By Laura Pappano. Creativity Becomes an Academic Discipline.
IT BOTHERS MATTHEW LAHUE and it surely bothers you: enter a public restroom and the stall lock is broken. Fortunately, Mr. Lahue has a solution. It’s called the Bathroom Bodyguard. Standing before his Buffalo State College classmates and professor, Cyndi Burnett, Mr. Lahue displayed a device he concocted from a large washer, metal ring, wall hook, rubber bands and Lincoln Log. Slide the ring in the crack and twist. The door stays shut. Plus, the device fits in a jacket pocket. More...

Following on from last year’s successful CLL programme, the HEA will be running a new series of one-day CPD workshops which begin on 7 March.
Changing the Learning Landscape (CLL) aims to bring about changes in approaches to technology in learning and teaching within higher education institutions.
As part of CLL, the HEA is running a number of one-day workshops to provide a practical introduction to the use of learning technologies for staff working in higher education.
This year’s programme of events will look at the impact of online learning on learning and teaching in HE and be presented by expert speakers. Topics covered will include:

• Bring your own device and mobile learning;
• Using social media with students; linked to;
• Open Educational Practice and MOOCs;
• Flexible and seamless learning;
• Digital literacy;
• Simulations, virtual worlds and augmented reality;
• Challenges of ‘residency’ on the web

The potential impacts of CLL will be on individual teaching practices and students’ learning, on institutional and systemic practice, and on collaboration and partnership across and between universities and colleges.
CLL is a Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE) funded project being run collaboratively between Jisc, the National Union of Students (NUS), the Association for Learning Technology (ALT), the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education and the HEA.
For further information and to book please visit: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/cll. More...

The Management Development Network (EFMD) is holding its Annual Conference in Vienna from 15 to 17 June 2014 under the theme “The Art of Teaching and Learning”.
Hosted by the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), the conference website notes the event is “designed for all those interested in management education and development”. It is intended to bring together EFMD members, companies, educational institutions and other associations, to offer various perspectives and discussions on the conference theme.
To view the programme or to register for a reduced fee by 28 February, please visit the event website.

In all the discussion about learning management systems, open educational resources (OERs), massive open online courses (MOOCs), and the benefits and challenges of online learning, perhaps the most important issues concern how technology is changing the way we teach and - more importantly - the way students learn. For want of a better term, we call this “pedagogy.”
What is clear is that major changes in the way we teach post-secondary students are being triggered by online learning and the new technologies that increase flexibility in, and access to, post-secondary education. Printer-friendly version. More...

By Jessica Higgins. In a class this past December, after I wrote some directions on the board for students about their final examination, one young woman quickly snapped a picture of the board using her smartphone. It wasn’t the first time a student had taken a picture instead of taking notes, nor was she the only student in that class who was using this photographic note-taking method. But perhaps because she was sitting in the front row, or perhaps because her phone flashed, she drew my attention. More...