Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning

The UK government enquiry into the future funding of higher education, headed by Lord Browne, former Chief Executive of BP, has delivered its report.

At the moment, the government pays students’ fees while they are university. Once they graduate, and are earning £15,000 or more, they start to pay back £3,290 for each year of their degree.

Browne has proposed lifting the cap on fees with universities free to choose what they wish, with students repaying fees when they start earning £23000. It is unclear how the system would work and what interest rates would accrue on the loans for the fees.

The main motivation of the proposed reform  is to switch responsibility for university funding from the state to students and their families; for every £100 a student borrows to defer the payment until after graduation, the government pays about £35.

The elite universities like Oxford and Cambridge have welcomed the report, as have the research intensive universities. Interestingly the Open University has also supported the report, mainly because it extends loan support to part time students, who are excluded under the present scheme. But the report has been condemned by both the National Union of Students and the University and College Union which represent lecturers.

So much for the technicalities – if readers are interested in finding out more about the proposals, which have yet to be approved by Parliament, see the Guardian newspaper’s reports.

What does it all mean? Essentially it is a further (large) step forward in the privatisation of the education system in the UK. Browne says: “Under these plans universities can start to vary what they charge but it will be up to students whether they choose the university. The money will follow the student who will follow the quality. The student is no longer taken for granted, the student is in charge.” Or rather the students with money (or their parents with money) are in charge.  Higher Education is no longer seen as a right, but rather as part of a market mechanism. University courses become a market driven commodity. The arbiter of quality becomes the ability to monetarise on investment in taking a course. Academic quality counts for nothing. The university system has traditionally been class based, this reform will tweak the system to ensure new money is as good as old.

It is interesting to note too, that universities will be free to charge differential fees for different subjects and courses. But Browne also says the government may remove public funding from all but “priority” subjects, such as medicine, science and engineering in pursuing a”closer fit between what is taught and the skills needed in the economy”.

Browne calls for an overhaul of the careers advice and guidance system to ensure that students receive adequate advice as he says happens in the (private, fee paying) public schools. I know nothing about how careers advice is organised in public schools. But the truth is that for most working class students a spreadsheet of comparative fees will become the most important aid in choosing universities. And how Browne expects better careers advice at a time when careers services are facing cutbacks of up to 40 per cent is hard to see.

Essentially people are now being expected to pay for their own higher education. But why should the government stop there? Already there is talk that individuals may be expected to pay for vocational education. And despite the lack of take off of the so called free schools (free in that they are run by businesses not local government) we can expect to see further moves to cut school spending and privatise the school sector in coming years.

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk “Under these plans universities can start to vary what they charge but it will be up to students whether they choose the university. The money will follow the student ,who will follow the quality. The student is no longer taken for granted; the student is in charge. Browne said: “Our higher education system is world-renowned, but too often it enshrines the power of universities and not the power of students. These reforms will put students in the driving seat of a revolutionary new system.

This is a short post about the event organised by the Research Information Network (RIN) I attended last night. It was a plenary session, part of the Research Information in Transition – A series of evening events in 2010, entitled The future of scholarly publishing – where we go from here. Further considerations and reflections [...]

Presented by The European School of Visual Arts (EESI), the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne (KHM) and the Vilnius Academy of Arts (VDA)

Migrating:Art:Academies:

Conference – 15-16 October 2010, 13:00 – 18:00
Exhibition opening – 14 October 2010, 19:00
Exhibition – 14-16 October 2010
Opening times – daily between 10:00 – 19:00

Collegium Hungaricum, Dorotheenstrasse 12, Berlin

The two-year project Migrating Art Academies (MigAA) comes to a close with its Laboratory V Migrating:Art:Academies:. This exhibition and conference, organized in cooperation with Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, will map the territory around an ensemble of new and innovative forms of creative practice. During MigAA students from the European School of Visual Arts (EESI, FR), the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne (KHM, DE), and the Vilnius Academy of Arts (VDA, LT) traveled in Media RVs (recreational camping vehicles) throughout Europe, engaging the local cultural and environmental milieu, and creating art works “on the road.”

“The wealth of Migrating Art Academies was unanimously proclaimed by both the participants and by those who they encountered in the course of the project. This creative experiment was also an excellent educational laboratory and such laboratories undoubtedly play a critical role in a time of European-wide reforms in art education” â?? says Sabrina Grassi-Fossier, the MigAA coordinator and director of European School of Visual Arts, Angouleme/Poitiers.

The combined MigAA exhibition and conference does not claim to be a full picture but rather a presentation of life-sketches, fragmentary practices, and evolving processes. These active threads together chart a new territory for learning that turns away from most traditional academic strategies. This open event is meant to critically address this new approach and to open it up for public dialogue.

On Thursday, 14 October, Migrating:Art:Academies: will open with an exhibition of works by more than thirty students from the three European art academies at the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin. The selected projects, developed during the four consecutive MigAA laboratories in Berlin, Vilnius, Linz, and Royan, range from drawings and maps to installations and interactive works.

The laboratory will also present a 300+ page reader as a summary of the two years of distributed and mobile research. The book, divided into three essential parts – Migrating:, Art:, and Academies: – serves as a navigation supplement for the exhibition and the conference as well as the overall project.

The conference will take place on Friday and Saturday, 15 – 16 October and is divided into four panels: Migration, Education, Technology, and a final Round Table session with the participating students.

Friday, 15 October
13.00 : Migration panel
16.00 : Education panel

Saturday, 16 October
13.00 : Technology panel
16.00 : Final Round Table

About Migrating Art Academies

Migrating Art Academies is an ongoing joint educational project of three European higher education institutions: the European School of Visual Arts (EESI, FR), the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne (KHM, DE) and the Vilnius Academy of Arts (VDA, LT). Its primary purpose was to research and develop a progressive model of education that combines new and innovative forms of creative practice, collaboration, cooperation, and production. For the duration of the project, students had the possibility to work in an autonomous zone situated between virtual and real worlds, as well as between their normal home environment and new, unfamiliar places. The students investigated and engaged the local environment at the same time as developing creative projects in response to their experiences. The MigAA project is financed by the European Commission Culture Program 2007-2013. For more detailed information, please visit: http://www.migaa.eu/.

The conference language is English. Admission is free.

Migrating Art Academies team:
Mindaugas Gapsevicius (top e.V.), Sabrina Grassi-Fossier (Coordinator, EESI), Jonas Hansen (KHM), Žilvinas Lilas (KHM), Alvydas Lukys (VDA), Sylvie Marchand (EESI), Vaclovas Nevcesauskas (VDA), Martin Rumori (KHM).

Online, e-mail, or telephone pre-registration is available and highly recommended until 10 October.

Contact person:
Mindaugas Gapsevicius, Tel. 0179 5462260
press@migaa.eu

perhaps about me! I don’t really yet know what this post is going to be about. I just know I feel this ultimate urge to write…in a pursuit of trying…just trying to make sense of what has just happened. (there will be typos, and there will be grammar inconsistencies, I am just warning you…!) I’m [...]

There has been a lot of discussion about the impact of the economic crisis on the future of education and training. Sadly much of this discussion has led nowhere. In this video Nikitas Patiniotis, from Athens, explains the impact of the crisis on education and training in Greece and reflects on the future in an uncertain post recession world. The video was produced for the Network of Trainers in Europe,

There is an interesting new discussion recently started on the Open Education Resources discussion list, now being run out of the University of Athabasca. To join the discussion go to https://deimos.cs.athabascau.ca/mailman/listinfo/oer-community

Two  contributions have particularly caught my attention.

The first was from Paul Lefrere talking about the sustainability of Open Educational Resources,. Paul says:

Think of sustainability not in terms of money, but rather in terms of impact that is wholly positive (eg, new forms of wealth creation, compatible with the public-interest). Take action in an integrated way: link OER and OCW to forms of Open Innovation and Open Knowledge Sharing that benefit society as a whole (eg, socially-focused exploitation of publicly-funded intellectual property, to create new sources of wealth for the world) and that can lead to socially-desirable outcomes (eg, creating new types of job, and making students more employable by helping them to apply what they learn via OER and OCW, to bridge the “knowledge-action gap”).

And Paul later agreed with the suggestion from Rory McGreal to change that first line to “not just in terms of money.”

The second was a post from Stephen Carson who identifies multiple visions of OERs:

OER as substitute:  This is the idea that OER can be used to substitute for copywritten materials, generally text books and journal articles.  Here the interest seems to be primarily about cost savings, and the concern about whether the quality of the materials is equivalent to the for-fee versions.

OER as reusable resource:  This is the learning object vision married with open licenses, the idea that we can come up with definitive version of granular learning materials appropriate to wide audiences that can be flexibly localized and recombined.  Interest in this area seems to be focused on gains in efficiency in the creation of course materials, scalability in automated learning and to some extent cost savings.

OER as transparency:  This is the vision that I believe gets the least attention, but the one that is most important to models like OCW and to institutions.  Most of the benefit for schools publishing OCW and other curricular materials is both the quality improvements prompted but the increased scrutiny the materials are subjected to, and in the transparency across curriculum that OER project provide.  In publishing curriculum openly, communities of educators at institutions know more about what they collectively teach and how the subjects are related.  Student sin these communities have more information about what they will learn and how.

I wonder also if we could add to this something like OER as digital creativity. Of course OERs do not have to be digital – but most are. And the idea of OER fits very well with the creative use of technology for developing and sharing digital content in dispersed communities.

“Journalists are coping with the rising information flood by borrowing data visualization techniques from computer scientists, researchers and artists.”

I found that very interesting, very well made and also very long (54 mins) video on Vimeo. But there is another version available which includes much more information and access by chapters: http://datajournalism.stanford.edu/

Journalism in the Age of Data from Geoff McGhee on Vimeo.

Our autumn live radio programme schedule is coming together.

Sound of the Bazaar will broadcast next week on Thursday 14 October, live from the Network of Trainers in Europe Conference in Kostelec in the Czech Republic. The conference is on the theme of  ‘Crossing Boundaries: The multiple roles of trainers and teachers in vocational education and training.’ Sounds of the Bazaar will go out at 1700 Central European Time, 1600 UK. We are excited about the format which will take the form of a panel session. The programme will be presented by Eileen Luebcke.

The following week, on Thursday 21 October, we will be broadcasting a special programme live from Blankenberge on the Belgium coast. This programme will form part of a training course for teachers on the use of social software and Web 12.0 being run through the European Taccle project.  The programme will be live on air from 1600 to 1640 Central European Time, 1500 -1540 in the UK.

And from December 1-3, we return to our traditional pre Christmas shows at the Online Educa Berlin Conference. Details of times to follow. We are also working on organising one or two more shows in our autumn schedule and will post details here when confirmed.

To listen to the shows just go to http://radio.jiscemerge.org.uk:80/Emerge.m3u and the stream will open up in your favourite MP3 player.

Interesting stuff by TED’s Chris Anderson says the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation — a self-fuelling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. But to tap into its power, organizations will need to embrace radical openness.

Incidentally if you have a video or presentation you would like us to feature on the front page of the Pontydysgu web site, just drop us an email.