By Inge Ignatia de Waard. While MOOC are of interest for any training and learning, the surplus of mobile learning or mLearning can not be underestimated. In many ways I feel that the benefits that mLearning offers would add to many MOOC environment. To me a future training platform would merge both mLearning features, as well as MOOC options to come to an ultimate online learning environment that caters intuitively (read ubiquitously) to the learner's own contexts ans needs. But before getting there a couple of hurdles need to be taken, to me the most difficult challenges are:

By Inge Ignatia de Waard. And adding to the call for papers I send out earlier today, a call send out by a MOOC conference.
Name of the conference: European MOOCs Stakeholder Summit (eMOOC) 2014
Date of conference: 10, 11 and 12 February 2014
Location: Lausanne, Switzerland.
Deadline for submission of papers: 20 September 2013
More information: http://www.emoocs2014.eu/
Description of the conference:
Organised by the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and P.A.U. Education the event aims to be an opportunity to gatherEuropean actors involved in the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) phenomenon, from policy makers to practitioners andresearchers. This conference is the follow-up of the MOOC Summit 2013. More...

By Audrey Watters. MOOOOOOOOOOOOOCs
Remember in January when Udacity and San Jose State University announced a pilot program where the latter would offer college credit for classes offered by the former? Remember how Techcrunch said it would “end college as we know it?” Well, there’s MOOC-egg on some faces this week as SJSU plans to “pause” the effort, citing the poor performance of enrolled students. “74 percent or more of the students in traditional classes passed, while no more than 51 percent of Udacity students passed any of the three courses,” according to Inside Higher Ed. It’s worth noting that SJSU students taking edX classes, which are offered in a “blended” rather than “online-only” setting, seem to be doing better than those in traditional classes. More...

By Audrey Watters. Testing Sturm und Drang
“New York Fails Common Core Tests,” reads the Politico headline. “Test Scores Sink as New York Adopts Tougher Benchmarks,” says The New York Times. “New York State Stops Lying to Children – and That’s a Good Thing,” says Dropout Nation. So yeah, lots of sturm und drang this week as New York State released the results of how students performed on this year’s tests – tests that were aligned with the new Common Core State Standards. Fewer than a third passed.
The Wyoming Department of Education also released the scores for its 2013 Proficiency Assessments for Wyoming Students this week. The proficiency rates declined across all grade levels and content areas when compared to the 2012 exams. This year’s exams were partially aligned with the Common Core State Standards. More...

By Audrey Watters. The (Federal, State, and City) Politics of Education
Philadelphia School District officials say that schools in the city will open on time now that the city has promised to come up with the $50 million the district says it needs. For a look at the struggles that teachers in Philly have faced over recent years, read the recap of recent school district history by Mary Beth Hertz.
NCLB waivers are at risk in three states, Politico’s Caitlin Emma reports. Kansas, Oregon, and Washington are now considered “at risk” by the Department of Education as they haven’t sufficiently tied student performance to teacher and principal evaluations.
But Maine, I guess, is behaving nicely as the Department of Education approved this week the state’s NCLB waiver request.
Louisiana is boosting the funding for its new Course Choice program, which allows high school students to receive credits for classes taken from a variety of vendors, including for-profit companies. 4000 students have signed up so far.
The Department of Education says it will reconsider changes it made to the eligibility for Parent PLUS Loans. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, denials for loans “shot up by 50 percent for parents of students at historically black colleges and universities,” which along with members of Congress, have asked the DOE to revisit the new rules.
After closing a record number of schools, Chicago Public Schools is now requesting applications for new charter school operators for the 2014–2015 and 2015–2016 school year. Because "screw you," I guess.
New York City says it will issue scorecards on teacher colleges. Because "data," I guess.
Two people were shot, one fatally, along the Chicago Public Schools’ “Safe Passage” route on Saturday. The “Safe Passage” route has been touted by city officials as a way for thousands of students to get to and from school safely, many of whom have been affected by the recent school closures in the city and will have to walk farther this academic year.
South Korea is moving forward with its plans to use digital textbooks throughout the country. According to the Yonhap News Agency, the education minister says that “social studies and science textbooks are being developed for third- and fourth-year students of elementary schools and first- or second-year middle school students.
India has launched a national repository for open educational resources. More...

By Melonie Fullick. Later this week I’m going to be on a panel about the inescapable subject of MOOCs, so for this post I’m thinking through an issue I’ve been noticing since I last wrote a big post on this topic, which was during the peak of the media mayhem in July 2012. For many of those researching higher education, even those who’ve been doing it for just a few years as I have, the ongoing hyperbolic MOOC debate that has hijacked the higher ed news has been quite frustrating. Of course, there is plenty of bluster on both sides of this debate. But it’s really troubling to see many perfectly legitimate criticisms reduced to straw-person arguments about “faculty fear“ (“those teachers just don’t want to lose their jobs!”), or about how those who are skeptical must be “against accessibility”. More...

By Léo Charbonneau. Last November, the New York Times declared 2012 the Year of the MOOC. Now, halfway through 2013, the MOOC momentum appears to be slowing – or, at least, shifting in a new direction. Some higher education observers go further, claiming the MOOC “revolution” is over.
For the uninitiated, MOOCs are massive open online courses generally offered free of charge by professors at elite universities to tens of thousands of people at a time. They are also a source of much breathless hyperbole about being a “game changer” or “creative disruptor” or “tsunami” that will sweep away traditional university campuses. More...

By Chris Parr. The first courses on the UK’s first massive open online course platform Futurelearn will be unveiled in mid-September, it has been announced.
Specific details of the first Moocs to be made available are thin on the ground, although Futurelearn has confirmed that they will cover topics including literature; history; social sciences; computing and IT; and physical science, and be designed to work on mobile devices.
Times Higher Education revealed in December last year that the University of Warwick’s Business School was planning to offer a behavioural science Mooc on Futurelearn, although it has not been confirmed that this will be one of the first courses to go live. More...

By Carrie Saarinen. C.S. Lewis said, “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” Some people feel the same way about online courses, hence, the MOOC was born.
Working on the front lines of Canvas Network, I’ve learned there are plenty of great reasons to embrace MOOCs. Sometimes I talk with people who’ve thought long and hard about the philosophy behind MOOCs, while others approach it from a carefree "I just want to try it!" perspective. Whatever your mentality, teaching a MOOC is a great experience with lots of practical value. Here are a few reasons to consider teaching a MOOC. More...

By Jeannie Crowley. While the term "MOOC" brings to mind thousands of students viewing recorded lectures without much interaction, alternative models are fostering creativity and collaboration with peers. What is a MOOC? The term has dominated the online education conversation over the past year, yet there is still a lot of ambiguity surrounding its definition. Even a look at the components of the acronym itself--massive open online course--can lead to more questions than answers:

• Massive:What is the threshold for massive? Is the threshold relative to the size of the institution?
• Open:Is the platform open source? Can anyone lead a course? Can any institution offer a course? Can any student enroll? Are all of the materials open? (Free and open are not synonymous.) Is it accessible for diverse learners and languages?
• Online: How do we define online? Are we thinking about SMS/mobile-only courses? What about blended learning?
• Course:What makes it a course? Why are we trying to replicate face-to-face experiences (courses) in a new medium? Is the traditional semester approach ideal for online environments?

It is tempting to create a one-size-fits-all definition of a MOOC based on our answers to these questions. More...