Formation Continue du Supérieur

16 juin 2013

Can Canada Attract American Students?

By Kris Olds. Alex Usher posted a pithy entry this morning titled 'The Latest Bandwagon – American Students' that is worth a read. In fact, it is a short one so I'm going to reprint the whole thing below, and then reflect back on his discussion of the emerging view that Canadian universities could/should recruit more American undergraduate students. I'm basing my comments below via reflections of my Gr. 12 son's experience this year applying to five Canadian and five US universities, as well as a discussion I coincidentally coordinated with approximately 140 UW-Madison students a few days ago in my summer version of Geog 304 (World Regions in Global Context). This discussion involved engendering comparative thinking about regional similarities and differences and centered on a hypothetical study abroad year split in half between l’Auberge Espagnole (in Barcelona) and l’Auberge Canadian (in the Canadian city of their choice). Read more...

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16 juin 2013

Coursera Condescension

Yesterday I watched the video of Daphne Koller, co-founder of Coursera, speaking at UBC a couple of weeks ago. After her presentation, three UBC professors who have taught or are currently teaching a Coursera MOOC contributed to a panel discussion. In many ways, neither the talk nor the discussion were particularly illuminating. Koller gave a talk that, I understand, she has been giving for some time. It’s the basic schtick for Coursera: “The Online Revolution: Learning without Limits.” It begins with the mathematical sublime, stunning us with the sheer numbers who register or show initial interest in Coursera offerings. And it transitions smoothly through the prestige of the universities who have signed up so far (“30 of the top 60 universities worldwide,” represented by their logos) to the pathos of individual cases. Read more...

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16 juin 2013

The Other Higher Education

By Liz Reisberg. No one doubts the phenomenon of “massification” that has resulted in more access to higher education for more students worldwide. This is certainly a good thing. But as we have discussed in past blogs, massification introduces many new challenges. When higher education was an elite undertaking, entering students often came from elite primary and secondary schools, making it more likely that they had the necessary preparation to continue tertiary studies through to graduation. As participation rates move from 6 or 16 percent to 46 or 66 percent, the cohort includes more students from public primary and secondary schools where the quality of education varies dramatically. The growing participation in postsecondary education parallels economic growth, particularly notable in Latin America and Africa where rapidly growing economies demand higher levels of skilled labor. Read more...

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16 juin 2013

Ordinary Americans

By Barbara Fister. Abuse thrives on secrecy. Obviously, public disclosure of matters such as the names of intelligence agents or the technological details of collection methods is inappropriate. But in the field of intelligence, secrecy has been extended to inhibit review of the basic programs and practices themselves. Read more...

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16 juin 2013

Competitive Advantage?

By Dayna Catropa. A headline in Forbes this week caught my eye -- “It’s Official! The End of Competitive Advantage.” I was intrigued. The article discussed a new book, “The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business.” The author argues that strategy frameworks are designed to help organizations find a sustainable competitive advantage, but in the new frontier successful organizations will realize that an ‘advantage’ may only be temporary. Read more...

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16 juin 2013

Balancing Privacy and a Public Web Presence

By Andrea Zellner. Recently evidence of a massive government surveillance program called PRISM has re-surfaced concerns about individual privacy. Here at GradHacker, we've blogged about the need for a public web presence in grad school, primarily in order to facilitate networking, sharing researching, and job searching. While these discussions have included ideas about what to share and what not to share, they've largely ignored (mea culpa!) the privacy discussion. While I don't have any tips for avoiding government surveillance, there are some privacy considerations that most of us should think about as we splash about in the social stream. Read more...

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16 juin 2013

Digital Divide in My Own Home

By Laura Tropp. My daughter did not do so well on her first math tests at school. Neurotic professor mom that I am, I quickly went on Amazon to buy up all the books so I could tutor her in 1st grade math (I even learned what a rectangular prism was-- I swear that wasn’t a shape when I went to school). However, when I started working with her, I realized the material was not the problem. It turns out she was being tested via computer, and she had no idea how to navigate using the mouse. She needed a digital education. As I am a communication professor, my friends made fun of me-- the old “shoemaker’s child never has shoes” phenomenon, they said. Read more...

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16 juin 2013

Need a Mobile App Solution for Your Campus?

By Eric Stoller. I spent a couple of days in California last week at the offices of Blackboard Mobile. As you already know, I'm a fan of the apps from the fine folks at Bb Mobile. Mobile Central and Mobile Learn brought major shifts in user interface, design, and creativity when they were launched "back in the day." The newest solution from the Bb Mobile team is called Mosaic. My mission for this visit was to use Mosaic to create my own app. To get ready for this endeavor, my "handlers" at Bb Mobile had me download Xcode (it includes an iOS emulator for app demos/testing) and acquire developer credentials for the Apple Store as well as for Google Play. My "homework" also included suggestions for my app assets - icons, load screen graphics, background images. Read more...

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16 juin 2013

On Bubbles, Online Education, and Confused Reporting

By Joshua Kim. I'm sure that Forbes staffer John Tamny is a good reporter, and that Forbes is a quality publication. It is the quality of Tamny and Forbes that cause me so much frustration when I read columns such as Online Education Will Be the Next 'Bubble' To Pop, Not Traditional University Learning. When Tamny is saying that online education is the next bubble he is of course not talking about the sort of online education that any of us working in the field of designing, teaching, or supporting online courses would recognize. Read more...

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16 juin 2013

Engaging With For-Profits

By Joshua Kim. I have this idea that people like me in traditional non-profits can learn some things from the for-profits. I also think that it is in everyone’s interest (both students and the for-profits themselves) to adopt some of the cultural norms and practices of traditional non-profits. The problem, as I see it, is that we don’t really understand each other. For-profits should be more transparent, and we (traditional non-profit people) should be more open to listening. It is in this spirit that I reached out to Dr. Jennifer Stephens-Helm, VP, Institutional Research & Assessment at American Public University System (APUS). Read more...

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