Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Lucy Ferriss. Punctuating dialogue, for reasons I fail to understand completely, is one of the hardest things for my fiction-writing students to master. Autocorrect inserts a capital after any form of so-called terminal punctuation, so “Are you going out?” he asked becomes “Are you going out?” He asked. Certain that the verb accompanying the speaker’s name is the dialogue tag, many students write, She laughed, “That’s a funny joke.” Master classes on the rules, the craft, and the art of punctuating dialogue make some impression, but deeply confused students often default to abjuring any sort of punctuation: “I think I’ll go out” he said “after I’ve done the laundry.” More...

By Hannah Winston. As more and more aspects of higher education become digitized or enhanced by technology, the process of applying to college and planning a successful career there has followed suit. The problem? Students still fall through the cracks. A new report looks at the plethora of digital tools marketed to students to help them get into and make the most of college. It tackles individual websites and mobile apps, like College Confidential and Find Tuition, and provides a comprehensive look at what each offers. More...

By Lawrence Biemiller. Preliminary results of a study of 16 massive open online courses offered through the University of Pennsylvania show that only a small percentage of people who start the courses finish them—and that, on average, only half of those who register for the courses even watch the first lecture. The study, conducted by the university’s Graduate School of Education, is reviewing data from about a million users of the courses, which Penn offered on the Coursera platform, from June 2012 to June 2013. More...

By Eric Hoover. The College Board has delayed the release of the revamped SAT by one year, the organization announced on Tuesday. The new examination will make its debut in the spring of 2016. At the College Board’s annual conference, in October, David Coleman, its president, said colleges would get an early look at the new test this winter, a year ahead of the original rollout date. But in an email to college counselors on Tuesday, Mr. Coleman said feedback from admissions officials and other experts had persuaded the organization to push back its schedule. “We heard clearly from our members … that you need more time, and we listened,” Mr. Coleman wrote. More...

By David Kent. As our readers know, we ran a panel discussion last month in Toronto at the 5th Annual Canadian Science Policy Conference. It was a packed room and the panel featured heated exchanges at some points (even between panellists!). Many diverse opinions were shared, pointing to a clear need for academic-training reform. Chris Corkery began by representing the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars and their recent survey findings from ~20% of Canadian postdoctoral scholars. This launched the panel discussion by showing that early career researchers in the postdoctoral stage were a growing cohort of young bright minds in their mid-30s who aspired to becoming career researchers, but found themselves in a temporary holding zone when it came to career options. More...