This post from The Guardian Higher Ed presents a recent study:
This week saw the first publication of a new ranking of national HE systems, based on research at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (University of Melbourne) into data from 48 countries with a developed HE offering. The ranking is organised by Universitas 21, a global network of research universities
This post from Diane Goldenberg-Hart on the Coalition for Networked Information’s (CNI) mailing list (CNI-ANNOUNCE: cni-announce-subscribe@cni.org) caught my eye It features James J. Duderstadt, who is (from the email):
is President Emeritus at the University of Michigan, he chaired the National Academies committee that published the key 2002 report Preparing for the Revolution: Information Technology and the Future of the Research University, and he is a member of the Academies committee studying the future of the research university. In this talk, Duderstandt discusses the social and technological trends driving the restructuring of higher education, the future role of the research university, and the changing understandings of teaching and learning, scholarship, and engagement.
The theme of the talk is “Reinventing the Research University to Serve a Changing World” and was delivered at the opening plenary from CNI’s spring 2012 membership meeting:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OwrYZmaXBY&w=480&h=360]
The video is over an hour long, so here are some slides that caught my eye :
The full video is also available on CNI’s two video channels: YouTube: http://goo.gl/sfycM or Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/41324942
Or via their channels: YouTube http://www.youtube.com/cnivideo or Vimeo http://vimeo.com/channels/cni
MIT and Harvard announce the launch of a new online education platform called EdX :
[From the press release] Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) today announced edX, a transformational new partnership in online education. Through edX, the two institutions will collaborate to enhance campus-based teaching and learning and build a global community of online learners.
EdX will build on both universities’ experience in offering online instructional content. The technological platform recently established by MITx, which will serve as the foundation for the new learning system, was designed to offer online versions of MIT courses featuring video lesson segments, embedded quizzes, immediate feedback, student-ranked questions and answers, online laboratories, and student paced learning. Certificates of mastery will be available for those motivated and able to demonstrate their knowledge of the course material.
MIT and Harvard expect that over time other universities will join them in offering courses on the edX platform. The gathering of many universities’ educational content together on one site will enable learners worldwide to access the course content of any participating university from a single website, and to use a set of online educational tools shared by all participating universities. […]
Here is the video of the press release:
http://www.ustream.tv/embed/11009424
Live Video app for Facebook by Ustream
Interesting questions spring to mind: exactly what technologies will run this initiative “under the hood” of the system? How will it work with Moodle or MOOCs? This notwithstanding, it remains a very interesting development to keep an eye on!
Here are a few Fair Use guides setup by institutions. Fair Use is a general exception to copyright applies in the USA – in Canada, we have fair dealings, which applies to private study, research, news reporting, criticism and review.
These guides may be useful in devising our own fair dealings guides.
“Best practices” from the Center for Social Media, includes the following:
– The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries from the Association of Research Libraries– Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for OpenCourseWare
– Copyright, Free Speech, and the Public’s Right to Know: How Journalists Think about Fair Use
(Thanks to this post from District Approach, an ALA blog)
For videos:
Fair Use and Video: Community Practices in the Fair Use of Video in Libraries
For music:
– The Music Library Association (USA) has a series of guides delaing with Digital reserves (a type of fair use in libraries, as this one from Indiana University) as well as a general Statement on the Copyright Law and Fair Use in Music.
–
For images:
– Visual Resources Association: Statement on the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study (see this blog post: New College Art Association Standards and Guidelines on the Fair Use of Images posted by Linda Downs)
An interesting attempt to rething journal rankings, with open access publishing in mind:
March 2012 College & Research Libraries vol. 73 no. 2 134-145
Positioning Open Access Journals in a LIS Journal RankingJingfeng Xia
See these guidelines about tenure for librarians in universities:
Standards for faculty status for academic librarians: Approved by the ACRL Board of Directors, June 2007, revised October
2011 March 2012
College & Research Libraries News vol. 73 no. 3 160-161
The Modern Languages Association just issued an updated “Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media” – see also a blog post from InsideHigherEd.
See also this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education: Scholars Seek Better Ways to Track Impact Online (Jan 12 2012).
A recent blog post from Inside Higher Ed pointed me in the direction of this open course or MOOC:
Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success / http://events.blackboard.com/open
I could not resist the temptation to enroll despite the fact that I have a pretty full plate for the next few weeks. By the way, you can read more about Massively Open Online Course (or MOOCs) on this recent post on OutFind.ca.
We had a very interesting meeting today with Concordia’s Center for Teaching & Learning. The goal of the presentation was to explore partnership ideas, but we also discussed how the Library could contribute to a blended learning initiative at our institution.
Here are some thoughts about the blended learning environment (I purposefully use the environment paradigm, which I borrow from systems theory as posited by Luhmann)
Firstly, the main point brought was the idea of a “learning object” – a concept that we did not quite hammer out. I would offer this personal definition : a learning object is a type of document that presents information or knowledge to enable a learner to achieve a specific outcome. A learning object may (recursively) contain one or many other learning objects. Templates are useful tools to present this information or knowledge in a structured way. A learning object repository is a collection of curated learning objects, with associated metadata.
Secound, I would like to point out that there are many agents in this environment : the learners (obviously), the instructor or their assistant, the content owners and the system administrators. Each one of them has a role to play in the conception, organisation and provision of learning objects to learners.
Of course, the goal would be to identify all the learning objects and all the agents that are relevant in this environment. It may be easier to start with all the distinct templates of learning objects (as there may be too many learning objects).
Which now brings me to this conceptual model:
I devised this model during the course of my graduate degree in law (I’ve explained it on this blog post) and I’ve presented it at an IFLA Pre-Conference.
Now, this model tries to map out the Web 2.0 environment – I will make the claim that “blended learning” is functionally equivalent to Web 2.0 on a conceptual level (sorry for not prouving this point thoroughly – more on that later perhaps).
It is defined as 2 elements, documents and agents, interacting through 4 generic relationships: linking (document-document); conversations or intermediations (agent-agent); using (document-agent); and contributing (agent-document). This is meaningful in a discussion of a library’s role in a blended learning environment as is helps define exactly where it may be useful.
Specifically, I find that the priority is to identify areas where librarians may be contributing content – creating learning objects, followed closely to linking these learning objects to form paths through the knowledge base. Finally, librarians may play a role in the conversations that may happen in the environment between the various agents (focussing, as a priority, with the conversations that happen with the gatekeepers of knowledge: instructors and their assistants).
Of course, this is an off the cuff exploration of a complex topic, where I pin some broad concepts on a simplification of the real world. But it makes sense ! Please feel free to share comments or questions below…
Special thanks to Pamela Carson and Vince Graziano, two colleagues from Concordia University Libraries, for our very interesting conversation that was instrumental in organizing this post.
This blog post from The Atlantic (The Digital Education Revolution, Cont’d: Meet TED-Ed’s New Online Learning Platform by Megan Garber) gives more insight on the new TED-Ed platform.
In addition to templates for content and customization,
Most intriguing: Teachers can customize the lessons they create on a student-by-student basis, using the TED-Ed platform both to track individual student progress and to tailor questions to student interests and skill levels. The site offers real-time feedback to students, letting them know when they get answers right and providing hints when they get answers wrong.
You can also watch a promotional video I already added to OutFind.ca.
Sounds really cool!