Search

Universities and academics today are facing challenges that require more active and self-interested management. The book argues that higher education in the future will not become any more ordered, but will actually become more complex, more fractured and less bounded, and that academics will have to respond with new ways of thinking. The book also suggests that while academics' work will change, the change will focus more on the intentions that underlie it and the tools that are used than on the development of entirely new roles or loss of existing ones. For academics this means a new focus on structuring learning environments and helping students make use of information, rather than being their primary source of information. Finally, the book reviews the relationship between academics and their institutions, particularly in terms of the relationship between academic and institutional values, priorities and practices. The book's seven chapters cover such topics as: contemporary challenges, views of past and future changes in higher education; academic identities; changing academic roles; models of personal change; challenges of managerial roles; issues of self-management; learning new work practices; academic careers; the academic "profession"; making teaching count; anticipating new opportunities and challenges; and moving on. (Contains approximately 120 references.) (JM)

In the original version of Parrondo's paradox, two losing sequences of games of chance are combined to form a winning sequence. The games in the first sequence depend on a single parameter p, while those in the second depend on two parameters p1 and p2. The paradox is said to occur because there exist choices of p, p1 and p2 such that the individual sequences of games are losing but a sequence constructed by choosing randomly between the games at each step is winning. At first sight, such behavior seems surprising. However, we contend in this paper that it should not be seen as surprising. On the contrary, we showthat such behaviour is typical in situations in which we randomly create a sequence from games whose winning regions can be defined on the same parameter space. Before we discuss this issue, we investigate in some detail the issue of when sequences of games, such as those proposed by Parrondo, should be considered to be winning, losing or fair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]