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By Jeannie Rea (NTEU National Office). Universities Australia (UA) should be congratulated on today’s launch (27 February) of its $5m ‘Smarter Australia’ campaign to promote Australian higher education, Jeannie Rea, President of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) said this afternoon.
“The NTEU shares UA’s view that it is important for all Australians to better understand the significant economic, social and contributions universities make to Australian society,” Rea said.
“Ensuring that all Australians are aware of universities role in our society and economy is the responsibility not only of universities, but also university staff and their students. This is especially important in the context of the 2013 Federal election where policies related to university independence and the cost of attending university deserve to be fully debated by both sides of politics.”
Rea said that the NTEU shares many of the objectives outlined by UA and especially welcomes its acknowledgement of the high cost Australian government-supported students already pay for their university education and therefore placing a strong emphasis on the need for increased public investment in our universities. See more...

By Nathan J. Daun-Barnett. In a 21st century knowledge economy, countries across the globe are struggling with growing their stock of college educated workers while balancing concerns over the equitable distribution of opportunities to attend college.  The U.S. system is among the most “accessible” in the world, in the sense that nearly any high school graduate can find a place to enroll and potentially earn a degree.
In practice, that “American Dream” frequently goes unrealized in greater proportions for lower income families and under-represented minority students. As a consequence, much of the college access literature in the U.S. addresses these forms of social stratification in analyses and implications.  There is, unfortunately, a disconnect between the theory and evidence presented by the research community and the range of policy alternatives initiated at the state and federal levels. There are at least two problems that make research difficult to translate into policy – the research community does not operate as quickly as the policymaking process, and as a result, evidence that can be brought to bear quickly by federal agencies may be given disproportionate weight by policymakers seeking to legislate policy solutions. See more...

Episode 39 of our podcast series features Professor Isa Jahnke from Umeå University in Sweden. In the podcast she sheds light on her recent work on interactive media and learning, as well as the concept of digital didactics in higher education.
Isa Jahnke is a Professor in Interactive Media and Learning (IML) at Department of Applied Educational Science in Umeå University, Sweden. Her background is in sociology (advanced role theory of socio-technical systems), digital didactics (Hochschuldidaktik) and academic development. She has her doctoral education from Dortmund University where she focused on Informatics & Society. She has later held positions at University of Ruhr-University of Bochum (Germany), University of Colorado at Boulder (USA), University of Dortmund (Germany), and she became a professor at Umeå University in 2011. See more...

Call for papers: workshop on higher education reforms
10th International Workshop on Higher Education Reform (WHER) will be held between October 2–4, 2013 at the Faculty of Education in University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. The event is themed “Higher Education Reforms: Looking Back – Looking Forward“.
The key theme of the event:  The 2013 Workshop theme gives an opportunity to look at the larger picture of these changes, the drivers of change, and their effects. At the same time, the theme invites contributions about the likely futures of HE over the next generation, suggesting (or speculating on) developments that will further change HE.
The factors highlighted include marketization and privatization of HE, rankings and excellence focus, changing governance, consumerism and tuition fees, as well as new initiatives such as MOOCs and online learning trends and their impact on traditional academic values and institutional autonomy. Read more about the theme, proposal requirements and application procedure here.
Deadline:  June 1, 2013.
More information on event website. See more...

By Suzanne Alexander, Director, International Office, University of Leicester, UK. Having a large number of partnerships around the world will not necessarily guarantee that your higher education institution raises its international profile and reputation, but it can play an important role in achieving these objectives. International partnerships provide opportunities to attract a more diverse student body, and to promote greater mobility of staff and students. These partnerships also have the potential to make an impact on curriculum development, collaborative teaching programmes and research networks.
Partnerships provide multiple benefits
Partnerships can make a significant contribution to institutional internationalisation objectives, but only if those objectives are articulated and understood within the institution and shared with the partners. At an institutional level, partnerships provide opportunities for learning from each other, sharing knowledge and experience and benchmarking, but many institutions simply see partnerships in a more narrow and constrained way, in terms of the benefits they provide to those students/staff who engage in the mobility programmes.
Partnerships are for the long term
Setting up partnerships and negotiating agreements can be very time-consuming. For this reason, unless you see the relationship in terms of your institution’s medium- to long-term interests, it is probably best not to enter into it in the first place. Partners need time to get to know each other. Even if you have researched and perhaps visited your partner, there will be gaps in your knowledge about each other, and maybe some surprises! Partnerships will also evolve over time. There will be internal changes, such as leadership, staffing, funding arrangements, institutional strategy and perhaps external changes too, such as government policy. Read more...

Book your place at the HEA conference on social mobility
The Higher Education Academy's (HEA) conference on social mobility is open to bookings. The two-day residential conference (26 and 27 March 2013, Manchester) will consider 'What can higher education contribute to improving social mobility in the UK?'
Through a series of keynote presenters, panel discussions, workshops and paper sessions the conference will explore themes including the curriculum to improve social mobility, the benefits of part-time HE study, and fees and fair access to more prestigious UK universities. Keynote speakers include David Barrett, Deputy Director, Office for Fair Access to Higher Education (OFFA), Carl Gilleard, Chief Executive, Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) and Rajay Naik, Director of Government & External Affairs, the Open University.
The student perspective on social mobility will be provided by a student jury, made up of 12 students from across the UK. Professor Liz Thomas, Academic Lead for Retention and Success at the HEA, said: "We were thrilled with the level of interest in they jury and the competition for places was very high. We are confident that the diversity of the 12 jurors will enable a range of student voices to be engaged with and reflected on throughout the conference.
"The student jurors will participate in the sessions and at the end of the conference they will 'give their verdict' on the actual and potential of higher education to improving social mobility. We value student perspectives in addition to those of academics, practitioners, researchers and policy makers."
The event will take place at the Macdonald Manchester Hotel, Manchester city centre. Further information about the conference, including the full programme and booking details, can be found here on the HEA website.

Very soon, European winegrowers will have access to a language learning programme especially conceived for them and catering to their specific needs.
The project VinoLingua will provide winegrowers with a series of language manuals, focused on their professional needs, which will prepare them to carry out wine tastings, take visitors on a guided tour of their vineyard, present their wine cellar at a wine fair, or just sell their own wine; and, all this, in a different language!
Languages offered are German, French, Italian, and Spanish, and, at the same time, each one of these languages will be represented by a wine-growing region through which students will manage to discover the culture associated to the wine and its region: Lower Austria and South Tyrol, for German; Burgundy, for French; Tuscany, for Italian; and, for Spanish, the Toro region. Each of these four languages is, at the same time, the target language —that is, the language our students wish to learn— or the winegrowers’ mother tongue, which potentially accounts for twelve different language combinations.
From the beginners’ level, this method teaches the language of wine, rather than language in general. Moreover, materials for study are organized following a “spiral” shape, that is, presenting the same communicative situations on several occasions all along the course; firstly, using simpler linguistic structures, and then, progressively, introducing more complex structures as the programme unfolds. Thus, for instance, wine tasting features six times, and work in the vineyard, as well as the description of work in the cellar and wine trading, appear on three occasions. At the A1 level, students learn how to manage themselves in these situations using “chunks”, that is, fixed expressions they can easily memorize (in the mouth, there is …). Later on, a series of customized flashcards are introduced to teach winegrowers how to describe their own wine. Finally, at the B1 level, learning is based on authentic audio/video materials related to wine.
The VinoLingua method, financed by the European Union through its Leonardo da Vinci Program, has been conceived as a set of self-study materials. Nevertheless, we are certain these materials can also be used at professional winemaking schools. In fact, the latter are an integral part of the partnership, composed of winegrowers, linguists, winemaking instructors, and language teachers. Thanks to this project, Europe will likely turn into a crowd of “vinolinguist winegrowers” who will manage to communicate either amongst themselves or with any other wine lover in any language!
More on Vinolingua.

In which European country is the total amount of annual taught time for the 2012-2013 school year highest? How many hours do students spend on specific subjects, such as mathematics or natural sciences?
A new Eurydice publication on recommended annual taught time during compulsory education gives quick answers to these questions. More precisely, the publication contains annually updated facts and figures on the amount of time allocated to core subjects by grade/stage in full-time compulsory education. Information in the publication is divided into the amount of time allocated to individual subjects, such as literacy learning, mathematics, or physical education and also by country. The report also covers the number of taught days and weeks per year, as well as the number and length of the class periods.
The full report can be downloaded from the facts and figures area of the Eurydice network website: Recommended annual taught time in full-time compulsory education in Europe.

Call for Submissions - MOOCs and Beyond: eLearning Papers Issue 33

The Education Competencies represent many of abilities required for successful job performance in education. The competencies were created in in 2006 and adapted for education.
Schools and districts around the country are using these tools in a variety of ways. If you are interested in learning more about the Education Competency Wheel please consider attending the Microsoft Institute.
The Education Competencies represent many of the attributes, behaviors, areas of knowledge, skills, and abilities required for successful job performance. Each Education Competency includes a definition, four levels of proficiency, sample interview questions, activities and resources to develop skills, and examples of overdoing the competency.