Books on the topic 'Platforms of opportunity'

The Vidéothèque de Paris, a video archive of the city’s past that opened in 1988, provides the opportunity to take stock of over a hundred years of putting pictures of Paris’s past at the heart of municipal policy and prestige. While its futuristic viewing pods, robots, and searchable databases seem to predict the future of the Internet, video-sharing platforms, and digital history, the Vidéothèque also reveals how the production and circulation of images are not just windows onto urban change but part and parcel of that history. Photographs shaped the historical imagination in the twentieth century in significant ways. People learned to read photographs as history, while simultaneously believing them to provide transparent, direct access to the past. Photographs forged individual and collective memory. And, their circulation and institutionalization paved the way for arguments about Paris’s reduction to an image or a museum city in the twentieth century.

Neuroscience communication is at a turning point, with tremendous opportunity for growth and democratization. The rise of the web and social media as platforms for dissemination of research findings and stakeholder engagement presents both unique opportunities and critical ethical considerations. Online- and mobile-based information and services for brain health may enhance the autonomy of users in health decision-making. However, nonadherence to ethical norms, such as informed consent and conflict of interest by digital content creators, may lead to harm. The challenges of communicating neuroscience in the digital era will require the rejection of the traditional top-down dissemination of research findings by the science community. Communicators must embrace participatory communication models, frame science in non-sensationalized, lay-friendly terms, improve the ethics of online resources and web users’ ability to assess the quality of information and source material, and educate scientists in the importance of transparency and public engagement.

When midcentury Hollywood found itself struggling to compete within an expanding entertainment media landscape, certain producers and studios saw an opportunity in making films that showcased performances by rock ’n’ roll stars. Such stars eventually found cinema to be a useful space to extend their creative practices, and the motion picture and recording industries increasingly saw cinematic rock stardom as a profitable means to connect multiple media properties. This book examines how casting rock stars for film provided a tool for bridging new relationships across media industries and practices. Rock Star/Movie Star offers a new perspective on the role of stardom within the convergence of media industries. While hardly the first popular music culture to see its stars making the transition to screen, the timing of rock’s emergence and its staying power within popular culture proved fortuitous for a motion picture business searching for its place in the face of continuous technological and cultural change. At the same time, a post-star-system film industry provided a welcoming context for rock stars who have valued authenticity, creative autonomy, and personal expression. Examining stars from Elvis Presley to Madonna, this book uses illuminating archival resources to demonstrate how rock stars have often proven themselves to be prominent film workers exploring this terrain of platforms old and new—ideal media laborers whose power lies in the fact that they are rarely recognized as such.

Teaching introductory psychology presents many challenges. These include the diversity of teaching goals, the broad content, and the hefty enrollments. The course also presents teachers with the opportunity to make a number of significant contributions. This chapter describes an approach to teaching introductory psychology that is designed to address its challenges and opportunities. This approach involves making the course a platform for teaching graduate and undergraduate students to teach. In our approach, students and teachers learn in parallel. We share three key features of our approach to educating students and teachers simultaneously, namely encouraging skill development, fostering growth mindsets, and building social connections.

As a psychologist working in an academic setting in Nigeria, the author had the opportunity to develop a variety of social research and action projects both within the university setting and in the surrounding community. In addition, her participation in starting a new private university and implementing educational reformation has given the author the platform to practice community principles. There are challenges to international community psychology development work in Nigeria that include her reintegration into the Nigerian cultural system and recognition of the dynamics in operation and provision of relevant interventions. This chapter presents the reader with the author’s path to doing community psychology in Nigeria and offers suggestions and lessons learned for readers interested in doing international work.

This article gives a critical account of shifting approaches to prominent theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues within the history of medicine in recent decades. It offers a synthetic account of the state of the art, an opportunity to take stock of where the history of medicine has been and where it now resides. It attempts to establish, and promote discussion about some of the major challenges facing future historians of medicine in terms of the questions, sources, and methods that should direct and animate the evolution of the discipline. This article hopes to provide both seasoned and aspiring scholars with a substantial empirical and theoretical platform for future research and with a constructive basis for more informed discussion of the intellectual place and ideological purpose of medical history.

This chapter provides an overview of the doctrine of the separation of powers under modern African constitutions. It begins by discussing the origins and nature of the doctrine, then explains the main models of separation of powers that have influenced developments in Africa. Next it looks at the approaches in Anglophone Africa and in the civilian jurisdictions in Africa, followed by a discussion of emerging new patterns of hybrid institutions which have the potential to enhance accountability. It is argued that the doctrine of separation of powers is an important instrument for limiting governmental arbitrariness. It is critical to dealing with broader issues such as the inclusion and protection of minorities, equitable resource allocation, and corruption. An effective system of separation of powers that limits the opportunity for abuse of powers provides a solid platform to deal with other challenges to constitutionalism, rule of law, and good governance in Africa.

The Mississippi Freedom Vote of 1963 is no small thing. It is a complex historical and rhetorical phenomenon worthy of in-depth analysis. The Mississippi Freedom Vote of 1963 was an integrated citizens’ campaign to empower and promote agency for blacks within the state. With candidates Aaron Henry, a black pharmacist from Clarksdale, for governor and Reverend Edwin King, a white college chaplain from Vicksburg, for lieutenant governor, the Freedom Vote ran a platform aimed at obtaining votes, justice, jobs, and education for blacks in the Magnolia state. Though the actual campaign took place October 13 through November 4, the Freedom Vote’s impact far transcends those few weeks in the fall of 1963 and extends beyond the borders of Mississippi. Campaign manager Bob Moses was right to label the Freedom Vote “one of the most unique voting campaigns in American history.” It is precisely how the rhetorical forms employed by the Freedom Vote catalyze agency that is so appealing and unique. Educating people about citizenship and then providing an opportunity to practice this phronesis in real time created a groundswell of political activity in Mississippi. The Freedom Vote campaign employed the rhetorical tactics of image events to protest voting rights inequalities by executing a campaign that allowed participants to enact the very agency that was being criticized. The campaign turned protestors in to citizens, allowing local citizens to experience empowerment, and it allowed organizers to learn valuable lessons that they would employ time and time again.

On 3 February 2020, the High Court of Malawi sitting on constitutional matters nullified the presidential election that was held on 21 May 2019. That decision was upheld by the Supreme Court of Appeal on 8 May 2020. Various reforms were ordered by the courts and legislated by Parliament, most notably a change in the electoral system, from a simple majoritarian, or first-past-the-post (FPTP), system to a two-round system where the winner must receive over 50 per cent of the votes. A fresh presidential election was held on 23 June 2020 under the supervision of a new commission, and Malawi made history in Africa on 27 June when the opposition candidate was announced victorious in the fresh presidential election. The repeat election was held in a largely peaceful environment, and the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) did not receive any complaints following the announcement of the result. Given the remarkable events that took place in Malawi, the Executive Committee of the Electoral Commissions Forum of SADC countries (ECF-SADC) recommended that the MEC should be given the opportunity to share its experience regarding the fresh presidential election of 23 June 2020 with other member commissions. The ECF-SADC in collaboration with the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) organized a webinar on 31 August 2020 to strengthen peer review among electoral management bodies (EMBs) in the region of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The webinar provided a platform for peer-learning concerning both the conduct of the fresh presidential election in Malawi and emerging regional trends in electoral justice.

These Guidelines are one of the results of the four-year research project “Open Online Learning for Digital and Networked Society” (2017-2021). The project objective was to enable university teachers to design open and online learning through open and online learning curriculum and environment applying learning analytics as a metacognitive tool and creating open and online learning assessment and recognition practices, responding to the needs of digital and networked society. The research of the project resulted in 10 scientific publications and 2 studies prepared by Vytautas Magnus university Institute of Innovative Studies research team in collaboration with their international research partners from Germany, Spain and Portugal. The final stage of the research attempted creating open and online learning assessment and recognition practices, responding to the learner needs in contemporary digital and networked society. The need for open learning recognition has been increasing during the recent decade while the developments of open learning related to the Covid 19 pandemics have dramatically increased the need for systematic and high-quality assessment and recognition of learning acquired online. The given time also relates to the increased need to offer micro-credentials to learners, as well as a rising need for universities to prepare for micro-credentialization and issue new digital credentials to learners who are regular students, as well as adult learners joining for single courses. The increased need of all labour - market participants for frequent and fast renewal of competences requires a well working and easy to use system of open learning assessment and recognition. For learners, it is critical that the micro-credentials are well linked to national and European qualification frameworks, as well as European digital credential infrastructures (e.g., Europass and similar). For employers, it is important to receive requested quality information that is encrypted in the metadata of the credential. While for universities, there is the need to properly prepare institutional digital infrastructure, organizational procedures, descriptions of open learning opportunities and virtual learning environments to share, import and export the meta-data easily and seamlessly through European Digital Hub service infrastructures, as well as ensure that academic and administrative staff has digital competencies to design, issue and recognise open learning through digital and micro-credentials. The first chapter of the Guidelines provides a background view of the European Qualification Framework and National Qualification frameworks for the further system of gaining, stacking and modelling further qualifications through open online learning. The second chapter suggests the review of current European policy papers and consultations on the establishment of micro-credentials in European higher education. The findings of the report of micro-credentials higher education consultation group “European Approach to Micro-credentials” is shortly introduced, as well as important policy discussions taking place. Responding to the Rome Bologna Comunique 2020, where the ministers responsible for higher education agreed to support lifelong learning through issuing micro-credentials, a joint endeavour of DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion and DG Research and Innovation resulted in one of the most important political documents highlighting the potential of micro-credentials towards economic, social and education innovations. The consultation group of experts from the Member States defined the approach to micro-credentials to facilitate their validation, recognition and portability, as well as to foster a larger uptake to support individual learning in any subject area and at any stage of life or career. The Consultation Group also suggested further urgent topics to be discussed, including the storage, data exchange, portability, and data standards of micro-credentials and proposed EU Standard of constitutive elements of micro-credentials. The third chapter is devoted to the institutional readiness to issue and to recognize digital and micro-credentials. Universities need strategic decisions and procedures ready to be enacted for assessment of open learning and issuing micro-credentials. The administrative and academic staff needs to be aware and confident to follow these procedures while keeping the quality assurance procedures in place, as well. The process needs to include increasing teacher awareness in the processes of open learning assessment and the role of micro-credentials for the competitiveness of lifelong learners in general. When the strategic documents and procedures to assess open learning are in place and the staff is ready and well aware of the processes, the description of the courses and the virtual learning environment needs to be prepared to provide the necessary metadata for the assessment of open learning and issuing of micro-credentials. Different innovation-driven projects offer solutions: OEPass developed a pilot Learning Passport, based on European Diploma Supplement, MicroHE developed a portal Credentify for displaying, verifying and sharing micro-credential data. Credentify platform is using Blockchain technology and is developed to comply with European Qualifications Framework. Institutions, willing to join Credentify platform, should make strategic discussions to apply micro-credential metadata standards. The ECCOE project building on outcomes of OEPass and MicroHE offers an all-encompassing set of quality descriptors for credentials and the descriptions of learning opportunities in higher education. The third chapter also describes the requirements for university structures to interact with the Europass digital credentials infrastructure. In 2020, European Commission launched a new Europass platform with Digital Credential Infrastructure in place. Higher education institutions issuing micro-credentials linked to Europass digital credentials infrastructure may offer added value for the learners and can increase reliability and fraud-resistant information for the employers. However, before using Europass Digital Credentials, universities should fulfil the necessary preconditions that include obtaining a qualified electronic seal, installing additional software and preparing the necessary data templates. Moreover, the virtual learning environment needs to be prepared to export learning outcomes to a digital credential, maintaining and securing learner authentication. Open learning opportunity descriptions also need to be adjusted to transfer and match information for the credential meta-data. The Fourth chapter illustrates how digital badges as a type of micro-credentials in open online learning assessment may be used in higher education to create added value for the learners and employers. An adequately provided metadata allows using digital badges as a valuable tool for recognition in all learning settings, including formal, non-formal and informal.