Guidelines for Quality Assurance and Accreditation of MOOCs

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have emerged as an educational innovation with the potential to increase access to and improve the quality of education. Different stakeholders in education view MOOCs from different perspectives. However, there are common questions related to the quality of these courses and to the granting of equivalent credits. This document provides a set of guidelines designed to support decision making about the sorts of quality measures that are appropriate in different contexts. These MOOC Quality Guidelines can be used by governments, accreditation agencies, institutions and learners with an interest in developing, running, accrediting or participating in MOOCs, to improve quality assurance (QA) and accreditation

2013 Service-Learning Faculty Survey Results Report

Service-learning is an important teaching pedagogy that has been proven effective in enhancing student learning and promoting both academic and civic engagement. As civic engagement continues to gain prominence as an integral aspect of higher education, it is increasingly important that engagement metrics are consistently measured to demonstrate outcomes. This is especially true of service-learning as it strongly correlates with student learning, academic performance, and retention rates. Feedback and suggestions from service-learning faculty members are useful for gaining insights into how service-learning quality can be enhanced at the classroom level and understanding the resource needs of faculty members. The purpose of the Service-Learning Faculty Survey was to assess (a) the level of support that faculty members receive for their service-learning/community engagement activities and (b) the impact they believe their service-learning/community engagement work has had. The evaluation asked questions on the following dimensions: 1. Perceived support, 2. Usefulness of supports provided and received, 3. Partnerships, 4. Scholarship, and 5. Impact. The results will serve two purposes. First, information gathered will be utilized in VCU‟s renewal of its Community Engagement Classification through the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In addition, the results will help the Service-Learning Office improve the services and supports it provides to meet the needs of service-learning instructors. Data was collected from faculty members who had taught at least one service-learning course during the 2011-2012 academic year. Appropriate faculty member were identified by VCU‟s Service Learning office (n=69). These individuals were sent a confidential, online survey using Qualtrics (a secure, web-based application designed to support data capture for research studies). Faculty members were sent an invitation and two follow-up reminders to complete the survey

Building capacity without disrupting health services: public health education for Africa through distance learning

The human resources crisis in Africa is especially acute in the public health field. Through distance education, the School of Public Health of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, has provided access to master's level public health education for health professionals from more than 20 African countries while they remain in post. Since 2000, interest has increased overwhelmingly to a point where four times more applications are received than can be accommodated. This home-grown programme remains sensitive to the needs of the target learners while engaging them in high-quality learning applied in their own work contexts

Curriculum, intellectual property rights and open educational resources in British universities — and beyond

Is the curriculum in British universities being influenced by decisions about ownership of intellectual property rights (IPR) in ‘open educational resources’ (OERs) that are available online under Creative Commons licenses, free of charge? This paper provides the context for, describes and analyses three significant examples in British higher education where OERs are being created for use by academics and learners on campus or at a distance. OpenLearn and iTunes U, two of the British examples, are drawn from the Open University of the United Kingdom, which teaches over 200,000 undergraduate and graduate students almost entirely at a distance. The third example, OTTER, is at the University of Leicester, a campus university in England with about 7,000 distance learners. Both universities depend on government funding, student fees, research and entrepreneurial income. All three examples are funded indirectly by the British government, though OpenLearn has received substantial US foundation support as well. In presenting these examples, the questions arise of whether the projects are supply- or demand-driven, and of whether they are altruistic or not. Debate over intellectual property rights has influenced creation of the OERs and vice versa, but from these three examples it seems doubtful whether, as yet, OERs and IPR have significantly influenced British universities’ curriculum. The paper ends with discussion of how OERs created in British universities are influencing teaching and learning in other countries, as globalisation advances

Reflections on the ethics of recruiting foreign-trained human resources for health

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Developed countries' gains in health human resources (HHR) from developing countries with significantly lower ratios of health workers have raised questions about the ethics or fairness of recruitment from such countries. By attracting and/or facilitating migration for foreign-trained HHR, notably those from poorer, less well-resourced nations, recruitment practices and policies may be compromising the ability of developing countries to meet the health care needs of their own populations. Little is known, however, about actual recruitment practices. In this study we focus on Canada (a country with a long reliance on internationally trained HHR) and recruiters working for Canadian health authorities.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We conducted interviews with health human resources recruiters employed by Canadian health authorities to describe their recruitment practices and perspectives and to determine whether and how they reflect ethical considerations.</p> <p>Results and discussion</p> <p>We describe the methods that recruiters used to recruit foreign-trained health professionals and the systemic challenges and policies that form the working context for recruiters and recruits. HHR recruiters' reflections on the global flow of health workers from poorer to richer countries mirror much of the content of global-level discourse with regard to HHR recruitment. A predominant market discourse related to shortages of HHR outweighed discussions of human rights and ethical approaches to recruitment policy and action that consider global health impacts.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We suggest that the concept of corporate social responsibility may provide a useful approach at the local organizational level for developing policies on ethical recruitment. Such local policies and subsequent practices may inform public debate on the health equity implications of the HHR flows from poorer to richer countries inherent in the global health worker labour market, which in turn could influence political choices at all government and health system levels.</p

Women : key partners in sustainable and equitable development; resource materials on women and sustainable development

R. Wiltshire, GSD, was member of Consultative Group"Project on the Development of Training Materials on Women and Sustainable Development

Colleges reaching out : report on the status of distance education in Canadian colleges and technical institutes /

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