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This paper reviews recent studies on the relationship of classroom life to larger social/political institutions. It analyzes the phenomenon which Philip Jackson has identified as the "hidden curriculum", that covert pattern of socialization which prepares students to function in the existing workplace and in other social/political spheres. The authors argue that this pattern has been largely ignored by social studies curriculum developers. By ignoring the values contained in the social processes of schooling, social studies developers failed to influence school programs in a fundamental way. To promote a more complete understanding of the dynamics of classroom life and its relationship to the larger society, the authors have identified social processes of school and classroom life which give specific meaning to the term hidden curriculum. They argue that a new set of processes will have to replace existing ones if the goals of social education are to be realized. In the latter part of the paper, a new set of social processes are described which could form the basis for a new and more progressive approach to social studies instruction.

This report addresses the question of pedagogy within the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC): what kinds of MOOCs are currently offered in the UK; what it means to 'teach' in the open and at massive scale; and what kinds of demands and expectations are experienced by academics who teach MOOCs

A critical look at the development of MOOCs and their place in the current educational society; including a discussion about future potential.

This is an excellent piece that explains how different levels of the organisation find it difficult to understand each other

This is an horizon report produced in collaboration with the Open University. It is produced annually.

The sense of belonging in online learning community is an important index to measure learners' degree of emotional participation. In this paper., the influencing factors on the sense of belonging in online learning community are analyzed and its model for learners' sense of belonging is constructed. Text mining., collaborative filtering., visualization and other technologies will be used to mine learning characteristics of learner in the model. Furthermore., the model will recommend learning resources., guide learning path to learner and so on.

The so-called 'hidden curriculum' (HC) is often presented as a counterproductive element in education, and many scholars argue that it should be eliminated, by being made explicit, in education in general and specifically in higher education (HE). The problem of the HC has not been solved by the transition from a teacher-centered education to a student-centered educational model that takes the student's experience as the starting point of learning. In this article we turn to several philosophers of education (Dewey, Kohlberg, Whitehead, Peters and Knowles) to propose that HC can be made explicit in HE when the teacher recognizes and lives his/her teaching as a personal issue, not merely a technical one; and that the students' experience of the learning process is not merely individual but emerges through their interpersonal relationship with the teacher. We suggest ways in which this interpersonal relationship can be strengthened despite current challenges in HE.

This is the Educause Horizon Report produced through the Delphi method. It has a global audience and is produced annually

he present study builds on earlier work by Meyer and Land (2003) which introduced the generative notion of threshold concepts within (and across) disciplines, in the sense of transforming the internal view of subject matter or part thereof. In this earlier work such concepts were further linked to forms of knowledge that are 'troublesome', after the work of Perkins (1999). It was argued that these twinned sets of ideas may define critical moments of irreversible conceptual transformation in the educational experiences of learners, and their teachers. The present study aims (a) to examine the extent to which such phenomena can be located within personal understandings of discipline-specific epistemological discourses, (b) to develop more extensively notions of liminality within learning that were raised in the first paper, and (c) to propose a conceptual framework within which teachers may advance their own reflective practice.

Exploring the challenges and opportunities associated with the concepts of community and communication in online higher education, this paper reconsiders the intention to replicate face-to-face learning and teaching strategies in online learning environments. Rather than beginning with the assumption that face-to-face education is the prototype for quality, the authors appraise the online learning environment as a unique medium which, by its nature, necessitates unique communication, community-building, teaching and learning strategies. This paper proposes an in-depth analysis of the potential unique affordances associated with online learning contexts as existing in their own right. The concepts of community and communication are explored in relation to online Communities of Practice (CoPs). The nature of face-to-face and online learning contexts are considered, especially in the light of the possibility of redefining "face-to-face" within the online realm, in addition to physical learning contexts. The paper identifies unique ways in which online communication (in the context of learning) is different from face-to-face communication, and consequently four ways in which this can be an advantage for students; namely, there is a measure of social egalitarianism, emphasis on verbal/written proficiency, time for reasoned response, and social agency. The paper provides grounding for further research into strategies that forge rich online learning experiences and suggests an empirical study as a next step.

Online educational content is becoming increasingly popular in higher education. In prior studies it has been reported that students prefer weblectures with a visible lecturer over weblectures consisting of audio and slides only. Anticipated was that the amount of attention students pay to a weblecture is relevant for this preference. A study was conducted to see whether lecturer-visibility was related to reported attention for a weblecture. Lecturer's appeal was expected to be a moderator in this relation.

'Openness' is a central contested value of modern liberalism that falls under different political, epistemological and ethical descriptions. In this chapter, we employ 'openness' to analyze the spatialization of learning and education. We discuss dimensions of openness and 'open education' (Peters & Britez, 2008), beginning with a brief history of openness in education that focuses on the concept of the Open University as it first developed in the United Kingdom during the 1960s, a development we dub Open University 1.0.