When President Macron's idea of European Universities was first picked up by the academic community, most people expected that, given its bureaucratic nature, the EU would not be able to act on it before the new Erasmus+ generation starts in 2021. But within a year, the first pilot call was published, and the first winners were just announced on June 26th. More...
What do a Chinese doctoral student at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, a globally recognised expert in education and pedagogy at Curtin University in Australia, and the Mauritius-born Associate Deputy Provost for International Programs at the University of Delaware in the United States all have in common? Like me, they were actively involved in the 2019 WES-CIHE Summer Institute hosted earlier this month at Boston College. More...
As the EAIE Mentorship programme gets ready to kick off yet another year of cultivating supportive relationships between internationalisation professionals, EAIE member and former mentor Evelien Hack shares how her experience led to knowledge exchange at the institutional level and friendship at the personal level. More...
English-Medium Instruction (EMI) and its spread across Europe in recent years is a well-documented phenomenon. However, despite its widespread use, higher education institutions can still struggle to implement it in a way that is successful and responsible. Come to the workshop at EAIE 2019 Helsinki to learn about the strategies and support practices that can turn English into a medium of inspiration for teaching and learning. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Press Release[Edit][Delete]: More than 70 Million Adults Want to Head Back to School, Capella University [Edit][Delete] August 22, 2006
The headline is an attention-grabber, but of course this is a survey result that has been extrapolated. Moreover, the headline equivocates between 'getting more eduication' and 'going back to school' - and these are two very different things. It would be useful to have the survey questions, however I was not able to find them on the survey itself. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Seb Schmoller[Edit][Delete]: Automatic Metadata Collection. Humans Not Obsolete. For the Foreseeable Future., Fortnightly Mailing [Edit][Delete] August 22, 2006
I like the way Seb Schmoller introduced this item in his newsletter: "humans are not obsolete. For the foreseeable future. But they can still create useless metadata." Hence we see the proposal that some metadata needs to be based on subjective interpretation highlighted with a reference to Clay Shirkey's metacrap paper. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. David Carter-Tod[Edit][Delete]: Blackboard's Pending Patents, A poke with a sharp stick [Edit][Delete] August 22, 2006
An item from David Carter-Tod lists more pending patents submitted by Blackboard. It will take some analysis of these, but they again appear to be concepts already established at the time of the filing.
Take, for example, the "method and system for conducting online transactions." The application describes a system where users have an account with an organization that acts as a broker for sales of third-party materials. Yes, a 'store'. But more to the point, the description seems to be almost a clone of the system I describe here and elsewhere. Not, again, that I am claiming to be the first person ever to think of it. But I was definitely ahead of - and published before - Blackboard's patent application. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Scott Leslie[Edit][Delete]: Short Video on Common Cartridge, EdTechPost [Edit][Delete] August 22, 2006
I don't know - it just seems to me odd that interoperability has finally been achieved - at the course level. "IMS Common Cartridge, recently demonstrated in action between Angel, Sakai, Blackboard and WebCT at the Alt-i-lab 2006 sessions... to create a common standard for full course import and export between CMS and useful to publishers. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Constance Steinkuehler and Dmitri Williams[Edit][Delete]: Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication [Edit][Delete]Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication [Edit][Delete] August 22, 2006
Quite a good essay on the idea of online games as 'third places' - that is, neutral and familiar meeting areas, like pubs (where "everybody knows your name"). "Participation in such virtual 'third places'," argue the authors, "appears particularly well suited to the formation of bridging social capital." For example, pubs will allow individuals from very different social communities - plumbers and M.Ds, for example - to meet and interact. These weak social ties create important 'bridging' connections between communties. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Joyce Valenza[Edit][Delete]: Meme:, August 22, 2006
I don't know - do you capitalize the words in a lyric when its used as a title? Oh well - sometimes you just have to throw out the styleguide. This link is a nice chart showing "how life has changed since I left library school" - looking at things like types of reference materials and what we know about how we learn, among many others. More...
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