Jeudi 4 octobre 2012 à Caen (Université campus 1, amphi Pierre Daure) à partir de 9h.
En décembre 2009, la Région Basse-Normandie votait les principes directeurs de son SPRFP. Depuis, elle a conduit de nombreux projets (numéro vert dédié à la formation professionnelle en Basse-Normandie, Esp'OIR, programme Qualif...) qui permettent d'améliorer la réponse formation, apportée notamment aux demandeurs d'emploi. L'évolution des modalités de financement et de contractualisation de certains dispositifs ont également permis de sécuriser les prestataires de formation.
La Région poursuit ses réflexions afin de structurer un SPRFP et mieux répondre aux besoins des différents publics, notamment les plus fragiles. Pour ce faire, elle a la volonté d'associer les acteurs bas-normands de l'orientation, de la formation et de l'insertion sur lesquels elle s'appuie pour mettre en oeuvre sa politique de formation professionnelle et développer les partenariats nécessaires à son bon déroulement.
C'est pourquoi, elle les convie à participer à ce séminaire au cours duquel des experts nationaux interviendront sur ces problématiques permettant d'éclairer les échanges qui s'engageront sur les tables rondes.
Invitation avec le programme complet: Télécharger le document.
› Ouverture du séminaire par: Laurent Beauvais, Président de la Région Basse-Normandie, Pierre Sineux, Président de l’Université de Caen Basse-Normandie.
› Présentation de la démarche SPRFP en Basse-Normandie, son histoire, ses enjeux
Intervenant : Yanic Soubien, Vice-président de la Région Basse-Normandie, chargé de la Formation et de la Politique de l’Emploi.
› Mise en oeuvre des SPRFP par les régions au regard du contexte européen (SIEG) et du contexte national
Intervenant : Carine Seiler, Directrice Formation économie Emploi du cabinet Sémaphores.
› Un SPRFP au service des usagers et des territoires: quelles pratiques pédagogiques favorisant les apprentissages? Quelles modalités d’élaboration et de pilotage?
Intervenant : Philippe Meirieu, Vice-président de la Région Rhône-Alpes délégué à la formation tout au long de la vie, Professeur en sciences de l’éducation à l’Université de Lyon 2.
› Synthèse et vision de l’institution régionale
Intervenant : Rémy Sueur, Directeur Général des Services - Région Basse-Normandie.
› Présentation de la méthode déployée en Région Basse-Normandie pour structurer son SPRFP
Intervenant : Vincent Aubin, Région Basse-Normandie.
› Qui sont les demandeurs d’emploi concernés par un S.P.R.F.P. en Basse-Normandie?
Intervenants : Marie Gregori et Gilles Mariey, Région Basse-Normandie.
› 1ère table ronde : Quelles obligations de service public et quelles modalités de contractualisation?
Intervenants : Denis Leboucher, Directeur de l’Emploi et de la Formation Professionnelle, Région Basse-Normandie, Yvon Lamache, Direction Régionale Pôle emploi, Kathy Harlay AGEFIPH, Xavier Nabat, UROF, Philippe Scelin, FFP.
› 2ème table ronde: Comment favoriser les conditions de la réussite des parcours de formation professionnelle?
Intervenants : Annie Rossi, Directrice de la Prospective, des Métiers et de l’Apprentissage, Région Basse-Normandie, Nicolas Bansard, Mission Locale, un représentant de Cap Emploi, Isabelle Fortin, AFPA, Paul Quenet, DAFCO.
› Synthèse de la journée par Jean-Paul Martin, animateur
› Clôture du séminaire par Laurent Beauvais, Président de la Région Basse-Normandie ou son représentant
Nécessité de s'inscrire avant le 28 septembre par téléphone au 02 31 06 78 62 ou par mail c.baron@crbn.fr.

Déjà testé dans cinq régions (Ile-de-France, Midi-Pyrénées, Limousin, PACA et Rhône-Alpes), le déploiement de VAE Puissance 2 vient d’être confié par Agefos-PME aux CIBC d’Aquitaine pour les 5 départements aquitains. 
Il s’agit de proposer aux candidats, un accompagnement renforcé et personnalisé: mieux encadrés et suivis tout au long de leurs démarches, les candidats à la VAE bénéficieront, après accord de leur employeur, d’un accompagnement organisé par étapes jusqu’à la validation totale. L’innovation du dispositif réside dans la présence d’un « interlocuteur relais ».
Depuis 2009, le programme VAE Puissance 2 a permis d’engager 494 parcours. Le taux de réussite est d’ailleurs 20% supérieur au taux de réussite de parcours de VAE « classique ». Parmi les publics ainsi accompagnés, 73% étaient des femmes; 74% des salariés de plus de 35 ans; 72% des employés et 75% des titulaires de niveaux de formation inférieurs au baccalauréat. Côté employeurs, ils sont 95% à se dire prêts à recommander la VAE à d’autres entreprises. En savoir +.
AGEFOS/PME Aquitaine a décidé de confier aux CIBC d’Aquitaine le déploiement sur les 5 départements du dispositif « VAE Puissance 2 ».
Laurent MAURY, qui conçoit et coordonne différents projets à l’échelle des territoires aquitains pour l’OPCA Interprofessionnel, a bien voulu nous présenter le service proposé aux entreprises adhérentes et à leurs salariés.
Le lien sera ensuite fait avec les CIBC d’Aquitaine, en lien avec leur mission de Points Relais Conseil VAE habilité par le Conseil Régional. Nous attendons qu’ils mobilisent ensuite leur réseau dédié à l’accompagnement (Livret 2) et organisent la suite en cas de validation partielle: ce sont les points clés du rôle de l’interlocuteur relais confié aux CIBC aquitains.  

By Nicholas Carr. Online versions of college courses are attracting hundreds of thousands of students, millions of dollars in funding, and accolades from university administrators. Is this a fad, or is higher education about to get the overhaul it needs?
A hundred years ago, higher education seemed on the verge of a technological revolution. The spread of a powerful new communication network—the modern postal system—had made it possible for universities to distribute their lessons beyond the bounds of their campuses. Anyone with a mailbox could enroll in a class. Frederick Jackson Turner, the famed University of Wisconsin historian, wrote that the "machinery" of distance learning would carry "irrigating streams of education into the arid regions" of the country. Sensing a historic opportunity to reach new students and garner new revenues, schools rushed to set up correspondence divisions. By the 1920s, postal courses had become a full-blown mania. Four times as many people were taking them as were enrolled in all the nation's colleges and universities combined.
The hopes for this early form of distance learning went well beyond broader access. Many educators believed that correspondence courses would be better than traditional on-campus instruction because assignments and assessments could be tailored specifically to each student. The University of Chicago's Home-Study Department, one of the nation's largest, told prospective enrollees that they would "receive individual personal attention," delivered "according to any personal schedule and in any place where postal service is available." The department's director claimed that correspondence study offered students an intimate "tutorial relationship" that "takes into account individual differences in learning." The education, he said, would prove superior to that delivered in "the crowded classroom of the ordinary American University."
We've been hearing strikingly similar claims today. Another powerful communication network—the Internet—is again raising hopes of a revolution in higher education. This fall, many of the country's leading universities, including MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton, are offering free classes over the Net, and more than a million people around the world have signed up to take them. These "massive open online courses," or MOOCs, are earning praise for bringing outstanding college teaching to multitudes of students who otherwise wouldn't have access to it, including those in remote places and those in the middle of their careers. The online classes are also being promoted as a way to bolster the quality and productivity of teaching in general—for students on campus as well as off. Former U.S. secretary of education William Bennett has written that he senses "an Athens-like renaissance" in the making. Stanford president John Hennessy told the New Yorker he sees "a tsunami coming."
The excitement over MOOCs comes at a time of growing dissatisfaction with the state of college education. The average price tag for a bachelor's degree has shot up to more than $100,000. Spending four years on campus often leaves young people or their parents weighed down with big debts, a burden not only on their personal finances but on the overall economy. And many people worry that even as the cost of higher education has risen, its quality has fallen. Dropout rates are often high, particularly at public colleges, and many graduates display little evidence that college improved their critical-thinking skills. Close to 60 percent of Americans believe that the country's colleges and universities are failing to provide students with "good value for the money they and their families spend," according to a 2011 survey by the Pew Research Center. Proponents of MOOCs say the efficiency and flexibility of online instruction will offer a timely remedy.
Nicholas Carr is the author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. His last article for Technology Review was "The Library of Utopia."
But not everyone is enthusiastic. The online classes, some educators fear, will at best prove a distraction to college administrators; at worst, they will end up diminishing the quality of on-campus education. Critics point to the earlier correspondence-course mania as a cautionary tale. Even as universities rushed to expand their home-study programs in the 1920s, investigations revealed that the quality of the instruction fell short of the levels promised and that only a tiny fraction of enrollees actually completed the courses. In a lecture at Oxford in 1928, the eminent American educator Abraham Flexner delivered a withering indictment of correspondence study, claiming that it promoted "participation" at the expense of educational rigor. By the 1930s, once-eager faculty and administrators had lost interest in teaching by mail. The craze fizzled.
Is it different this time? Has technology at last advanced to the point where the revolutionary promise of distance learning can be fulfilled? We don't yet know; the fervor surrounding MOOCs makes it easy to forget that they're still in their infancy. But even at this early juncture, the strengths and weaknesses of this radically new form of education are coming into focus.
Rise of the MOOCs
"I had no clue what I was doing," ­Sebastian Thrun says with a chuckle, as he recalls his decision last year to offer Stanford's Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course free online. The 45-year-old robotics expert had a hunch that the class, which typically enrolls a couple of hundred undergraduates, would prove a draw on the Net. After all, he and his co-professor, Peter Norvig, were both Silicon Valley stars, holding top research posts at Google in addition to teaching at Stanford. But while Thrun imagined that enrollment might reach 10,000 students, the actual number turned out to be more than an order of magnitude higher. When the class began, in October 2011, some 160,000 people had signed up. The experience changed Thrun's life. Declaring "I can't teach at Stanford again," he announced in January that he was joining two other roboticists to launch an ambitious educational startup called Udacity. The venture, which bills itself as a "21st-century university," is paying professors from such schools as Rutgers and the University of Virginia to give open courses on the Net, using the technology originally developed for the AI class. Most of the 14 classes Udacity offers fall into the domains of computer science and mathematics, and Thrun says it will concentrate on such fields for now. But his ambitions are hardly narrow: he sees the traditional university degree as an outdated artifact and believes Udacity will provide a new form of lifelong education better suited to the modern labor market.
Udacity is just one of several companies looking to capitalize on the burgeoning enthusiasm for MOOCs. In April, two of Thrun's colleagues in Stanford's computer science department, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, rolled out a similar startup called Coursera. Like Udacity, Coursera is a for-profit business backed with millions of dollars in venture capital. Unlike Udacity, Coursera is working in concert with big universities. Where Thrun wants to develop an alternative to a traditional university, Koller and Ng are looking to build a system that established schools can use to deliver their own classes over the Net. Coursera's original partners included not only Stanford but Princeton, Penn, and the University of Michigan, and this summer the company announced affiliations with 29 more schools. It already has about 200 classes on offer, in fields ranging from statistics to sociology.
On the other side of the country, MIT and Harvard joined forces in May to form edX, a nonprofit that is also offering tuition-free online classes to all comers. Bankrolled with $30 million from each school, edX is using an open-source teaching platform developed at MIT. It includes video lessons and discussion forums similar to those offered by its for-profit rivals, but it also incorporates virtual laboratories where students can carry out simulated experiments. This past summer, the University of California at Berkeley joined edX, and in September the program debuted its first seven classes, mainly in math and engineering. Overseeing the launch of edX is Anant Agarwal, the former director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
The leaders of Udacity, Coursera, and edX have not limited their aspirations to enhancing distance learning. They believe that online instruction will become a cornerstone of the college experience for on-campus students as well. The merging of virtual classrooms with real classrooms, they say, will propel academia forward. "We are reinventing education," declares Agarwal. "This will change the world."
Professor Robot
Online courses aren't new; big commercial outfits like the University of Phoenix and DeVry University offer thousands of them, and many public colleges allow students to take classes on the Net for credit. So what makes MOOCs different? As Thrun sees it, the secret lies in "student engagement." Up to now, most Internet classes have consisted largely of videotaped lectures, a format that Thrun sees as deeply flawed. Classroom lectures are in general "boring," he says, and taped lectures are even less engaging: "You get the worst part without getting the best part." While MOOCs include videos of professors explaining concepts and scribbling on whiteboards, the talks are typically broken up into brief segments, punctuated by on-screen exercises and quizzes. Peppering students with questions keeps them involved with the lesson, Thrun argues, while providing the kind of reinforcement that has been shown to strengthen comprehension and retention.
Norvig, who earlier this year taught a Udacity class on computer programming, points to another difference between MOOCs and their predecessors. The economics of online education, he says, have improved dramatically. Cloud computing facilities allow vast amounts of data to be stored and transmitted at very low cost. Lessons and quizzes can be streamed free over YouTube and other popular media delivery services. And social networks like Facebook provide models for digital campuses where students can form study groups and answer each other's questions. In just the last few years, the cost of delivering interactive multimedia classes online has dropped precipitously. That's made it possible to teach huge numbers of students without charging them tuition.
It's hardly a coincidence that Udacity, Coursera, and edX are all led by computer scientists. To fulfill their grand promise—making college at once cheaper and better—MOOCs will need to exploit the latest breakthroughs in large-scale data processing and machine learning, which enable computers to adjust to the tasks at hand. Delivering a complex class to thousands of people simultaneously demands a high degree of automation. Many of the labor-intensive tasks traditionally performed by professors and teaching assistants—grading tests, tutoring, moderating discussions—have to be done by computers. Advanced analytical software is also required to parse the enormous amounts of information about student behavior collected during the classes. By using algorithms to spot patterns in the data, programmers hope to gain insights into learning styles and teaching strategies, which can then be used to refine the technology further. Such artificial-intelligence techniques will, the MOOC pioneers believe, bring higher education out of the industrial era and into the digital age.
While their ambitions are vast, ­Thrun, Koller, and Agarwal all stress that their fledgling organizations are just starting to amass information from their courses and analyze it. "We haven't yet used the data in a systematic way," says Thrun. It will be some time before the companies are able to turn the information they're collecting into valuable new features for professors and students. To see the cutting edge in computerized teaching today, you have to look elsewhere—in particular, to a small group of academic testing and tutoring outfits that are hard at work translating pedagogical theories into software code.
One of the foremost thinkers in this field is a soft-spoken New Yorker named David Kuntz. In 1994, after earning his master's degree in philosophy and working as an epistemologist, or knowledge theorist, for the Law School Admission Council (the organization that administers the LSAT examinations), Kuntz joined the Educational Testing Service, which runs the SAT college-admission tests. ETS was eager to use the burgeoning power of computers to design more precise exams and grade them more efficiently. It set Kuntz and other philosophers to work on a very big question: how do you use software to measure meaning, promote learning, and evaluate understanding? The question became even more pressing when the World Wide Web opened the Internet to the masses. Interest in "e-learning" surged, and the effort to develop sophisticated teaching and testing software combined with the effort to design compelling educational websites.
Three years ago, Kuntz joined a small Manhattan startup called Knewton as its head of research. The company specializes in the budding discipline of adaptive learning. Like other trailblazers in instructional software, including the University of California-Irvine spinoff ALEKS, Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative, and the much celebrated Khan Academy, it is developing online tutoring systems that can adapt to the needs and learning styles of individual students as they proceed through a course of instruction. Such programs, says Kuntz, "get better as more data is collected." Software for, say, teaching algebra can be written to reflect alternative theories of learning, and then, as many students proceed through the program, the theories can be tested and refined and the software improved. The bigger the data sets, the more adept the systems become at providing each student with the right information in the right form at the right moment.
Knewton has introduced a remedial math course for incoming college students, and its technology is being incorporated into tutoring programs offered by the textbook giant Pearson. But Kuntz believes that we're only just beginning to see the potential of educational software. Through the intensive use of data analysis and machine learning techniques, he predicts, the programs will advance through several "tiers of adaptivity," each offering greater personalization through more advanced automation. In the initial tier, which is already largely in place, the sequence of steps a student takes through a course depends on that student's choices and responses. Answers to a set of questions may, for example, trigger further instruction in a concept that has yet to be mastered—or propel the student forward by introducing material on a new topic. "Each student," explains Kuntz, "takes a different path." In the next tier, which Knewton plans to reach soon, the mode in which material is presented adapts automatically to each student. Although the link between media and learning remains controversial, many educators believe that different students learn in different ways. Some learn best by reading text, others by watching a demonstration, others by playing a game, and still others by engaging in a dialogue. A student's ideal mode may change, moreover, at each stage in a course—or even at different times during the day. A video lecture may be best for one lesson, while a written exercise may be best for the next. By monitoring how students interact with the teaching system itself—when they speed up, when they slow down, where they click—a computer can learn to anticipate their needs and deliver material in whatever medium promises to maximize their comprehension and retention.
Looking toward the future, Kuntz says that computers will ultimately be able to tailor an entire "learning environment" to fit each student. Elements of the program's interface, for example, will change as the computer senses the student's optimum style of learning.
Big Data on Campus
The advances in tutoring programs promise to help many college, high-school, and even elementary students master basic concepts. One-on-one instruction has long been known to provide substantial educational benefits, but its high cost has constrained its use, particularly in public schools. It's likely that if computers are used in place of teachers, many more students will be able to enjoy the benefits of tutoring. According to one recent study of undergraduates taking statistics courses at public universities, the latest of the online tutoring systems seem to produce roughly the same results as face-to-
face instruction.
While MOOCs are incorporating adaptive learning routines into their software, their ambitions for data mining go well beyond tutoring. Thrun says that we've only seen "the tip of the iceberg." What particularly excites him and other computer scientists about free online classes is that thanks to their unprecedented scale, they can generate the immense quantities of data required for effective machine learning. Koller says that Coursera has set up its system with intensive data collection and analysis in mind. Every variable in a course is tracked. When a student pauses a video or increases its playback speed, that choice is captured in the Coursera database. The same thing happens when a student answers a quiz question, revises an assignment, or comments in a forum. Every action, no matter how inconsequential it may seem, becomes grist for the statistical mill.
Assembling information on student behavior at such a minute level of detail, says Koller, "opens new avenues for understanding learning." Previously hidden patterns in the way students navigate and master complex subject matter can be brought to light.
The number-crunching also promises to benefit teachers and students directly, she adds. Professors will receive regular reports on what's working in their ­classes and what's not. And by pinpointing "the most predictive factors for success," MOOC software will eventually be able to guide each student onto "the right trajectory." Koller says she hopes that Lake Wobegon, the mythical town in which "all students are above average," will "come to life."
MIT and Harvard are designing edX to be as much a tool for educational research as a digital teaching platform, Anant Agarwal says. Scholars are already beginning to use data from the system to test hypotheses about how people learn, and as the portfolio of courses grows, the opportunities for research will proliferate. Beyond generating pedagogical insights, Agarwal foresees many other practical applications for the edX data bank. Machine learning may, for instance, pave the way for an automated system to detect cheating in online classes, a challenge that is becoming more pressing as universities consider granting certificates or even credits to students who complete MOOCs.
With a data explosion seemingly imminent, it's hard not to get caught up in the enthusiasm of the MOOC architects. Even though their work centers on computers, their goals are deeply humanistic. They're looking to use machine learning to foster student learning, to deploy artificial intelligence in the service of human intelligence. But the enthusiasm should be tempered by skepticism. The benefits of machine learning in education remain largely theoretical. And even if AI techniques generate genuine advances in pedagogy, those breakthroughs may have limited application. It's one thing for programmers to automate courses of instruction when a body of knowledge can be defined explicitly and a student's progress measured precisely. It's a very different thing to try to replicate on a computer screen the intricate and sometimes ineffable experiences of teaching and learning that take place on a 
college campus.
The promoters of MOOCs have a "fairly naïve perception of what the analy­sis of large data sets allows," says Timothy Burke, a history professor at Swarthmore College. He contends that distance education has historically fallen short of expectations not for technical reasons but, rather, because of "deep philosophical problems" with the model. He grants that online education may provide efficient training in computer programming and other fields characterized by well-established procedures that can be codified in software. But he argues that the essence of a college education lies in the subtle interplay between students and teachers that cannot be simulated by machines, no matter how sophisticated the programming.
Alan Jacobs, a professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois, raises similar concerns. In an e-mail to me, he observed that the work of college students "can be affected in dramatic ways by their reflection on the rhetorical situations they encounter in the classroom, in real-time synchronous encounters with other people." The full richness of such conversations can't be replicated in Internet forums, he argued, "unless the people writing online have a skilled novelist's ability to represent complex modes of thought and experience in prose." A computer screen will never be more than a shadow of a good college classroom. Like Burke, Jacobs worries that the view of education reflected in MOOCs has been skewed toward that of the computer scientists developing the platforms.
Flipping the Classroom
The designers and promoters of MOOCs don't suggest that computers will make classrooms obsolete. But they do argue that online instruction will change the nature of teaching on campus, making it more engaging and efficient. The traditional model of instruction, where students go to class to listen to lectures and then head off on their own to complete assignments, will be inverted. Students will listen to lectures and review other explanatory material alone on their computers (as some middle-school and high-school students already do with Khan Academy videos), and then they'll gather in classrooms to explore the subject matter more deeply—through discussions with professors, say, or through lab exercises. In theory, this "flipped classroom" will allocate teaching time more rationally, enriching the experience of both professor and student.
Here, too, there are doubts. One cause for concern is the high dropout rate that has plagued the early MOOCs. Of the 160,000 people who enrolled in ­Norvig and Thrun's AI class, only about 14 percent ended up completing it. Of the 155,000 students who signed up for an MIT course on electronic circuits earlier this year, only 23,000 bothered to finish the first problem set. About 7,000, or 5 percent, passed the course. Shepherding thousands of students through a college class is a remarkable achievement by any measure—typically only about 175 MIT students finish the circuits course each year—but the dropout rate highlights the difficulty of keeping online students attentive and motivated. Norvig acknowledges that the initial enrollees in MOOCs have been an especially self-motivated group. The real test, particularly for on-campus use of online instruction, will come when a broader and more typical cohort takes the classes. MOOCs will have to inspire a wide variety of students and retain their interest as they sit in front of their computers through weeks of study.
The greatest fear among the critics of MOOCs is that colleges will rush to incorporate online instruction into traditional classes without carefully evaluating the possible drawbacks. Last fall, shortly before he cofounded Coursera, Andrew Ng adapted his Stanford course on machine learning so that online students could participate, and thousands enrolled. But at least one on-campus student found the class wanting. Writing on his blog, computer science major Ben Rudolph complained that the "academic rigor" fell short of Stanford's standards. He felt that the computerized assignments, by providing automated, immediate hints and guidance, failed to encourage "critical thinking." He also reported a sense of isolation. He "met barely anyone in [the] class," he said, because "everything was done alone in my room." Ng has staunchly defended the format of the class, but the fact is that no one really knows how an increasing stress on computerized instruction will alter the dynamics of college life.
The leaders of the MOOC movement acknowledge the challenges they face. Perfecting the model, says Agarwal, will require "sophisticated inventions" in many areas, from grading essays to granting credentials. This will only get harder as the online courses expand further into the open-ended, exploratory realms of the liberal arts, where knowledge is rarely easy to codify and the success of a class can hinge on a professor's ability to guide students toward unexpected insights. The outcome of this year's crop of MOOCs should tell us a lot more about the value of the classes and the role they'll ultimately play in the educational system.
At least as daunting as the technical challenges will be the existential questions that online instruction raises for universities. Whether massive open courses live up to their hype or not, they will force college administrators and professors to reconsider many of their assumptions about the form and meaning of teaching. For better or worse, the Net's disruptive forces have arrived at the gates of academia.

Commenting on today’s publication of The Sunday Times University Guide Professor Craig Mahoney, Chief Executive of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) said:
“Today’s Sunday Times University Guide joins other guides and tables, all of which can provide future students with independent information about the experience they can expect from different higher education institutions.
“We know that students choose their course, and their university, based on a wide range of factors. Crucially The Sunday Times Guide includes student satisfaction and the quality of teaching as two of its criteria, both of key importance to the HEA. Fees for many students beginning their courses over the next few weeks across the UK have increased, with the most dramatic shift for those in England. But whatever the fees structure, students everywhere are rightly expecting even more from their time in higher education. Excellence in teaching remains of paramount importance and this guide can support our future students as they make decisions about where to study.
“It’s also important that students look to other sources of information to help them make decisions about their future. Today’s Guide shows, for example, that in the north of England students at the University of Huddersfield are most satisfied with the quality of their teaching. Huddersfield has demonstrated huge commitment to the UK Professional Standards Framework, which accredits higher education teachers who have demonstrated clear evidence of the quality of their teaching. This commitment is making a real difference to student’s learning experience.
“The publication of the Key Information Sets (KIS) just a few days ago is also an important step in providing prospective students with clearer, more easily accessible and pertinent information. The National Student Survey (NSS) informs a significant part of the KIS, and this year I’m encouraged to see the improvement in scores for assessment and feedback – particularly the marked increase in the proportion of students reporting that feedback helped clarify their understanding, which can only enhance the student learning experience.
“As a champion for learning and teaching, the HEA is committed to providing an extensive range of support to higher education providers, whether at a discipline, generic or strategic level, to ensure that all students can benefit from a quality learning experience.”
The Higher Education Academy, Innovation Way, York Science Park, Heslington, York, YO10 5BR, United Kingdom
Contact us.

Lisbon, Portugal, the 18th and 19th January 2013. CRELL sponsors the "Second Lisbon Research Workshop on Economics, Statistics and Econometrics of Education", that will take place in Lisbon, Portugal, the 18th and 19th January 2013. The event aims to provide a forum for presenting and debating current cutting-edge research on the topics of economics, statistics and econometrics of education. For details and Call for Papers see the website: http://cemapre.iseg.utl.pt/.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Welcome to the Second Lisbon Research Workshop on Economics, Statistics and Econometrics of Education.
We are pleased to announce the "Second Lisbon Research Workshop on Economics, Statistics and Econometrics of Education". This workshop aims to provide a forum for presenting and debating current methodological and applied research on the topics of economics, statistics and econometrics of education. It will include invited speakers' lectures, organized thematic sessions, contributed parallel sessions and poster sessions.

International Conference: Fostering Entrepreneurial Learning at Tertiary Level: University-Industry Interaction, 11-12 October, 2012, Banja Luka, Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Bosnia and Herzegovina signed Bologna Declaration in 2003. Since then higher education institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina have been conducting the largest higher education reform in decades. Bosnia and Herzegovina is co-chairing the Bologna Follow-up Group (BFUG) in the period of 1 July to 31 December 2012. With regard to this, the Ministry of Education and Culture of Republic of Srpska organizes the Conference which will explore in an interactive manner innovative ways of entrepreneurial learning that can empower graduated students and academic community and strenghten the linkage between university and industry . The goal of the conference will be creating entrepreneurial mindset at the university level, integrating developing entrepreneurial skills into study programmes and teacher training in entrepreneurial learning. The development of entrepreneurship at universities requires profound change in university governance and leadership.
DEADLINE FOR REGISTRATION AND SUBMISSION OF PRESENTATIONS EXTENDED TO 1 OCTOBER.
Provisional agenda will be available soon.
For all information with regard to the Conference do not hesitate to contact:
Nataša Rodić Botte                                               Jelena Zlojutro
e-mail: n.rodic@mp.vladars.net                             e- mail: j.zlojutro@mp.vladars.net
tel. +387 51 338 532                                            tel. +387 51 338 444

1. Call for Presentation
2. Invitation
3. Practical Information
4. Registration Form
5. Agenda

In this post, Hedda associate Mari Elken collects some impressions from the latest CHER conference. What were the main themes that emerged and what were the highlights of the conference?
Earlier in September the 25th CHER (Consortium for Higher Education Research) conference was held in Belgrade, co-hosted the Centre for Education Policy (CEP) and the Centre for Education Policy Studies of the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Education (CEPS), and this year was themed “Higher Education and Social Dynamics”. Connected to this, the second ECHER (Early Career Higher Education Researchers) network was held, and the conference was ended with a post-conference symposium in Ljubljana.
CHER covers a wide range of topics and as a conference it aims to be a comprehensive one, covering various aspects of higher education research. While this was also the case in Beograd, one can notice that there is a relative skewness towards policy, governnace and organisational topics. When commenting on the impressions on main themes, Dominik Antonowicz, a researcher from Poland, highlighted two: autonomy and internationalisation, and he was pleased that the latter is ”no longer seen as a process of “universities becoming more international” but internationalisation is more like a way to sell  normative political and institutional order“.
However, issues such as teaching and learning in higher education tend to gain less focus, which can be argued to be somewhat of a downside, provided that conferences also have an important role in knowledge sharing and the lack of focus on one of the core activities of universities means that a piece of the puzzle might be missing and some important connections between research agendas will be lacking. This is by no means the fault of the organisers, but a wider question of turfs and territories and the unfortunate division between various disciplinary traditions.
As the conference took place in Western Balkans, this as also an opportunity to set the region in the research agenda. Dominik thought that this was exactly that happened during the conference “the research spot is in now on Western Balkans. A number of presentation concerned issues in this region. Lots of topics, researchers, questions to address. Clearly, it deserves better attention and I am personally glad that because there is a wide range of similarities between CEE and WB“. A separate panel was held on the large project focusing on the region led by CEPS, and a number of other papers in various sessions focused on the region, covering topics from the civic mission of universities to the academic profession, to internationalisation aims and impacts of European ideas. A large number of these papers were presented by researchers from the region, something Hedda associate Martina Vukasovic also put forward as one of her highlights of the conference.
The conference also featured three keynote speeches, amongst these Hugh Lauder from University of Bath, highlighted by another Hedda associate Romulo Pinheiro as the highlight of his conference. Lauder set a critical view on knowledge economy as a concept and assumptions of human capital theory, where learning=earning. Highlighting empirical data from a large project focusing on transnational companies he gave insights how increasing human capital and skill levels has not meant a general reduction of povery, thus shaking the assumptions of ‘trickling down’ and spillovers. And not only that, the wage premium for increased skills is not there in broad terms. As such, he called for a more active approach and opposition towards what he called the “knowledge capitalism”. The other keynotes included Srbijanka Turajlić who highlighted the issues of employability in the  region and Maarten Simons who examined university education as a collective/public practice.
Looking back  at the conference and not least the post conference symposium, one sits with an impression that a large amount of self reflection took place with a common concern about higher education research and its future – concerns that have their origin in the implications of funding and resources, disciplinary connections and methodology.
There seems to be an aknowledgemenet that there is a new reality for higher  education researchers, a reality imbued with policy ambitions of various national or supranational bodies, and where research is increasingly done in multiple knowledge production centres outside traditional research practice (i.e. consultancy firms). In a tighter funding situation where some funding either comes from agencies with strong normative implications, or implies cooperation with consultancy firms, this requires a new set of skills from the researchers. There is little doubt that this can be seen as an unfortunate development, perhaps leading towards a more superficial account on what kind and how certain knowledge research can be produced, in addition to the implications of this to basic research. Where researchers are modest, ambiguous and uncertain, there seems to be a need for certain and bold evidence that assures and supports the necessary success of new policy ambitions.
Nevertheless, it is also the responsibility of the researchers to highlight the issues with this, rather than sit back and complain to each other about the dire state of affairs. This means there is a necessity to be more active in the public debate about the types of expert knowledge higher education researchers have that cannot be gained from other sources. By higher education being so central in the knowledge economy, the research expertise that higher education researchers have is unique and necessary, also raising questions on how this competence should be organised internationally and what are the possible routes for collaboration and coordination. What the correct answer is, is of course up for debate, but the defeatist doom and gloom scenarios do not really help.
Another concern that was highlighted during a number of presentations, panels and the symposium was the role of disciplines. Higher education being a field with no disciplinary core of its own, the shaky feet of the knowledge domain were a topic for debate. Thus themes linked to the role of disciplines, whether we have higher education specialists or generalists, and the general question of identity were high on the agenda. This was further highlighted by the calls for more methodological rigour in higher education research with link to the core disciplines. While this is to an extent the case, one could also argue that in social sciences there is at least some common platform for methodology, and it is also possible to do methodologically rigorous research in a multidisciplinary context. As such, the issue of methodology and issue of disciplines should perhaps kept separate, while both of them being important.
While focus on strenghtening the disciplines seemed to gain support at CHER, one should note that despite there being a number of higher education researchers with linkages to political science, for instance  last years large ECPR (European Consortium for Political Research) conference only had a few of them present. While the situation might be  somewhat different for sociology or some of the other disciplines, it seems that the unfortunate tendency is that at the higher education conferences such as CHER there is a yearning towards the disciplines (but without sufficient activity from the researchers themselves), and at the large disciplinary conferences there is an impression that there is no research on higher education. Perhaps it is time to stop talking and start doing and showing that higher education research can play ball on  both sides and how the two do not contradict but complement. And yes, there are those who do this already, but perhaps more should follow.
Despite the usual doom and gloom stories of the future, some positive things also emerged. Also noted by Martina Vukasovic as being the second of her conference highlights, there is a large number of young researchers, both as members of larger research teams, but also as presenting their work independently and actively engaging in the debates. As a follow-up to the initiative started in Iceland, the network for early career researchers (ECHER) provided a platform for some good discussions. Still in its infancy the ECHER workshop debates this time to a large extent focused on the purposes of such network and potential activities. However, they also included also presentations from experienced researchers, for instance a presentation from Jussi Välimaa on how to publish in the Higher Education journal, and presentations from Christine Musselin and David Hoffman on the potential outlooks of such network. More activities can be expected during upcoming higher education conferences, both CHER and others (and, if you are an early career researcher and not a member yet - click here!!).
Last but not least, the organisers deserve a sincere gratulation. The well planned event, smooth organisation and inclusive atmosphere was to be felt throughout – and not to forget the wonderful food. And since we on the Hedda blog, perhaps we should mention that it was a graduate of the Hedda master programme, Jelena Brankovic, who was responsible for the academic coordination of the conference. Congrats, and thanks to you and your whole team!

By Serge Sych, Director of Alumni and Corporate Relations, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. Higher education institutions in continental Europe have been trying to define the role of alumni relations in their advancement strategies. While many institutions have incorporated alumni relations into their operational activities, these programmes have not undergone the same phases of development that their counterparts in North America or the UK have. What roles do cultural and institutional contexts play in shaping alumni relations strategies? What are the challenges facing alumni relations offices today?
Long tradition of alumni relations in some parts of the world
While organised alumni relations (AR) functions started to appear in the UK and USA in the 19th century, examples of alumni volunteering and philanthropic involvement date back as far as the 16th century. Today, most US and UK higher educational institutions offer a standard set of alumni relations programmes, including: reunions, alumni associations, fundraising initiatives, volunteer opportunities, professional networks and academic programmes.
Cultural and institutional factors affecting alumni relations programmes
Similarly to my own institution, Central European University (CEU), many start-up alumni relations programmes in Europe tend to focus on the alumni records and career support functions. This strategy may be driven by the lack of a wider culture of alumni involvement and shorter history of alumni relations. Programmes are also shaped by the existing institutional resources, current economic situation, as well as EU and national regulations in regards to career path information tracking.
Another aspect of AR in the European context is the close connection to the International Relations offices at many institutions. These offices often become a hub for programme development and help to start AR functions at their institutions. Within this context, until comprehensive AR programmes are set up, many AR programmes in Europe focus on the needs of international alumni, whose support in recruitment and marketing is deemed as especially valuable.
Web 2.0 and new technologies
Alumni relations thrive on the global ‘knowledge economy’ and benefit from the latest advances in social media and communications. While journalists, for example, might be forced to compete with online ‘amateurs’, AR professionals embrace the new technologies which allow them to engage more of their key constituencies in a meaningful way. A blog run by a graduate, or an online alumni community on Facebook or LinkedIn, are seen as opportunities, rather than challenges. Indeed, modern communication technology can be seen as a way to engage more alumni and other key constituencies, thus empowering groups and individuals with connections and information, and building stronger relationships.
Making the most out of a ‘small-shop’
Many higher education institutions in Europe are starting to invest staff and resources into alumni operations. Often, a move from ‘zero’ to half FTE alumni relations staff, for example, is more of a sign of intention than a long-term strategic investment. Many AR officers manage these limitations by collaborating with other units at their institutions, for example publications, events and records management, or career services. Based on my experience, I would argue that the best way to go about AR in the context of the so-called ‘small-shop’ operation is the integrated approach, ie capitalising on internal institutional resources based on client group overlap and cross-functional activities.
Measuring success in alumni relations: difficult but necessary
Alumni relations officers are more frequently utilising different assessment techniques, benchmarking tools and CRM (customer relations management) systems. The goal here is to measure, manage and improve both individual staff performance and the core functions of the office. AR programmes are about connecting alumni to the institution and engaging them with one another, in the hope that those connections will translate into volunteers and financial support. Having said that, demonstrating programme effectiveness and creating a useful evaluation strategy for a profession that encompasses many different sizes and types of institutions is difficult.
To illustrate the challenge, I would use the following analogy: there are two doctors, one working in an emergency care unit and another in rehabilitation as a general practitioner. On the one hand, saving lives and taking immediate care of a number of patients within a limited time frame can be compared to a concrete, relatively simple performance assessment, based on how much revenue was generated by a fundraising office, for example. On the other hand, the success of a long process of rehabilitation, or a long-term GP-patient relationship, is naturally much more subjective and difficult to assess in quantifiable terms. The latter is thus comparable to what alumni relations professionals do: they develop and maintain relationships.
In this context, when answering questions regarding ‘return on investment’, one has to acknowledge this ‘relationship-specific’ subjective component and try to identify additional measurements upon which to compare programmes and their effectiveness, for example level of engagement.
The value of international alumni
Today’s institutions cater to a much more diverse student population than ever before. International student enrolments are on the rise, and many campuses now need to serve the needs of graduates from around the globe (see for example the article ‘International alumni matter’ in Spring Forum 2012). In this context, many higher education institutions, as well as governmental, cultural and educational agencies (for example British Council, DAAD or Nuffic), as well as multinational companies, have active alumni programmes in Asia and Europe, with a growing interest and need to reach graduates in Central and South America. While international alumni might still represent a small proportion of the graduates on most campuses, the potential importance of this alumni constituency should not be underestimated. International graduates can serve as institutional ambassadors on the global scene and add visibility and leverage to the international efforts of their institutions.
Are you setting up a new alumni programme or reshaping the existing one? Do you need a social media plan or new strategy for international alumni clubs? Perhaps you are mining data online or moving to a new database? The intensive ‘Alumni from A to Z’ professional training course during the EAIE Academy in Porto, November 19-23, 2012 will cover all of these topics and more.