EUA’s Annual Report 2012 is now available on the EUA website. The online publication gives an overview of all EUA’s activities, including policy work, projects and events, together with a breakdown of EUA’s governing bodies, financial statements and membership development in 2012.
The report outlines EUA’s policy and advocacy work on key issues related to the main thematic areas of EUA’s work: learning and teaching; research and innovation; quality management; governance, autonomy and funding; and internationalisation. It also presents an overview of the different EUA projects and thematic events, which provide opportunities for members to exchange experiences and best practices, and of the different areas of EUA’s policy work.
Together with the EUA Council for Doctoral Education and the Institutional Evaluation Programme, these services are designed to enable members to take part in activities that correspond to their own specific interests and needs.
To download the report, click here.

Report from the Fifth European University-Business Forum, Brussels (4-5 June 2013)
Organised by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education and Culture, the fifth edition of the University-Business Forum focused on the theme “University-Business Cooperation: Strategic partnerships for Innovation and Growth; From dialogue to Partnership”. The U-B Forum featured high-level plenary sessions with representatives from business and higher education, DG Education and Culture, policy makers and other stakeholders.
EUA President, Professor Maria Helena Nazaré, represented EUA during the initial round table on 4 June which set the scene for the subsequent discussions. Key benefits of university-business collaboration were highlighted and pro-active attitudes were recommended. All the round table panellists agreed that talent was key for innovation and that universities must be considered by companies as another part of their value chain. Professor Nazaré highlighted that business and society at large should take account of the transformations that many universities are incurring to develop more and better university-business collaboration. Based on evidence gathered by EUA she highlighted that “academic and non-academic leaders involved in long-standing collaborative research initiatives show that universities can make compatible their core missions (i.e. excellence in academic research) and successful long-term collaborative research activities with the adequate institutional leadership, support services and public funding”. Recalling the EUA statement addressed to heads of state and government in November last year she also said that “increased investment in higher education and research to mobilise the potential and capacities of present and next generations of young people is the ‘sine qua non’ for Europe to exit the economic crisis and achieve future prosperity”. Read more...

The Spanish Rectors’ Conference (CRUE) co-organised with the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) an information and debate event in Madrid, 10 June 2013, on “European Programmes: Opportunities for the participation of Spanish Universities”. The event gathered over one hundred rectors, vice-rectors and other high-level representatives from the Spanish university sector and policy makers. In the opening session, the Secretary of State for Research, Development and Innovation, Carmen Vela, highlighted the need to valorise both the tangible and intangible added values of Spanish universities in the landscape of research and innovation. Meanwhile, the Secretary of State for Education, Vocational Training and Universities, Montserrat Gomendio, updated participants on the progress of the committee of experts who are currently debating university reforms in close collaboration with CRUE.
The President of CRUE and Rector of the University of Malaga, Adelaida de la Calle, whilst expressing concern about the emigration of some Spanish graduates to some wealthier economies, underlined the high quality of the Spanish university system, which was demonstrated for example by the way Spanish university graduates were welcomed in other parts of Europe and the rest of the world. The current state of play on issues related to the development of the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation ‘Horizon 2020’, the Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisations (RIS3) within the Cohesion funds and the strategic positioning of the Spanish Universities were debated during two sessions. Read more...

Ann Priestley’s list of legal MOOCs now enables researchers in the legal community to identify a sizeable number of law-related MOOCs offered by several different providers, and to design studies of them.
It so happens that the Gates Foundation is funding the MOOC Research Initiative, offering grants “in the range of $10,000 – $25,000,” for the study of various aspects of MOOCs.
The application deadline is 7 July 2013.
For more details, please see the complete announcement. Read more...

This post argues that the current discourse around the concept of xMOOCs (primarily based around interaction with content and essentially adopting a behaviourist learning approach), and cMOOCs (which focus on harnessing the power of social media and interaction with peers, adopting a connectivist learning approach), is an inadequate way of describing the variety of MOOCs and the ways in which learners engage with them. It will introduce an alternative means of categorising MOOCs, based on their key characteristics. It will describe how this can be used as part of the 7Cs of Learning Design framework, to design more pedagogically informed MOOCs, which enhances the learner experience and ensure quality assurance. A fundamental aspect of ensuring a good learner experience is the quality of the course. It is important to distinguish between three main aspects of quality: quality audit, quality assurance and quality enhancement.
Gráinne Conole is Professor of learning innovation at the University of Leicester. Her research interests include the use, integration and evaluation of Information and Communication Technologies and e-learning and the impact of technologies on organisational change. She regularly blogs on www.e4innovation.com and is @gconole on Twitter. She has successfully secured funding from the EU, HEFCE, ESRC, JISC and commercial sponsors). She was awarded an HEA National Teaching Fellowship in 2012. She has published and presented over 1000 conference proceedings, workshops and articles, including the use and evaluation of learning technologies. She has recently published a Springer book entitled ‘Designing for learning in an open world.’ She was involved in the OLDS MOOC on Learning Design and is leading a team for a new Masters in Learning Innovation http://www2.le.ac.uk/study/postgrad/distance. Read more...

The MOOCs Quality Project, an initiative of the European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning (EFQUEL), has launched a debate on the quality of MOOCs with blogposts from experts and those involved in MOOOCs, with different world and user perspectives. The evolution of open educational resources to MOOCs can be chartered as follows. First came open access to course content, and then access to free online courses. Accredited institutions are now accepting MOOCs as well as free courses and experiential learning as partial credit toward a degree. The next disruptor will likely mark a tipping point: an entirely free online curriculum leading to a degree from an accredited institution. This project seeks to stimulate a discourse through a series of weekly blog posts on the issue of quality of MOOCs – what is a good quality MOOC? Read more...

By Cherilyn Winkler. Online learning empowers students and offers alternatives to traditional higher education. The rising cost of higher education has sparked a revolution in online learning. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) offer a learning experience that wouldn’t otherwise be available to many of the students flocking to these free, online-only classrooms. Now, more universities are joining the trend, even though some administrators and educators worry that MOOCs could impact the current higher ed business model. According to a report from EDUCAUSE, the University of Manitoba sponsored the first MOOC in 2008, entitled “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge.” Since then, the online classes have become so ubiquitous that The New York Times dubbed 2012 The Year of the MOOC. Read more...

By S. David Ramirez. The University of Texas System has partnered with edX, a popular Massive Online Open Courses platform, to expand the growing field of MOOCs and study how these non-traditional classes work within current academic frameworks.
A MOOC is a free online course sponsored by a university on a variety of subjects. Current courses include classes on psychology, literature, art, music, statistics and biology. Students can enroll via a platform like Coursera or edX.
“One reason for aligning with edX was to become part of a national and international conversation of what education should look like in the (21st) century,” said Steven Mintz, executive director of the UT Institute for Transformational Learning. Read more...

Par lettre du 28 janvier 2013, les ministres des affaires étrangères, de l'économie et des finances, de l'intérieur, du commerce extérieur, du redressement productif, de l'enseignement supérieur et de la recherche et des petites et moyennes entreprises, de l'innovation et de l'économie numérique, ont demandé à quatre inspections générales de conduire une mission sur l'accueil des talents étrangers, en vue de renforcer l'attractivité de la France. Selon les conclusions de la mission, la France demeure attractive pour les talents étrangers mais sa place dans la compétition internationale est menacée. La France doit construire un nouveau modèle d'accueil: de nombreuses simplifications administratives, une stratégie pilotée au niveau interministériel, une politique d'accompagnement, un changement d'image et une politique de communication institutionnelle.
En savoir + Rapport sur l’accueil des talents étrangers.

La Cour des comptes a rendu public, le 10 juin 2013, un rapport sur « Le financement public de la recherche, un enjeu national ». La Cour observe qu’en dépit de financements publics croissants, l’effort national de recherche et développement stagne en France, du fait de la faiblesse de la recherche des entreprises. La part des financements sur projet progresse, mais la participation des équipes françaises aux appels à projet européens connaît un recul préoccupant. Par ailleurs, malgré des ressources accrues, les universités et organismes de recherche disposent paradoxalement de marges de manœuvre en réduction. Enfin, en termes de valorisation de la recherche, les performances scientifiques de la France apparaissent meilleures que leurs retombées économiques. La Cour formule cinq axes de recommandations.
Télécharger Le financement public de la recherche, un enjeu national; Syntheses - Le financement public de la recherche, un enjeu national; Allocutions - Le financement public de la recherche, un enjeu national; Fiches - Le financement public de la recherche, un enjeu national.