By Nora Almeida. The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has emerged in the past few years as the poster child of the online higher education revolution.  Lauded and derided, MOOCs (depending on who you ask) represent the democratization of education on a global scale, an overblown trend, or the beginning of the end of the traditional academic institution. MOOCs have gained so much critical traction because they have succeeded in unmooring educational exchanges and setting them adrift in the sea of the internet.  Although the MOOC is a new and evolving platform, it has already upended facets of education in which librarians are heavily invested including intellectual property, digital preservation, and information delivery and curricular support models. Consequently, to examine the MOOC as a microcosm is also to explore how the scope of academic librarianship is changing and will continue to change. Librarians and information professionals—who serve as bibliographers, purchasing managers, access advocates, copyright and preservation experts, and digital pioneers on many campuses—are uniquely situated to mediate this disruption and to use this opportunity to develop strategies for navigating an environment in flux. More...

By Graham Attwell. Mind the Gap, says Geoff Stead referring to the gap between theory and practice in mobile learning. And it is this gap which is perplexing me as we attempt to develop an App (code named Rapid Turbine) for use by German construction apprentices.
Writing in a blog for last year’s MobiMOOC Geoff says:
There are a few academic frameworks that can be useful in evaluating, and reflecting on m-learning:

1. Laurillard’s Conversational framework (2002) – showing the different roles that technology can play in the process
2. Park’s Pedagogical Framework for Mobile Learning (2011) – offering a simple matrix to map the transactional and/or social closeness of a learning intervention
3. Koole’s Model for Framing Mobile Learning (FRAME) – 2009 – showing how the mobile learning is an interaction between the technology, the learner and the context.

The one that most connects with my own thinking is FRAME, because it is quite clear that you any theory about m-learning needs to engage with the technology itself (the device), AND the learner (who they are, what they want), AND their social context.

The reason the definition works for me is exactly the reason why I suspect m-learning has proved so problematic to define precisely. It just isn’t one thing. There may well be one core idea in the middle, but this is heavily influenced by factors that are different in different contexts.
Here are some examples, and contrasting ideas:

• while m-learning at work might be about performance support tools, and access to small nuggets of information; m-learning in the classroom might be more about exploring ideas together, and collaborating on a project
• while m-learning on a field trip might be exploring your environment (GPS / augmented reality / mapping / camera), m-learning in a lecture theatre might be about taking notes, and looking up references.
• while BYOD m-learning might be about sharing critical information via any device; a specific iPad activity will be rely on a specific app on a specific, named device

Folks, these are ALL m-learning, but because the circles in the Venn Diagram are filled with different questions, the resulting answer is different. More...

By Cathy Davidson. On Facebook, my pal John recently joked that we're not living in the Digital Age.  We're living in the Age of the Acronym:
MOOC (Massive Online Open Courseware), we all know about MOOCs.  @George Siemens coined the term in 2008.
SPOC (Self-Paced Open Course).  The students remixed course content in "Surprise Endings:  Social Science and Literature" and added a lot of content into seven open self-paced content units, including seven 20-minute video lectures on everything from self-control to racism, by myself and the famous behavioral economist Dan Ariely plus lots of course content on these topics .   Anyone can now take this SPOC:  http://www.hastac.org/blogs/kaysi-holman/2013/08/07/learn-about-self-control-racism-gender-much-more-introducing-self-pace
DOCC:  This Fall, FemTechNet is offering a very exciting feminist alternative to the MOOC.  DOCC is a Distributed Online Collaborative Course:  http://www.hastac.org/documents/recent-coverage-femtechnets-distributed-open-collaborative-course-docc-feminism-and-techno    This DOCC is intended to encourage us to rethink other models of online learning than the corporate, for-profit, elite "Doc on the Laptop" (I coined that phrase in, roughly, August 2013).
MO . . .:  And then there is our upcoming (January 2014)  "History and Future of Higher Education" course that is both a Coursera-sponsored MOOC (but with lots of P2P elements that we've added in) and it comes with a coordinated, distributed, Face-to-Face Component, with (so far) about seventeen different universities offering some version of this course, with Google Hang Outs, and Webinars, and other possibilities for open, public, cross-university and beyond interaction:  http://www.hastac.org/collections/history-and-future-higher-education     I guess that makes it a MOF . . .      Ah, yes.  The problem with acronyms. More...

By David F. Carr. After weathering a round of negative publicity, Udacity CEO Sebastian Thrun believes vindication is at hand.
"The thing I'm insanely proud of right now is I think we've found the magic formula," he said in an interview last week. "Had you asked me three months ago, I wouldn't have said that. I'm not at the point where everything is great. There are a lot of things to be improved, a lot of mistakes we're making, but I see it coming together."
Formerly a Stanford University professor as well as the founder of the Google X Labs, which created the famed self-driving car and the Google Glass wearable computer, Thrun co-founded Udacity in 2011 to explore the possibilities of massive open online courses (MOOCs). The success Thrun claims to be on the verge of is actually outside the realm of MOOCs, if you define MOOC as a free online course with a huge enrollment. Instead, he is claiming an early victory in Udacity's partnership with San Jose State University (SJSU) to offer $150 courses for which students would get credit for a passing grade, just as if they had attended on campus. The credit-bearing classes are much smaller, and in the latest round of classes the enrolled students got more tutoring and help. More...

By Michael A Peters. The New York Times dubbed 2012 the year of the MOOCs - massive open online courses. Suddenly the discourse of MOOCs and the future of the university hit the headlines with influential reports using the language of "the revolution to come." Most of these reports hailed the changes and predicted a transformation of the delivery of teaching and higher education competition from private venture for-profit and not-for-profit partnerships. Rarely did the media focus on questions of pedagogy or academic labor. This article suggests that MOOCs should be seen within the framework of postindustrial education and cognitive capitalism where social media has become the dominant culture. More...

www.MOOCs.co is a directory of free Massively Open Online Courses providers (MOOCs).
MOOCs are free non-degree online courses with open unlimited global enrollment to anyone who desires to learn, and regardless of their current educational level.
About MOOCs:
Today, MOOCs provide access to many of the same courses being taught at some of the world's leading universities, and by leading scholars and industry experts in all areas:  From Computer Science to Economics to Medicine to Literature to Engineering to Social Sciences and others.
To date in the K-12 segment, MOOCs  largely concentrated in tutor-style courses to assist students in specific subjects: Math, English, Science, etc.  However, it is anticipated that MOOCs similar in structure to those being offered in the higher education space will be soon be coming from some of the world's leading schools, their faculty and other professionals.
While most are non-credit bearing, some are starting to offer certificates, enhanced learning services and credit options at additional costs. However,none of  these additional options are required to sign up and take advantage of these free courses.
In addition, some MOOCs students are starting to submit their MOOCs course work for credit recognition by their current colleges and universities.
The majority of MOOCs are in English, but increasingly - we are seeing some of these being translated by the MOOCs' online student community themselves. It is also anticipated that multi-lingual MOOCs will be growing with the increased participation of leading international universities.
Enrollment is done online at the MOOCs provider sites. More...

Keith Devlin has an article at Huffington Post today titled “MOOC Mania Meets the Sober Reality of Education”. The premise is that the halting of the San Jose State University (SJSU) / Udacity pilot project and of SB 520 show that naive assumptions on the power of MOOCs to disrupt higher education are insufficient in reality – education is too complex. While the overall article has some good points, the very foundation of the article is flawed.
I have written about both issues – SJSU program and SB 520 – and agree that there were flaws in both. Michael and I co-wrote a position paper for 20 Million Minds Foundation making recommendations to change and improve California legislation, and we have been critical of overly-simplistic views of higher education disruption. But authors should at least characterize the goals of each program accurately before drawing conclusions. The HuffingtonPost article has three glaring problems that undercut its entire message. More...

Qu'est-ce que la VAE ?
La validation des acquis de l’expérience (VAE) est une nouvelle voie pour obtenir tout ou partie d’un diplôme à finalité professionnelle, un titre ou une certification de qualification professionnelle figurant sur une liste validée par la Commission Nationale de la Certification Professionnelle, en s’appuyant sur l’expérience acquise au cours d’activités, professionnelles ou bénévoles, notamment.
Parcours VAE
Le parcours pour obtenir une certification par la VAE comporte différentes étapes. Vous trouverez ici la description de ces étapes, certaines sont facultatives et des conseils pour mener à bien votre démarche.
Financements de la VAE
La démarche de Validation des Acquis de l'Expérience a un coût, variable selon les ministères et les organismes valideurs. Selon le statut face à l’emploi du candidat (salarié, demandeur d’emploi, non salarié, bénévole…), il existe différents types de financement de la démarche de VAE.

En visite sur le Campus de l'I.R.D. Paris-Nord, à Bondy, le 20 août 2013, pour inaugurer une nouvelle résidence étudiante, Geneviève Fioraso a réaffirmé la priorité du Gouvernement en faveur du logement étudiant.
40 000 logements étudiants supplémentaires en cinq ans
Lors de cette visite, la ministre a confirmé l'engagement du Gouvernement de créer 40 000 logements étudiants supplémentaires en cinq ans, soit une progression de près de 25 % du parc actuellement géré par les CROUS (165 000 logements). D'ores et déjà, 30 000 de ces logements sont identifiés, dont 13 000 en Ile-de-France. Une mission, confiée avec le ministère du Logement, à Marc Prévost, permettra d'identifier les 10 000 restants : 50 % de ces logements seront en Ile de France.
Dès la rentrée 2013, ce sont 8 500 nouveaux logements qui seront livrés, avec 4 600 réhabilitations et 3 900 nouvelles constructions, alors que le gouvernement précédent n'a jamais dépassé les 3 300 nouveaux logements en moyenne par an. Suite...