2013 was a year of hype for MOOCs (massive open online courses). Great big numbers and great big hopes were followed by some disappointing first results. But the head of edX, Anant Agarwal, makes the case that MOOCs still matter -- as a way to share high-level learning widely and supplement (but perhaps not replace) traditional classrooms. Agarwal shares his vision of blended learning, where teachers create the ideal learning experience for 21st century students. More...

By rhizo14. The rhizomatic learning course #rhizo14 is the first open course I’ve ever taught without affiliation. (though certainly being employed by my university and having an invested and interested partner allows me to have the ‘free time’ to pursue it) I have no partner that I’m working with or no school supporting it. This is the educational exploration I’ve been doing for the last 8-9 years, and I invited whoever may want to join to come along with me for the ride. It is, in many ways, the vision of MOOCs that I have had since we first starting talking about them in 2008. The course participation has been fascinating… and enlightening. Don’t take my word for it, check out some of the highlights for yourself on Cathleen Nardi’s curation page. The course is being ‘designed’, if you can call it that, to expose the concepts of rhizomatic learning through a succession of challenges. The challenges have been developed on the fly based on my sense of what might help push the conversation to a new and interesting place. They are structured to challenge the cultural assumptions that are prevalent around learning and to have people share their responses to it. More...

By jaapsoft2. Language needs a medium. The medium could be sound, paper, books, screen, phone. Medium has possibilities and impossibilities.
Telling stories has laws and rules. Listeners react on the story if you don’t keep to the rules. Writing has rules.
learning depends on language, the medium (books, blogs) of the language restricts or benefits the learning. The medium of telling has rules and laws, the art of story telling is to use these rules to make a good story. Books do have their rules and possibilities. Newspapers and blogging are media with possibilities and impossibilities. More...

By Tom Woodward. I’m attending ELI 2014. MOOC seems to be synonymous with any online or blended “educational” offering regardless of size or openness.
That’s a pretty open definition.
Massive
Massive (or massively) is a strange word to ignore. It is the first letter after all. It seems important to differentiate between online courses which have lots of participants and courses which use massive participation to change course possibilities.

• If a student can’t tell¹ if they’re the only student in the course or if there are 5,000² other students, you just have an online course. Please retract your media statements before the old school online learning people burn you in effigy.
• If you take your 5,000 students and break them down so they are in “normal” sized cohorts that proceed independently, congratulations you have several online courses. Please call your mom and tell her you might have overstated your MOOC street cred.
• If having 5,000 students actually hurts your students, you have an online mess. Punish yourself by reading YouTube comments until you lose hope in humanity. More...

Are we moral by nature or as a result of learning and culture? Are men and women "hard-wired" to think differently? Do our genes or our schools make us intelligent? These all seem like important questions, but maybe they have no good scientific answer.
Once, after all, it seemed equally important to ask whether light was a wave or a particle, or just what arcane force made living things different from rocks. Science didn't answer these questions—it told us they were the wrong questions to ask. Light can be described either way; there is no single cause of life.
Every year on the Edge website the intellectual impresario and literary agent John Brockman asks a large group of thinkers to answer a single question. (Full disclosure: Brockman Inc. is my agency.) This year, the question is about which scientific ideas should be retired. More...

'Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations'. Senator William Fulbright
As the debate on internationalisation of higher education grows stronger, so does the interest in mobility not only of students, but also of staff. This is likely to intensify in the coming months, as the European Commission's new Erasmus+ programme, starting in 2014, promises more opportunities and funding for higher education and teaching staff to study, train and work in another country. Indeed, higher education staff will account for a significant percentage of the 1 million beneficiaries of a mobility period funded by the programme between 2014 and 2020. Read more...

When a country’s tuition fee system does not cover administrative charges, who picks up the bill?
Comparing tuition fees - the fee charged to higher education students for educational instruction - seems straightforward.  It should be as simple as crunching a few numbers or better yet, locating dots on a chart. Every year, country comparable data on tuition fees are issued by international information providers. The chart below, based on Eurydice’s National Student Fee and Support Systems and the OECD’s 2013 ‘Education at a Glance’, for example clearly shows that England charges more tuition fees than Japan. It seems straightforward.  But is it? Short answer: not really. Read more...

'We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.' – Kurt Vonnegut
Great inventions respond to simple needs. Wanting to move faster than on foot surely led to the first ever bicycle sketch, often attributed to Caprotti in 1493. Now the speed of technological innovation is increasing, so fast it seems that our cars will soon drive themselves. Science is finding technological fixes to our problems before most of us realise there was a problem in the first place. Just have a look at the world of education and new teaching tools: virtual classrooms and smart boards are well on their way to replacing physical space and chalk. But how are our systems adapting to this brave new world, and by the way, why doesn't somebody invent a smart tool where we could find out what is really going on? Read more...

Welcome to the New Year Edition of the Eurydice Newsletter
New year, new start, new Eurydice Newsletter - your update on recent and forthcoming Eurydice publications and news from the world of European education.

Welcome to the New Year Edition of the Eurydice Newsletter
New year, new start, new Eurydice Newsletter - your update on recent and forthcoming Eurydice publications and news from the world of European education.

Education News from the Commission 

>> Public consultation on a "European Area of Skills and Qualifications"

>> Erasmus+ guide published, €1.8 billion in funding available in 2014

>> Commission and OECD launch website for universities to measure entrepreneurial impact

>> Education and Training Monitor highlights impact of budget cuts and skills mismatch