By Audrey Watters. MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCs
The University of Tokyo has joined edX.
Harvard and MIT have released visualizations (and open sourced the visualization tools) on their MOOC data.
“MOOCs are proving to be a great tool for employee training,” tweeted Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng (a little bit of a different message than “democratizing higher education.” But there ya go.)
And speaking of “democratizing higher education lulz,” Inside Higher Ed looks at what Cornell, Princeton, and Yale think about MOOCs.
“The first British massive open online course to offer students the option to pay for academic credit has ended, with none of its participants opting to fork out for official recognition,” writes the Times Higher Education. Nice lede. Important detail: the class was on Vampire Fictions, which probably isn’t something folks are clamoring for formal recognition of, ya know.
It looks as though there’s growing interest in using MOOCs to teach AP classes. According to Campus Technology, “The University of Houston System is launching its first three massive open online courses (MOOCs), two of them targeted to high school seniors preparing for advanced placements tests and one for K–12 teachers. The classes will be offered free through Coursera.”
Paging physics teachers: join a MOOC to build a MOOC on introductory physics course. This course is being organized by Dave Cormier, so it’s “cMOOC meets xMOOC.” More...
Cedefop work programme 2014: new projects and challenges
Cedefop’s work programme 2014 takes the final phase of the medium-term priorities 2012-14 into account in a European context of low economic recovery, high youth unemployment, skills needs and gaps and the overall European policy framework for education and training.
New projects include the EU skills panorama (EUSP) and the inventory on validation. Following up a mandate from the European Council, national qualifications frameworks (NQF) mapping’s scope will be broadened to include progress on validation systems in 33 countries; and the Centre will support the European alliance for apprenticeships. Work programme 2014. More...
EUA-LERU-EARTO fringe session at European Commission Innovation Convention
On Monday 10 March 2014, EUA, the League of European Research Universities (LERU) and the European Association of Research and Technology Organisations (EARTO) will jointly host a fringe session at the European Commission’s Innovation Convention in Brussels (10-11 March).
As part of the EU Innovation Union flagship initiative, the Innovation Convention aims to provide a platform to debate and inform policies that will contribute towards the building of a research and innovation eco-system in Europe that can support this objective.
In parallel to the main programme organised by the European Commission, EUA, together with LERU and EARTO, will be organising from 15.15 to 16.30 a fringe session that will focus on the Innovation Growth Machine in Europe and the contribution of universities and RTOs. Speakers will include Prof. Reinhilde Veugelers (KU Leuven/Bruegel/ERC Scientific Council), Dr Jens Neugebauer (Fraunhofer) Prof. Enrico Macii (Politecnico di Torino) and Dr Edoardo Rabino (Fiat-Chrysler).
Meanwhile, EUA’s President Professor Helena Nazaré will take part in the fringe session on “The ERA Partnership as backbone of the European innovation eco-system(s)” that will take place from 14.00 to 15.15.
More information on how to register is available on the Convention website.
L’Agence nationale des mobilités européennes s’allie au réseau IxESN
L'Agence Europe-Education-Formation France (2E2F) et l'Association IxESN France vont signer une convention de partenariat le 21 février 2014 à Toulouse lors de l'Assemblée générale de IxESN France.
Antoine GODBERT, directeur de l'Agence 2E2F et Valentin DUPOUEY, Président d'IxESN France, décident de développer leurs actions communes par la mise en oeuvre de projets concertés de formation, de communication et de valorisation de la mobilité dans le cadre du nouveau programme de la Commission Européenne Erasmus+.Cet accord a notamment pour objet de soutenir la réalisation et la diffusion des productions d'enquêtes réalisées par IxESN chaque année, l'ESNSurvey, sur les enjeux liés à la mobilité des étudiants universitaires et non universitaires. More...
Hack Education Weekly News: MOOCs, Money, and the Looming Clown Shortage
MITx and HarvardX release MOOC datasets and visualization tools
By Stephen Carson. "Insights" tools provide intuitive interface for accessing enrollment and demographic data from edX courses. Following the recent release of a series of working papers based on 17 online courses from Harvard and MIT offered on the edX platform, researchers have made available an initial dataset of registration and demographic information coupled with a suite of open-source interactive visualization tools for MITx and HarvardX courses. More...
Google Launches Google Capital and Makes First Investment in Education
By Heidi M. Agustin. On Wednesday, Google officially announced the launch of its new growth equity fund, Google Capital, by making its first investment in education.
As announced in a Google blog post, the new investment arm is backed by Google and led by partners David Lawee, Scott Tierney and Gene Frantz. While it is somewhat similar to Google Ventures in that both aim to invest in the most promising startups, Google Capital differentiates itself in two significant ways: instead of focusing on early-stage investments as Google Venture does, Google Capital will provide late-stage capital for startups that have hit their growth phase. It will also provide more than just a monetary investment. According to the blog post, Google Capital's portfolio of companies may have access to the company's workers. See more...
Coursera Offers CS Specialization Certificates
By Sue Gee. Coursera has a new initiative whereby students who complete a series of courses on a specific topic can earn a Specialization Certificate. Four Computer Science options are among the initial programs, including Data Science.
The idea of Universities awarding certificates and diplomas in recognition that a student has completed a course of study in a specialized subject isn't new and now that Coursera has announced its Specialization Certificates the idea will probably spread. More...
Accreditation and innovation not incompatible
By Daniel Kulinski. A major landmark in open education was reached last week when University of the People was finally accredited by the Distance and Education Training Council, a U.S. Department of Education authorized accrediting agency. The online university with 1700 students from 142 countries has been in operation since 2009 with the objective of becoming "the world’s first non-profit, tuition-free, accredited online academic institution dedicated to opening access to higher education globally for all qualified individuals, despite financial, geographic or societal constraints." Until now students have not been entitled to academic hard currency in the form of full university credits but with accreditation now in order it is likely that UoP will expand considerably and also demonstrate to the world that this educational model is not incompatible with the academic establishment. Indeed the accreditation of UoP must have raised a host of academic eyebrows and an article in Inside Higher Ed, An Innovation Stifler? sees the decision as evidence that accreditation organisations may not be the barriers to innovation in education that they have often been accused of being. More...Closing thoughts on #OCL4Ed
By . As I write this post I realize that I have finally completed a MOOC after many attempts (Open Content Licensing for Educators). I have written several times about why I and thousands of others find it hard to stay the course so it's better to reflect briefly on why I completed this one. Firstly the subject is directly relevant to my work at present and I realised that although I know quite a lot about copyright and Creative Commons there's always more to learn. Secondly the length of course was not so daunting, a mere two weeks. Surely I could fit that into my life. Thirdly, I promised myself that this would be the one I'd complete. In other words the ideal combination of internal and external motivation plus the availability of time. More...The habitus of digital scholars
The first paper coming out from my PhD has just been published by the the Journal of Research in Learning Technology, 21(0).
I’m actually quite excited about it and I have blogged about it here. (I’ll talk more about the Social Theory Applied project I have just joined in a very near future post). More...
