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In all the discussion about learning management systems, open educational resources (OERs), massive open online courses (MOOCs), and the benefits and challenges of online learning, perhaps the most important issues concern how technology is changing the way we teach and - more importantly - the way students learn. For want of a better term, we call this “pedagogy.”
What is clear is that major changes in the way we teach post-secondary students are being triggered by online learning and the new technologies that increase flexibility in, and access to, post-secondary education. Printer-friendly version. More...

By Jason Rhode. UPCEA has made freely available the recording of Cable Green’s general session presentation titled, “Innovation, Access, and Open Education: The Business & Policy Case for OER” at the recent Summit for Online Leadership and Strategy. While the slides are available here, the recording is now available here. See more...

By Alex Usher. You may have noted the gradual proliferation of rankings at the Times Higher Education over the last few years.  First the World University Rankings, then the World Reputation Rankings (a recycling of reputation survey data from the World Rankings), then the “100 under 50” (World Rankings, restricted to institutions founded since the early 60s, with a methodological twist to make the results less ridiculous), then the “BRICS Rankings” (World Rankings results, with developed countries excluded, and similar methodological twists). More...

By Jenny Mackness. This is an open letter to Keith Hamon. Since it is open anyone is welcome to respond, but the thoughts here have been prompted by contact with Keith.
Hi Keith – I have been thinking about your invitation to discuss some of the ideas around rhizomatic learning with you further.
I am still finding it difficult to get my head round it – but maybe that’s because I haven’t read enough of ‘A Thousand Plateaus’. On one level it all seems so obvious. More...

2013 was a year of hype for MOOCs (massive open online courses). Great big numbers and great big hopes were followed by some disappointing first results. But the head of edX, Anant Agarwal, makes the case that MOOCs still matter -- as a way to share high-level learning widely and supplement (but perhaps not replace) traditional classrooms. Agarwal shares his vision of blended learning, where teachers create the ideal learning experience for 21st century students. More...

By rhizo14. The rhizomatic learning course #rhizo14 is the first open course I’ve ever taught without affiliation. (though certainly being employed by my university and having an invested and interested partner allows me to have the ‘free time’ to pursue it) I have no partner that I’m working with or no school supporting it. This is the educational exploration I’ve been doing for the last 8-9 years, and I invited whoever may want to join to come along with me for the ride. It is, in many ways, the vision of MOOCs that I have had since we first starting talking about them in 2008. The course participation has been fascinating… and enlightening. Don’t take my word for it, check out some of the highlights for yourself on Cathleen Nardi’s curation page. The course is being ‘designed’, if you can call it that, to expose the concepts of rhizomatic learning through a succession of challenges. The challenges have been developed on the fly based on my sense of what might help push the conversation to a new and interesting place. They are structured to challenge the cultural assumptions that are prevalent around learning and to have people share their responses to it. More...

By jaapsoft2. Language needs a medium. The medium could be sound, paper, books, screen, phone. Medium has possibilities and impossibilities.
Telling stories has laws and rules. Listeners react on the story if you don’t keep to the rules. Writing has rules.
learning depends on language, the medium (books, blogs) of the language restricts or benefits the learning. The medium of telling has rules and laws, the art of story telling is to use these rules to make a good story. Books do have their rules and possibilities. Newspapers and blogging are media with possibilities and impossibilities. More...

By Tom Woodward. I’m attending ELI 2014. MOOC seems to be synonymous with any online or blended “educational” offering regardless of size or openness.
That’s a pretty open definition.
Massive
Massive (or massively) is a strange word to ignore. It is the first letter after all. It seems important to differentiate between online courses which have lots of participants and courses which use massive participation to change course possibilities.

• If a student can’t tell¹ if they’re the only student in the course or if there are 5,000² other students, you just have an online course. Please retract your media statements before the old school online learning people burn you in effigy.
• If you take your 5,000 students and break them down so they are in “normal” sized cohorts that proceed independently, congratulations you have several online courses. Please call your mom and tell her you might have overstated your MOOC street cred.
• If having 5,000 students actually hurts your students, you have an online mess. Punish yourself by reading YouTube comments until you lose hope in humanity. More...

Are we moral by nature or as a result of learning and culture? Are men and women "hard-wired" to think differently? Do our genes or our schools make us intelligent? These all seem like important questions, but maybe they have no good scientific answer.
Once, after all, it seemed equally important to ask whether light was a wave or a particle, or just what arcane force made living things different from rocks. Science didn't answer these questions—it told us they were the wrong questions to ask. Light can be described either way; there is no single cause of life.
Every year on the Edge website the intellectual impresario and literary agent John Brockman asks a large group of thinkers to answer a single question. (Full disclosure: Brockman Inc. is my agency.) This year, the question is about which scientific ideas should be retired. More...

'Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations'. Senator William Fulbright
As the debate on internationalisation of higher education grows stronger, so does the interest in mobility not only of students, but also of staff. This is likely to intensify in the coming months, as the European Commission's new Erasmus+ programme, starting in 2014, promises more opportunities and funding for higher education and teaching staff to study, train and work in another country. Indeed, higher education staff will account for a significant percentage of the 1 million beneficiaries of a mobility period funded by the programme between 2014 and 2020. Read more...