A lot, it seems. See strategies in this Inside Higher Ed article.

Carl Weiman, Physics Nobel at Stanford University, says college lectures are as effective as bloodletting and that how students learn need to be renovated. Read the article and view the video here. Thanks, Uriel Cukierman for the pointer!

 

The Maker Movement and Regional Innovation Ecosystems   
Wednesday, April 27, 2016; 1:00-2:30 p.m. ET  Invitation from the US Government University Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR) The Maker Movement is expected to transform opportunities for students, entrepreneurs, and citizens to access new technologies and tools for design and manufacturing. President Obama launched the Nation of Makers initiative in 2014, and in June of this year the administration will celebrate another National Maker Faire to celebrate makers and makerspaces all over the country.

Please join us for a webinar to discuss the state of the Maker Movement and its impact on education, regional innovation ecosystems, and economic growth withTeresa Sappington, Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow in the Office of Maker Caucus Co-Chair, Congressman Mark Takano, and Jim Woodell, the Vice President for Economic Development and Community Engagement at the Association for Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU).
There is no cost to this webinar, but registration is required. A confirmation email will be issued prior to the event containing the webinar URL. Register for Webinar

Good (visual) summary by Business Insider. For the article, press here.

Short answer is no. And that is because courses are not built to do so…

Read the CHE article here (you need a subscription). If you do not have a subscription email me (lueny.morell@gmail.com) and I will send you a copy.

 

For more details on the WEF article press here.

Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College at the top. For the complete list go here.

From McKinsey Institute. Read about the strategic and organizational factors that separate successful big-company innovators from the rest of the field.

This NYT blog article says the course’s name is Learning How to Learn, created by an electrical engineer and a neuroscientist, available through Coursera. Ijust registered (course has just started)!

“Students are clearly hungry to learn, and they’re particularly hungry for practically useful, scientifically based information told in a way that they can really get it.”

Links to more information:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/29/the-most-popular-online-course-teaches-you-to-learn/?_r=0

http://www.onlinecoursereport.com/the-50-most-popular-moocs-of-all-time/

https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

Excellent New Yorker’s article on how Silicon Valley is disrupting learning.

 

 

Times Higher Education World University Rankings data reveal the 20 best institutions based on private-sector investment per academic.

 

Research by Charles Eesley shows that funding is only one part of the complex entrepreneurial ecosystem, and that an innovative product isn’t necessarily enough for success.

Source: Stanford professor explains the secret sauce for successful startups in China

“The classroom is a dead end. The classroom is a mausoleum. The classroom is an outdated husk, and the classroom must be destroyed. Yes: The classroom of the future is no classroom at all”. Eli Horowitz and Scott Teplin

The classroom is dead but we don’t know how (or perhaps we don’t want) to revive it!

Read the Bright article here.

View story at Medium.com

View story at Medium.com

A must for engineering curricula! Download free from the US National Academy of Engineering site – here.

According to the 2016 National Association of Colleges and Employers survey the most important skill for the job today is: verbal communication.

Employers rate the importance of candidate skills/qualities

Skill/Quality Weighted Average Rating Ability to verbally communicate with persons inside and outside the organization 4.63 Ability to work in a team structure 4.62 Ability to make decisions and solve problems 4.49 Ability to plan, organize and prioritize work 4.41 Ability to obtain and process information 4.34 Ability to analyze quantitative data 4.21 Technical knowledge related to the job 3.99 Proficiency with computer software programs 3.86 Ability to create and/or edit written reports 3.60 Ability to sell or influence others 3.55

Source: Job Outlook 2016, National Association of Colleges and Employers
*5-point scale, where 1=Not at all important; 2=Not very important; 3=Somewhat important; 4=Very important; and 5=Extremely important

– See more at: http://www.naceweb.org/s02242016/verbal-communication-important-job-candidate-skill.aspx?utm_source=spot-nm&utm_medium=email&utm_content=txt-head&utm_campaign=content#sthash.KDGCJu4E.dpuf

 

 

 

From Business Insider – view all here.

 

On 29 January, Obama announced his executive action, which will require companies with 100 or more employees to report to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission what workers are paid, broken down by gender, race, and ethnicity.

Yesss! Read article from IEEE 

A long way to go!

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Office of the Director
Arlington, VA 22230

NSF 16-48

February 22, 2016

Dear Colleagues:

I write to invite your participation and leadership in the NSF INCLUDES (Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science) initiative.

Today, NSF is releasing the first NSF INCLUDES solicitation, which aims to fund approximately 40 Design and Development Launch Pilots at ~$300,000 each. I encourage you to enlist partners (e.g., industry, foundations, states) who can help leverage and expand support beyond the Federal dollars. More importantly, in FY 2017, all of these Pilot projects will be eligible to apply for full NSF INCLUDES Alliances, proposed in the President’s FY 2017 Budget Request at a level of $12.5 million each for five years.

Diversity — of thought, perspective, and experience — is essential to achieving excellence in 21st century science and engineering research and education. And, there is a business case for diversity. A recent McKinsey & Company study found that companies were 15% more likely to gain financial returns above their national industry median if they were in the top quartile of gender diversity; the probability climbed to 35% for companies in the top quartile for racial/ethnic diversity.

NSF INCLUDES is a comprehensive national initiative to enhance U.S. leadership by seeking and developing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) talent from all sectors and groups in our society through access and engagement. It aims to improve the preparation, increase the participation, and ensure the contributions of individuals from groups that traditionally have been underserved and/or underrepresented in the STEM enterprise. The U.S. science and engineering workforce can thrive if women, blacks, Hispanics, and people with disabilities are represented in percentages comparable to their representation in the U.S. population. According to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, we have a long way to go to reach that goal. We can achieve national STEM diversity and its benefits to our Nation if we commit to national STEM inclusion.

Many people, projects, and organizations already have achieved significant successes toward greater STEM inclusion. Yet, according to a National Academies report, many larger challenges still remain: under-preparationand lack of opportunity for members of all demographic groups to become “STEM-capable”; under-resourcing as seen in growing disparities of access to quality learning and technology; and under-production of STEM graduates from the above-mentioned sectors.

The goal of NSF INCLUDES is to achieve significant impact at the national scale within the next ten years in transforming STEM so that it is fully and widely inclusive. That will require strong partnerships and collaborations among many organizations and people in the overall STEM talent development eco-system. You and your organization can play a large role in this initiative.

Collaborative alliances, spanning education levels, public and private sectors, and including new partners, will need to be developed, expanded, organized and built by leveraging state-of-the-art knowledge on scaling of social innovations. For example, “Collective Impact” approaches that incorporate key success determinants such as common agendas, shared measurements, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communications, and backbone support organizations have the potential to yield large-scale progress towards NSF INCLUDES goals. The latest knowledge from the science of broadening participation provides a strong foundation, and novel systems approaches and designs for achieving scale will be critical. I invite you to read the growing literature on the positive impacts of diversity in teams, and the subtle, but pervasive, biases that can diminish our collective action.

As university and college presidents and chancellors, and heads of organizations funded by the National Science Foundation, I urge you to take a direct and personal role in helping to build these collaborative alliances – with ambitious goals for STEM inclusion – at a national scale. There is rich variation across the Nation in terms of local resources, talent and expertise as well as in the specific roadblocks and challenges you may face. We leave the specific nature of each alliance and the ambitious goals it will aim to achieve to you to define. NSF’s goal is to achieve impact at scale on STEM inclusion. We need your leadership if we are to succeed.

I invite you to become a leader in the NSF INCLUDES initiative. To learn more about this exciting program, go to http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2016/nsf16544/nsf16544.htm.

Sincerely,

/// signed ///

France A. Córdova
Director

Resources

Hunt, V., Layton, D., & Prince, S. (February, 2015). Diversity matters. McKinsey & Company

Kania, J., & Kramer, M. (2011). Collective impact, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter. Retrieved from ssir.org/articles/entry/collective_impact

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (2015). Women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in science and engineering. Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation

Committee on Underrepresented Groups and the Expansion of the Science and Engineering Workforce Pipeline, Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, & Policy and Global Affairs. (2014). Expanding underrepresented minority participation: America’s science and technology talent at the crossroads. Washington, DC: National Academies Press

Abstract Submission Now Open!

http://www.weef-gedc2016.org/