The Community of Inquiry framework, originally proposed by Garrison, Anderson and Archer, identifies teaching, social and cognitive presences as central to a successful online educational experience. This paper presents the findings of a study conducted in Uruguay between 2007 and 2010. The research aimed to establish the role of cognitive, social and teaching presences in the professional development of 40 English language teachers on continuous professional development programmes delivered in blended learning settings. The findings suggest that teaching presence and cognitive presence have themselves "become social." The research points to social presence as a major lever for engagement, sense-making and peer support. Based on the patterns identified in the study, this paper puts forward an adjustment to the Community of Inquiry framework, which shows social presence as more prominent within the teaching and cognitive constructs than the original version of the framework suggests.

Alejandro Armellini is a senior learning designer at the Beyond Distance Research Alliance, University of Leicester, UK. He works closely with academic course teams in the areas of technology-enhanced design for learning and assessment, with a focus on distance learning. He is the principal investigator on the HE Academy-funded ADDER and the JISC-funded OTTER projects. Olaojo Aiyegbayo was a research associate on the ADDER project and project manager for the CHEETAH project at Leicester. He is now a researcher at the University of Bristol. AbstractThis paper reported on the findings of research into innovation in e-learning design and assessment through the development and implementation of online learning activities (e-tivities). The focus of the study was on Carpe Diem as a process to enable academic course teams to seize 2 days to design and embed pedagogically appropriate e-tivities into their courses. The study also addressed the use of technology in the design of e-tivities and the level of tutor and learner engagement with them during course delivery. Six academic course teams representing three disciplines at four British universities took part in this 12-month study. Cognitive mapping was the main research methodology used. The results suggested that Carpe Diem is an effective and powerful team-based process to foster pedagogical change and innovation in learning design and assessment practices. The e-tivities designed during Carpe Diem were successfully used primarily for learning and formative assessment, and exceptionally for summative assessment. Web 2.0 tools, especially wikis, were employed to enable collaborative online learning and were prominent in the new designs. The tutors' e-moderation skills were key to engage learners and thus capitalise on the benefits of e-tivities.

Open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP) are relatively new areas in educational research. How OER and OEP can help practitioners enhance curricula is one of a number of under-researched topics. This article aims to enable practitioners to identify and implement appropriate open practices to enhance higher education curricula. To that aim, we put forward a framework of four open educational practices based on patterns of OER reuse ('as-is' or adapted), mapped against the processes of curriculum design and delivery. The framework was developed from the in-depth analysis of 20 cases of higher education (HE) practitioners, which revealed patterns of OER reuse across disciplines, institutions and needs. For each open practice we offer evidence, examples and ideas for application by practitioners. We also put forward recommendations for institutional policies on OER and OEP.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce an evidence-based, transferable framework of graduate attributes and associated university toolkit to support the writing of level-appropriate learning outcomes that enable the university to achieve its mission to Transform Lives + Inspire Change. Design/methodology/approach An iterative process of co-design and co-development was employed to produce both the framework and the associated learning outcomes toolkit. Findings There is tangible benefit in adopting an integrated framework that enables students to develop personal literacy and graduate identity. The toolkit enables staff to write assessable learning outcomes that support student progression and enable achievement of the framework objective. Research limitations/implications While the framework has been in use for two years, institutional use of the toolkit is still in its early stages. Phase 2 of the project will explore how effectively the toolkit achieves the framework objective. Practical implications The introduction of a consistent, integrated framework enables students to develop and actively increase personal literacy through the deliberate construction of their unique graduate identity. Social implications Embedding the institutional Changemaker attributes alongside the agreed employability skills enables students to develop and articulate specifically what it means to be a “Northampton graduate”. Originality/value The uniqueness of this project is the student-centred framework and the combination of curricular, extra- and co-curricular initiatives that provide a consistent language around employability across disciplines. This is achieved through use of the learning outcomes toolkit to scaffold student progression.