With only nine days to go until the chapter submission deadline, we thought we’d highlight some of the more innovative and monumental goings on in the world of higher education over the last few weeks. We watch with interest to see if any or all of the developments noted below include explicit creation of learning pathways for informal learning. Will learners drawn into open learning developments at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (USA), The Open University of Nairobi, and HASTAC, be given additional opportunities for credit?
Last week the world’s largest provider of online public health education, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (USA), celebrated its one year partnership with Coursera by announcing the introduction of 8 new courses to its current thriving bank of 113 for-credit online courses.
East Africa has also seen massive growth with the creation of open and distance learning courses at the University of Nairobi. Professor George Magoha told University World News “Open and distance learning has great potential as an effective tool for provision of education in developing countries because of its flexibility”.
The Open University of Tanzania has been the only stand-alone distance education institution in the area since 1992, offering a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees across a range of specialties.
HASTAC have also created a system to assist budding badge developers with an all you need to know Q&A database on the creation of a new badge. ‘Project Q&A Interviews’ was developed with the winners of the 30 Badges for Lifelong Learning competition. HASTAC states:
“Thirty rich, thorough surveys convey the variety of experiences and insights of badge development and institutional adoption, offering all of us real-life examples of how to build badge system for a wide range of audiences and purposes: higher ed, professional development, museum programs, schools, veterans, workforce development, and anywhere, anytime learning environments”.
For more info in the lead up to the book, be sure to follow us on Twitter, and if you’re feeling up to it, why not submit a chapter?
*Image courtesy of Dave King
Open Learning and Recognition 