29 décembre 2013

The ICDE Quality Review service

In an increasingly open and online world, ensuring quality higher and adult education is more important than ever. The ICDE Quality Review service for institutions provides member institutions with the opportunity to initiate an independent, external peer-review of the service provided to the student. The Quality Review process is an ICDE member service designed to promote and support quality open, distance, flexible and online education.
The focus for the ICDE Quality Review service is the enhancement of quality of student support. As a central element of open, distance and online education it will involve many aspects of an institution. More...

We mourn his passing, we celebrate his legacy

Nelson Mandela's commitment to the importance of education for all, and to its power to create change was undoubted. What is less well known is that he was an alumnus of ICDE member institution, the University of South Africa (Unisa). Nelson Mandela was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 by the Nobel Committee, appointed by the Norwegian parliament. Norway has been the host country for ICDE since the government began to support the organization in 1988.
Mandla S Makhanya, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Unisa writes that, "President Mandela was one of us – an illustrious alumnus with whom we took the long walk in his thirst for knowledge and education, culminating in his acquiring all his degrees, BA Law and LLB from Unisa". More...

ICDE and partners launch Global Online Higher Education Report initiative

Have you ever looked for good research data on the global impact of distance or online learning and discovered that this just doesn't exist?
ICDE has partnered with UNESCO, the European Commission, the International Association of Universities, the Sloan Consortium, StudyPortals and Babson Survey Research Group to begin work on this formidable task.
Context
The global landscape of post-secondary education is in a period of dramatic change. A significant driver for this has been a dramatic rise in the use of technology and the extension of the traditional campus to more learners.
Although there is clear evidence of the growth of online learning, the global data remains anecdotal or limited in scope. There has been no formal effort or process to define online learning in the global context. More...

Connecting the World through Open, Distance and e-Learning - ICDE International Conference 2014

ICDE International Conference 2014. Connecting the World through Open, Distance and e-Learning. Sept. 25-26, 2014 Moscow, Russia. 
An ICDE International Conference will be hosted by Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics and Informatics (MESI) in Moscow, Russia, 25-26 September 2014.
Venue of the Conference (September 25-26): Renaissance Moscow Olympic Hotel, Moscow, Russian Federation Address: 18/1 Olimpiysky Prospect, Moscow 129110, Russian Federation.
The conference will discuss economic, technological and social aspects of distance education, closing the gap between formal education and work, e-learning in conventional institutions, and the balance between quality and diversity and plurality.
Conference website. Flyer ICDE Conference MESI 2014. 
Conference
The development of technology considerably changes major characteristics and even the philosophy of education. Distance learning and e-learning have become a part of daily life and penetrate into conventional educational establishments. OER and MOOCs, as well as emerging smart education challenge existing educational systems. The kaleidoscope of approaches, techniques, breakthroughs and gaps in education make sharing experience and promoting cooperation a vital necessity at international, regional, national, local and institutional levels.
THEME OF THE ICDE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 2014:
Connecting the World through Open, Distance and e-Learning
SUB-THEMES:

• distance education: the economic, technological, pedagogical and social outlook
• open, distance and flexible learning for reduction of the gap between formal education and work
• e-learning in a conventional educational establishment: challenges and possibilities
• distance and smart education: narrowing or widening digital and cognitive gaps?
• quality and standards of educational provision in distance settings; social and cultural diversity and linguistic plurality; educational tradition and innovation – where does the balance lie?
• open, distance and e-learning as a field for cooperation at international, regional, interregional, national, local and institutional levels.

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The BRICS Rankings by QS

Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) have just published their BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) university rankings, a collaborative effort with Interfax, the Russian news agency. The top ten contains seven Chinese, two Brazilian and one Russian university. There are none from South Africa or India, although the University of Cape Town is eleventh. The methodology is based on the QS World University Rankings methodology but with some important modifications to reflect the situation of emerging economies.
On the subjective side the employer survey has a weighting of 20%, compared to 10% in the World University Rankings, while the weighting for the academic survey is reduced to 30%. These rankings also assess universities for faculty student ratio (20%), faculty with Ph Ds (10%), papers per faculty (10%), citations per faculty (5%), international faculty (2.5%) and international students (2.5%).
The top five overall are:

In the top 100 there are 40 Chinese, 19 Russian, 17 Brazilian, 16 Indian and 8 South African universities. More...

Rating of Private Colleges in Malaysia

In recent years, there has been a boom in private higher education in Malaysia with many students coming from overseas.In 2011, the Malaysian government introduced the Malaysian Quality Evaluation System (My Quest) ratings to evaluate private institutions. This rating is based on the voluntary submission of data and about a quarter of Malaysian colleges did not participate. Colleges were given ratings from one star to six stars in three categories: College Based, Cluster Based and International Student Readiness. Altogether 211 colleges were included. More...

Combined Rankings

The blog List Education Technology has produced a combined league table of international universities. Eight global rankings were compared and averaged out.
The top five universities are:

The top twenty contains sixteen US universities, three British and one Canadian. Altogether 200 universities are ranked. 
These combined rankings are helpful since they show large variations from one ranking to another. Tsinghua University, China, for example ranges from 4^th place in SCImago to 227^th in the Leiden Ranking. More...

The Times Higher Education BRICS Rankings

Times Higher Education (THE) has published its BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and Emerging Economies University Rankings. Those countries listed in the Financial Times Stock Exchange Emerging Market Indices are included.
The methodology is the same as that used in the THE World University Rankings and uses data supplied by Thomson Reuters from its Global Institutional Profiles Project. Only universities that actively submit data to Thomson Reuters are ranked. Source: Times Higher Education 04/12/13. More...

QS World University Rankings

MIT beats Harvard and Cambridge to retain the top spot in the tenth annual QS World University Rankings.The US takes 11 of the top 20 positions, but its dominance has eroded since the financial crisis. Of the 83 US universities in the top 400, 64 rank lower than in 2007/8.The 43 US public universities in the top 400 have lost an average of 20 places since 2007/8, following successive government funding cuts.In contrast, 70% of the 62 Asian institutions in the top 400 rank higher than in 2007, yet still no Asian institution in the top 20.
Global highlights:

Regional highlights:

• UK: Four institutions in top 10; Oxford and Cambridge 1^st and 2^nd for employer reputation
• Australia: Melbourne (31^st) catching up with ANU (27^th)
• Asia: National University of Singapore (24^th) overtakes University of Hong Kong (26^th)
• Canada: Toronto (17^th) overtakes McGill (21^st)
• Continental Europe: ETH Zurich (12^th) and EPFL Lausanne (19^th=) lead as nine of region’s top 10 maintain or improve position
• Nordic Countries: University of Copenhagen (45^th) leads as twenty rise
• Latin America: Universidade de São Paulo (127^th) leads, nine of region’s top ten rise
• Africa/ME: 33 in top 800, led by King Fahd University (216^th). More...

IREG-7 Conference: Employability and Academic Rankings – Reflections and Impacts

IREG-7 Conference: Employability and Academic Rankings – Reflections and Impacts. 14-16 May 2014, London, United Kingdom.
Organized by IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence and QS Intelligence Unit, UK.
What does the average student go to university for? By far the most substantial subsequent destination is the world of work. A job. Whilst statistics suggest that a university degree is still, on average, a ticket to better job and a better salary, with the massification of global higher education it has become a hirers’ market and employers are beginning to expect and even demand that graduates are more than their degree certificate. As the cost of higher education escalates around the world, students are turning to their universities expecting to be equipped with the skills employers are seeking. Students look to universities to get employed and rankings to help them choose a university, employers look to universities to provide work-ready graduates and to rankings to help them identify where to find them.
Introduction
Topic and Its Context
One of key function of higher education is providing those who graduate from its institutions and programs with knowledge, skills and competences which allow them to enter and function on a broadly-understood labour market. There is ample evidence that the likelihood of having a job is greatly enhanced by being a higher education graduate.
Relations between higher education and labour market and skills supply have never been simple or straightforward. In recent years, due to structural transformations in economic and social systems, there are arguments about emergence of a new paradigm – moving from a provider-driven model to a consumer-driven one. In this context, higher education institutions are expected to be responsive to “signals” from the economic and social sectors.
Changes in study programmes as well as pedagogical practices to ensure a more prominent role for work-based learning, availability of internship programmes, sandwich courses, problem-based learning and learning outcomes focused learning are the response coming from higher education institutions. In addition, higher education institutions are requested to demonstrate that their study programmes provide a set of qualifications and competences [often referred to as “learning outcomes”] which give employer reliable, comparable and easily interpreted information about qualifications of the graduate. It is an increasingly usual practice [and expectation] that higher education “follow the graduate” by collecting information about his/her early stage of post-graduate employability and professional career.
It is therefore evident that cooperation between higher education and those representing a “world of work” are seen as important engine for improved employability of higher education graduates. Such cooperation is even more relevant considering that professional development as well as assurance of employability is growingly seen in relation to continuous education and lifelong learning (LLL).
If in general terms there is a positive correlation between employability and “university diploma”, a number of elements are determining graduates career/employability success. It is not surprising to observe that variations in employability and earnings depend on the type of institution, study programme graduates attended and the type of degree they obtained. It is not surprising to note that those who graduated from more prestigious institutions fared better than those from less prestigious ones, and, on average, that those who majored in engineering and economics earned more than those in the humanities.
It is evident that university rankings are symbiotic with the above presented developments. Taking into consideration that they are seen as one of information tools for variety of stake-holders, including those directly and indirectly concerned with employability of graduates, it is appropriate to look at the role of rankings in the context of employability of a university’s graduates, and their subsequent job performance.
London IREG-7 Conference
The objective of the conference is to identify elements of a comprehensive approach for dealing with the major developments in the way how university rankings are responding to this renewed attention on the “employability challenge”. Equally important will be learning about how employers are “looking at university rankings” in their recruiting and professional development practices.
The format of the conference will include commissioned presentations, selected submitted papers. An important part of the time will be devoted to an open discussion of core issues. Prior to the conference, there will be a “call for papers” which will be subject of evaluation by the Programme Committee.