Think this is well put, about the need for University to be about more than being a cog in the working line:
If you’re going, and worrying about the fees – check out Martin Lewis’s guidance.
H/T to @sallyhitchener for sharing.
Tag: university
This looks interesting, addressing a number of issues (MOOCs, etc) that are highly current, although the focus appears to be on maintaining elitism:
What we call widening participation or access to higher education in the UK is not a central concern of this debate; rather it is about how higher education can contribute to the increased productivity of both elite higher education and the subsequent labour markets – both of which, of course, are already being transformed through technological change. Equally interestingly, these lectures, which have been available online since the colloquium, and this subsequent publication, make scant mention of how socially transformative these Moocs can be.
Read full review.
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Chinese Politeness & Education
A really interesting piece about the culture in Chinese universities:
Respect, in this instance, simply means having regard for those who know more than them. In the West, putting intellectual pressure on students can be dubbed “bullying”; here in China, they expect you to expect the best of them. In fact, most of my students are highly competitive, keen to demonstrate their aptitude for learning as well as their attitude to learning. It is a thirst for finding things out that is reflective of and responsive to the social dynamism in which they find themselves.
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In the end, it is the willingness of my students to get on, to understand the world (not just their part of it) and to be critical and creative that is rewarding. As a result, there is also a refreshing pressure on me to perform. Besides, when all students are armed with mobile phone cameras – like a phalanx of Chinese tourists snapping away at my blackboard calculations – there is no way that I can blame them for copying things down incorrectly.
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Dangers from MOOCs?
Interesting challenges to the standard model of University teaching from MOOCs – needs to be taken seriously:
There is a lot of apocalyptic language around at the moment. And not just in higher education: we are, after all, still picking our way through the aftermath of a financial “tsunami”.
So it was timely for the authors of a recent report on the challenges facing our own sector to couch their analysis in terms of an “avalanche”.
The upheaval forecast by the Institute for Public Policy Research in An Avalanche Is Coming: Higher Education and the Revolution Ahead is based largely on the advent of a new type of online learning – the now ubiquitous massive open online course, or Mooc. Co-authored by Sir Michael Barber (a former head of Tony Blair’s Delivery Unit who is currently chief education strategist for the education giant Pearson), the report warns of a coming era of unprecedented competition in higher education driven by proliferating online opportunities, and it generated widespread media coverage last month.
Read full article.
Considering that many marketing departments in Universities are still influenced by those who found their feet in old media, am not too surprised by this… social media is all about relationships/building trust…:
Prospective students are keen to engage with their university through social media channels, with one fifth of students saying that universities don’t make enough use of social media in recruitment, which meant they currently didn’t expect or look for information there.
What’s more, many of the students we surveyed were clueless that their chosen university even had a Twitter or Facebook account – showing that there is a need for universities to ensure their social media presence is clearly signposted to attract the widest audience.
There is also a question to be asked about what kind of content is relevant for social media profiles. We found that fewer than one in five students were influenced by university Twitter accounts and only one in four were influenced by Facebook pages or blogs.
Read full article.