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"Although not specifically designed to optimise learning, claims have been made that MOOCs are based on sound pedagogical foundations that are at the very least comparable with courses offered by universities in face-to-face mode. To validate this, we examined the literature for empirical evidence substantiating such claims. Although empirical evidence directly related to MOOCs was difficult to find, the evidence suggests that there is no reason to believe that MOOCs are any less effective a learning experience than their face-to-face counterparts. Indeed, in some aspects, they may actually improve learning outcomes."

"It gives me great pleasure to announce that OER Research Hub is now ready to release the first of its dissemination reports. The 'OER Evidence Report 2013-2014′ brings together a range of evidence around the research hypotheses of the product and provides an overview of the impact OER is having on a range of teaching and learning practices."

"Wherever the money is coming from, and however it is being spent, the root of the crisis in higher education (and the evidence that investment in universities may amount to a bubble) comes down to the fact that additional value has not been created to match this extra spending. Indeed, evidence from declines in the quality of students and graduates suggests that a degree may now mean less than it once did."

"Despite statistics showing that more college admissions officers, as well as hiring managers, check applicants' Facebook pages, many teenagers are still lax about social media security, continuing to post content that is detrimental to their online reputation. Michael P. Grace, president and CEO of Virallock, spoke with AllFacebook about the mistakes that high school and college students are making on Facebook and how they can clean up their acts for a better future."

"Instead of using Facebook primarily as a communication device with friends (there's Facebook messages for that purpose), Grace said students should use their profiles as secondary resumés. If a student is applying to a college and their application shows that they were involved in, say, Model U.N. or the choir, they should have some kind of evidence of their activities. Likewise, if volunteer work is mentioned, teens should make sure they have photos of that on their Facebook page. When a college admissions officer or a hiring manager sees a prospect's Facebook page, they want to see evidence of positivity and accomplishments. Grace says taking this kind of approach can help young people stand out from their peers."

"This research looks closely at claims that ratemyprofessors.com creates a valid measure of teaching effectiveness because student responses are consistent with a learning model. While some evidence for this contention was found in three datasets taken from the site, the majority of the evidence indicates that the instrument is biassed by a halo effect, and creates what most accurately could be called a 'likeability' scale."

"Young has reduced the number of students failing, withdrawing or performing below average in Bio 208: Human Anatomy from 50 percent to fewer than 20 percent in about four years, and poorly performing students have watched their grades climb, with continued improvement on the horizon."

"This article presents a framework for guiding modifications to Peer Instruction based on theory and findings from the science of learning. We analyze the Peer Instruction method with the goal of helping teachers understand why it is effective. We also consider six common modifications made by educators through the lens of retrieval-based learning and offer specific guidelines to aid in evidence-based implementation."

"There is already evidence that teachers are using social media as part of teaching strategies, with the aim of encouraging students to view social networks as less of a pleasurable distraction, and more as something that can be used in projects and for personal expression in a medium they prefer. Steven Anderson has recently proposed a comprehensive set of general approaches to integrating social media into the classroom, and focuses on the need to carefully review existing teaching strategies and understandings of social media before making changes."

"Shows like To Catch a Predator  sensationalize and feed the fear of parents having their child exposed to a child predator. It is a real fear and certainly a serious consideration.The facts however support evidence that over 90% of child predators are family members, close family friends, or clergy. We do not ban family picnics, playgrounds, family reunions, or church functions. There are no laws addressing these issues.The best way to defend our children against these threats is to educate them. Warn or rather teach them of the dangers,make them aware of the possibilities.Or, we can lock them away, effectively banning them from the outside world in which they will eventually have to live, leaving them to use whatever they picked up on their own about responsible digital citizenship, a topic probably not stressed outside of education."

When we're making a snap judgement about a fact, the mere presence of an accompanying photograph makes us more likely to think it's true, even when the photo doesn't provide any evidence one way or the other. In the words of Eryn Newman and her colleagues, uninformative photographs "inflate truthiness".

"Responding to calls for additional resources to support postsecondary instructors, many vendors and organizations now offer online educational development resources. The ultimate goal is to improve instruction and student learning, but to get there, higher education institutions must examine and evaluate these tools, as well as consider the specific needs of diverse campus stakeholders. After research and discussion, the Professional and Organizational Development Network developed eight principles to guide institutions as they explore and select online educational development resources for their campus communities."

"Christopher Brinton at Princeton University and a few pals offer their view. These guys have studied the behaviour in online discussion forums of over 100,000 students taking massive open online courses (or MOOCs). And they have depressing news. They say that participation falls precipitously and continuously throughout a course and that almost half of registered students never post more than twice to the forums. What's more, the participation of a teacher doesn't improve matters. Indeed, they say there is some evidence that a teacher's participation in an online discussion actually increases the rate of decline."

Digital badges are receiving a growing amount of attention and are beginning to disrupt the norms of what it means to earn credit or be credentialed. Badges allow the sharing of evidence of skills and knowledge acquired through a wide range of life activity, at a granular level, and at a pace that keeps up with individuals who are always learning-even outside the classroom. As such, entities not traditionally in the degree-granting realm-such as museums, associations, online communities, and even individual experts-are now issuing "credit" for achievement they can uniquely recognize. At the same time, higher education institutions are rethinking the type and size of activities worthy of official recognition. From massive open online courses (MOOCs), service learning, faculty development, and campus events to new ways of structuring academic programs and courses or acknowledging the granular or discrete skills that these programs explore, there's much for colleges and universities to consider in the wide open frontier called badging.

MOOCs are too new for there to be compelling evidence of their value, cost, and risks. The potential benefits and threats to academic quality, student outcomes, institutional integrity, and administrative processes are not yet known. However, the emerging features of MOOCs that have made them distinctive from the other types of OER are the services integrated with the content. The MOOC platforms for organizing and delivering the multimedia content, integrated with the social media tools for engaging individuals, and the assessment and analytic tools for providing feedback on learning and teaching are critical services that manage the content delivery within a design for learning. These services available through the open enrollment of MOOCs are the additional benefits that have been recognized as valuable by some learners, teachers, and institutions.

"There is strong, if not overwhelming evidence that behaviour patterns of students, educators, employees and professionals are moving towards the use of social tools for learning, working and teaching. Collaborating seamlessly face-to-face and at a distance, bringing the human element to virtual interactions, and personalized learning will prevail in 2014; each facilitated by technology. But it's not going to be about the technology, it will be about making connections by voice and/or visual, contributing to new knowledge, and learning with and from others-all mediated through social media. It will be the behaviours of students, lifelong learners and educators-their use of technology, specifically social media applications that will influence education in the upcoming year."

"The lack of teacher training in education schools has also been borne out recently by a new report by the National Council on Teacher Quality, entitled "Training Our Future Teachers." The question the group asked was a simple one: Do education schools teach classroom management? The answer was: not very much. The group examined 122 teacher-preparation programs and found that while most programs could say they had classroom management as part of their curriculum, classroom management strategies rarely received "the connected and concentrated focus they deserve." What's more, "instruction is generally divorced from practice (and vice versa) in most programs, with little evidence that what gets taught gets practiced." Education schools, says Kate Walsh, who leads the group, "don't see their job as training teachers. They see their job as creating professional identity.""

"One of those social media networks that multiplies mistakes as well as amplifying your connections and content is LinkedIn. With the recent opening up of its "publishing platform" to all of its members, the rising importance of Linkedin is now even more evident. With Linkedin's membership now passing 300 million professionals, not looking like a "dork" is important in front of that size crowd."

"For example, there's a lot of overlap in the processes of reading and the processes used for understanding speech - processes that assign syntactic roles to words. Do we see any evidence that people are having a harder time understanding spoken language? Or does the problem lie in the mental processes that build understanding of larger blocks of language, as when we're comprehending a story? If so, habitual Web users should have a hard time understanding complex narratives not just when they read, but in television and movies. No one should have watched The Sopranos, with its complicated, interweaving plotlines."

"Digital Badges in higher education also have an additional ability that is newly available - the ability to embed the badge into social platforms and have others "see into" the learning that has been accomplished via metadata that contains valuable information about the issuer, criteria, skills and evidence."

"Based on the research synthesized in the 2012 NRC report Discipline-Based Education Research, Reaching Students strives to answer these questions and presents the best thinking to date on teaching and learning undergraduate science and engineering. Focusing on the disciplines of astronomy, biology, chemistry, engineering, geosciences, and physics, this book is an introduction to strategies to try in undergraduate classrooms. Concrete examples and case studies illustrate how experienced instructors and leaders have applied evidence-based approaches to address student needs, encouraged the use of effective techniques within a department or an institution, and addressed the challenges that arose along the way."