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"The dramatic increase in online education, particularly Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), presents researchers, academics, administrators, learners, and policy makers with a range of questions as to the effectiveness of this format of teaching and learning. To date, the impact of MOOCs and emerging forms of digital learning has been largely disseminated through press releases and university reports, with only limited peer-reviewed research publication. The proliferation of MOOCs in higher education requires a concerted and urgent research agenda. The MOOC Research Initiative (MRI) will fill this research gap by evaluating MOOCs and how they impact teaching, learning, and education in general."

As more and more mechanisms are built to provide meme-tracking data on social media campaigns, marketers are able to provide more and more dazzling charts and graphs on reach and impact. Social media memes are a high impact, low cost way to show audience engagement. When that engagement is good, it's great. When that engagement is faux-bad (in the case of Hamm's junk), it's also great. While it's not always possible to demonstrate that audience engagement translates into ratings, or sales, or donations, engagement is a good thing in and of itself, right?

"Recently Leo @leohavemann and I were discussing on how was the best way to encourage academics to use OER and share their materials, how can we make them see at the impact that sharing content can have and after reviewing some very interesting models of data visualisation, we decided that the best way was to generate a map with a which contains the list taken from the directory of repositories of OER and some new more."

We're pretty keen on optimal timing for social media here at Buffer, and I figured it was high time I collected all the information we have about online communication into one place. I've collected research and stats on Twitter, Facebook, email and blogging to help you find the best time to communicate with others in each format.

"ReCon is designed to raise and discuss current issues to do with research communication in academia and beyond. These issues range from the use of metrics for evaluating research, access to publications, how to share and store data, government policy to how this affects careers and incentives for researchers. ReCon includes speakers from government agencies, academics, publishers, people working in outreach and founders of startups working in the research space."

"With the 2014 JIF ranking finally expected this week, the anti-JIF coalition of scientists, journal editors, and scholarly publishers who issued the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) are greeting the delayed JIFs with examples of JIF-less "good practices" for scientific assessment. DORA is calling for the scientific community to contribute fresh JIF-less examples to a new DORA web page. "

"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."

"Thanks for taking the time to look at some of my work! I'm a JetBlue adherent, a coffee addict, a foodie and an iPhoneographer. I am also a speaker, consultant and educator on a wide variety of topics impacting colleges and universities and their students."

How will MOOCs Impact Higher Education?

This 12 week course, starting September 10, 2012 will explore openness in education - its roots, its growing influence, and economic and systemic impact. We have adopted an open online format (massive open online courses, sometimes referred to as MOOCs...though we expect this course won't hit that "massive" target achieved by initiatives like Coursera and EDx. For a quick introduction to connectivist courses and how they work, please view the videos below.

For me, the biggest reassurance of this experience is that it's OK to have off days and low points in every course. You can't possibly be always at the top of your game, week after week, and still meet all the other demands placed on college faculty members outside of the classroom. And from the standpoint of having a lasting impact on students, maybe there's no reason to try to be.

"Digital literacies have a life-wide impact which is not limited to either the academic or the employment domain. Developing critical and evaluation skills results in sought-after and adaptable employees. Yet digital literacy is not simply about learning from content online this represents a deficit model of education (frequently practiced) rather than skills development."

So what does 2013 hold for social media in the workplace? It looks like many of the big (and sometimes overhyped) promises that have surrounded social media - better insight into customer behavior, improved office productivity with internal networks and, of course, significant, measurable ROI - will finally begin to bear fruit. Here's a look at five ways social media will impact the way we work and the bottom line in 2013.

In October 2011, the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges launched the Open Course Library, a collection of high-quality, low-cost educational materials to correspond with the 81 largest-enrollment courses in the state. The first 42 courses are available immediately, and the remaining 39 are slated for development in 2012 and release in 2013. In conjunction with the release of the first 42 courses, the Student PIRGs conducted this informal study to evaluate just how much the Open Course Library could reduce costs for students. Based on a survey of 22 of the program's 42 course authors, all of whom had agreed to adopt the materials in their own teaching, we have preliminary estimates for the impact of these courses.

"Although it's not getting enough attention, Open SUNY will have an outsized impact on the future of online education in the US. State-wide initiatives, whether driven by the systems or the state government, are becoming one of the biggest factors in how higher education is changing in the US. I suspect that other states will be watching SUNY and adopting this model in part or in whole."

"The boring university lecture is going to be the first major casualty of the rise in online learning in higher education, says Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. The custodian of the world's biggest online encyclopaedia says that unless universities respond to the rising tide of online courses new major players will emerge to displace them, in the way that Microsoft arrived from nowhere alongside the personal computer. "I think that the impact is going to be massive and transformative," says Mr Wales, describing the importance of the MOOCs (massive open online courses) that have signed up millions of students."

With almost 326 votes, I suppose it has some validity. What surprised me, but perhaps shouldn't have, was the even distribution of responses. I think that's a reflection of the new affordances and opportunities. People are finding value and learning in all kinds of tools and this truly represents a personalization of learning spaces

I have told her to name names. I'm not sure it'll have much of an impact, but just as the Reddit community now must deal with the increased scrutiny on its machinations and culture, I'd hope that a little more transparency and openness about academia's own culture will do it a lot of good.

Jonathan is also the director of the BadgeStack Project, the first system designed for badge-empowered learning and community-building, and the first to issue Mozilla Open Badges. We'll talk about the changing nature of professional development (PD) in particular and learning in general with the rise of online meeting technology, and how informal and non-traditional learning environments are impacting how we think about education.

"When I think about my own definition of a "meaningful assessment," I think the test must meet certain requirements. The assessment must have value other than "because it's on the test." It must intend to impact the world beyond the student "self," whether it is on the school site, in the outlying community, the state, country, world, etc. Additionally, the assessment should incorporate skills that students need for their future. That is, the test must assess skills other than merely content. It must also test how eloquently the students communicate their content."