By Jonathan Tapson. A lot can change in a year. Twelve months ago, the traditional universities were doomed, condemned to irrelevance by an onslaught of MOOCs. Not every last one of them was going to die; Sebastian Thrun said that perhaps ten might survive. This was not very reassuring for the executives, staff, students, and alumni of the 20,000 universities which don’t fall into the top-10, when ranked according to the criterion: “Universities which will survive MOOCs.” We haven’t yet seen this category in the Times Higher Ed rankings, but we are sure its appearance is imminent. One year later, it seems that, like Mark Twain’s, reports of these deaths are greatly exaggerated. In fact, as a Slate writer put it, “Anti-MOOC really is the new black.“ San Jose’s State University’s MOOCs-for-credit experiment has ended in qualified failure. There has been a plethora of articles and commentaries suggesting that the MOOCs were all just a bad dream, and we can go back to the chalkboard with a sigh of relief. More...
In my previous post, we talked about the general information available on MOOCs and contemplated the frequently asked questions. In nutshell, launching a MOOC requires the following:
1. A great idea for a course
2. A great plan
2. Lots of time for creating content
3. A platform to host the MOOC
4. A good social media campaign
5. A group of teachers you can rely on
Lets assume you have the idea and the plan. And the content is ready too. In this post, we talk about the technological aspect of MOOCing aka the possibilities of hosting a MOOC via WizIQ Virtual Classroom, and how should you go about it.
This post is written by Mark Williamson, Director of Action for Happiness*. This blog is part of the Wikiprogress Series on Subjective Well-being.This post, written by the OECD’s Charlotte Demuijnck, provides an overview of the OECD’s input on target measurements in the post-2015 development framework and agenda. The OECD paper Strengthening National Statistical Systems to Monitor Global Goals on post-2015 goals monitoring is the fifth thematic paper in a series which outlines the Organisation’s position on the global debate in the lead up to the UN 68th General Assembly which begins on Tuesday, 17 September 2013. This post is part of the Wikiprogress Post-2015 series.
By Marilyn Achiron Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills. There was a good reason why our teachers demanded our attention in class: it wasn’t about power; it was about performance – ours. As this month’s PISA in Focus shows, the disciplinary climate in schools is strongly related to student performance.
You might be surprised to learn that, according to the reports of students who participated in PISA 2009, most students in most PISA-participating countries and economies enjoy orderly classrooms. For example, across OECD countries, more than two out of three students reported that never or hardly ever is there noise and disorder in their classrooms. In some countries, classrooms are models of orderliness: fewer than one in ten students in Korea and Thailand reported that they cannot work well in class because of disruptions; and fewer than one in ten students in Japan, Kazakhstan and Shanghai-China reported that their teacher has to wait a long time for students to quiet down before they can begin class. More...
The new university year has not even begun for millions of students worldwide and already many are worrying about how they will pay their tuition fees. But for those asking themselves if it is all worth it, the answer is reassuring.
People with university-level degrees earn one and a half times as much as those without in OECD countries, as Education at a Glance 2013 tells us. These graduates are also more likely to have a job, with 75% of them in full-time employment, compared with 64% of those who did not complete secondary education (high-school).
But going to university is not an automatic guarantee of employment, and at a time of economic uncertainty and rising tuition fees, the prospect of starting one’s adult life already in debt through student loans may deter some. So how to acquire the skills to make you a hot property on the 21st century labour market? One option is apprenticeships, which can involve learning on the job or a combination of classes and work experience.
Countries with well-established vocational and apprenticeship programmes have been more effective in holding the line on youth unemployment, and oftentimes apprenticeships come with a guaranteed job at the end. At the same time, however, some consider vocational education a less attractive option than more academic education; and some research suggests that participation in vocational education increases the risk of unemployment at later ages.
Whatever choice you make, it is unlikely that once you graduate from school, college, or apprenticeship that you will be saying goodbye to education for the rest of your adult life. New technologies mean new jobs, and new skills to perform them in every walk of life. So whatever else you bring away from your education, make sure you do not forget how to learn.
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The ILO's International Training Centre (ITC-ILO) and the ETF will jointly offer a new training and knowledge-sharing course on career guidance policies and practices. The training in Turin, Italy, on 21-25 October 2013 is designed for planners and decision makers in employment, education and training. It responds to an increasing demand for career guidance and related capacity-building services in partner countries.
Course content
The one-week course will comprise five learning units:
(1) The need and rationale for career guidance;
(2) Delivery models of career guidance - finding the optimal career guidance mix;
(3) The crucial role of labour market and career information;
(4) Key elements of effective career guidance;
(5) Next steps of policy implementation - key messages and ways forward.
The course will pay special attention to the specific issues (i.e. informal economy, negative stereotyping of technical and vocational education and training (TVET), specific meaning of 'career'), which developing and transition countries need to address when building career guidance services.
Lecturers and scientific support
Activity manager of the course is Mostefa Boudiaf (ITC-ILO) and the main lecturers will be Dr Gideon Arulmani (India), Dr John McCarthy (ICCDPP), Donna Koeltz (ILO) and Helmut Zelloth (ETF). Scientific support in the course design has been provided by Professor Ronald Sultana (Malta) and Dr Aboubakr Badawi (Egypt).
Expected participants
The course is targeted both to employment and education/training sector representatives:
• Employment, TVET and education planners at national, regional and local government levels;
• Employment services staff;
• Representatives of employers and workers' organisations;
• Members of boards of trustees of educational and training institutions and bodies, or similar committees; and
• Leaders in guidance professional societies and unions.
Deadline for application
The deadline for application is 16 September 2013. Interested candidates are kindly requested to fill in the online registration form. The course leaflet provides more information.
NB: The ETF, as a decentralised agency of the European Union, is a non-profit entity. The course fees are charged solely by the ILO to cover for the tuition fees and specified subsistence costs.
The IAU Validation Workshop for Anglophone Africa of its new project to support academic librarians in the use, re-use and production of Open Educational Resources (OER) will open tomorrow. The Workshop, organized in partnership with the Association of African Universities (AAU) and with support from UNESCO's Participation Fund, will bring together some 30 academic librarians from 10 African countries. Its aim is two-fold: to provide all participants with equal and updated knowledge on OER and to discuss the content of IAU's project to adequately fit local needs. It is taking place from 12 to 13 September 2013 in Accra, Ghana. More information on the workshop will be posted on the IAU website soon afterwards. Contact: Amanda Sudic
Generally speaking, language is to culture what a key is to a door: It allows us to access and explore a new space. A space of cultures and ideas, but above all a space occupied by fellow human beings. Learning foreign languages brings us into contact with others, it allows us to understand them better and enables us to live and work with them.
German, in particular, is a language of opportunities: Speaking German significantly improves the employability of Irish people looking for a job in a multilingual environment in Ireland where companies are in search of staff equally qualified in professional skills and foreign languages. A good knowledge of German also offers an easy access to the German-speaking labour markets in Europe which are confronted with a severe demographic problem and subsequently a lack of skilled workers.
For this reason the German Embassy and the Goethe-Institut Irland in Dublin in conjunction with the Austrian and Swiss Embassies initiated a marketing campaign aiming at fostering the learning of German throughout Ireland. The main partners are the German-Irish Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the German Studies Association in Ireland (GSAI), the Business German in Ireland Working Group (BuGI), the Association of German Teachers in Ireland (GDI) and a number of Irish institutions working in the field of secondary and third level education. Many Irish education and business institutions have expressed their support.
The campaign will engage with a broad spectrum of the Irish population - pupils, students, parents, school principals, business people and policymakers. The initiative wants to highlight that German is an important language worth learning.
Following a successful media campaign in February and March this year, negotiations are under way with Irish, German and multinational companies based in Ireland on an internship programme for German language learners on secondary and third level. The idea is to find companies that are willing to offer short term work placements for potential employees during the summer, autumn or spring break. From October 2013 a road show (“Deutschmobil”) will follow. For more information, you can consult the German Connects' website.
By Queenter Mawinda. The Executive Secretary for the Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA) Professor Mayunga Nkunya has said that Tanzania still lags behind in university students’ enrollment rate compared to other East African countries.
Professor Nkunya made the observation early this week in an interview during the second East African Community university students’ debates on EAC integration organized by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the German agency for international development. More...
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