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By Navleen. What are MOOCs? 
MOOCs stand for Massive Open Online Courses. The idea behind the concept of MOOCs is that these are ‘Courses’, related to practically any topic, are offered ‘Online’, and are free and ‘Open’ for anyone to enroll into. So, an ideal MOOC would have unlimited number of enrolls, hence making it ‘Massive’!
What exactly is meant by Open Access? 
Open access refers to the unrestricted provision of access to educational resources, free of cost. MOOC content is usually open for all, and there is no registration or fee required to enroll for one either. A web browser is all one requires to have Open Access.
Is there a limit on the number of participants in a MOOC? 
No, there is no limit to the number of participants in a MOOC. A typical MOOC is designed to take on board millions of students and learners. 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 Graeme Paton. An investigation is to be launched into the state of foreign language teaching in schools after the number of pupils taking A-levels in French and German plummeted to a record low.
Examination boards said they were working on a rescue plan in an attempt to revive interest in the subject following a year-on-year fall in entries over the last decade.
The inquiry is likely to look into areas such as the types of students studying a language and why relatively few A-levels are awarded a top grade.
It came after French and German – traditionally the two most popular language courses in schools – both appeared in a list of the 10 fastest declining subjects this summer. Some 11,272 pupils studied French in 2013 – a drop of 10 per cent in a year and a near 50 per cent decline over the last decade. More...

By Telegraph View. The drop in A-level grades indicates that Michael Gove's reforms are having an effect.
The announcement of A-level results is a time-honoured summer ritual, with households around the country gathering in trepidation and then, ideally, exhilaration. Yet this year, there is a different flavour to events. As in 2012, grades are doing something decidedly untraditional: namely, going down.
This is not a fact to be lamented. No one seriously disputes that the exam system fell victim to rampant grade inflation: how else to explain the threefold rise in the proportion of A grades since the mid-Eighties? That this trend is now going into reverse is a tribute to the Coalition’s efforts, with the watchdog Ofqual and the exam boards given the clearest indication by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, that he wants to restore rigour and integrity to the system. More...

By Graeme Paton. Almost 3,000 courses were still available at Britain’s best universities on Thursday night as elite institutions scrambled to recruit bright students. Sixteen out of the 24 members of the elite Russell Group are advertising degree places through the clearing system. Courses are being left open to students who may have narrowly missed out on their original offer of a place at another highly sought-after institution. Many places are also likely to be taken by students who want to “trade up”, shunning their existing course offer after gaining better than expected grades. Last year, just 1,300 students gained places through “adjustment” but it is thought numbers could rise this summer. It represents the first evidence of a competitive market between universities after the Coalition reforms to the higher education system in England. More...

By Ian Walker. Research published yesterday shows that graduate earnings continue to exceed average non-graduate earnings whatever your degree, says economist Professor Ian Walker. The message from our research into the 'graduate premium' – published yesterday by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills – is simple: it's all good news for anyone willing to study hard. On average, if you complete a degree of any kind you're going to see a substantial return on your 'investment'.
Not only is it the case that average graduate earnings continue to exceed average non-graduate earnings (despite the dramatic recent rise in higher education participation), but also the riskiness in graduate earnings continues to be less than that of non-graduates. So called STEM subjects and business related degrees continue to be the best bets – partly reflecting the importance of quantitative skills across the market. But all subjects show a healthy return. Moreover, despite the rise in tuition fees the average return remains huge. Indeed, the tweaks to the loan system have been designed to favour those that do badly in the labour market. More...

By Graeme Paton. Top universities are discriminating against private school pupils by engineering admissions in favour of teenagers from the state system, according to the head of Britain’s biggest independent schools group. Institutions are attempting to drive down recruitment from the fee-paying sector to satisfy Government demands for a more socially-balanced student body, it is claimed.
Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council, said the creation of specific targets that discriminate between state and private school pupils were “wrong” and actually risked favouring affluent children from “middle-class comprehensives”. An analysis by the Telegraph shows that 11 out of 20 members of the elite Russell Group want to increase admissions from state schools over the next five years. This includes Cambridge, Durham, Exeter, King’s College London, the London School of Economics and Warwick. One institution – University College London – has pledged to boost the number of places awarded to state-educated entrants by 10 per cent by 2016. 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...

By Deborah Gabriel. With just 85 black professors in the UK, Deborah Gabrielsays we need a more diverse curriculum for real change. If the same vigour and commitment that drive gender equality in higher education were directed towards race equality then better progress could be made in addressing the institutionalised racism that pervades the higher education sector.
While women now account for 44% of all academics within UK universities (2011/12 HESA Staff Record) , the percentage of black academics (combining black Caribbean, black African and black other) stands at 1.6%.
In a survey among the Black British Academics network, 81% of respondents said they were in favour of positive action targeted towards the groups most adversely impacted by race. The issue is not just that black academics are under-represented, says member Cecily Jones, an independent researcher, but also relates to "the conditions under which we work; the opaque pay negotiations and promotions structures".
There are just 85 black professors out of a total of 18,510 in the UK. More...

By Claire Shaw. Far from reaching its due-by date, academic library architecture is reflecting and predicting how we learn now and into the future. "The academic library has died," wrote Brian Sullivan, librarian at Alfred University, in an opinion piece responding to the gloomy tone of a 2011 report on the future of academic libraries. "One reason for cause of death is that library buildings were converted into computer labs, study spaces and headquarters for informational-technology departments." Although Sullivan is being facetious – the headline for his piece was 'Academic library autopsy report 2050' – there's no denying that the university library as we know it is changing. And this has become more evident over the past decade through changes in the way university library buildings look the world over. More...