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In order for the Open Access (OA) to learning concept to a have wider impact in formal education, it is important that faculty members intent to adopt new educational innovations. However, little is known about which variables influence the intention of faculty members. Therefore, the purposes of this study are to empirically determine: 1) which of the characteristics of the educational innovation significantly influence the intention to adopt educational innovations, 2) which variables influence the readiness of faculty members intention to adopt educational innovations, and 3) how the characteristics of the innovations moderate the relationship between faculty readiness and intention to adopt the innovations. Participants of this study include 335 faculty members in ABET certified computer science and electrical engineering programs in the United States. The results show that ease of use is positively related to the intention of faculty members to adopt an educational innovation. We conclude that Open-CourseWare developers need to ensure that ease of use is emphasized in the CourseWare and they need to propagate these initially in institutions where faculty members have positive attitude to the CourseWare and care about student learning. In addition, a new method of identifying, building, and funding “open access grant” universities that develop easy-to-use educational innovations, make them available on an open access platform, and spread them widely by embedding agents in community colleges, schools, and other educational institutions is essential. Such an initiative may lead to wider adoption of MOOCS and other open access materials.

This report finds that in developing countries over the past 15 years, high priority was accorded to increasing enrolments in primary schools, but much less attention was directed to the crucial issue of whether children are learning adequately. The report recommends that countries, the World Bank and development partners give the same emphasis to learning outcomes as to access, so that the world's increasing investments in primary education have a far greater impact on poverty reduction and national development. The World Bank is the largest provider of external financial support to education in developing world. Since 1963, it has transferred about US$36.5 billion for education, over $14 billion of which has been for primary education. Its current lending portfolio consists of about 143 operations in 88 countries amounting to US$8.4 billion. (DIPF/Orig.).

Nowadays the use of distance learning systems is widely extended in engineering education. Moreover, most of them use multimedia resources that sometimes are the only educational material available to provide certain educational knowledge to the students. Unfortunately, most of the current educational systems and their educational content present accessibility barriers so some students cannot access to these educational resources. This paper introduces IMES, an inclusive system designed to ensure that students of all abilities can access the educational content of the system. But, are all the students (not only students with disabilities) satisfied with this kind of inclusive applications? Are they useful for all the students? One hundred and eight students participated in the evaluation of the system during an academic course at Universidad Carlos III of Madrid. The evaluation shows that the system presents educational benefits to all the students in terms of usefulness and user's satisfaction.

Nowadays the use of distance learning systems is widely extended in engineering education. Moreover, most of them use multimedia resources that sometimes are the only educational material available to provide certain educational knowledge to the students. Unfortunately, most of the current educational systems and their educational content present accessibility barriers so some students cannot access to these educational resources. This paper introduces IMES, an inclusive system designed to ensure that students of all abilities can access the educational content of the system. But, are all the students (not only students with disabilities) satisfied with this kind of inclusive applications? Are they useful for all the students? One hundred and eight students participated in the evaluation of the system during an academic course at Universidad Carlos III of Madrid. The evaluation shows that the system presents educational benefits to all the students in terms of usefulness and user’s satisfaction.

Flexibility has become a central concept in much policy and academic debate. Individuals, organizations and societies are all required to become more flexible so that they can participate in the ongoing processes of change involved in lifelong learning. This book explores how the notion of a learning society has developed over recent years: the changes that have given rise to the requirement for flexibility, and the changed discourses and practices that have emerged in the education and training of adults. With the growth in interest in adults as learners, (primarily to support economic competitiveness), the closed field of adult education has now been displaced by a more open discourse of lifelong learning. This involves not only changing practices such as moving towards open and distance-based learning, but also changing workplace identities. Learning settings are therefore changing places in a number of senses: they are places in which people change; they are subject to change; and they are changing to include the home and workplace as well as more formal settings. This book takes an unusually critical standpoint: it challenges contemporary trends, explores the uncertainties and ambivalences of the processes of change, and is suggestive of different forms of engagement with them. It will prove an important text for policy makers, workplace trainers and those working in the field of adult, further and higher education. Richard Edwards is currently a Senior Lecturer in post compulsory education at the Open University.

Cloud computing is an important technology to offer consumer appliances a wide pool of elastic resources. The heterogeneous network faces collision while making communication, which reduces the entire network performance. The future cloud-edge networks will deal with a vast amount of clients and servers, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and the 6G networks, which require flexible solutions. From these points, Multiple Machine Access Learning with Collision Carrier Avoidance (MMALCCA) protocol is proposed in the environment of 6G Internet of Things for creating an effective communication process. This protocol employs the Media Access Control (MAC) protocol for the sync of high-speed wireless communication networks in the Terahertz (THz) band. MMALCCA performs multiple machine access and collision control for improving the resource utilization and latency-less services of the users. The decisions of the protocol are made using the output of the classification and regression learning method for improving the efficiency of MAC sync. The performance of the proposed protocol is verified using the metrics latency, collision probability, service failure, and resource utilization by varying channels and user equipment density.

Introduction: Distal radial access (dRA) has recently gained global popularity as an alternative access route for vascular procedures. Among the benefits of dRA are the low risk of entry site bleeding complications, the low rate of radial artery occlusion, and improved patient and operator comfort. The aim of this large multicenter registry was to demonstrate the feasibility and safety of dRA in a wide variety of routine procedures in the catheterization laboratory, ranging from coronary angiography and percutaneous coronary intervention to peripheral procedures. Methods: The study comprised 1240 patients who underwent coronary angiography, PCI or noncoronary procedures through dRA in two Hungarian centers from January 2019 to April 2021. Baseline patient characteristics, number and duration of arterial punctures, procedural success rate, crossover rate, postoperative compression time, complications, hospitalization duration, and different learning curves were analyzed. Results: The average patient age was 66.4 years, with 66.8% of patients being male. The majority of patients (74.04%) underwent a coronary procedure, whereas 25.96% were involved in noncoronary interventions. dRA was successfully punctured in 97% of all patients, in all cases with ultrasound guidance. Access site crossover was performed in 2.58% of the patients, mainly via the contralateral dRA. After experiencing 150 cases, the dRA success rate plateaued at >96%. Our dedicated dRA step-by step protocol resulted in high open radial artery (RA) rates: distal and proximal RA pulses were palpable in 99.68% of all patients at hospital discharge. The rate of minor vascular complications was low (1.5%). A threshold of 50 cases was sufficient for already skilled radial operators to establish a reliable procedural method of dRA access. Conclusion: The implementation of distal radial artery access in the everyday routine of a catheterization laboratory for coronary and noncoronary interventions is feasible and safe with an acceptable learning curve.

The Report of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education chaired by Sir Ron Dearing was published in July 1997. It represents the first officially sponsored systematic examination of the United Kingdom's system of higher education since the Robbins Report over 25 years ago. This book is an authoritative evaluation of the cogency, relevance and prospects for success of the Dearing vision and recommendations. Like the members of the comittee, the authors have sought to take a holistic view; to consider the underlying implications of genuine lifelong learning for the university system, and how institutions and the system will need to adjust. The outcomes are threefold: a description of what a UK higher education system that is genuinely part of a national learning society might look like, as well as the impetus this provides for radical reform; identification of features of its historical (especially recent) development, as well as wider social forces, which might inhibit or encourage its performance in this way; and an assessment of the coherence, desirability and practicality of the Dearing proposals in bringing about this end.

Under present conditions of economic globalization, social-ecological systems undergo rapid changes. In this context, internal and external forces put heavy pressure on the governance systems of commons to adapt effectively. While institutional learning has been identified as a key element for the adaptive governance of social-ecological systems, there is still limited knowledge of what roles communities and governmental actors play in these processes. In this study, we take the case of yarshagumba (English: caterpillar fungus), a formerly non-valued product in the Himalayas, which has recently been transformed into a highly valuable resource within a short time. We compare the governance systems in collection sites in the Kailash Landscape in India and Nepalby using an analytical framework developed by Pahl-Wostl. Our findings show that in these remote mountain areas, communities and community-led organizations are highly flexible in responding to immediate resource value changes by establishing communal management arrangements. At the same time, however, communities have difficulties to enforce their newly developed informal and formal arrangements. During the process of learning the link between the amendment of arrangements on community-level and the revision of formal policies and frames at the state or national level is only partly established. Against this background, we argue that in the context of rapid change, adaptive governance requires the concerted interaction of actors at the local and the national levels in order to enable the sustainable use of common pool natural resources.

Autonomy and self-learning are ongoing challenges for universities generally, and for their language centres specifically when it comes to language learning and acquisition. The University of Modena and Reggio Emilia has always paid attention to both fostering autonomy in its learners and developing customized language learning activities. Among all the activities the Language Centre deals with, we include self-access learning, through the establishment of proper laboratories, and traditional-teaching support measures, through the use of Moodle, as means to reach out to several non-attending students with supplementary materials. Although the Language Centre staff has been able to successfully complement teaching activities in class using Moodle, there was also a tendency to keep self-access learning within the physical barriers of its room, thus almost obliging users to go there to find language assistance and materials. However, a natural change in learners’ academic attendance and needs has lately led the Language Centre staff to rethink the whole idea of self-access learning, by having it transcend its walls and find a home online. Exploiting some of Moodle’s characteristic features – i.e. accessibility, flexibility, and customization – in the academic year 2018–2019, a new project will be piloted which will give learners the chance to get in touch with the language adviser via the web in order to receive counselling on language matters, and to find a network of extra services such as: Through these tools the Language Centre hopes to expand its range of self-learning activities so as to meet learners’ new expectations and attitudes.