Maximizing Competency Education and Blended Learning: Insights from Experts

In May 2014, CompetencyWorks brought together twenty-three technical assistance providers to examine their catalytic role in implementing next generation learning models, share each other's knowledge and expertise about blended learning and competency education, and discuss next steps to move the field forward with a focus on equity and quality. Our strategy maintains that by building the knowledge and networks of technical assistance providers, these groups can play an even more catalytic role in advancing the field. The objective of the convening was to help educate and level set the understanding of competency education and its design elements, as well as to build knowledge about using blended learning modalities within competency-based environments. This paper attempts to draw together the wide-ranging conversations from the convening to provide background knowledge for educators to understand what it will take to transform from traditional to personalized, competency-based systems that take full advantage of blended learning

Personalisation, Participation and Care

Personalisation services are developing in England as a social policy response to user demands for more tailored, effective and flexible forms of health and social care support. Across England and Wales, this process is being implemented under the personalization which is also seen as a vehicle for promoting service user rights through increasing participation, empowerment and control while also promoting self-restraint by having users manage the costs of their health and social care. This paper reviews the existing research evidence for personalization, albeit limited, and identifies themes for future research

Metadata for describing learning scenarios under European Higher Education Area paradigm

In this paper we identify the requirements for creating formal descriptions of learning scenarios designed under the European Higher Education Area paradigm, using competences and learning activities as the basic pieces of the learning process, instead of contents and learning resources, pursuing personalization. Classical arrangements of content based courses are no longer enough to describe all the richness of this new learning process, where user profiles, competences and complex hierarchical itineraries need to be properly combined. We study the intersection with the current IMS Learning Design specification and the additional metadata required for describing such learning scenarios. This new approach involves the use of case based learning and collaborative learning in order to acquire and develop competences, following adaptive learning paths in two structured levels

Describe Innovative and Creative Approaches to On-The-Go Learning

As the landscape of technology changes, businesses are seeking the best ways to incorporate on-the-go learning into educating employees. Recognizing this, when using mobile education for knowledge transfer it is beneficial to look at companies successfully implementing such training and what they are doing in terms of utilizing innovation and newest trends of on-the-go learning. The purpose of this article is to offer a snapshot of what is on the forefront of mobile learning and the organizations putting these approaches into practice

Inside Success: Strategies of 25 Effective Small High Schools in NYC

For decades, New York City's high school graduation rates hovered at or below 50 percent. In attempt to turn around these disappointing results, the NYC Department of Education enacted a series of large-scale reforms, including opening hundreds of new "small schools of choice" (SSCs). Recent research by MDRC has shown that these schools have had large and sustained positive effects on students' graduation rates and other outcomes. How have they done it? What decisions -- made by the educators who created, supported, and operated these schools -- have been critical to their success? What challenges do these schools face as they try to maintain that success over time? The Research Alliance set out to answer these questions, conducting in-depth interviews with teachers and principals in 25 of the most highly effective SSCs. Educators reported three features as essential to their success:Personalization, which was widely seen as the most important success factor. This includes structures that foster strong relationships with students and their families, systems for monitoring student progress -- beyond just grades and test scores, and working to address students' social and emotional needs, as well as academic ones.High expectations -- for students and for educators -- and instructional programs that are aligned with these ambitious goals.Dedicated and flexible teachers, who were willing to take on multiple roles, sometimes outside their areas of expertise.The findings, presented in this report, paint a picture of how these features were developed in practice. The report also describes challenges these schools face and outlines lessons for other schools and districts that can be drawn from the SSCs' experience. These include the need to avoid teacher burnout, improving the fit between schools and external partners, and expanding current notions of accountability

The Houston A+ Challenge: Staying the Course

With support from the Ford Foundation, the Houston A+ Challenge participated in Public Education Network's Gulf States Initiative, designed to enlarge the role of the public in school improvement in the Gulf States region. Public Education Network (PEN) is a network of local education funds (LEFs) across the nation. In PEN's view, "public responsibility" will not emerge from conventional, smaller-scale efforts to involve parents more closely with their children's schools or to inform the community about a superintendent's program. Instead, PEN initiatives take as their premise that in a democracy, public schools can only improve in a sustainable way if a broad-based coalition of community members pushes them to improve and holds them accountable. The Gulf States Initiative charged six LEFs, including the Houston A+ Challenge, with moving their communities toward different and more substantial forms of responsibility for their schools

Young children learning with mobile devices: Research on design and implementation

The increasing growth and usage of mobile devices, such as tablets and iPads, by young children has not yet been accompanied by systematic research about the effects they have on children's learning and the conditions that facilitate or hinder learning and engagement. As a result, only few empirically-based guidelines exist to guide parents, educators, and application (app) designers when choosing or designing apps for young children, often leading to non-evidence-based decisions, or the design of apps with little educational value. This symposium aims to bring together researchers from Australia, the UK and USA to discuss what evidence exist about the learning potential of mobile devices and apps for young children and how it could be used to inform relevant stakeholders

Discovering the Impact of Knowledge in Recommender Systems: A Comparative Study

Recommender systems engage user profiles and appropriate filtering techniques to assist users in finding more relevant information over the large volume of information. User profiles play an important role in the success of recommendation process since they model and represent the actual user needs. However, a comprehensive literature review of recommender systems has demonstrated no concrete study on the role and impact of knowledge in user profiling and filtering approache. In this paper, we review the most prominent recommender systems in the literature and examine the impression of knowledge extracted from different sources. We then come up with this finding that semantic information from the user context has substantial impact on the performance of knowledge based recommender systems. Finally, some new clues for improvement the knowledge-based profiles have been proposed.Comment: 14 pages, 3 tables; International Journal of Computer Science & Engineering Survey (IJCSES) Vol.2, No.3, August 201