By . More UK universities are setting up shop in the capital, reports Gill Wyness – is this healthy competition or centralised power? Higher education is one of London's many draws, with 40 higher education institutions including five of the 24 prestigious Russell Group universities. However, there are several more universities in London than these HESA statistics show. This is due to the growing trend for universities outside the capital to open up London campuses. More...
By Tracy McVeigh. Aristocratic publisher branches out into office etiquette after bosses complain about embarrassing junior staff.
After centuries spent monitoring the genealogy of the British aristocracy, the publishing house Debrett's is to branch out from producing guides to elegant manners for "people of distinction" and offer courses in etiquette and social skills to hopeful jobseekers. More...
By Richard Adams. Independent Commission on Fees study reveals an applications increase from poorer neighbourhoods between 2010 and 2013. The rise in tuition fees to £9,000 a year has not discouraged students from disadvantaged areas applying to university in England, a study on the impact of higher fees has concluded. More...
By Matthew Reisz. A leading sociologist has attacked the application of so-called “‘evidence’-based policy” – and much of the research lying behind it – to education.
Writing in the online magazine spiked on “the scourge of scientism”, Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent, argues that “the use of scientific evidence for political ends is particularly troublesome in the sphere of social policy…An area where this is most apparent is education”.
Particularly to be deplored, in Professor Furedi’s view, was the use of the term “intervention”, taken over from medicine, in an educational context, which he believed “reveals how much today’s cultural elite believes in the existence of educational pathology – that is, great numbers of children suffering from some form of quasi-medical educational deficit”. More...
By Simon Baker. A cross-party group of MPs has launched an inquiry that will look at the black and minority ethnic community’s interaction with higher education.
Entitled Race and Higher Education, the inquiry will be organised by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Race and Community, which is chaired by former higher education minister David Lammy.
Among the issues that the inquiry will tackle will be access to higher education for students from BME communities and the “long and short-term value” of universities for such students. More...
MIT beats Harvard and Cambridge to retain the top spot in the tenth annual QS World University Rankings.The US takes 11 of the top 20 positions, but its dominance has eroded since the financial crisis. Of the 83 US universities in the top 400, 64 rank lower than in 2007/8.The 43 US public universities in the top 400 have lost an average of 20 places since 2007/8, following successive government funding cuts.In contrast, 70% of the 62 Asian institutions in the top 400 rank higher than in 2007, yet still no Asian institution in the top 20. Read more...
By Carmel Shute. Swinburne University of Technology today agreed to settle a discrimination claim made to the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission by Joanne Waldron, an administrator employed by Swinburne University of Technology to provide assistance to post-graduate students. The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), which represented Ms Waldron, said that Swinburne senior management had finally agreed to honour previous undertakings to relocate Ms Waldron to its Croydon campus following the closure of its Lilydale campus. Ms Waldron has a medical condition which significantly limited her capacity to travel long distances and was made redundant despite her strong desire to continue working for the university. More...
By Jonathan Tapson. A lot can change in a year. Twelve months ago, the traditional universities were doomed, condemned to irrelevance by an onslaught of MOOCs. Not every last one of them was going to die; Sebastian Thrun said that perhaps ten might survive. This was not very reassuring for the executives, staff, students, and alumni of the 20,000 universities which don’t fall into the top-10, when ranked according to the criterion: “Universities which will survive MOOCs.” We haven’t yet seen this category in the Times Higher Ed rankings, but we are sure its appearance is imminent. One year later, it seems that, like Mark Twain’s, reports of these deaths are greatly exaggerated. In fact, as a Slate writer put it, “Anti-MOOC really is the new black.“ San Jose’s State University’s MOOCs-for-credit experiment has ended in qualified failure. There has been a plethora of articles and commentaries suggesting that the MOOCs were all just a bad dream, and we can go back to the chalkboard with a sigh of relief. More...
In my previous post, we talked about the general information available on MOOCs and contemplated the frequently asked questions. In nutshell, launching a MOOC requires the following:
1. A great idea for a course
2. A great plan
2. Lots of time for creating content
3. A platform to host the MOOC
4. A good social media campaign
5. A group of teachers you can rely on
Lets assume you have the idea and the plan. And the content is ready too. In this post, we talk about the technological aspect of MOOCing aka the possibilities of hosting a MOOC via WizIQ Virtual Classroom, and how should you go about it.
This post is written by Mark Williamson, Director of Action for Happiness*. This blog is part of the Wikiprogress Series on Subjective Well-being./https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
