Jacques of all Trades

While the details of how to effectively teach MOOC’s may not yet have been worked out, a recent Gallup survey shows that the demand for alternative or flexible models to college is growing. 

infoneer-pulse:

Despite the popular narrative of recent years that a college degree might not be “worth it,” Americans still generally agree that a degree is important. But they might be likelier to pursue one if colleges were more flexible and – of course – less expensive.

That’s the impression left by a new survey by Gallup (on behalf of the Lumina Foundation), which asked 1,009 adults 18 and older what they think about the quality, accessibility and financing of American higher education.

While 38 percent of respondents without a college degree said they were likely to go back and get one, many struggle with obstacles like time and family that keep them from doing so. But they seemed to indicate that newer models (such as prior learning assessment and competency-based education) that place less weight on learning tied to a specific place and time could help more adults get back in the classroom.

“We’ve got to help them understand that their pathway does not have to follow a traditional model – that there are ways to get their traditional credential, faster,” Jamie Merisotis, Lumina’s president, said in an interview. “When you think about the rapidly rising demand for talent that we have in American society…. our ability to deliver that, and deliver it in a way that people can get access to, is going to be really important.”

» via Inside Higher Ed

Primary and secondary schooling is combined, so the pupils don’t have to change schools at age 13. They avoid a potentially disruptive transition from one school to another.

Teacher Marjaana Arovaara-Heikkinen believes keeping the same pupils in her classroom for several years also makes her job a lot easier.

”I’m like growing up with my children, I see the problems they have when they are small. And now after five years, I still see and know what has happened in their youth, what are the best things they can do. I tell them I’m like their school mother.”

Children in Finland only start main school at age seven. The idea is that before then they learn best when they’re playing and by the time they finally get to school they are keen to start learning.

(via gilmoure)

There are many reasons offered for the results in Finland, but these seem pretty plausible elements of that success. Whether they could be replicated in a more heterogeneous place like the US is a whole different question.  

(Source: azspot)

infoneer-pulse:

U.S. News & World Report is not going to change the way it composes its annual rankings of colleges and universities in a significant way anytime soon, regardless of how admissions counselors and higher education admissions officers feel about them.

That’s what the head of the rankings said here Friday at a session of the annual meeting of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling after a special committee from the association presented its final report examining the rankings. The report, which took about two years to compile, is largely based on a survey of NACAC members the committee conducted in 2010 and repeats much of what was established in a draft of the report released earlier this year. Officials from U.S. News worked closely with the committee throughout the process, a relationship that has bothered some rank-and-file members of the association. (The concern was that involving the rankings officials in the discussion might co-opt the process, although the final results suggest that the association did not hold back on its criticisms of the rankings.)

» via Inside Higher Ed

infoneer-pulse:

For a stranger, the main library at the University of Illinois at Chicago can be hard to find. The directions I got from a pair of clerks at the credit union in the student center have proven unreliable. I now find myself adrift among ash trees and drab geometric buildings.

Finally, I call for help. Firouzeh Logan, a reference librarian here, soon appears and guides me where I need to go. Several unmarked pathways and an escalator ride later, I am in a private room on the second floor of the library, surrounded by librarians eager to answer my questions.

Most students never make it this far.

This is one of the sobering truths these librarians, representing a group of Illinois universities, have learned over the course of a two-year, five-campus ethnographic study examining how students view and use their campus libraries: students rarely ask librarians for help, even when they need it. The idea of a librarian as an academic expert who is available to talk about assignments and hold their hands through the research process is, in fact, foreign to most students. Those who even have the word “librarian” in their vocabularies often think library staff are only good for pointing to different sections of the stacks.

» via Inside Higher Ed

This was one of the most important things I learned while working on my senior thesis.  Reference librarians have spent many years of education developing top-notch researching skills, only to spend most of their time giving directions to the restroom, or to answer very simple queries about sources or APA notation.  When a student (or anyone else), comes to them with a real research question—the more challenging, the better—they will typically spring into action with a bewildering array of knowledge, a fanatical attention to detail, and a mischievous glint in their eye!