Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Pierre-Antoine Ullmo. MOOCs have just appeared and the big question has already been raised: are they sustainable? In other words, are they pedagogically adequate, institutionally relevant and financially viable? MOOCs are rupturing the norms of how we have taught and learned until now. They enable a fresh approach to continuing education. They demonstrate the irrelevance of existing quality standards. They demand a new approach to certification… One of the questions that comes up again and again refers to the business model. What is the business model for MOOCs? How much do they cost? What are the revenues? Simple questions but difficult to answer. More...

On Feb 10-12, over 450 education stakeholders met at the European MOOCs Stakeholders Summit, a conference focused on massive open online courses and their place in the wider education field. The conference proceedings are also massive, open and online - click here to access the 300-page document. Are they worth consulting? We'll give you an overview of the summit and you can decide for yourself if you want to dig deeper. We've already published a recap of the first day of the conference and posted the videos of the first keynote speeches, so let's get right to the second day. More...

The EMOOCs 2014 conference started yesterday, opening with keynote speeches from EPFL's President Patrick Aebischer and Deputy Director General of Education and Culture at the European Commission Xavier Prats Monné. The afternoon sessions took place in four tracks: business, research, experience, and policy. Recap on Storify. More...

Creative Commons would like to invite you to a breakfast discussion „Really Open Education. Domestic Policies for Open Educational Resources”. The event will take place on the 18th of February 2014 and be hosted in the European Parliament by Róża Gräfin von Thun und Hohenstein, MEP. Website. More...

The deadline for to submit an abstract for the VII International GUIDE Conference, Culture in the Midst of Global Modernization: The Role of Distance Education, has been extended to February 24, 2014. Authors can apply by filling out this Call for Papers form. GUIDE Conference website. More...

One of the principal critiques of massive open online courses (MOOCs) is that of the massive amounts of students that register, only a tiny fraction actually completes each course. Roi Tzikorel, Chief Technical Officer at the Trump Foundation, believes that using MOOCs for group learning rather than individual learning could significantly improve the completion rates.  He and his friend Michael Shurp developed an approach towards MOOC pedagogy that is now being adopted at the national level, but it started as a personal endeavour. Tzikorel and Shurp were taking a MOOC and they gathered some friends in a Facebook group to take the course together. More...

The European MOOCs Scoreboard has been updated for February 2014, showing 10% growth in the MOOCs offered from European institutions and 12% growth in the rest of the world. According to Open Education Europa’s research, the number of MOOCs continues to grow, both in Europe and globally. Meanwhile, MOOC pedagogy continues to develop as different providers experiment and adapt their models. We recently wrote about the emerging trends in the monetization of MOOCs. More...

Over the last decade, the importance of mobile devices has grown dramatically in education. The latest issue of RUSC. Universities and Knowledge Society Journal devotes a special section to the analysis and assessment of the current state of m-learning by studying specific cases. RUSC. Universities and Knowledge Society Journal. More...

Cedefop – Municipality of Thessaloniki/European Youth Capital – Regional Directorate for Education
Skills and Employability: labour market opportunities for youth
21 February 2014,Thessaloniki, Olympion Film Theatre
Since 2009,  Greece has been struggling with economic depression, severe youth unemployment (now around 55%) and plummeting wages and living standards. The debt crisis exposed structural weaknesses of the Greek economy, including the weak link between education and the labour market. Policy makers need to help young people make informed decisions about learning and working if Greece is to make the most of its rich skills reserves. This is the direction taken by recent national policies and legislation. More...

Young people with vocational education and training (VET) qualifications, which include a significant amount of work-based learning, have higher employment rates compared to those who come from general education or from fully or mainly school-based VET, Cedefop Director James Calleja told the European Commission’s monitoring conference in Brussels (11-12 February).
In his keynote speech, Mr Calleja said that, according to Cedefop research, ‘employers place a premium on work experience, and in countries where VET is well developed, includes work-based learning and is governed together with social partners, it results in better labour-market outcomes for VET graduates.’ More...