It’s started – the Nottingham professional services NOOC

The Changing University: Inside Nottingham is underway   The University of Nottingham professional services NOOC (Nottingham Open Online Course) is underway. Thanks to a great deal of work by many colleagues a first four week course is now open and over 400 members of staff have signed up. The NOOC has been designed especially for …

Launch of the university professional services NOOC

The Changing University: Inside Nottingham - a post just for University Nottingham (UK, China and Malaysia) colleagues An earlier post invited views on the possibility of a University of Nottingham professional services NOOC (Nottingham Open Online Course). Following much discussion and a great deal of work by many colleagues a first four week course is …

Mobile students

Student mobility in and out of the UK The British Council has produced this nice graphic on student mobility in and out of the UK: This new interactive animation shows how the UK as a provider and host of internationally mobile students has evolved over recent years. From 2002 onwards differences in gender, age, level …

Celebrating Student Success

We really do have an outstanding Students' Union A nice new website publicising the University of Nottingham Students' Union's successes over the past year and its centenary celebrations: For the last week of the semester, your officers decided it was time to celebrate the things we’d achieved. So, we launched our very first Celebration Week. …

Most serious league tables of the year?

League tables of choice All rankings have their shortcomings. Some though are perhaps even more methodologically questionable than others. I was struck recently by two league tables which seemed to be even less credible than this very important ranking of universities based on the length of their name. First up is the ranking of the …

Breakfasts of champions?

Academics and their breakfasts Greatly amused by this story in Inside Higher Ed about a new website which encourages academics to photograph and consider their breakfasts: What you eat for breakfast may not merit space on your C.V, but a new website called Academic Breakfast is based on the idea that how professors start their …

More means worse? (Data that is)

 Lots of information is not necessarily a good thing for prospective students I've written before about concerns about too much data and the importance of quality rather than just quantity in the information provided to applicants to higher education. Now a new HEFCE report on Improving information for prospective students has come to a similar …

Two very different approaches to campus security

Sophisticated Mobile App or an Armoured Truck? Tough Call The Chronicle of Higher Education had an interesting report on the introduction of 'LiveSafe', a mobile app that was adopted by the university in August and has been downloaded 4,200 times: "We get the luxury of getting a lot of information from the students because we …

Free Education in Rwanda?

edX and Facebook say they are offering free education in Rwanda A previous post on a 'university in a box' noted a report on a project to bring higher education to Rwanda in a novel way. Others are now following. The Chronicle of Higher Education has a report on another initiative in Rwanda, this time …

Netflix for University Selection?

An algorithm to help with university choice The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting report on a Netflix-like algorithm which is designed to help with selecting a university. A former admissions counsellor and now PhD student, Daniel Jarratt has been working on a tool which would help students find the right institution for them …

More Problems for MOOCs

More gloomy news for MOOC enthusiasts MIT Technology Review has a striking report on how some data mining has exposed a few embarrassing problems for MOOCs. The research confirms earlier reports about low continuation and completion rates and, perhaps surprisingly, notes that teacher involvement really doesn't help: But this new golden age of education has rapidly …

What are academic bloggers up to?

What are academic bloggers blogging about? And why? A great article for the Guardian Higher Education Network by Pat Thomson ( @ThomsonPat )  and Inger Mewburn ( @thesiswhisperer ) on bloggers in higher education. The piece is a summary of an article in a special edition of Studies in Higher Education and the longer one is well …

What about a university professional services NOOC?

A post just for University Nottingham (UK, China and Malaysia) colleagues: what about a university professional services NOOC? Following the success of the first NOOC (Nottingham Open Online Course) on Sustainability in, among other things, involving staff and students from the UK, China and Malaysia campuses in shared learning it occurred to me that it …

Unbelievable excitement as website updated

Big announcements about Unistats. As previously noted there is no shortage of information available to prospective university students. Unistats was intended to enable better decision-making by students but, whilst it is not without merit, it is no substitute for effective advice and guidance. Unfortunately this shiny website seems to be pretty much all that's on …

Badges, badges, badges

Earn your first badge now! I've posted before about this nonsense but then I heard the exciting news about how you can bypass all that messy unpleasant formal education stuff and get straight on and get some real recognition for your achievements via this super Open Badges concept: Want to get started? Earn a Mozilla …