The 2012 European Year of Active Ageing and the Solidarity Between Generations serves as framework for raising awareness, generating innovative approaches and disseminating good practice. Call for proposals for dissertation grants from the American Educational Research Association (20.000 $ for one year project) Deadline: 1 March 2012 More information: [link] Short description AERA invites education-related dissertation proposals using NCES, NSF, and other federal data bases. research call for papers conferencesFor entry to the MRes you should have a 2.1 MORE >>

Let's be honest, we all LOVE research *grin*, or facts, or lists, or useful practices. In my latest research I focused on the impact of mobile access on learner interactions in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). The research was done to get my Master in Education at Athabasca University. As always all of the Athabasca faculty was supportive to get the research up to their standards (ethical approval, relevant literature.). Future research needs to support the findings, embracing a larger learner population from a more varied background. Course activities 16. MORE >>

As I am researching learner interactions in a mobile accessible open, online course – I can see that access pushes forward learner interactions, and even meaningful, constructive learner interactions (research snippets will be shared soon, still getting my thesis together). Looking at Tin Can will reveal a bit of the future of learner tracking and open opportunities for future educational research. The most essential challenge that emerged from my research (at this point) was the fact that meaningful mapping of learning was lacking due to a number of reasons. Great! MORE >>

There are many reasons for this (she researches for non-US institute, while looking at US xMOOCs so outside the universities providing the courses, privacy issues, platform difficulties,). But, there are technical issues only being realized right now, and there is of course a market were business models that still needs to be fine-tuned (if not set up), and best practices need to be created, tough barriers for emerging (international) research fields. One of the main MOOC challenges: MOOC drop-out As drop-out rates are one of the main MOOC challenges, this research is a gift. MORE >>

Of the 309,628 people who registered on the Edinburgh MOOCs, 123,816 learners accessed the course sites(‘active learners’) during the first week of launch – an average of 40% of those enrolled - of whom 90,120 engaged with content in Week One. In total 165,158 individuals actively engaged with course content during the life span of the courses, and 36,266 learners engaged with week 5 assessments(29% average of initial active learners, with a range of 7-59% across the six courses). research mooc report Note that enrolment continued after this survey was sent out.) MORE >>