Technology, does one size fit all?

Technological advancements have enabled a wealth of opportunities for learning opportunities to be delivered in an online context without the need to be physically in the classroom.

A recent BBC article, How do you stop online students cheating?, suggested that in the near future students may be able to take exams at home without the need to be a formal exam setting. In addition to issues such as how to effectively invigilate exams of this nature, it also raises the consideration of how the environment of a formal exam room has an influence on performance.  For some who respond well to pressure, the heightened pressure of an examination room can only increase performance.  For others, the anxiety created within an exam room can inhibit performance and an exam set within the comforts of their own home may help to increase performance.

This brings into consideration the wider discussion of the role of face to face interaction within learning and how this might affect the learning experience for participants with different learning preferences.

The glass ceiling and MBA’s

During my time working for the Centre for Women’s Enterprise (CWE) at the University of Bedfordshire I frequently had to consider whether the services we provided were accessible to women with childcare responsibilities. This included ensuring that the CWE services were offered during school hours to ensure women with children were able to participate and on occasions, providing a crèche to enable mothers with pre-school children to benefit from business support services.

To Google, or not to Google?

I received an email today requesting some information on time differences between the different countries our MBA operates in, to which my reaction was ‘couldn’t Google answer this question?’

After reflecting about this, I started to think about how we go about getting information these days and the effect this has on our interactions with one another.