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"The University of Queensland has committed to the development of a major online open learning environment.  UQ Vice-Chancellor Professor Deborah Terry said heads of school, deans and other senior academic leaders had embraced a University vision to move toward the development of a major online open learning environment.  "The initiative is an integral component of the new UQ blueprint for technology-enhanced learning, recently released to staff," Professor Terry said. "

Professors, particularly those in the senior ranks, might have a reputation for being leery of social media. But they are no Luddites when it comes to Web 2.0 tools such as Facebook and YouTube, according to a new survey scheduled to be released today.

Professors, particularly those in the senior ranks, might have a reputation for being leery of social media. But they are no Luddites when it comes to Web 2.0 tools such as Facebook and YouTube, according to a new survey scheduled to be released today.

Students assess their professors' technology skills http://t.co/ebYN1nv (via @catspyjamasnz) #digitalliteracy #yam

"That the acronym MOOCs rhymes with "nukes" seems apt. Massive open online courses, or MOOCs - led by two profit-making start-ups, Coursera and Udacity, founded by entrepreneurial Stanford professors - are a new disruptive force in education. "

A survey of academics who taught on Coursera and Udacity Moocs and their perceptions.

Interesting - A US academic says that Coursera should run a MOOC on how its own business model could ruin education!

An account of someone who isn't bothered about learning and won't ive feedback to students in a Mooc. Scale might be a reason but that's not the rationale being used.

New Mooc's - a perspective from an Australian professor

"NPR reports that Harvard physicist and professor Eric Mazur has largely gotten rid of the lecture in his classes, after finding that in lecture-based classes, students tend to commit to memory formulae and heuristics, but fail to develop deep understanding of concepts. Mazur has tried - and seemingly succeeded - to cultivate deeper learning with a combination of small group peer-instruction and a tight feedback loop based on in-class polling about particular problems."

Hey guys. Happy new year, hope yaz had a nice break. The idea posted in this thread at /. no doubt isnt new to you all, neither the whole learning-styles thing, but the thread itself is actually not a bad read, lots of differing opinions, not all geeks.

The Google Online Marketing Challenge (GOMC) is an exciting opportunity for students to experience online marketing and creating online marketing campaigns using Google AdWords & Google+. As well, students and their professors can win great prizes. Over 50,000 students from almost 100 countries have participated in past years.

Interesting read

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today filed suit against an Australian record company for misusing copyright law to remove a lecture by Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig from YouTube. With co-counsel Jones Day, EFF is asking a federal judge in Massachusetts to rule that the video is lawful fair use, to stop Liberation Music from making further legal threats, and to award damages."

"Far more important to me than all the venture-capitalized consortia of elite university MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) and the hundreds of thousands of students flocking to them is a course taught by an adjunct professor at University of Mary Washington."

First MOOCs now SMOC = synchronous massive open online course

Point by point refutation of an article complaining about moocs.

"Meta-data contains a great deal of information, and when gathered together it forms a startlingly clear picture of the person it comes from. A point that Professor César Hidalgo and graduate students Daniel Smilkov and Deepak Jagdish of MIT are trying to get across. They have created a new program called Immersion. It works by signing you into your Gmail account and collecting only the meta-data from your account usage history. From there you can get a picture of your emailing habits from that single account, and you will be shocked at what you see."

Different tracks online students take with MOOCs e.g. do the bits which clear up the muddy points in the topic, take the course because the professor is famous, want to find out what MOOCs are like etc. These are the students lumped together as 'drop-outs' and unpacking their experience shows useful learning takes place, but they don't complete the course.

Useful post on the why change doesn't work in unis. We're attacking the wrong thing and need to create context for academics.