Formation Continue du Supérieur

Jisc, the body which provides innovative technology, resources, information and advice to support UK higher and further education (HE and FE) and skills, is now registered as an independent charity following a review by HEFCE.
This is a key step in its transition to meet the needs of the many communities it serves for 2013 and beyond. The new Jisc is owned by the Association of Colleges, GuildHE and Universities UK. It will continue to receive funding from HEFCE and all the other UK higher and further education funding bodies as it continues to develop. Jisc is a company limited by guarantee and a charity, owned by UUK, GuildHE and the AoC. This company wholly owns a subsidiary company, Jisc Collections and Janet Ltd, which will continue to provide the network and content services they have successfully provided for many years.
HEFCE welcomes this development, which includes the appointment of trustees to Jisc and the appointment of Martyn Harrow as its first Chief Executive.
Heather Fry, Director for Education, Participation and Students at HEFCE, said:
‘Jisc has been working hard for some time to prepare for its important transition into a separate legal body from 1 December. This announcement recognises that a key milestone has been reached. What is vital is that Jisc continues to provide a high-quality dedicated service to the higher and further education communities, for education and research and focuses its business to meet the needs of all its users including students and academics. HEFCE is confident that Jisc will do this, and we will continue to support Jisc as it develops its role for 2013 and beyond.
'HEFCE is grateful to the dedication and hard work of Jisc staff under the leadership of Malcolm Read over many years and under Martyn Harrow more recently to build Jisc into a world-renowned organisation. We encourage institutions to work with Jisc to fully realise its potential as a contributor to the delivery of their own objectives.’ More about the review process.

Dossier d'actualité Veille et Analyses:  Pédagogie + Numérique = Apprentissages 2.0,  n° 79, novembre 2012. Auteur:  Thibert Rémi. Télécharger la version intégrale du dossier.
Après plus de 25 ans de plans d’équipements, de volontés politiques affichées, d’incitations, d’innovations, le numérique peine à entrer dans les usages scolaires. Si les établissements sont en général assez bien équipés, les TIC utilisées en classe restent limitées à la navigation sur internet, à des usages bureautiques, parfois agrémentés de vidéo-projection et de tableaux blancs interactifs.
Mais les TIC ne sont pas venues changer les paradigmes pédagogiques. Quelle est donc leur efficacité? Les méta-analyses qui ont été menées depuis les années 1980 indiquent qu’elles n’ont pas d’impact significatif sur la réussite scolaire des élèves. Pourtant elles soulèvent beaucoup d’espoirs en terme de motivation des élèves et d’approche pédagogique différente, davantage centrée sur les apprenants La question qui s’impose ne concerne donc plus l’impact des TIC, mais plutôt de savoir quelles solutions technologiques peuvent soutenir efficacement les apprentissages, et quelle pédagogie doit être mise en place pour profiter pleinement des possibilités offertes par le numérique. Le débat est d’ordre pédagogique.
Le rapport au savoir est modifié par le numérique, les lieux scolaires sont interrogés par la prise en compte et l’accompagnement d’apprentissages connectés.
Comment l’école secondaire peut-elle profiter du numérique pour se refonder? Ceci pose la question de la réflexion pédagogique, de la formation des enseignants mais aussi des nouveaux outils de mobilité qui s’imposent dans la société.
Ce nouveau dossier d’actualité n° 79 (novembre 2012) intitulé « Pédagogie + Numérique = Apprentissages 2.0 » examine ces questions à la lumière d’une sélection de travaux de recherche sur les usages du numérique dans les établissements scolaire du secondaire, en France et à l’international. Nous remercions Jean-Louis Durpaire pour ses conseils avisés.

By Fabrice Hénard and Deborah Roseveare. Fostering Quality Teaching in Higher Education: Policies and Practices - An IMHE Guide for Higher Education Institutions - 54 pages.
Foreword
Quality teaching in higher education matters for student learning outcomes. But fostering quality teaching presents higher education institutions with a range of challenges at a time when the higher education sector is coming under pressure from many different directions. Institutions need to ensure that the education they offer meets the expectations of students and the requirements of employers, both today and for the future. Yet higher education institutions are complex organisations where the institution-wide vision and strategy needs to be well-aligned with bottom-up practices and innovations in teaching and learning. Developing institutions as effective learning communities where excellent pedagogical practices are developed and shared also requires leadership, collaboration and ways to address tensions between innovators and those reluctant to change.
This Guide has been developed by the OECD’s Programme on Institutional Management of Higher Education (IMHE) to assist higher education institutions, university leaders and practitioners in fostering quality teaching. Provosts, vice-rectors of academic affairs, heads of teaching and learning improvement centres, deans and programme leaders, supporting staff, members of internal and external quality assurance bodies, and researchers may find inspirational content in this report. Drawing upon case studies of institution-wide quality teaching policies conducted by the OECD, this Guide provides exposure to new approaches and practices and the corresponding policy levers likely to help improvement happen. Illustrations offer a unique opportunity for learning through international experiences and sharing insights with institutional leaders involved in quality teaching...
Self-assessment and questions for further reflection
This section has been designed for you, the reader, to use as a self-assessment and reflection tool as an aid to deciding what your priorities should be for fostering quality teaching and what actions you might take. There are no right or wrong answers and it is intended to be adapted to take account of your institution’s mission, strategic objectives and context.
It is intended for use by anyone within the institution (or its stakeholders) with a role to play in fostering quality teaching, including institution leaders, deans and heads of programmes or individual teachers and researchers. It can be used by an individual or as part of a collaborative reflection and dialogue. It’s up to you.
The self-assessment scale invites you to evaluate the current situation on a scale of 1-5, where 1 is very poor and 5 is very good. However, you may consider that in your particular circumstances some aspects are very important while others are not at all. This is important to bear in mind when considering priorities for action – a dimension that is poor, but also not important, does not need to be addressed.
The self-assessment and questions for further reflection for each policy lever is self-contained, so you may choose to work through all seven policy levers, or simply use the individual policy lever that most directly relates to your current challenges and priorities... Download Fostering Quality Teaching in Higher Education: Policies and Practices - An IMHE Guide for Higher Education Institutions.

By Cox, Annette; Rickard, Catherine; Tamkin, Penny. Innovations in work organisation have the potential to optimise production processes in companies and improve employees’ overall experience of work. This report explores the links between innovations in work organisation – under the broader label of high performance work practices (HPWPs) – and the potential benefits for both employees and organisations. It draws on empirical evidence from case studies carried out in 13 Member States of the European Union where workplace innovations have resulted in positive outcomes. An executive summary and annexes are also available. Download Work organisation and innovation.
Training
Links have also been found between training and improved individual performance; for example in the semi-conductor industry where investment in training improved the problem-solving skills of machine operators and was found to reduce the number of production defects (Hatch and Dyer, 2004). The same study showed that training can have a strong positive effect on productivity. Company productivity was measured using a production function to estimate the value added per employee, designed to measure productivity rather than profitability to discount impacts beyond companies’ control. They found the effect of extensive training was both statistically and substantively significant, representing a gain of over 6% in value added per employee. Similarly, analysis of the ECS shows that provision of training has links to improved productivity and self-reported perceptions of organisational financial performance (Eurofound, 2011b). More specifically, studies have shown that training plays a significant role in developing innovation and organisations providing training benefit from enhanced knowledge and skills and ‘innovative capability’ in performing work tasks (Chen and Huang, 2009). Therefore it is through training that companies develop the ‘organisational expertise in terms of demand and content for the innovation’ (Weisberg, 2006; cited in Chen and Huang, 2009, p. 106). Training investment increases employees’ skills across all levels of the organisation and this can help grow a ‘source of ideas for further innovation’ (Torraco and Swanson, 1995; cited in Chen and Huang, 2009). This is supported by further evidence showing the importance of developing workforce skills in order to be able to reap the benefits of HPWPs. The EPOC survey found that managers believed a well-trained workforce was vital to securing the effectiveness of participatory workplaces; the proportion of workplaces using direct participation methods requiring highly trained staff was double that of those who did not use such techniques. Furthermore, the number of managers reporting direct participation measures had been a complete success was more than double among those with a highly skilled workforce than those with low-skilled employees (Eurofound, 1997, p. 171). Download Work organisation and innovation.

UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, together with the National Institute for Adult Education in Mexico (INEA), the UNESCO office in Mexico, and the Organization of Ibero-American States’ (OEI) office in Mexico, took part in a working session in Mexico City on 14─16 November 2012 to prepare for the launch of the Observatory website. The Observatory is part of the follow-up of CONFINTEA VI in the Latin America and the Caribbean region.
During this working session, the main functions of the Observatory were defined. These are:

1. To collect and disseminate objective, reliable and relevant information on the status and progress of youth and adult education in the region,
2. To monitor public policies for youth and adult education in the region, and
3. To establish a baseline of content for comparative study.

The Observatory will also help to build and strengthen relationships between different information systems for youth and adult education in the region, and to promote exchange among countries, researchers, academics, and participants in youth and adult education.
The coming weeks will be devoted to receiving information from partners for upload to the website. The launch is planned for January 2013 to coincide with the meeting of the Regional Education Project for Latin America and the Caribbean (PRELAC).

By Daniel McCabe. Today’s research environment pushes for the quick fix, but successful science needs time to think. There is a growing school of thought emerging out of Europe that urges university-based scientists to take careful stock of their lives – and to try to slow things down in their work.
According to the proponents of the budding “slow science” movement, the increasingly frenetic pace of academic life is threatening the quality of the science that researchers produce. As harried scientists struggle to churn out enough papers to impress funding agencies, and as they spend more and more of their time filling out forms and chasing after increasingly elusive grant money, they aren’t spending nearly enough time mulling over the big scientific questions that remain to be solved in their fields. This slow science movement is patterned, to some extent, on the Slow Food movement, born in Italy in the 1980s. Read more...

By Maureen Mancuso. We need to measure what students learn. In my introductory column, I hinted at the ever-brewing, sometimes boiling conflict between unconstrained academic freedom and the increasing demands for accountability and proof of “return on investment” in higher education. In some ways we are victims of our own success: as academics we know that education is as much about the journey as the destination, but there’s no escaping the fact that many of the people involved value that destination pretty highly. Education is an excellent investment – for students, communities and governments – but as with any program that pays off in social and intellectual as well as mere monetary capital, it can be challenging to demonstrate that fact convincingly.
What annoys many academics, including me, about the baldly economic description of education as an “investment” is that modelling teachers as producers and students as consumers not only demeans both parties to the relationship but also reduces learning to a purely passive activity: mere absorption of knowledge, pre-digested and individually wrapped. The problem is that budgets are budgets, and if all we can provide are fiscal metrics, there will always be a tendency to use a model that conforms to what can be measured. Read more...

By Jordan Paper. Research vs. teaching institutions? Here’s a better idea. The debate over the relationship between research and teaching in the contemporary university exists within the larger framework of late 20th-century understandings. These understanding include the belief that everyone should have a “higher” education, rendering the concept meaningless; and that funding is based on the number of students, leading legislators to measure productivity quantitatively and universities to try to expand enrolment and avoid failing students. The 20th-century understandings also permit the encroachment of pedagogy into higher education, which unnaturally shifts the burden of learning from the student to the teacher and places priority on self-esteem over learning. Thus, the debate over research and teaching reflects the loss of meaning of “the university,” now far removed from its original concept.
Once upon a time, the university was a place where professors professed (“declared publicly”); they professed original understandings of ideas fundamental to the societies of their times; they professed through lectures because printing was late in developing in Europe – the lectures were in lieu of books which students could not afford. Now, it has been suggested that professors no longer profess what they have learned to be passed on to the next generation. Instead, they are to digest and regurgitate what others have learned and published, and pass that along through now counter-productive lectures. Those who advance knowledge and understanding are expected not to profess those understandings but rather to leave it to others to relate their findings to students. Read more...

By Rosanna Tamburri. Whether you see them as a catalyst for change or mostly as hype, MOOCs are fundamentally different from other forays into open online learning.
A poetry appreciation class for 30,000 – what’s that like? Hear the author talk about her experiences as a MOOC student in the latest Reporter's Notebook podcast.
It’s been 25 years since I last set foot in a university classroom and, to be honest, the thought of doing so now makes me a little uneasy. Not that I’ll be in a classroom per se this time round. The 10-week course on modern and contemporary American poetry that I’ve enrolled in through Coursera is taught solely online.
An introductory email from the instructor, University of Pennsylvania English professor Al Filreis, assured me that I didn’t need to know a thing about poetry to succeed in the class. But he too admitted to some trepidation. It would be a challenge, he wrote, to judge how well everyone is doing – all 30,000 of us. We would use online chat groups to discuss the poems and peer-to-peer grading to assess one another’s writing assignments. There would be weekly quizzes and four short essays and if I complete them all, I’ll get a certificate.
Week one gets under way with a look at the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. After reading Dickinson’s “I dwell in Possibility –” I watch a 20-minute video of the engaging Dr. Filreis and his TAs parsing its meaning. We are invited to do the same on one of the several chat groups that have sprung up on the site. At the end of the week I attempt my first quiz, two short multiple-choice questions. I score 100 percent on the first question and 80 on the second. All in all, not too bad a beginning. Read more...

By Roslyn Dakin. Could an economic perspective on grades help improve university teaching?
Late can be costly in childcare. When parents arrive late to pick up their children, caregivers are forced to work extra hours – often with no compensation. One solution is to charge late parents a small fine to deter this behaviour. But when economists Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini did just that – introducing a $3 late fee at a group of daycare centres in Haifa, Israel – it had the opposite effect: the late arrivals more than doubled.
In recent years, behavioural economists like Drs. Gneezy and Rustichini have begun to study how people respond to incentives using controlled experiments. Their work reveals a host of psychological effects: we’re risk averse, prone to choking when the stakes are high, and we over-value the present. Different types of incentives – financial, social or moral – can have different effects. As a result, policies often backfire.
In the daycare study, the late penalty failed because it took an important social cost – the desire not to impose on others – and replaced it with a financial cost that parents found quite affordable. Instructors often use a similar policy with grades, deducting five or ten percent of the mark from late assignments. Could this have the perverse effect of encouraging procrastination?
The comparison between grades and financial incentives is not far-fetched. After all, students work for grades, and they trade them for scholarships and a spot in graduate school. Grading practices affect which courses students take and how much they enjoy them. So, do students treat grades like money? Read more...