Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Institute for Open Leadership
Open Policy Network, May 26, 2014
Are you good enough for open learning? "Who should apply to be an IOL Fellow? Public and private sector professionals interested in openness and policy with the passion and potential to make a high impact at their institution and/or government through open policy*. Emerging leaders in academia, the arts, cultural institutions, government, scientific labs, and others who are eager to become experts in open licensing." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Developing world MOOCs – A workshop on MOOCs in Africa
Tony Carr, e/merge Africa, May 26, 2014
From Tony Carr: "Are you curious about MOOCs or already developing or running MOOCs in Africa? From Tuesday 17 June - Friday 27 June 2014 we present "Developing World MOOCs - a workshop on MOOCs in Africa" led by Sukaina Walji, Andrew Deacon and Janet Small from the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching, University of Cape Town, South Africa." The workshop is online and of course anyone can join. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Cooperation and Collaboration
Stephen Downes, May 26, 2014, International Workshop on Mass Collaboration and Education, Tübingen, Germany
In this presentation I revisit some of my work on 'groups and networks' to draw out the distinction between cooperation and collaboration for this mass collaboration workshop. I argue that mass collaboration may be impossible to achieve, and show how we employed a principle of mass cooperation to support massive open online courses (MOOCs). I also introduced new terminology, using the term 'collective' to describe what I have been calling 'groups', and 'connectives' to describe what I have been calling networks. [Link] [Slides] [Audio]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Digital Research Methodologies Redux
Stephen Downes, May 26, 2014, E-Teaching.org, Tübingen, Germany, online via Adobe Connect
This is essentially the same set of slides as presented as 'Against Digital Research Method', though the presentation addresses research on MOOCs more specifically. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Defending Commencement Protest
Michael Rushmore, Inside Higher Ed, May 27, 2014
I have never attended any of my graduation ceremonies and have no idea who spoke at them. I would probably have disapproved; I think that universities often celebrate the wrong people (the selection for this year's University of Calgary speakers makes my point: the outgoing Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, a science journalist, the CEO of the Calgary Stampede, and an executive in the grain and energy industries). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Alexander the MOOC Lands
Guy M. Rogers, Inside Higher Ed, May 28, 2014
I know, it's just another MOOC story, which has been done, but still I can't help passing these sentences along: "Some critics of MOOCs have pointed to the fact that only a small percentage of those who register for MOOCs routinely 'finish' classes... it is true that about 6% of the students who registered for my class completed the final exam. But the total of 1162 students taking the final exam in this one course is more students than I have taught at Wellesley College over the past ten years." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Future of Ed-Tech is a Reclamation Project
Audrey Watters, Hack Education, May 28, 2014
Quite a good talk from Audrey Watters a few days ago in Edmonton. This post is the (sparse) slide deck and the (rich) text transcript. The gist? "We can reclaim the Web and more broadly ed-tech for teaching and learning. But we must reclaim control of the data, content, and knowledge we create. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Building a Knowmad Society in Ecuador
John W. Moravec, Education Futures, May 28, 2014
I think this is an ambitious plan and wonder how it will impact the work that follows: "The project seeks to encourage horizontalized, peer-to-peer exchange and the development of activities that will promote extending learning beyond formal education. Nine three-day workshops will cover each regional division of Ecuador. An online platform will facilitate further discussion, and the outputs from the workshops and online activities will be fed into a data analysis process that will inform the creation of a white paper on transforming Ecuadorian education for a 'knowmadic' society." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Best Laid Plans …
Frances Bell, Francesbell's Blog, May 28, 2014
Frances Bell has responded to my recent presentation on digital research methods. She writes, "A criticism of research that Stephen made was that it tends to find what it is looking for. This is a very valid potential criticism but I would claim that a combination of planning and flexibility can guard against this." Also don't miss a good comment from Roy Williams. More...