The Medical Research Council is a publicly-funded organisation dedicated to improving human health. It supports research across the entire spectrum of medical sciences, in universities and hospitals, in its own units and institutes in the UK and in Africa. The MRC works closely with key stakeholders and research funders - UK health departments, other departments and agencies, the six sister research councils, industry, and the academic and charity sectors - giving a high priority to research that is likely to make a real difference to clinical practice and the health of the population. This annual report describes progress in 2008-09, highlights key awards and partnerships, and outlines plans for the future.
For over twenty years, digitisation has been a core element of the modern information landscape. The digital lifecycle is now well defined, and standards and good practice have been developed for most of its key stages. There remains, however, a widespread lack of coordination of digitisation initiatives, both within and across different sectors, and there are disparate approaches to selection criteria. The result is 'silos' of digitised content. Stepping away from the Silos examines the strategic context in the UK since the 1990s and its effect on collaboration and coordination of exemplar digitisation initiatives in higher education and related sectors. It identifies the principal criteria for content selection that are common to the international literature in this field. The outputs of the exemplar projects are examined in relation to these criteria. A range of common practices and patterns in content selection appears to have developed over time, forming a de facto strategy from which several areas of critical mass have emerged. The book discusses the potential to improve strategic collaboration and coordinated selection by building on such a platform, and considers planning options in the context of work on national digitisation strategies in the UK and internationally. - Summarises the rise of publicly funded digitisation in the UK from the 1990s to date and identifies the need to improve coordination and content selection criteria - Reviews the role of digitisation in government and organisational strategies from the 1990s to the present day - Examines the strategic position of collaboration within and across different organisations - Identifies common selection criteria and outlines the coverage of exemplar projects - Discusses the apparent emergence of a de facto selection strategy and the potential for national strategic planning of digitised content based on existing outputs and improved collaboration
The pressure to be seen to be making cuts across the public sector is threatening to undermine both the Government's good record on investment in science and the economic recovery. Whilst the contribution of a strong domestic science base is widely acknowledged, methodological problems with quantifying its precise value to the economy mean that it is in danger of losing out in Whitehall negotiations. Scientists are under increasing pressure to demonstrate the impact of their work and there is concern that areas without immediate technology applications are being undervalued. The Committee believes the Government faced a strategic choice: invest in areas with the greatest potential to influence and improve other areas of spending, or make cuts of little significance now, but that will have a devastating effect upon British science and the economy in the years to come.
French Studies in and for the 21st Century draws together a range of key scholars to examine the current state of French Studies in the UK, taking account of the variety of factors which have made the discipline what it is. The book looks ahead to the place of French Studies in a world that is increasingly interdisciplinary, and where student demands, new technologies and transnational education are changing the ways in which we learn, teach, research and assess. Required reading for all UK French Studies scholars, the book will also be an essential text for the French Studies community worldwide as it grapples with current demands and plans for the future.
The term ethical finance refers to finance that considers environmental, social, and governance (ESG) aspects influencing a borrower and/or its possessions. The authors provide a fresh look at ESG aspects along with CSR implementation for sustainable development, which has global and long-term repercussions.
With contributions from leading scholars across the entire range of French studies, this up-to-date volume examines both the current state of French studies in the United Kingdom, as well as its future in an increasingly interdisciplinary world where student demand, new technologies, and developments in transnational education are changing the ways in which we teach, learn, research and assess achievements. Required reading for French studies scholars worldwide, this volume builds upon the findings of the influential Review of Modern Foreign Languages Provision in Higher Education and maps the present and future of the field.
Over the last five years student numbers and income have grown annually by 2 per cent and 6 per cent respectively. As the sector has begun the transition to a new system of funding in which Funding Council grants to institutions will be replaced by higher tuition fees the Higher Education Funding Council's role in the allocation of funds & influence will diminish. The Department for Education will need to provide new powers for the Funding Council to regulate these institutions and the Funding Council must monitor risks as they emerge and respond quickly. All the indications are that more institutions will charge significantly higher fees than was anticipated by the Department. The Office for Fair Access has yet to agree the measures universities will adopt to widen participation where the proposed fees are above the £6000 level. However it is likely that a significant funding gap of hundreds of millions of pounds for the taxpayer will occur. The Funding Council also has a responsibility for promoting value for money, although it does not assess the value for money of institutions. In future, prospective students will need better information to make an informed choice about where they will study, including comparable information on the financial health of, and value for money provided by, individual institutions. The Funding Council does not normally publish the names of institutions it judges to be at financial risk, so as to protect them while they are in recovery. Now that students are required to make a substantial financial investment in their degree, the Funding Council needs to strike a suitable balance between the interests of institutions and those of prospective students
The whole landscape of space use is undergoing a radical transformation. In the workplace a period of unprecedented change has created a mix of responses with one overriding outcome observable worldwide: the rise of distributed space. In the learning environment the social, political, economic and technological changes responsible for this shift have been further compounded by constantly developing theories of learning and teaching, and a wide acceptance of the importance of learning as the core of the community, resulting in the blending of all aspects of learning into one seamless experience. This book attempts to look at all the forces driving the provision and pedagogic performance of the many spaces, real and virtual, that now accommodate the experience of learning and provide pointers towards the creation and design of learning-centred communities. Part 1 looks at the entire learning universe as it now stands, tracks the way in which its constituent parts came to occupy their role, assesses how they have responded to a complex of drivers and gauges their success in dealing with renewed pressures to perform. It shows that what is required is innovation within the spaces and integration between them. Part 2 finds many examples of innovation in evidence across the world – in schools, the higher and further education campus and in business and cultural spaces – but an almost total absence of integration. Part 3 offers a model that redefines the learning landscape in terms of learning outcomes, mapping spatial requirements and activities into a detailed mechanism that will achieve the best outcome at the most appropriate scale. By encouraging stakeholders to creating an events-based rather than space-based identity, the book hopes to point the way to a fully-integrated learning landscape: a learning community.
This book is the first systematic attempt to examine one of the biggest challenges facing universities and society in the 21st century: how do we create opportunities to allow people from all social backgrounds to benefit from higher education? It examines how policymakers, higher education institutions and civil society organisations are meeting this challenge across the globe. Each chapter focuses on one of 12 countries, including the economically powerful US and Germany, developing nations from Africa and South America and the new higher education 'superpowers' of China and India. Access to Higher Education shows that across these different nations inequalities in higher education participation are common, but their nature differs. It argues for a new, 'nationhood' based approach to understanding why these differences exist.