Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Rebecca Ratcliffe. Last week it was reported that Cambridge University had spent almost £3m on wine in one year. Is it a wise use of funds?
Last week it was reported that Cambridge University had spent almost £3m on wine in one year. Is it a wise use of funds?
Prof Peter Strike, vice-chancellor, University of Cumbria
Oxford and Cambridge live in a slightly different part of the higher education world. More...

By Richard Adams. Academic success of selective free school in east London gives Michael Gove chance to set out his vision for reform of education. In Michael Gove and Andrew Adonis's wildest dreams, the academies and free schools their policies ushered into being would be filled with bright students in spotless classrooms, being encouraged to apply to top universities. When the failures of the Al-Madinah and Discovery free schools dominated the headlines in 2013, that vision seemed the stuff of a madman's hallucination. But not in Stratford, in shadow of the deconstruction of the 2012 Olympic venue, where the free school project finally had a gold medal winner in the London Academy of Excellence. More...

By George Siemens. In the past few years, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have become a lens used by educators, entrepreneurs, education reformers and venture capitalists to view the higher education system. They are now a proxy for our hopes and fears for education; how we speak of MOOCs increasingly says more about our personal philosophy than it does about open online courses.
In 2008, Stephen Downes and I offered the first MOOC — a course on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge. Our intent was to create a learning experience that embodied the attributes of the Internet: open, accessible, networked, distributed and participative. The 2,300 learners who joined our course are now a rounding error in comparison to the large offerings of providers such as edX and Coursera. Yet our original vision continues to shape our research and teaching practices: networking individual learners to foster knowledge creation. It remains my firm belief that the complex challenges that society faces can only be met through a learning architecture that emphasizes knowledge generation over knowledge duplication.
After a frenetic 2012 and 2013, the last several months have been disappointing for many advocates of MOOCs. More...

By Hedda. The Nordic Fields of Higher Education (NFHE) conference will be held in Oslo on 8-9 Oct 2014, at Litteraturhuset in Oslo, Norway. The conference is titled: “Nordic model at times of crisis – what is at stake?”. See more...

By Hedda. Quality assurance is one of the areas where European cooperation has advanced in a relatively significant manner over the last decade. Recently, the Commission published a new report on issues related to quality and quality assurance in Europe. The report refers to the 2009 report that put forward three main aims: to make quality assurance (QA) more transparent for users, to link it closer to the wider aims of higher education, and to further develop cross-border cooperation. See more...

Von Sarah Schaschek. Kopierer stehen still, Heizungen bleiben kalt: Der Sparkurs der Regierung schränkt die Hochschulen massiv ein. Deutschland hilft mit Geld für den akademischen Austausch.
An der Universität Köln ist das Reisefieber ausgebrochen: Griechenland steht wieder auf dem Flugplan. Seit einem Jahrzehnt arbeiten Kölner Wissenschaftler eng mit Kollegen der Aristoteles-Universität in Thessaloniki zusammen, doch durch die Finanzkrise ist der Austausch ins Stocken geraten. Thessaloniki hat kein Geld, um Konferenzen zu organisieren. Umgekehrt kamen die Griechen zuletzt selten nach Köln, weil ihnen Reisemittel fehlten. Altertumsforscher, aber auch Chemiker und Linguisten beider Universitäten legten ihre gemeinsamen Projekte auf Eis. "Akademische Zusammenarbeit lässt sich nicht allein per E-Mail gestalten", sagt Johannes Müller vom Akademischen Auslandsamt in Köln. Mehr...