By HASTAC Admin. FemTechNet, a network of feminist scholars and educators, is launching a new model for online learning at 15 higher education institutions this fall. The DOCC, or Distributed Open Collaborative Course,is a new approach to collaborative learning and an alternative to MOOCs, the massive open online course model that proponents claim will radicalize twenty-first century higher education. FemTechNet’sfirst DOCC course, “Dialogues on Feminism and Technology,” will launch fall 2013.
The DOCC model for 21st-century higher education recognizes and is built on the understanding that expertise is distributed throughout a network, among participants in diverse institutional contexts. This model explicitly departs from the typical MOOC approach organized around the delivery of information from an “expert” faculty (or a pair of instructors) to the uninformed "masses." The organization of a DOCC emphasizes learning collaboratively in a digital age by enabling the active participation of all kinds of learners (as teachers, as students, as media-makers, as activists, as trainers, as members of various publics and/or social groups). By virtue of its reach across institutions and learning sites, the DOCC also enables the extension of classroom experience beyond the walls, physical or virtual, of a single institution.

By David Kent. When I was in the early stages of my undergraduate degree, I thought long and hard about doing an MBA in combination with science. It seemed to me that the sector was underdeveloped in Canada and good science training was going to be essential to a successful career. I was motivated to go out and create products that were useful for people and make money while doing so. That was circa 2001 and, upon reflection, I believe that my science mentors from 3rd year undergraduate onwards steered me away from the biotech industry repeatedly and uncompromisingly – demonizing such careers as “selling out” or “not real science.” To be fair, I am quite happy with where I ended up and the scientific mentoring I have received along the way has been incredible, but some part of me wonders how much of a demographic shift in science training could be achieved if the impressions left on young minds were different. More...

By Graeme Paton. Old-fashioned gender “stereotyping” is leading to a huge division in A-level subjects taken by boys and girls, leading examiners have warned. Figures show that the gender split has been “very significantly widened” this year as more pupils sit courses that match traditional expectations.
It emerged that girls accounted for more than seven out of 10 English exams sat this year – an increase on 2012 – while boys’ likelihood of studying the subject dropped. At the same time, almost eight-in-10 physics papers were taken by boys – up by four per cent in a year – while fewer girls sat exams in the discipline.
Examiners suggested that teachers and parents may be fuelling the trend by filling pupils with stereotypical advice about their future career path. It was also feared that a lack of good role models in some subjects may be putting boys or girls off certain disciplines. More...

By Cole Moreton. Girls may be outraged by this, but the man in charge of admissions at Oxford University believes boys do better in exams like science because they are better at taking risks.
“It depends on the subject discipline,” says Mike Nicholson, the director of undergraduate admissions. “We have generally seen male students tend to be much more prepared to take risks, which is why they do well in exams.
“Generally, female students are risk-averse, and will tend to take longer to think about an answer. If it’s a multiple-choice question, male students will generally go with their gut feeling. Girls will try and reason it out.”
What impact does that have on the results? “Obviously, if you are using timed multiple-choice assessments, that has a bearing on the likelihood of the female students even finishing the section, when the boys have whizzed through it.”
He admits to talking in “broad brush strokes” — but Thursday’s A-level results revealed that seven out of 10 students who sat English papers this year were girls, while eight out of 10 in physics exams were boys. There was an increase in both trends, widening the gender gap in a year when record numbers of students passed their A-levels. More...

Holding the Line is the theme of the NTEU’s Bluestocking Week 2013 to be celebrated this year between 12 -16 August.
2013 has been a tumultuous period for gender politics. This makes this year’s Bluestocking Week an even more critical moment for women working in higher education. The theme is ‘Holding the Line’ and the necessity of resistance to sexism in public life has perhaps never been so pronounced.
Bluestocking Week is named for the first generations of university women of the 19^th century who grabbed the term, and even as it was used by their opponents as a derogatory dismissal of their achievements and proudly wore it as a badge of serious scholarship. The term originates from the latter part of the 18^th century as women started organising literary societies in their homes and began campaigning for women’s access to university and more generally for women’s rights to equality in work, under the law and access into the parliaments. Many of the middle and upper class leaders of the suffragist and suffragette movements started out in or were influenced by these literary societies, as did some of the male supporters of women’s rights. Indeed the term blue stocking is often attributed to a male member of the circle who arrived at meetings in his everyday worsted wool blue stockings rather than white silk ones usually worn by men when meeting with men. This was taken up as distinguishing the women’s initiative.*
See www.nteu.org.au/bluestockingweek and the 2012 edition of Agenda, the NTEU’s annual women’s magazine (link) for details of the origins and histories of the Bluestockings.
We focused last year upon celebrating the success of women in higher education drawing upon the history of women’s sometimes slow, but determined struggle for participation in universities as students and staff, as well as upon challenging gendered discrimination in the construction and transmission of knowledge. Read more...

By Jeannie Rea. University women across Australia are donning blue stockings and putting their best foot (and leg) forward for Bluestocking Week, 12-16 August.
NTEU National President, Jeannie Rea, who launched Bluestocking Week in Melbourne today, said that the theme this year was ‘holding the line’.
“2013 has been a tumultuous period for gender politics. This makes this year’s Bluestocking Week an even more critical moment for women working in higher education. The necessity to resist to sexism in public life has perhaps never been so pronounced,” she said.
“Underpinning this is the persistent gender pay gap. Men out-earn women in every occupational group in Australia, even in those jobs dominated by women. Gender inequity is still a major issue in university employment, even while more women than men study and work at universities.”
Today’s launch had women literally ‘holding the line’ – a clothes line with large cardboard blue stockings displaying facts about women’s pay inequity. Read more...

A la recherche d'un nouvel équilibre hommes-femmes dans l'enseignement supérieur et la recherche
Auteur(s) :  LABORDE Françoise
Editeur(s) :  Sénat (France)
"Le rapport d'information de la délégation aux droits des femmes examine le projet de loi relatif à l'enseignement supérieur et à la recherche (n° 614, 2012-2013) en réponse à la saisine de la commission de la culture, de l'éducation et de la communication, et conformément à ses attributions. Le rapport note que de fortes disparités entre les sexes subsistent dans l'enseignement supérieur et la recherche. Celles-ci témoignent de la persistance de barrières implicites qui affectent les parcours des étudiantes, des enseignantes-chercheuses, et des chercheuses. Revenant sur les démarches engagées par les pouvoirs publics et les principaux acteurs du secteur de l'enseignement supérieur et de la recherche pour faire évoluer cette situation, le rapport se penche sur les deux séries de dispositions inscrites dans le projet de loi pour assurer un meilleur équilibre entre les femmes et les hommes : d'une part la composition paritaire de trois grands organismes chargés du pilotage et de l'évaluation de l'enseignement supérieur et de la recherche (Conseil national de l'enseignement supérieur et de la recherche, Haut conseil de l'évaluation de la recherche ; Conseil stratégique de la recherche), d'autre part la parité dans les conseils centraux de certains établissements publics d'enseignement supérieur. La Délégation présente par ailleurs une série de propositions en faveur d'un rééquilibrage de la place des femmes, de la préservation des conditions d'un enseignement sur le genre, et enfin de la lutte contre le harcèlement et les violences sexuelles." (à consulter sur le site du Sénat).
Télécharger le document :  http://www.senat.fr/.../r12-655-notice.html.