Tagged / MOOCs

Free MOOC – Career Management for Early Career Academic Researchers

There is still time to sign up for the second run of  the online course for research students and research staff – Career Management for Early Career Academic Researchers. It aims to support researchers to explore their career options and make career plans.  According to the organisers, more than 1000 research students and research staff from across the UK and beyond engaged with the first course in March, with a few comments from participants given below.

This course has been fantastic, particularly as I am at a stage where I am finishing my PhD and was worrying about what comes next. I didn’t realise a lot of the things about academic and non-academic career paths, and have found the self reflection tasks invaluable.

 The course is impeccably designed, perfectly structured and neatly organised.

 My motivation to take control of finding my future career has increased exponentially from the day I started this course.

Through a series of articles, videos, discussions, and reflective exercises, researchers will be encouraged to consider what they want out of a career; to explore the academic career path and many other career options; and to increase their confidence in job search and applications.

The MOOC is a collaboration between the University of Glasgow, University of Edinburgh, and University of Sheffield, and has been developed by careers professionals who are experienced in working with research students and research staff.

It’s a free online course and open to research students and early career research staff at any institution in the UK and beyond.  It may be particularly useful for researchers who are unable to access any on campus support due to other commitments, or for researchers in institutions that are unable to offer any dedicated careers support to these groups.

The course  started on 4th June but for more information and sign up details go to: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/career-management

Welcoming our newest Erasmus Mundus TECHNO II post-doc

I am Dr Helmi Norman, an Erasmus Mundus post-doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Science and Technology, Bournemouth University (BU). I arrived here late December 2014 and will be attached here until the end of June 2015. My research interest is in the area of emerging learning technologies, where I am particularly interested in the mobile, online and ubiquitous technologies that can applied for 21st century learning.

Currently, at BU, I am working with Dr Huseyin Dogan on three main research initiatives. First, we are working with the Technology-Enhanced Learning Division under the Centre for Excellence in Learning at BU on creating a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for education technology. The MOOC created could serve as platform for educators in exploring potential teaching and learning technologies for promoting learner-driven innovations. I have been previously involved with a national MOOC initiative in Malaysia and the BU MOOC initiative can further spark new cross-regional research between Europe and Asia in this field.

Second, we are currently studying on social media addiction which is currently becoming a serious issue and we are investigating effective approaches and techniques of intervening with the addiction. Third, we are also currently working on a research about peer assessment using online learning technologies.

Feel free to contact me on future collaborations at mnorman@bournemouth.ac.uk or helmi.norman@gmail.com.  

 

BU has two Erasmus Mundus Academic Partnerships TECHNO and TECHNO II partnerships. Please contact Dr Demetra Andreou if you would like more information: dandreou@bournemouth.ac.uk