Κοινότητα - Πύλη - Περιοδικό Φοιτητών Πανεπιστημίου Αιγαίου -- Πρωτοβουλία MyAegean

City of Boston and edX partner to establish BostonX

Pilot project with the City of Boston, Harvard and MIT to make online courses available through internet-connected Boston neighborhood community centers, high schools and libraries.

A first-of-its-kind, BostonX brings together innovators from the country’s center of higher education to offer Boston residents access to courses, internships, job training and placement services, and locations for edX students to gather, socialize and deepen learning.

This follows another edX project with two Boston-area community colleges. This month, Bunker Hill and MassBay Community Colleges began offering an adapted version of the MITx 6.00x Introduction to Computer Science and Programming course at their respective campuses. The BostonX initiative goes one step further by allowing, encouraging and supporting residents of all ages, regardless of social status or neighborhood, to participate in educational opportunities.

“We must connect adults and youth in our neighborhoods with the opportunities of the knowledge economy. BostonX will help update our neighbors’ skills and our community centers. As a first step, I’m pleased to announce a pilot with Harvard, MIT and edX, their online learning initiative, which will bring free courses and training to our community centers.”

The City of Boston will provide BostonX sites at community centers with computer access and basic computer training, support for internships, career counseling, and job transitioning. Harvard, MIT and edX will work with the city to provide courses selected to eliminate skills gaps, in-person lessons from affiliated instructors, training in online learning best practices and certificates of mastery for those who successfully complete the courses.

edX doubles its institutional membership: Six New Schools

• Australian National University

• Delft University of Technology

• École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

• McGill University

• Rice University

• University of Toronto

Coursera: 29 New Schools, 92 New Courses, 5 Languages, 4 Continents

• 62 Universities have partnered with Coursera (visualisation)

“With the addition of so many new courses across a wide range of disciplines, languages and academic approaches, we are now able to meet the needs of a more diverse student body, and give students more academic options to explore,” said co-founder.

• University Spotlight: Meet the New European Universities Joining Coursera

École Polytechnique (France), Leiden University (Netherlands), IE Business School, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (Spain), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Muenchen, Technical University Munich (Germany), Sapienza University of Rome (Italy), Technical University of Denmark, University of Copenhagen (Denmark), University of Geneva (Switzerland)

Να ξεφεύγουμε και λίγο από τη μιζέρια(*) των "μεταρρυθμίσεων":

Coursera Wiki

(*) ΣΑΧΜ, το "μαύρο πρόβατο" του Αιγαίου: κοίτα τί γίνεται στον κόσμο και αυτοί ούτε ένα Summer School δεν αξιώθηκαν να οργανώσουν.

Massive Open Online Courses Transform Higher Education and Science

Science, engineering and technology courses have been in the vanguard of the Massive Open Online Course movement. These classes also are providing fodder for scientific research on learning.



This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature.
The article was first published on March 13, 2013.

και μιας και η προηγούμενη εβδομάδα ήταν η λεγόμενη "Open Education Week", ρίξτε και εδώ μια ματιά: http://www.openeducationweek.org/

Αλλά αξίζει να δούμε και ετούτο, ίσως: http://p2pu.org/en/

Παράθεση: What is P2PU? The Peer 2 Peer University is a grassroots open education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls and gives learners recognition for their achievements. P2PU creates a model for lifelong learning alongside traditional formal higher education. Leveraging the internet and educational materials openly available online, P2PU enables high-quality low-cost education opportunities. (...) What We’re All About Peer 2 Peer University (we mostly just say P2PU) is a grassroots open education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls and gives learners recognition for their achievements. P2PU creates a model for lifelong learning alongside traditional formal higher education. Leveraging the internet and educational materials openly available online, P2PU enables high-quality low-cost education opportunities.

The Professors Who Make the MOOCs

Survey of 103 professors who have taught or are currently teaching a MOOC

edX releases XBlock SDK

XBlock is a component architecture that enables developers to create independent course components, or XBlocks, that are able to work seamlessly with other components in the construction and presentation of an online course. A complete educational ecosystem will make use of a number of web applications, all of which require access to course content and data. XBlocks provide the structure and APIs needed to build components for use by those applications. edX will be working with independent developers to continue to extend the functionality of XBlock through the XBlock SDK and future open source initiatives.

- github: edx / XBlock

This is a pre-alpha release of the XBlock API, to gather input from potential users of the API. We like what is here, but are open to suggestions for changes. We will be implementing this shortly in the edX LMS (Learning Management System).

On a high level, XBlocks is a Python language-level API, and it provides sensible defaults for things like storing data. XBlocks could be wrapped up in LTI, and one could make an LTI XBlock. The core reason to write an XBlock is that it is deployable. You can give us the code to an XBlock, and we can embed it in our courseware. LTI would require you to give us a virtual machine image which ran it.

This repo contains the core code for implementing XBlocks as well as a simple workbench application for running XBlocks in a small simple environment.

Πότε θα μας απασχολήσει η ουσία στην πανεπιστημιακή διδασκαλία; (Σ. Τραχανάς)

«Τις δύο τελευταίες δεκαετίες η φυσιογνωμία της τριτοβάθμιας εκπαίδευσης έχει αλλάξει τόσο δραστικά - και όχι μόνο στην Ελλάδα - ώστε άνετα θα μπορούσε πλέον να τη χαρακτηρίσει κανείς ως Νέα Μέση Εκπαίδευση.

Οι αριθμοί μιλούν από μόνοι τους. Σήμερα φοιτούν στην ενιαία τριτοβάθμια εκπαίδευση (ΑΕΙ και ΤΕΙ) περίπου όσοι φοιτούσαν στο ενιαίο εξατάξιο γυμνάσιο της δεκαετίας του '60, ενώ ο αριθμός των μεταπτυχιακών φοιτητών σήμερα είναι συγκρίσιμος ή μεγαλύτερος από τον αριθμό των προπτυχιακών φοιτητών τότε! Το να προσποιούμαστε - ιδίως εμείς οι παλαιότεροι - ότι τίποτα δεν έχει αλλάξει από τα φοιτητικά μας χρόνια είναι μια επικίνδυνη αυταπάτη.

Τουλάχιστον στο προπτυχιακό επίπεδο δεν καλούμαστε πια να εκπαιδεύσουμε την αυριανή επιστημονική ελίτ της χώρας, αλλά να υπηρετήσουμε ένα σύστημα τριτοβάθμιας εκπαίδευσης σχεδόν ελεύθερα προσβάσιμο σε όλους. Αυτή είναι μια συνθήκη που αλλάζει δραστικά τον χαρακτήρα και τον σκοπό της πανεπιστημιακής εκπαίδευσης, άρα και τον ρόλο του πανεπιστημιακού δασκάλου».



Spoiler: Παπαματθαίου Μάρνυ, 23/03/2013 05:45 έγραψε: - Είμαστε σε περίοδο μεγάλων αλλαγών στην ανώτατη εκπαίδευση της χώρας. Τί λέτε για το σχέδιο «Αθηνά» και τη «θύελλα» που προξένησε; «Ειλικρινά δεν θέλω να μπω στην ουσία των "συζητήσεων" περί Αθηνάς. Περί αυτών άλλοι είναι αρμοδιότεροι και κυρίως το θέμα τους ενδιαφέρει. Εμένα αντιθέτως τον τελευταίο καιρό με ενδιαφέρει πολύ περισσότερο το θέμα των "ανοικτών μαθημάτων", που αποτελούν τη νέα πραγματικότητα στα ανώτατα ιδρύματα, αφού όλος ο κόσμος μιλάει για τη μεγαλύτερη επανάσταση στην ιστορία των εκπαιδευτικών θεσμών. Και τί μέλλον μπορεί να έχει τελικά μια χώρα που ομφαλοσκοπείται αναγορεύοντας π.χ. τα ΤΕΙ μιας επαρχιακής πόλης σε τεράστιο ζήτημα, όταν ο κόσμος "εκεί έξω" αλλάζει με ρυθμούς πρωτόγνωρους στην ανθρώπινη ιστορία;». - Βρίσκετε ότι η επιδίωξη της ποιότητας στη διδασκαλία είναι σήμερα στο επίκεντρο της πανεπιστημιακής ζωής; «Φοβάμαι πως όχι. Η επιδίωξη της ποιότητας στη διδασκαλία είναι κυρίως ατομική υπόθεση κάποιων - όχι λίγων - διδασκόντων, αλλά όχι θεσμικός στόχος. Αυτό βέβαια δεν είναι περίεργο. Αντίθετα με την ποιότητα στην έρευνα, η ποιότητα στη διδασκαλία δεν είναι τόσο εύκολα μετρήσιμη. Με αποτέλεσμα να κυκλοφορεί και να αναπαράγεται μια μεταφυσική σχεδόν κουλτούρα για τη διδακτική ικανότητα. Η μεταφυσική του ταλέντου. Έχεις ή δεν έχεις διδακτικό ταλέντο. Ο δάσκαλος γεννιέται δεν... γίνεται και άλλα παρόμοια».

Stanford and edX Collaborate on Open Source Platform

The edX learning platform source code, as well as platform developments from Stanford, edX and other contributors, will be available on June 1, 2013 and can be accessed from the edX Platform Repository.

- Online learning: Varying lectures with tests improves attention, note-taking, and retention

- Coursera Partners’ Conference

EdX Rejected

Amherst professors voted on Tuesday not to work with edX, a nonprofit venture started by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to provide massive open online courses, or MOOCs. In interviews, professors cited a wide range of reasons for rejecting edX -- which currently works with only 12 elite partner colleges and universities -- starting with edX's incompatibility with Amherst’s mission and ending with, to some, the destruction of higher education as we know it.

Amherst – an elite liberal arts college where seminars are the norm and professors pride themselves on spending an hour on each student’s paper – has been looking for companies with which it could experiment with online education.

After rejecting for-profit companies, including 2U, Amherst decided to explore a deal with edX. […]

The Stanford team behind Venture Lab, founds a company NovoEd to offer collaborative MOOCs

[…] What makes Venture Lab unique is its dedication and focus towards peer learning.
Unlike Coursera and Udacity, this online learning community enables users to collaborate with peers around the world. This core feature stems from Saberi’s research, which lies at the intersection of computer and social sciences, and Ronaghi’s thesis, which focuses on the creation of social incentives in online learning.

This made them an ideal fit for developing a platform which allows students to form teams with people around the world and work on group projects. The system is powered through algorithms developed by NovoEd that assign students to different groups based on their profile. This results in a rich learning experience that is unmatched by individual thinking, and gives way to valuable networking opportunities.

- NovoEd

EdX Expands xConsortium to Asia and doubles in size

The new X University Consortium members will offer courses on edX beginning in late 2013 or 2014. All of the courses will be hosted on edX's open source platform.

University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Kyoto University, Peking University, Seoul National University, Tsinghua University - University of Queensland - Karolinska Institutet, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Technische Universitat Munchen - Berklee College of Music, Boston University, Cornell University, Davidson College, University of Washington.

(Πιο αναλυτικά αργότερα)