By Daniel Luzer. Coursera, the company that provides many massive open online courses (MOOCs) to colleges, is apparently changing its business strategy. The way it used to work was that Coursera would offer students free, online versions of courses taught by professors at elite colleges. The students wouldn’t get academic credit from these institutions but they would potentially get the advantage of the high-quality courses. The company wasn’t really sure how to make money off of the free courses, however, and merely proposed potential revenue strategies, like corporate sponsorship or payment for certifications. Observers assumed that eventually the company would find a plan. Apparently it has. According to an article by Steve Kolowich in the Chronicle of Higher. Read more...

By Aaron Bady. In the last year, MOOCs have gotten a tremendous amount of publicity. Last November, the New York Times decided that 2012 was “the Year of the MOOC,” and columnists like David Brooks and Thomas Friedman have proclaimed ad nauseum that the MOOC “revolution” is a “tsunami” that will soon transform higher education. As a Time cover article on MOOCs put it—in a rhetorical flourish that has become a truly dead cliché—“College is Dead. Long Live College!”
Where is the hype coming from? On the one hand, higher education is ripe for “disruption”—to use Clayton Christensen’s theory of “disruptive innovation”—because there is a real, systemic crisis in higher education, one that offers no apparent or immanent solution. It’s hard to imagine how the status quo can survive if you extend current trends forward into the future: how does higher education as we know it continue if tuition fees and student debt continue to skyrocket while state funding continues to plunge? At what point does the system simply break down? Something has to give. Read more...

By Doug Johnson. So I need to carefully consider how much my own transilliteracy impacts my answer to this month's ISTE Leading & Learning Point/Counterpoint question: "Should transliteracy replace language arts?" Is "language arts ... due for an update to encompass literacy in all the media that students must navigate in our mediacentric society" is the wicked question. Not being transliterate myself, I have a difficult time determining if traditional print literacy is a prerequisite to other literacies. Do I need to be able to write well if I am going created a quality video, for example? My approach to creating a video would be to write a script first, so I would consider traditional literacy foundational to transliteracy. But that's me. Read more...

By Kerry Benjoe. All foster children graduating high school will have their tuition paid for if University of Regina President Vianne Timmons has her way.
"That is something I am going to begin to work at advocating for," she said. "And I'm going to do it."
Timmons made the announcement at the end of the two-day Lloyd Barber Summit on Aboriginal Education at the U of R.
"I have a wide range of emotions on the last day of the summit," said Timmons. "But the most important thing is that I feel a sense of pride and a sense of optimism."
"I think the 150 people here have made the commitment to take action," she said.
She plans to get to work on her goal immediately.
Timmons challenged everyone at the summit to focus on one thing they can do to improve the aboriginal education situation.
Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo, who delivered the closing keynote address, was impressed by Timmons. Read more...

By Dana Flavelle. Canada has 1.33 million unemployed workers, yet business hired 338,000 temporary foreign workers last year, citing shortages in low-skilled jobs. Laid-off welders in Ontario sit idle, while oilsands employers in Alberta are chronically short-handed. High-skill jobs go unfilled, yet university graduates can’t find work. Canada has 1.33 million unemployed workers, yet business hired 338,000 temporary foreign workers last year, citing shortages in such low-skilled jobs as fast-food servers.
Why? One reason cited has been called the skills mismatch or skills shortage, phrases that refer to the growing gap between the skills Canadian employers say they need and the ones job seekers can provide. Employers say it’s one of the toughest challenges they face; the federal government made it the centrepiece of its 2013 budget, with a training incentive grant for employers called the Canada Job Program. Read more...

University insists the supports are there. Some Saskatchewan university professors say international students being admitted to study in the province don't have the necessary English skills to be successful. At a recent university council meeting, University of Regina professor Cameron Louis brought up his concerns, tabling a motion stating international students were being accepted into programs they did not have sufficient English skills to complete. But the problem may be more visible as the enrolment of international students keeps increasing. At the U of R, the number of international students has nearly doubled from 730 in 2009 to 1,448 in 2013. The number has been going up at the University of Saskatchewan as well, from 1,714 in 2009-10 to 2,264 in 2012-13. Read more...

By Bruce Spencer. Athabasca U staff look at shifting from corporate-style management. The cut of more than seven per cent in public funding for post-secondary institutions that were expecting a two-per-cent increase has created a crisis for Alberta's university and college sector. This new cut in funding, alongside mandate letters that emphasize post-secondary education as essentially preparation for work and university research in the service of business, is all in line with global trends that threaten university independence. Is it possible for universities to survive in this environment or will we be left with only the largest privately funded universities? Read more...