mismanaged. It is critical to recruit and gather participants suitable to face a particular technological or non-technological challenge and to motivate a group to perform innovative action and benefit from the learning-by-doing approach. This paper identifies 21 reasons to attend hackathons backed by existing research and presents a study conducted on 109 hackathon participants that help to score, rank and explain those attributes. Results have proven the importance of challenge and networking over monetary prizes and glory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThe education and pedagogy have been adopted with the growth of technology in order to achieve efficient consequences by the usage of innovational and up-to-date technologies. The new methods in neuroscience and neurotechnology have influenced the educational systems and the classrooms. A considerable number of researches have been projected in this field that all try to demonstrate the advantages and desirable effects of neurotechnology in education and the classrooms. In fact, most researchers have connived its harms and disadvantages on the students and the educational systems and the sphere of the classrooms. This paper tries to survey the fourteen recent researches in the framework of critical theory to discuss the adverse effects of neurotechnology as well as their neglected aspects in education and the classrooms. The findings illuminate that crucial disadvantages of neurotechnology are neglected in education and on the participants in the process of learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geography undergraduate students have broad academic backgrounds; consequently, teaching statistics can be especially challenging. Unfortunately, there is a lack of up-to-date and geography-specific literature on the pedagogies of statistics instruction on an undergraduate geography degree course. In this paper we detail, discuss, and reflect on a range of innovative attempts to improve engagement and attainment. Many of the examples revolve around technological platforms to enhance student engagement, but also to improve and simplify module management, an under-valued part of delivering a team-taught module. We discuss a variety of quizzing platforms as effective ways of engaging students with content, but, also, as a method of scaffolding teaching, whereby student comprehension is gauged, and content is adapted on-the-fly. We also highlight that use of frequent formative quizzing can increase module engagement through a substantive increase in attendance in an era of lecture recording. We also reflect on differences in engagement pre-and-post pandemic. Overall, we highlight the benefit of incorporating technology into teaching geographical statistics, but caution that this must be on a case-by-case basis and should be used for clear pedagogical reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digitalizing school is a process that comes with challenges. It requires strategic leadership and transformational change to work processes. Nevertheless, some succeed, and it is useful to understand what makes for success. This paper studies the challenges of leading digitalization of education in a city which decided to implement an IT-supported method for teaching literacy in primary schools. The method required transformational change; teachers not only had to learn to use technologies, they also had to review their pedagogy. This study is guided by the Diffusion of Innovation theory and draws on interviews with school principals. We find that the critical factors relate to the communication channel, the social system within and across schools, and the time perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last years we have observed a growing interest in the use of gamification approaches for climate change education. While most practices are related to digital gaming, there is a new trend which is still academically unexplored: escape rooms. The main objective of this paper is to serve as an initial exploratory study in this field by identifying and analysing climate change-related escape rooms. For that purpose we carried out a web search and a qualitative content analysis. A total of 17 initiatives are described and compared, unravelling their main audience, country of origin, topics, scenarios and objectives covered. The paper also highlights what escape rooms can offer to climate change education: experiential and immersive learning, problem solving and critical thinking skills, and a sense of collaboration and urgency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deeply integrating digital technologies in pedagogy and learning is associated with changes in classroom roles, relationships and actions that can challenge established teacher routines. This paper presents the findings of an eight-month case study of teachers transforming pedagogy to enact their design for personalised digital learning. Participating teachers reported that established classroom routines for managing behaviour and monitoring student engagement were challenged, and along with changes in classroom roles, this resulted in disorientation and uncertainty, but also created opportunities to consider new routines. This paper proposes that Dual Systems theory can be used to conceptualise the role of routine in teacher practice and the emergent challenges of transforming pedagogy with digital technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We seek to build a framework with which researchers can track the trends in charter school specialization and parents can better understand their options. This report examines the entire charter school population operating in the 2018–19 school year and calculates the rate of specialization among charter schools based on key terms found on their websites and marketing materials. For the purposes of this paper, we defined a "focus" as a deliberate form of specialization. We categorized charter schools' foci into three categories. Schools with a "curricular focus," utilize a specialized core curriculum beyond the standard history, science, ELA, and math. Schools with a "pedagogical focus," utilize a specialized method of teaching. Lastly, schools with a "student body focus," serve a nonstandard student body. Within these three categories of foci, we identified nine unique curricular foci, eleven pedagogical foci, and five student body foci. Because many schools have multiple foci across the three categories, we considered the complete combination of a school's specialized foci to be their "model." We found a total of 68 specialized models. In total, roughly two thirds of all charter schools use a specialized model of some sort. The top specialized models were single-focus models: "Personalized Learning" (389), "High Expectations" (370), "STEM" (368), "Classical" (257), and "Art" (223). We provide a comprehensive list of all school models, their definitions, and other relevant information in this report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, there has been a rapid increase in higher education institutions offering opportunities for interprofessional learning (IPL) to their students. The literature presents a number of factors that contribute to effective IPL, including having trained facilitators that help optimise the learning process. Many of these IPL facilitators are university teachers and the literature provides us with some insight into their views of IPL. However, little is known about university teachers' views about IPL and their role in supporting students in achieving outcomes linked to IPL during their own teaching; this paper explores these areas. University teachers, working with students in Norway and England who contribute to patients' care pathway were purposively invited to join focus groups. Data collected from the teachers' conversations during these focus groups were analysed to elicit the main themes. Findings show that university teachers have a wide range of views about IPL, its potential to enhance collaborative practice and care, and their role in helping students achieve outcomes linked to IPL. A key challenge appears to be whether IPL is "worth the struggle," which emphasises the need for strong leadership in order to align pedagogical approaches in education and practice that strive to achieve agreed outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the short- and long-term impacts of online water-use feedback provided via a smart metering trial involving 120 households in New South Wales, Australia. Near-real time water consumption feedback was provided via an online portal to half of the sample. Water consumption was uniquely analysed one year pre- and post-intervention, and in conjunction with login data. During one year of available access, the intervention group saved an overall average of 24.1 litres per household per day (L/hh/d) (4.2%). Regression analysis showed the significant savings of active users related specifically to portal login activity. Significant short-term effects persisted for 42 days, averaging at 63.1 L/hh/d. The article discusses the implications for research and practice, including a consideration of how, in addition to providing ongoing access, online portals could be leveraged further by water authorities to help meet urgent short-term supply constraints such as in drought. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent worldwide trends in curriculum policy have re-emphasised the role of teachers in school-based curriculum development. Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence is typical of these trends, stressing that teachers are agents of change. This paper draws upon empirical data to explore school-based curriculum development in response to Curriculum for Excellence. We focus on two case studies – secondary schools within a single Scottish local education authority. In the paper we argue that the nature and extent of innovation in schools is dependent upon teachers being able to make sense of often complex and confusing curriculum policy, including the articulation of a clear vision about what such policy means for education within each school. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For over a decade policy-makers have claimed that advanced industrial societies should develop a knowledge-based economy (KBE) in response to economic globalisation and the transfer of manufacturing jobs to lower cost countries. In the UK, this vision shaped New Labour’s policies for vocational education and training (VET), higher education and skills, and it continues to be influential. Learning for the KBE, according to policy-makers’ claims, requires individuals to acquire measurable knowledge or skills in the form of qualifications through formal education and training, which will allegedly improve national economic competitiveness and productivity. This paper argues that quite different conceptualisations of learning for the KBE can be drawn from the fields of economic geography and regional studies; in particular, the ‘cluster’ literature, which analyses the processes which underpin innovation and learning in regional agglomerations of economic activity. The paper argues that the cluster literature can and should be used to open up a debate about the nature, scale and location of the learning processes that support the KBE; the implications of which have not yet been fully appreciated in the fields of VET and skills policy. Moreover, when these insights are combined with those from social theories of learning, a more holistic understanding of how innovation occurs emerges. The paper concludes with some recommendations for the Coalition Government as it develops policies to rebalance and grow the UK economy, and suggests that these recommendations may also be relevant for other countries facing similar challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of existing best practices cannot determine whether the current “best” schooling practices could be even better, less costly, or more effective and/or improve at a faster rate, but we can discover a cost effective menu of schooling options and each item's minimum cost through market accountability experiments. This paper describes experiments that would create opportunities for market entry and a price system to signal cost and quality benchmarks (current minimum costs) to families and educators to produce information for policymakers. The entry-price system combination has a great economy-wide track record because it harnesses highly dispersed knowledge about schooling practices and exploits self-interest through opportunities to compete. States or school districts can employ one of four possible market accountability experiments to assess what families want from among the schooling options educators prove to be willing to offer and at what cost: (a) large tax credits or a large universal voucher, (b) school district vouchers, (c) competitive contracting out of school management, and (d) charter law adjustments. This paper describes and compares those four ways to discover a cost-effective menu of schooling options and how much each costs, certainly a key element of one of the biggest policy challenges of our times, drastically improving the performance and efficiency of our K-12 system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this conceptual paper, we expose learning cultures that contribute to firms' sustained success in innovations. The learning cultures we propose are based on the cultural theory proposed by Mary Douglas. We argue that different learning cultures have different preferences for modes of learning: the hierarchical learning culture prefers internal knowledge creation; the competitive learning culture learns through external knowledge transfer and the egalitarian learning culture learns through debates and discourse. We argue that, owing to their inherent characteristics, each learning culture will be more effective at different stages of the innovation process: the hierarchical learning culture will come to the fore during the radical phase of the innovation process, the competitive learning culture will be more effective during the incremental phase and the egalitarian learning culture will outshine the other two during the transition period between the radical and incremental phases. Finally, we propose that firms that support different learning cultures during different stages of the innovation process in the sequence that we outline in this paper will enjoy sustained success in innovations. Managerial and theoretical implications are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization, accelerated time-based competition, qualitative dynamics, rapid development of technology and especially Information and Communications Technology (ICT) developments challenge engineering education and capability development of each engineer. The success and the competitiveness of companies are increasingly based on their employees. Thus, the question becomes: what kind of future engineering education should be, and should it be radically different than today? Seeking viable and rapid answers to this question poses serious challenges to current educational systems. This paper describes two on-going projects: development of Finnish engineering education policy and development of Industrial Management programs together with ICT-industry. These projects aimed at restructuring engineering education in Finland. Both projects are unique in emphasizing the importance of crossing organizational borders within and outside of traditional engineering education system. The paper also introduces recent initiatives of global ICT industry (IBM, Cisco, Nokia and Apple) that challenge the traditional practices and content of engineering education. Experiences from examples confirm that a dynamic and interactive approach is essential for the success of future engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic writing is a vital, yet complex skill that must be developed within a doctoral training process. In addition, becoming an academic researcher is a journey of changing sense of self and identity. Through analysis of a group session, we show how the feedback of peers addresses questions of structure and writing style along with wider issues of researcher identity. Thus, peer learning is demonstrated as a process of simultaneously building a text and an identity as scholarly researcher. The paper advocates ‘borrowing brainpower’ from peers in order to write better texts and, at the same time, ‘share insecurities’ during the development of the researcher identity. Based on a distributed notion of peer learning and identity, we point to the need for further research into the everyday activities of doctoral writing groups in order to understand the dynamic relationship between production of text and creation of researcher identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The concept of Knowledge Triangle (KT) links together research, education and innovation and replaces the traditional ‘one way’ flow of knowledge, essentially from research to education, by a ‘both ways’ circular motion between all the corners of a triangle that, besides research and education, also includes innovation, the ‘poor relation’ of many universities. What are the main issues – barriers and drivers – and what could be done in order to make the concept of KT a strong reality in engineering education? In this paper, the authors intend to bring some answers by analysing three cases coming from actors operating at the three corners of the KT: students, academic staff and engineers in industry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper focuses on returnees and knowledge diaspora as important sources for human resources development, identifying push and pull factors that also contribute significantly to innovation. For both China and Israel, their high-skilled diaspora are a major policy priority: each has a substantial, high-skilled diaspora and policies and programmes to promote their return and/or greater involvement. By outlining key projects and schemes in each to recruit international professionals, we argue that bringing advanced knowledge and skills gained through international education and experiences back home has long been common to both. The relative strengths and weaknesses of each system's relations with returnees and diaspora is assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the rapid progress of modern civilization, creativity and innovation within a techno-economic perspective are becoming the major driving forces behind the sustainability of economic growth and competitive achievements. The current paper will focus on developing a clear concept of the terms creativity and innovation, and investigate their possible relation with engineering education. The parameters that could be essential for the enhancement of creativity or innovation are discussed from the perspective of the individual and the community. An engineering creativity enterprise diagram (ECED) is introduced to be reflective of the industrialization and technological level of any community as correlated to creativity and innovation. A systematic approach is designed to help developing the possible courses and activities that would enhance creativity and innovative skills and capabilities of a graduate engineer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, designed for supervisors of qualitative research projects, and addressed to students to enable them to think through how they may be evaluated, reviews some problems in the formulation of criteria for qualitative research in the discipline and issues that are important for the generation and paradigmatic framing of open flexible criteria. The guidelines that are presented here are developed as an attempt to explicate the parameters of criteria, rather than closing down future innovative work. Ten key points are elaborated 'under erasure' (that the study should be objective, valid, reliable, neutral, confirmed, definitive, established, coherent, accessible and psychological) and core principles of 'apprenticeship', 'scholarship' and 'innovation' are designed to open the way for good research to go beyond these criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining two metaphors we argue that apart from official educational policy, there exists a palimpsest of cumulatively added prior policies sedimented in teachers' pedagogy, in addition to quasi-official phantom policies formed at the local level. We argue that these affect teachers' practices and beliefs in ways that may run counter to the desire of policy-makers to change educational regimes. Using research from a two-year long professional development project with teachers from two Singaporean secondary schools, we contend that while the top is busily redesigning the education system in general, and language and literacy teaching in particular, in ways that foster enquiry and higher-level work with a wide range of texts, in the micro-context of the classroom a long-standing instrumentalist logic prevails. We conclude that innovators need to be very cognisant of the legacy of past written and unwritten policies embedded in teachers' practices and beliefs when planning and engaging in professional development work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]