Formation Continue du Supérieur

17 février 2013

Division over how to account for research expenses

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By Keith Nuthall and Carmen Paun. A political struggle is under way over how universities and research centres should account for expenses in the European Union’s (EU) upcoming Horizon 2020 research programme. With a projected €70 billion budget from 2014-20, the sums available are significant.
On the one side is the European Commission, which in the name of simplification wants to use flat-rate grants that give universities the freedom to spend research grants as they see fit, as long as the promised outcome is achieved. And on the other is the European University Association (EUA), which sees value in the old system – used in the outgoing EU Seventh Framework Programme, or FP7 – where project costs are fully accounted for in detail, and recouped through presentation of receipts and spending records. In debates on the shape of Horizon 2020 at the European parliament, the EUA is backing proposed amendments that would allow universities and research centres attracting Horizon 2020 grants to account for spending using the old system. Read more...

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17 février 2013

‘Higher education sector faces leadership crunch’

The higher education sector is facing shortage of capable leaders, says a survey on ‘The Leadership Challenges Faced by the Indian Higher Education System’. According to 92 per cent of respondents, this trend is expected to continue till 2020.
Lack of adequate mentoring, academic leadership, guidance and training (60 per cent), low salary (50 per cent) and the general impression about academics not as a popular career choice, are the reasons cited for the shortage. Education Promotion Society for India — a national body of over 500 higher education institutions in collaboration with a management portal took up the survey. The sample size was 111 respondents which included chancellors, vice chancellors (VCs), deans, principals and other academicians. Read more...

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17 février 2013

North African, Arab nations in open access initiative

By Wagdy Sawahel. Ten North African and 12 Arab countries are to benefit from an initiative called the Open Book Project, which will provide universities with open access to high quality educational materials in Arabic, with a focus on science and technology. The countries in North Africa are Algeria, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Sudan, Somalia and Tunisia.
Despite rapid improvements in digital readiness in Arab states, which include 22 countries with a population of about 350 million – of which 70 million people are between the ages of 15 to 24, representing 19% of the population – adoption of e-books is still at an early stage in universities, as indicated in the 2012 Global Information Technology Report. This is due to several challenging factors facing Arab states including limited internet penetration, challenges of piracy, issues related to the rule of law and censorship, and vast disparities in purchasing power, according to the March 2012 survey, What is the Biggest Obstacle to Arab Digital Publishing?
Internet World Stats has shown that only about 24% of the Arab population – which represents about 5% of the world population – use the internet. Another challenge facing the take-up of e-books in the Arab world is technical issues related to the Arab language, according to a 2012 report Digital Publishing Growth in the Arab World: Slow, but steady. To contribute towards solving problems facing the promotion of e-books in Arab education systems, the Open Book Project was launched by outgoing US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on 28 January, just days before she left office. Read more...

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17 février 2013

Incentive pay for universities

Both Gov. John Kasich and Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee have shown leadership in planning for a new era in how state government supports publicly funded higher education, with an eye toward the best interests of all state residents.
Together, with other university presidents from around the state, they have come up with a plan to tie state funding of public colleges and universities to graduation rates, helping ensure that taxpayers and students will get value for their dollars.
Kasich’s college-funding plan, like many of his other decisions regarding taxpayer money, is based on measurable return on investment. The yardstick In this case is graduation rates: Half of a school’s funding is tied to its average graduation rate from the previous three years. Under Kasich’s proposed budget, the overall funding pot for higher education would grow by $33 million, or 1.9 percent. Read more...

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17 février 2013

The aftermath of 14 fallen higher education institutions

By María Elena Hurtado. Ecuador’s higher education sector is on track again after the dramatic 12 April 2012 suspension of 14 higher education institutions that did not meet quality standards set by the government. The contingency plan for displaced students, academics and administrative staff is working well, while the remaining 57 higher education bodies are bracing themselves for a new round of accreditation and internal and external assessments.
Ninety-seven percent of the 41,000 students who applied for the government’s contingency plan were admitted. Those who chose to finish their studies at their institution of origin (under temporary administrators) will be graduating this month. And a general extension of the grace period for student loans, from six to 12 months, has brought relief for 2,413 students from shuttered institutions who owe US$7 million in total. Read more...

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17 février 2013

Research and Erasmus cuts ‘could have been worse’

By Alan Osborn. After all the scare stories of recent months, the budget settlements for the European Union’s (EU) research and innovation policy Horizon 2020 and the Erasmus for All mobility programme for 2014-20 could well have been a great deal worse. Huge cuts had been expected at the hands of the austerity-minded EU heads of state and government but the deal that emerged late last Friday, 8 February, was by no means all bad.
“It’s about 14% below our proposal, which means that around 700,000 people will miss out on an experience abroad under the Erasmus for All programme in 2014-20 compared with the commission's proposal,” said Dennis Abbott, the European Commission’s education spokesperson. Read more...

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17 février 2013

Graduate glut: Why college graduates are underemployed and overeducated

By Michael De Groote. When Barack Obama first became President four years ago, he set a goal to increase the nation's college graduation rate to 60 percent by 2020. The idea of working towards becoming a nation of college graduates, however, has a major problem according to a new report by the Center for College Affordability & Productivity. There are not enough jobs that require a college degree.
Analyzing 2010 data from the U.S. Department of Labor, the report finds that of the 41.7 million working college graduates, barely half (51.9 percent) are working in jobs that require a bachelor's degree or higher. Thirty-seven percent are in jobs that require a high-school diploma or less. The rest (11.1 percent) are in jobs that require some postsecondary training such as an associate's degree. Read more...

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17 février 2013

Do students understand plagiarism?

By Rebecca Ratcliffe. Instances of plagiarism appear to be on the rise. Are universities offering students enough advice about cheating? In a world of Wikipedia and internet-based essay-writing companies, it's never been easier for students to plagiarise their work. But as German education minister, Annette Schavan, found out today, it's also never been easier to get caught. While there are no hard stats on the number of students cheating at university, a recent survey of 80 institutions suggests such behaviour may be on the rise – in 2009-10 more than 17,000 incidents of cheating were recorded, up 50% in four years. Read more...

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16 février 2013

The MOOCs that ate themselves

Unless you've been in a very long meeting you can't have missed the story about the Coursera/Georgia Tech MOOC that ran into difficulty and was cancelled (yes, we get the irony that it was Fundamentals of Online Education, no need to go on about it). The Georgia Tech MOOC was trying to do some different things, maybe they didn't all work, but I don't think it was the disaster it's been portrayed as. In the early MOOC days this level of experimentation would have been accepted (I didn't sign up for it, so I'm just going on the reports of others here). It seems that the level of expectation around MOOCs has made this level of flakiness unacceptable. This is but the most publicly embarrassing example of a growing trend I've noticed. As MOOCs have become mainstream and high profile there is increasing pressure on them to be very high quality, robust and efficient. There is a good deal of brand reputation now invested in them. In short, they have become the equivalent of television broadcast. Read more...

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16 février 2013

A Language Learning MOOC – Thoughts & Vision

MOOCs and Language Learning seems to be a natural fit for each other. I previously wrote about the suitability between Language Learning and MOOCs, and have expanded some ideas on the topic. (I’ve also created a website that tries to communicate the LMOOC vision).
One of the reasons why Language Learning and MOOCs fit so well together is that MOOCs can create interaction. For language learners in non-target language speaking countries, this can increase the amount of target language feedback that they receive. This is a major part of the barrier in trying to learn language in an EFL setting. However, one of the challenges of increasing this feedback, is helping learners develop strategies for increasing this feedback, and guiding them in how to use this feedback effectively. A LMOOC isn’t based in Educational Technology (like many MOOCs are, making them more like conferences), but rather uses educational technology as a means for connecting.
Thus, the two main goals of the exterior LMOOC structure would be Increased Feedback and The Promotion of Autonomous Distance Educational Skills (Learner Autonomy). Read more...

Posté par pcassuto à 23:51 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: MOOCs

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