Group items tagged

US oriented & UK relevant. 50 min talk about inequity in maths learning by Uri Treisman. Data in 36 page PDF of Treisman's slides at http://tinyurl.com/cn85gp6. Keith Devlin writes " This month's column is short, but I am asking you to set aside 51 minutes and 36 seconds to watch the embedded video. It is a recording of the Iris M. Carl Equity Address given on Friday April 19 at this year's NCTM Annual Conference in Denver, Colorado. The title of the talk is "Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize" and the speaker is Uri Treisman, professor of mathematics and of public affairs, and director of the Charles A. Dana Center, at the University of Texas at Austin. I was not able to be at NCTM, but on the recommendation of several colleagues, I watched the YouTube video. I simply cannot write a column on mathematics or mathematics education in the same month as Treisman's immensely more important, profound-and powerfully articulated-words became part of mathematics education history. As a community, we now have our own "I have a dream" speech."

An depth analysis of the OECD skills report by the Independent's Richard Garner.

The Community College Research Center is based at Columbia University. It describes itself as the US's "leading independent authority on the nation's nearly 1200 two-year colleges". Since 2009 CCRC has been doing (amongst other things) a range of interesting and important qualitative and quantitative research about online courses in community colleges (which sit somewhere between FE and HE in a UK context, overlapping with both), funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and led by Shanna Smith Jaggars. This page has links to abstracts and presentations, which highlight general and specific disparities in outcomes between face-to-face and online provision, and which point to action that can be taken to deal with these problems. (Instructor presence seems to be key.....)

I haven't really looked under the bonnet of this yet, but it seems interesting in terms of market positioning alone (though note: aimed at school level/context).

Suggestion that social networks could be instrumental in helping MOOCs extend reach beyond those who are already enfranchised and educated. Potentially relevant to Citizens' Maths?

My gut feeling is that social networking could well be really important to us. In the Scratch context, I feel the Scratch community is potentially useful.

A 2008 report by the think tank Reform (non-political, but "on the right"). One of the authors, Liz Truss, is now a Conservative MP and DFE Minister. I'd be curious to know what colleagues at IOE and OCR reckon to it.

A constructive review by Donald Clark (Ufi Trustee) of one particular Coursera MOOC (with references to one of Edinburgh University's), with a focus on how the interaction design of the course could have been improved.

Comprehensive filleting by Donald Clark Edinburgh University's excellent self-review of its first 6 MOOCs. DC's review and the Edinburgh report are each worth reading.

Mick Fletcher (whom Seb knows) provides an overview of the double challenge faced by English FE from August 2013 when all those without GCSE Maths or English at Grade C must continue to study hose subjects, and even those with such an achievement should be expected to go further. "The logistical challenge, including the requirement to find hundreds of extra specialist teachers, is immense."

MOOCs and Open Education. Useful, if HE-focused, 21p report [PDF] by Stephen Powell and Li Yuan from Jisc Cetis. Worth most project people at least scan reading, for orientation purposes.

This is a long shot, but might the IMF want to encourage some of its learners with limited maths competence/confiden to do our course first?

Worth scan-reading at least.

Worth bearing in mind from the point of view of the course as a service

I blushed reading this........

Curiously revisionist history of MOOCs that centres on a Maths MOOC aimed at preparing students for US college courses that requite some maths proficiency

Plenty of references to MOOCs and to Educational Technology in the BIS International Education Strategy, launched today by Vince Cable and David Willetts at Pearson's HQ in London. (I was there.)

Interesting piece by Keith Devlin about instructional videos and the research evidence showing that they tend to reinforce preconceptions even if the learner's preconceptions are completely at variance with the instructional content.

80 hour OER course from the OU. Pitched at a different audience to Citizens' Maths, but may have some points we can learn from.