Formation Continue du Supérieur

Work programme 2013 - Download the Work programme 2013.
Introduction
Cedefop’s 2013 work programme is consistent with its medium-term priorities 2012-14. It is aligned to the objectives of the European Union’s ‘Europe 2020’ strategy and the policy framework devised to achieve them. This includes, in particular, the flagship initiatives, the annual growth surveys, the Education and training 2020 framework, the Bruges communiqué with its long-term objectives and short-term deliverables for vocational education and training (VET), the European Commission’s employment and youth employment packages and the communication Rethinking education. This policy framework, with its focus on the interdependence between employment, economic, social, education and development policies, reinforces VET’s pivotal role in meeting Europe’s socioeconomic challenges. Cedefop’s interdisciplinary approach and its aim to bridge the worlds of education and training and employment by bringing together its work on VET policies, common European tools and skills is well suited to support this focus.
This work programme meets European Commission demands for specific support. The work planned to support European VET policy development and implementation also reflects Member States’ and other stakeholders’ needs, most notably those of social partners. Together with its continued provision of information on EU VET, these activities reflect Cedefop’s mission as outlined in its founding regulation.
To ensure synergy of common efforts, Cedefop cooperates closely with European institutions, especially the Commission and Parliament, as well as the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, the European Training Foundation (ETF), Eurofound and other European organisations. As Croatia will become a Cedefop partner country with its accession to the EU, cooperation with the ETF will also include easing this transition process.
Cooperation with international organisations like OECD, ILO and Unesco has proved commonly beneficial. Building on this cooperation, Cedefop will have further opportunities to share its expertise globally, for instance in the OECD’s skills strategy or a Unesco/Unevoc working group on sustainable development and greening skills. Structured along economic, equity and transformative perspectives, recent recommendations on VET by Unesco member states resonate European priority areas and request international guidelines to ease validation and allow comparing qualifications based on learning outcomes. Work on statistics and indicators with OECD and Unesco will continue.
Combining its research and networking capabilities, Cedefop uses its expertise to strengthen (European) cooperation in VET and increase awareness of VET’s role and importance. By way of conferences and workshops or presentations it promotes discussion and exchange of ideas and experience between policy-makers, social partners, researchers and practitioners to find the best ways to tackle challenges.
Following this introduction, Chapter 2 outlines the policy background for Cedefop’s work programme 2013. It takes account of the overall strategy set by Europe 2020 and more recent policy developments such as the Commission communications Towards a job-rich recovery (employment package), Youth employment and Rethinking education and the related staff working paper VET for better skills, growth and jobs and the Council recommendation on validation.
Chapters 3 to 5 outline the planned activities by medium-term priority. Chapters 6 and 7 present communication activities as well as those planned for management and administration of Cedefop for 2013.
Cedefop’s work in 2013 is largely determined by a continuation of its most important activities. However, actions will change as projects enter new phases. In addition, the Centre receives new requests, in particular the European process of economic coordination (‘European semester’), as follow-up to the actions specified in the ‘Employment package’ and cooperation activities to support alternate forms of VET (dual forms of training) agreed at a ministerial meeting in Berlin in December 2012. These require addons to projects or adaptation of content, working modes and presentation of results.
In 2013, the Centre will have to adapt to a substantially smaller budget and manage a reduction of posts on the establishment plan (5% in the years 2013 to 2017). Both necessitate focusing activities continuously on the Centre’s core mission and making savings wherever possible. Download the Work programme 2013.

VET-Alert - Just published on Vocational Education and Training - April 2013 issue. VETAlert - no 4 - April 2013.
Cedefop's "VETAlert" for April 2013 is now available for download: http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/EN/newsletter/vetalert-newsletter.aspx.
VETAlert is a monthly selection of publications on vocational education and training available from Cedefop’s bibliographic database VET-Bib.
To receive this monthly review in your mailbox, please subscribe to VETAlert.

Cedefop's Library and Documentation Service would like to thank all those who participated in the 2012 survey about the VET-Bib database.
According to the 504 responses received, the VET-Bib database is used rather frequently, its content is considered useful and the interface is user-friendly.
To make the VET-Bib database even friendlier, we have re-designed the user experience taking on board some of the comments received in the survey. In particular, we have ensured that there is a permanent VET-Bib banner on the home page of the Cedefop web portal. We have also reduced the number of clicks necessary to perform a search in VET-Bib.
Visit the re-designed VET-Bib Bibliographic Database. If you have any questions, please contact us at library@cedefop.europa.eu - Cedefop Library and Documentation Service.
Link: VET-Bib survey 2012.

Sur les mentions et spécialités de Master: Lettre ouverte à Mme Geneviève FIORASO, Ministre de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche - PETITION
Nous hébergeons volontiers cette Lettre ouverte écrite par des membres de l’université Lille 3, concernant les mentions et spécialités de Master, que la ministre se propose de faire disparaître en grand nombre, et que vous pouvez soutenir grâce au module ci-contre.
Lettre envoyée à Mme Nicole MÉNAGER, présidente du comité de suivi Master:
Au motif de rendre l’offre nationale de formation plus « lisible » et plus « démocratique », il est envisagé de réduire de façon drastique le nombre de mentions et plus encore, de spécialités, de Master. Une liste limitative d’intitulés serait mise en place, dont dépendrait le processus d’accréditation qui remplacerait celui, actuel, d’habilitation des formations actuellement mises en place par les Universités et pensées, en amont, par leurs équipes pédagogiques, avec en principale ligne de mire l’insertion professionnelle des diplômés.
Si l’argument de l’absence de « lisibilité » de ces mentions peut éventuellement être avancé dans quelques cas, pour la grande majorité de nos formations, en particulier pour celles issues des anciens DESS, il ne résiste pas à l’analyse. Bien au contraire, l’affichage clair et détaillé de la mention, de la spécialité, voire du parcours (à inscrire d’ailleurs sur le diplôme) traduit précisément les compétences acquises par l’étudiant – cette précision est ce qui motive l’affluence de demandes d’inscription dans nos formations et explique les taux d’insertion professionnelle élevés, objectivement mesurés par les observatoires des universités.
Nous rappelons qu’un Master est une formation, un développement de compétences, dans une spécialité donnée, en deux ans (Bac + 5), avec adossement à la recherche universitaire, selon le cahier des charges du LMD, et qu’une spécialité de Master est tournée vers un ou des métier(s) clairement identifié(s) par les équipes, d’universitaires et de professionnels, qui la portent, la font vivre et évoluer, et défini(s) objectivement en lien avec une ou des fiche(s) du Répertoire National des Certifications Professionnelles (RNCP).
Nous rappelons et affirmons que ce qui fait la spécificité d’un diplômé de Master, ce qui signale ses compétences et signe son employabilité, ce qui est sa carte de visite, lisible et reconnue (dans bien des cas, depuis très longtemps, et ce, grâce au travail des équipes concernées) par les milieux professionnels pertinents, c’est, précisément, la spécialité clairement affichée de son diplôme.
Nous exigeons donc le maintien de nos spécialités de Master clairement identifiées et identifiables, qui sont un élément essentiel dans l’accès à l’emploi de nos diplômés et mettons solennellement en garde contre toute mesure qui nuirait à la réelle lisibilité des compétences professionnelles garanties par les diplômes auxquels nous préparons et contre toute décision dogmatique qui compromettrait l’insertion professionnelle de nos diplômés, à l’heure où tout, justement, doit être mis en œuvre pour la favoriser.
Notre mission est dans nos formations, que nous ne voulons pas voir nivelées dans des mentions de Master fourre-tout et par la disparition des spécialités. Nous souhaitons retrouver la sérénité indispensable à l’accomplissement de cette mission, par la levée des menaces qui pèsent aujourd’hui sur les actuelles mentions et spécialités de Master, dont l’effet délétère serait d’opacifier l’offre de formation des universités et de rendre proprement invisibles nos compétences. Les professionnels qui interviennent dans nos formations, nos diplômés et nos étudiants soutiennent et soutiendront cette légitime revendication.
Premiers signataires: Fabrice ANTOINE, Traduction, lexicologie, Lille 3, Bernard SÈVE, Esthétique et philosophie de l’art, Lille 3; Yves MACCHI, Linguistique Hispanique, Lille 3; Anne CARLIER, Sciences du Langage", Lille 3; Alain DEREMETZ, Langue et littérature latines, Lille 3; Françoise SAQUER-SABIN, Études hébraïques, Lille3; Michèle GUILLEMONT, Espagnol, Lille 3; Alexandra POULAIN, Études irlandaises, Lille 3; Rosa CARON, Psychopathologie, Lille3; Georgette DAL, Sciences du langage, Lille 3; Annie RISLER, Sciences du langage, Lille3; Paul-Henri GIRAUD, Espagnol, Lille 3; Christophe BATSCH, Hébreu, Lille 3; Maryla LAURENT, Langue et littérature polonaises, Lille 3; Anne-Catherine DE BOUVIER LOBO, Caen Basse-Normandie; Fiona MCINTOSH-VARJABÉDIAN, Littérature comparée, Lille 3; Philip MILLER, Linguistique anglaise, Paris 7; Marie BOLTON, Histoire américaine, Blaise Pascal (Clermont-Ferrand II); Serge ROLET, Russe, Lille 3; Christophe NIEWIADOMSKI, Sciences de l’Éducation, Lille 3; Christine HUGUET-MÉRIAUX, Littérature anglais, Lille 3; Vincent CARADEC, Sociologie, Lille 3; Daniel TOUDIC, Anglais, Rennes 2; Pierre LABROSSE, Linguistique anglaise, Paris IV-Sorbonne; Anne-Florence GILLARD-ESTRADA, Anglais, Rouen; Sarah HATCHUEL, Littérature anglaise, Le Havre; Guyonne LEDUC, Littérature anglaise, Lille 3.

By Mehdi Maghsoodnia. It’s no secret that universities across the nation are facing more challenges than ever before. Shrinking budgets are contrasted with higher costs and aging facilities. The government is getting more involved from a regulatory standpoint while decreasing its funding support for education. Demand is up, enrollments are all over the map and across the board, and graduation rates are down. It’s a roller coaster of peaks and valleys that leaves schools fighting for ways to cope, retain students, and help them graduate on time.
So it comes as no surprise that schools are looking for a silver bullet to answer their questions and solve their problems. Today, and for the past year or so, that bullet has been MOOCs, massive open online courses offered by companies like Coursera, edX, and Udacity. These online courses are virtually attended by students around the world; some courses even boast attendance in the hundreds of thousands. They’re popular for good reason: they offer access, often at no cost, to top-notch classes previously relegated only to those smart (and privileged) enough to attend the nation’s top schools. They’re a natural extension of traditional teaching that’s enabled by the internet.
And they’re an effective tactic; people are open to learning via high quality content on the Internet, a fact validated by the popularity of sites like Khan Academy and TED.com. Schools create very high quality content, and so it is natural to want to extend that content to massive audiences. MOOCs provide tremendous scale—a single course can be taught to an unlimited number of online students—and are coming of age at a time when many schools are seeking to address the demand for our schools’ content both domestically and abroad. Read more...

Interesting arguments from the CEO of LiveCode. These two points are particularly interesting. The first is: What sits between Scratch, or Alice, or App Inventor, and professional-class languages like JavaScript or C++? I would put Python in there, but I still see that the Scratch->Python gap is a big one.  The second paragraph is really striking, and I’d like to see more evidence. Does Israel’s great CS ed system lead to the strong startup culture, or is it because Israelis value technology that they have both a great startup culture and a great CS Ed system?
Up to about age 13 there are some excellent tools in widespread use, most notable among them being the free and popular Scratch from MIT and MIT App Investor  However students outgrow Scratch by around age 13 and schools often don’t make a good choice of language for the next phase in a child’s education.  Many traditional programing languages such as JavaScript or C++ are completely inappropriate for this age group. Read more...

By Helen Ku. Google Inc yesterday unveiled a Chinese-language version of its new service YouTube EDU, which allows Internet users to access videotaped courses from three local universities.
The search giant said National Taiwan University, National Tsing Hua University and National Chiao Tung University had uploaded more than 140 video courses about math, literature and science to the YouTube EDU Web site since the beginning of the year.
“The courses allow Internet users to learn not only academic knowledge, but also cultural aspects. They also provide great opportunities for foreign students to learn Taiwanese culture,” Angela Lin, manager of YouTube’s strategic partnerships division, said at a press conference. Read more...