Education & Policy

"NEW YORK - A soldier in Afghanistan learned about the death of Osama bin Laden on Facebook. A TV producer in South Carolina got a tip from comedian Kathy Griffin on Twitter. A blues musician in Denver received an email alert from The New York Times. And a Kansas woman found out as she absently scrolled through the Internet on her smartphone while walking her dog."

"Background Student authentication in distance education has been an issue of interest to federal policy makers for several years. The growth in enrollments and in the number of educational providers of online learning fueled concerns about the ability of institutions to verify the identity of online students throughout the cycle of an online course: registration, participation, assessment, academic credit. Passage of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, followed by federal rulemaking, resulted in new regulations. One regulation required accrediting agencies to assure distance and correspondence education programs have processes in place to verify student identity. Photo of Asian female student in front of computer The issue is complex and frequently misrepresented. Among many e-learning professionals, the issue seems unfairly aimed only at online education when similar concerns of identity falsification could apply in traditional higher education settings. The policy and regulatory conversations concerning identify authentication, originally focused on academic dishonesty, now encompass the serious problem of financial aid fraud, as reported in some high profile cases. WCET has led a number of important efforts aimed at informing policy makers, accrediting agency leaders, and online program administrators of different approaches-pedagogical as well as technological-that ensure their compliance with the regulation but also raise the conversation to a more widely relevant discussion of academic integrity. WCET's Study Group on Academic Integrity and Student Authentication, established in March 2008, continues its work to identify and disseminate information on promising practices to promote academic integrity of which identity authentication is but one component."

"Learning to Hate Learning Objectives By Mikita Brottman Like many of my colleagues, I assume, I'm growing deeply frustrated with the need for "learning objectives"-that list of superficial projections and assumptions that most syllabi these days are required to contain ("Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to … "). Perhaps learning objectives make sense for most courses outside the humanities, but for me-as, no doubt, for many others-they bear absolutely no connection to anything that happens in the classroom."

Higher education data for researchers and the public. Compare institutions by a number of topics.

Bill Gates on Higher Education, Part 2 June 26, 2012, 6:31 pm By Jeffrey R. Young

STELLAR briefing 2: the Future of TEL An overview on interim results from the STELLAR delphi study.

"RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms"

This research explores student perceptions of course quality and instructor effectiveness in a hybrid MPA distance learning program. The MPA distance learning program under analysis utilizes a synchronous computer software program for 21 hours of instruction per course, an asynchronous computer software program for 21 hours of instruction per course, and six hours of on-campus in-person instruction per course. Survey data from students who have completed eight (8) courses in this distance learning program (repeated samples n = 90) will be compared to the evaluations of students who have taken the same courses from the same instructors in the on-campus program (n=100). The purpose of the research is two-fold. First, the research will determine if there is a significant difference between the perceptions of course quality and instructor effectiveness between students in the distance learning program and students enrolled in the on-campus program. Second, the research will explore student satisfaction with the use of the synchronous and asynchronous computer delivery methods. It is anticipated that students will express satisfaction levels with course quality and instructor effectiveness equal to, or exceeding, the satisfaction levels expressed by students in the on-campus program.

"Good practice in undergraduate education: encourages contact between students and faculty, develops reciprocity and cooperation among students, encourages active learning, gives prompt feedback, emphasizes time on task, communicates high expectations, and respects diverse talents and ways of learning."

Summary Personal stories about the experience of working for a doctorate Description A collection of stories from a diverse group of teachers in UK higher education who have all completed a PhD. They narrate their experience of doctoral research, the relationship with supervisors and the hurdles they overcame

Reflections on panel session: Institutional minimum standards for VLE use (Durham Blackboard Conference 2012) Part of a series of posts on the Durham Blackboard Users' Conference 2012. This post is a summary of the discussion that took place in the panel session on the topic 'The Implications and Practicalities of Agreeing and Enforcing a Threshold Standard of use of a VLE in an Education Institution' chaired by Mike Cameron of Newcastle University. The session took place at 4.30pm on 5 January 2012. Throughout I have added my own take on the issues raised.

'Badges' Earned Online Pose Challenge to Traditional College Diplomas By Jeffrey R. Young The spread of a seemingly playful alternative to traditional diplomas, inspired by Boy Scout achievement patches and video-game power-ups, suggests that the standard certification system no longer works in today's fast-changing job market.

Top 5 Ed Tech predictions for 2012 By Christopher Dawson | December 22, 2011, 8:11pm PST Summary: Here's hoping I'm more accurate than I was last year. Earlier this week I wrote about five major technologies that should have had real impacts in education this year, but which never amounted to much. I called more than one of them out a year ago, when all signs pointed to their potential for disruption and transformation in 2011. I can't resist giving it another shot this year, though. Here are my top 5 predictions for the state of the art in Ed Tech in the coming year.

Technology-enhanced learning in Europe Where research meets research & practice! TELeurope is the social media hub for everything about technology-enhanced learning. It is the community platform of the European open network of excellence in technology-enhanced learning STELLARNET.EU. TELeurope is the place where research meets research & practice. If you have a stake in technology-enhanced learning - being a researcher, a developer, teacher, provider, vendor, policy-maker, or the like - you may want to join this social network. This platform is a social medium for technology-enhanced learning research and practice. As soon as you get your own TELeurope identity, make friends, join groups, and engage, a whole new universe of activity will become disclosed to you!

Australian government office web portal for teaching and learning related information.

Abstract Learning 'using' technologies has become a global phenomenon. The Internet is often seen as a value-neutral tool that potentially allows individuals to overcome the constraints of traditional elitist spaces and gain unhindered access to learning. It is widely suggested that online technologies can help address issues of educational equity and social exclusion, and open up democratic and accessible educational opportunities. The national governments and non-governmental agencies who fund educational endeavours in developing countries have advocated the use of new technologies to reduce the cost of reaching and educating large numbers of children and adults who are currently missing out on education. This paper presents an overview of the educational developments in open, distance, and technology-facilitated learning that aim to reach the educationally deprived populations of the world. It reveals the challenges encountered by children and adults in developing countries as they attempt to access available educational opportunities. The discussion questions whether, in face of these challenges, developing nations should continue to invest money, time, and effort into e-learning developments. Can technology-enhanced learning help address the poverty, literacy, social, and political problems in developing countries?

18 Oct 2011 Mary Meeker

"Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves"

"Charles Leadbeater: Education innovation in the slums"

"For the last couple of decades, exercises to assess the extent to which university research is excellent have been all the rage. The UK led the way with the RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) to be followed by Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong among others. With the passage of time, increasing amounts of research funding tend to be allocated on the basis of the results of these exercises and, so important have they become to individual universities, these exercises now drive the research cycle in the same way as national or general elections drive the economic cycles of individual states."