Formation Continue du Supérieur

Blog Educpros de Jean-Michel Zakhartchouk. Dans son excellent blog, Luc Cédelle fait part des « doutes sur PISA » qui se font jour dans la communauté de spécialistes de l’éducation (chercheurs, journalistes) , en dehors de la France cependant. Un appel a même été lancé pour un moratoire de ce programme d’évaluation des systèmes éducatifs lancé il y a quelques années par l’OCDE. (voir aussi l’article de l’Express) Les critiques portent sur plusieurs points : une contestation de la méthodologie qui tiendrait trop du bricolage statistique et aboutirait à des classements basés sur des écarts minimes et surtout très contestables, et une utilisation abusive faite par les gouvernements à partir de ces données peu fiables, ainsi qu’une standardisation des évaluations, fondée sur les QCM et un développement d’une politique de la performance qui met de côté d’autres aspects que la réussite purement scolaire dans des matières dites fondamentales. Suite...

Blog Educpros de Jean-Michel Zakhartchouk. Je poursuis mon analyse des critiques qui sont faites à PISA par certains chercheurs et journalistes éducation et j’en viens au contenu des épreuves elles-mêmes, sans oublier pour autant que celles-ci s’accompagnent aussi de questionnaires (nous y reviendrons).
On connait certaines épreuves, et celles-ci sont très loin de n’évaluer que des connaissances basiques à l’aide d’un QCM.  Je prendrai quelques exemples. Dans l’une d’elles, sur laquelle butent beaucoup de jeunes, on demande de classer le degré de fiabilité de sondages électoraux selon qu’ils partent d’échantillons purement aléatoires ou plus représentatifs, suivant la taille du groupe des sondés, etc. C’est une fausse épreuve mathématique, car il s’agit davantage de raisonner et de savoir mobiliser quelques connaissances ici assez élémentaires pour bien répondre. Suite...

By David Nagel. Campaign for the Future of Higher Education claims online education "is a billion-dollar business motivated more by profits than quality education for students."
Are online education providers serving the masses or just amassing wealth for themselves? That's the question the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education wants answered. The group today challenged the leaders of edX, Udacity and Coursera to a public debate "about the claims and promises being made by the online education industry about the quality of its higher education programs." More...

By Amir Rahbaran. This is a shortened and modified post for HASTAC from my personal blog how I came up with the idea of Crowducate. My first post here on HASTAC, explained the concept of Crowducate – interactive crowdsourced courses / learning paths. In short: At Crowducate people can create courses, which are divided into sections and, on the next level, divided into “bite-sized” lectures (note: I think the “unit” might be more appropriate). You consume the courses by reading/watching the material and afterwards you could check your understanding via some quizzes. The key features are that learners can send concrete “change requests” for the lectures and quizzes and furthermore COPY the course to their own profile in order to develop it into a different course (e.g. change the language or just take some of the sections/lectures as basis for a new course). The key features, namely change request and copy course, are inspired by open source software and GitHub (called pull requests and forks). More...

By  Aria F. Chernik. Hospitality in the classroom and digital pedagogical practices encourage participatory pedagogy and collective action. This model of learning and teaching emphasizes the shared responsibility between all members to contribute to and actively further the intellectual exchange and critical inquiry of the course; indeed, this model of learning can frame how we understand subjectivity itself. Google docs, for example, can be thought of as merely a technological innovation that enables collaborative notetaking. But the programming structure of Google docs closely resembles Clay Shirky’s articulation in Here Comes Everybody of how collective action invokes subjectivity by tying one person’s identity to the identity of the group and making a decision of a group binding on all individual members (51). A collaboratively constructed Google document creates a site of authoring — and self-authoring — that materially represents the multiplicity of subjectivity. Unlike “group work” (where students simply divide the workload of a project into discrete, individual tasks), the collaborative production of participatory pedagogy derives from a shared responsibility, vision, decision-making, and creation that cannot be divided. Read more...

By Jesse Stommel and Sean Michael Morris - Hybrid Pedagogy. “Digital pedagogy is becoming, for me, coterminous with critical pedagogy, given the degree to which the digital can function both as a tool for and an obstacle to liberation.” ~ Jesse Stommel, “Decoding Digital Pedagogy, pt. 2: (Un)Mapping the Terrain”
Hybrid Pedagogy is not ideologically neutral. The threads of our discussions and the underlying philosophy of the journal are grounded in critical pedagogy — an approach to teaching and learning predicated on fostering agency and empowering learners (implicitly and explicitly critiquing oppressive power structures). As a digital journal, our work is further nuanced by a consideration of technologies and cultures — how the digital changes the way we work, think, and create, and how we as humans can use tools (like chalkboards and computers) to form critically engaged communities. Read more...

By Rolin Moe. The purpose of education is in large part linked to its standing as a social science. Philosophers dating back to Socrates have linked education to a purpose beyond the individual, one where accrual of facts and training in skills is not the outcome or objective for the individual nor society; rather, a deeper relationship with thought and reason is necessary for the development of each person and in turn their community. This is at the heart of much great philosophy:  luminaries such as Locke, Milton, Rousseau, Hume and others saw education as a continuation of society through means greater than memory recall and skilled competencies. The education discipline is built upon this theory and is at the heart of its mission: through pedagogy and methodology education can foster the growth of our culture through each person. Read more...