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30 avril 2013

Rediscovering the Material World

By T. Hugh Crawford. While I was hiking the Appalachian Trail this past summer, Georgia Tech, my home institution, announced its affiliation with Coursera and launched itself headlong into the MOOC world. It occurred to me as I ambled down the trail that day that an intensely embodied experience like long-distance hiking seemed the opposite of long-distance education. Hiking requires taking not only a careful equipment inventory but also a constant inventory of your own body: checking hydration, sore muscles, arthritic knees, blisters, and an always-too-heavy pack.
I realized that to MOOC or not to MOOC was not really the question. The real issue was how brick-and-mortar institutions could embrace MOOCs while continuing to build on the strengths of local, capital-intensive pedagogical practices—actual in-the-flesh pedagogy in a world of Coursera. Read more...

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30 avril 2013

How to Assess the Real Payoff of a College Degree

By Scott Carlson. Just listen to Dimitrius Graham sing. His voice soars up and down the scale like a bird carried on the wind. As a music major at Morgan State University, he seems keenly aware of certain realities about his life: His talent is undeniable and probably innate, and his future is promising but uncertain. He could make a career singing on Broadway or climbing the charts as a Billboard phenomenon. Or he could spend years singing for church groups and community theaters, for little or no money.
Because he went to college already able to sing, and because a career in singing is something of a financial crapshoot, one has to ask: Is he wasting his time and money, getting a degree in something that might not pay off? Mr. Graham, sitting in a campus food court with a group of friends, is quick with an answer. Read more...

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30 avril 2013

College Graduates Deserve Much More Than Transcripts

By Kevin Carey. College transcripts are horrible. I say this not as a columnist but as an employer. Whenever my nonprofit policy group advertises a position, we get hundreds of résumés. Every applicant is a college graduate. But when it comes to winnowing the field to 10 or 15 semifinalists, we have almost no useful information about what they learned in school. Their résumés tell us if they attended a selective institution, which provides some insight into what they were like at age 17. But we're not in the market for high-school juniors. Their major suggests a broad area of interest, but if they weren't interested in my field, they wouldn't be applying for the job in the first place. Read more...

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30 avril 2013

Students Avoid ‘Difficult’ Online Courses, Study Finds

By Ann Schnoebelen. Many students stay away from online courses in subjects they deem especially difficult or interesting, according to a study released this month by the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College. The finding comes just as many highly selective colleges are embracing online learning and as massive open online courses are gaining popularity and standing. A report on the study, “Choosing Between Online and Face-to-Face Courses: Community College Student Voices,” focuses on why students opt to take some courses online but others face to face. “Because they serve a lot of students who work and have kids, community colleges feel they need to offer more and more online courses to meet their demands,” said Shanna Smith Jaggars, the report’s author and the center’s assistant director. “But we looked at, What is the extent of that demand?” Read more...

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30 avril 2013

Company Offers Cash Prizes to Lure Professors to Teach MOOCs

By Goldie Blumenstyk.A German course-platform company, looking to help kick-start the MOOC movement in Europe, is inviting professors and others interested in creating and offering massive open online courses to compete in its contest for a chance to win one of 10 MOOC Production Fellowships—and with it, a prize of 25,000 euros. Applicants have until April 30 to apply. Iversity, the Berlin-based company sponsoring the fellowships, will hold online voting for the finalists through May 23.
Stifterverband, a German nonprofit association that promotes university-industry collaborations and innovation, is putting up the money, a total of 250,000 euros, or about $325,000. Read more...

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30 avril 2013

Why Some Colleges Are Saying No to MOOC Deals, at Least for Now

By Steve Kolowich. Amherst College, known for its selectivity, is accustomed to sending rejection notices. But when the liberal-arts beacon this month turned down an invitation to join the exclusive partnership of colleges offering massive open online courses through edX, it nonetheless drew surprise from many corners of academe.
Colleges have clamored to be part of the high-profile consortiums run by edX, a Cambridge-based nonprofit, and Coursera, a Bay Area start-up—often with little input from faculty members. The pace of adoption has shocked even the founders of the MOOC platforms, who are veterans of a higher-education sector notorious for its tortoiselike reflexes. But Amherst's rejection of edX, decided by a faculty vote, could mark a new chapter for MOOCs—one in which colleges revert to their default modes of deliberations and caution. "I think we're at the early stages of that honeymoon period coming to an end," says Richard Garrett, vice president and principal analyst of the consulting company Eduventures.
If MOOCs portend a "tsunami" of change in higher education, as observers have said, then many colleges have been willingly swept in by the undertow. Read more...

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30 avril 2013

Major Players in the MOOC Universe

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/MOOC_web_final_wheel03.png

Millions of students have signed up for massive open online courses, and hundreds of universities are offering some form of Web-based curriculum. Most students aren’t paying much for these classes, if they’re paying anything at all. So where is all that knowledge—and all the cash—coming from?
Coursera
This for-profit MOOC founded by Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller has teamed up with 62 colleges (and counting) for its classes. The company is experimenting with a career service that makes money by connecting employers to its students, and attracted $22-million in venture capital in its first year.
Khan Academy
Salman Khan made waves when he quit his job as a hedge-fund analyst to record short video lectures on everything from embryonic stem cells to—you guessed it—hedge funds and venture capital.
Udacity
This for-profit MOOC, started by the Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun, works with individual professors to offer courses. By March 2013, Udacity had raised more than $21-million in venture capital.
edX
Harvard and MIT put up the original $60-million to start this nonprofit MOOC. So far, students can take classes only from Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley, but classes from nine more universities are coming soon.

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30 avril 2013

Welche Hochschulform passt zu wem?

Wer studieren will, hat die Wahl zwischen Universität, Fachhochschule und einem Dualen Studium. Wir erklären die Unterschiede und geben Entscheidungstipps. Lange Zeit belastete der Zusatz "FH" den Lebenslauf von Fachhochschulabsolventen. Wer von der Uni kam, galt als schlauer, hatte er doch eine theoretischere Ausbildung hinter sich. Von der Fachhochschule (FH) hingegen kamen die Praktiker, die anwenden, aber angeblich nicht entwickeln und forschen konnten. Mehr...

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30 avril 2013

Wer kein Einser-Abi hat, muss flexibel sein

Ohne Einser-Abi stehen die Chancen auf begehrte Studienplätze schlecht. Kein Grund, die Hoffnung aufzugeben, schreibt Kristin Schmidt. Wer flexibel ist, findet einen Weg. Angenommen, Sie wollten Wirtschaftswissenschaften an der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt studieren. Dann musste im vergangenen Wintersemester die Abitur-Note besser als 2,0 sein. Für Kommunikationswissenschaften in Münster brauchten Bewerber 1,9. Biologie in Saarbrücken war mit 1,8 möglich. Psychologie in Dresden konnten nur Abiturienten mit einem Schnitt von 1,3 und besser belegen. Aber das ist noch gar nichts: Wollen Sie direkt nach dem Abitur Medizin studieren, brauchten Sie in den meisten Bundesländern einen Notendurchschnitt von mindestens 1,1. Mehr...

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30 avril 2013

Gros plan sur Paris Descartes

Blog "Il y a une vie après le bac" d'Olivier Rollot. Gros plan sur Paris Descartes: entretien avec Frédéric Dardel, son président
Polytechnicien, ancien directeur du département des sciences du vivant du CNRS, Frédéric Dardel est président de l’université Paris Descartes depuis fin 2011. Celui qui se définit comme un "infatigable curieux" veut y promouvoir de nombreuses innovations pédagogiques, et pas seulement dans des études de médecine qui sont le fer de lance de son université.
Olivier Rollot: Si certaines universités sont concentrées sur les sciences ou les sciences humaines, Paris Descartes est-elle très large avec non seulement une faculté de médecine parmi les plus réputées mais aussi du droit, des sciences humaines et sociales ou des sciences « dures». Comment gérez-vous un ensemble aussi large?
Frédéric Dardel: Je viens des sciences dures, je me suis ensuite passionné pour la biologie et je travaille aujourd’hui avec des enseignants de toutes les disciplines. En vieillissant on apprend à comprendre que tout ce qu’on voit dans son périmètre ne se généralise pas forcément. Passer par l’Institut des hautes études pour la science et la technologie (IHEST) m’a aussi permis de rencontrer des profils très différents et de réfléchir à des sujets qui ne sont pas forcément de notre ressort immédiat. Aujourd’hui le dialogue est assez facile avec des collègues qui ne voient pas en moi un horrible mathématicien borné. Suite de l'article...
Voir aussi Universités - qui sont les nouveaux présidents, Evaluation des universitaires.

Blag "Tá an saol tar éis na scoile ard" 's Olivier Rollot closeup de Paris Descartes agallamh le Frédéric Dardel, a uachtarán. Polytechnique, iar-stiúrthóir ar an roinn na heolaíochtaí beatha CNRS, tá Frédéric Dardel Uachtarán na hOllscoile bPáras Descartes ó dheireadh 2011. A cur síos ar é féin mar "gan staonadh aisteach" ba mhaith leis a chur chun cinn nuálaíochtaí oideachais go leor, ní hamháin i scoil leighis atá ag spearheading an ollscoil. Níos mó...

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