Conferinta Nationala "Educatia Azi", dedicata formarii profesorilor în era digitala, la Iasi
În perioada 30 - 31 mai 2019, Departamentul pentru Pregatirea Personalului Didactic (DPPD) - Facultatea de Psihologie si Stiinte ale Educatiei, din cadrul Universitatii "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" (UAIC) din Iasi si Inspectoratul Scolar Judetean (ISJ) Iasi, în parteneriat cu Universitatea din Bucuresti, Universitatea "Babes-Bolyai" Cluj-Napoca si Universitatea de Vest din Timisoara vor organiza editia a V-a a Conferintei Nationale "Educatia Azi", dedicata formarii profesorilor în era digitala.
Organizata pentru prima data la Iasi, aceasta editie a Conferintei Nationale se desfasoara în cadrul mai larg al Festivalului International al Educatiei (FIE), eveniment educational si cultural de anvergura al orasului. Partenerii acestei manifestari sunt Primaria Municipiului Iasi, precum si Asociatia Studentilor Psihologi si Pedagogi Iasi.
Deschiderea oficiala a conferintei va avea loc joi, 30 mai 2019, în Aula Bibliotecii Centrale (BCU) "Mihai Eminescu", începând cu ora 9:30. In acest context, tot in aceasta zi, începând cu ora 9:00, în Sala "Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu" din incinta Bibliotecii Centrale Universitare Iasi vor fi oferite detalii despre eveniment. In acest context, vor participa: prof. univ. dr. Constantin Cucos, director al DPPD din cadrul Facultatii de Psihologie si Stiinte ale Educatiei de la UAIC, prof. dr. Genoveva Aurelia Farcas, inspector scolar general, precum si cadre didactice universitare de la celelalte trei institutii de invatamant superior partenere în Consortiul "Universitaria"
Publicație : Bună Ziua Iași
Studentii Facultatii de Mecanica au luat premiul I la un concurs cu drone organizat in cadrul Zilelor Educatiei Mecatronice
O echipa de 11 studenti de la Universitatea Tehnica „Gheorghe Asachi” din Iasi (TUIASI) a obtinut mai multe premii, printre care si pozitia I la o cursa de drone, in cadrul Zilelor Educatiei Mecatronice, editia a X-a, eveniment organizat intre 21 si 24 mai la Cluj-Napoca. Studentii provin de la specializarea Mecatronica, Facultatea de Mecanica a TUIASI, si au fost asistanti tehnic de prof. univ. dr. ing. Gheorghe Prisacaru, sef lucrari dr. ing. Ciprian Stamate si drd. ing. Denis Cojocaru, profesori in cadrul facultatii. „Zilele Educatiei Mecatronice” se desfasoara anual, de fiecare data fiind gazduite de un alt centru universitar.
„Evenimentul este organizat la nivel national si constituie un pol de atractie si inspiratie pentru studentii universitatilor din tara, fiind cea mai importanta manifestare la care acestia isi pot verifica si testa competentele prin participarea la concursuri vizand programarea sistemelor industriale, realizarea si programarea robotilor mobili si dronelor in aplicatii de viteza si trasee cu obstacole. De asemenea, sunt organizate expozitii cu realizarile de exceptie ale studentilor specializarilor de mecatronica din tara, cu produse ale firmelor din domeniu, respectiv sunt planificate prezentari si intalniri cu reprezentanti ai firmelor si companiilor din domeniu” a declarat prof. univ. dr. ing. Gheorghe Prisacaru
La editia de anul acesta au participat studenti de la zece institutii de invatamant superior, noua universitati din Brasov, Bucuresti, Cluj-Napoca, Craiova, Sibiu, Suceava, Timisoara, Iasi si Republica Moldovei, si de la Institutul National de Cercetare-Dezvoltare pentru Mecatronica si Tehnica Masurarii.
Publicație : Bună Ziua Iași
EU students will not face Brexit penalty next year
Tuition fees and student loans will be pegged in England at same level as for home students
EU students going to English universities next year will be eligible for domestic tuition fees and student loans for the duration of their course regardless of Brexit, the Department for Education (DfE) has announced.
Chris Skidmore, the universities minister, told a meeting of ministers in Brussels that EU students would continue to be funded on the same basis as students in England for undergraduate and postgraduate courses starting in the 2020-21 academic year.
“We know that students will be considering their university options for next year already, which is why we are confirming now that eligible EU nationals will continue to benefit from home fee status and can access financial support for the 2020-21 academic year, so they have the certainty they need to make their choice,” Skidmore said.
The announcement was welcomed by university leaders, although it has been widely expected since the decision to delay the UK’s EU departure date until the end of October. The Scottish government said in April that EU students applying for courses there next year would be eligible for home student status.
Applications for undergraduate places at Oxbridge and medical schools close in October, leading to uncertainty for potential EU applicants. International student fees in England can be £15,000 a year higher than annual home student fees.
The decision means EU students will be eligible for student loans on tuition fees of £9,250 a year for undergraduate courses in England. EU nationals who have lived for five years in the UK are also eligible for maintenance loans.
Jess Cole, the director of policy for the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, said Skidmore’s announcement was critical to clarify the fee status for tens of thousands of EU students.
“To reassure these students further, the government should guarantee their migration rights for the duration of their studies. Students starting courses in 2020-21 should be eligible for the EU settlement scheme regardless of whether the UK leaves the EU without a deal,” Cole said.
“Students from across the EU enrich campus life and bring benefits to all regions of the UK, making a positive impact on our economy. We want to ensure the UK remains open and attractive to talented students from Europe and more widely after the UK leaves the EU.”
The DfE said discussions were ongoing on the future fee status for EU students starting courses after 2020-21.
Alistair Jarvis, the chief executive of the Universities UK group, said: “It is important that other post-Brexit policies ensure an attractive offer to students from the EU and beyond and signal that the UK continues to be a welcoming place for those wishing to study here.”
The DfE’s announcement comes before a review of tertiary education funding in England, which is expected to recommend a cut in undergraduate fees to £7,500 a year and a shift in funding towards vocational training and further education.
The review – established by Theresa May last year - is unlikely to have any immediate impact on tuition fees or other funding, although its recommendations could inform future Conservative party policy.
Publicație : The Guardian
Working-class academics are not disadvantaged
Transparency, plentiful leadership opportunities and the need for self-motivation all benefit blue-collar scholars, says Thomas Anker
Being working class is still a major barrier to getting ahead in the academy.
That, at least, is the view of the Association of Working Class Academics, recently established to help blue-collar scholars succeed in the supposedly class-ridden world of UK higher education. And it is a view echoed by the anonymous researcher who wrote movingly in Times Higher Education recently about how she has been consistently held back by her Romany Gypsy background (“The end of my tether”, Features, 7 March).
My experience could not be more different, however. I was the first in my family even to go to university, let alone to embark on an academic career. My dad’s post-school education consisted of an apprenticeship as a machine technician, while my mother went straight into a job as an office girl. The word “academic” was sometimes used in our home, but always pejoratively – such as when a conservative politician on the television news got lost in abstractions. My dad’s frequent references to “engineers” were also made through gritted teeth because, according to him, university-educated mechanical engineers had only a remote, academic understanding of what machines were really like.
Of course, class matters enormously when it comes to considering career options. It is only natural for young people to consider pathways that they are familiar with. Work and social identity are closely connected, and that means that their role models usually come from the same type of background as they do. So universities must undoubtedly do much more to widen access to ensure that they attract the best talent from all walks of life.
Despite everything, however, universities became my professional playground. And once you become a member of the higher education world – either as a student or researcher – my experience is that social class no longer matters. I have never thought of myself as being disadvantaged in any way by not coming from an academic family.
After all, despite their often overly bureaucratic nature, universities are very transparent when it comes to recruitment and career progression. Academic success is determined by merit, and performance criteria are structurally identical across all disciplines. Publications in prestigious journals, grants won and successful supervision of PhD students all matter greatly, and everybody knows that. Moreover, promotion criteria are often very clearly articulated, with consideration of applications typically carried out by committees on which the applicant’s line manager does not sit.
All of this codification minimises the importance of any insider knowledge that academics from non-traditional backgrounds would lack. It also makes social influence largely irrelevant. Whether you are from a working-class household or not, grit and hard work will get you much further in academia than networks and received pronunciation.
Universities are also great places to develop leadership skills and careers. All too often, this goes unnoticed in debates on higher education. Moreover, roles such as director of learning and teaching or head of department are surprisingly unattractive to most academic colleagues. As a result, entry barriers are often low, with deans willing to take a chance and appoint relatively junior colleagues. This was the case with me: I have just finished a three-year tenure as head of my department.
Such entry-level leadership positions offer a stepping stone into senior academic administration and the attractive pay packages that come with it. And even those positions are often undersubscribed. It is not uncommon for universities to struggle to appoint to deanships because the talent pool simply is not big enough. This stands in stark contrast to the many graduate careers whose upper echelons can seem all but impenetrable to everyone but white, privately educated males.
Indeed, academics from non-standard backgrounds are not just on a level playing field here. They may have a competitive edge because they are likely to be adept at working effectively and inclusively with colleagues from different backgrounds and across job families: one big criterion of successful leadership.
This is not the only advantage that a non-traditional background can offer. Academics still enjoy considerable academic autonomy; in effect, most will have to define their own research agendas and careers. And while it may be beneficial to have academic parents who can guide that choice, the direction and momentum required to sustain an independent research career must come from your own intellectual curiosity. Passion for scientific exploration is, in my view, critical for success – and if that passion has arisen against all the odds, you can be sure that it is real and will endure.
Researchers from non-standard backgrounds, including bilingual scholars, also have an advantage when it comes to interdisciplinary research: a strategic priority for universities and funding bodies alike. This is because constant interpretation from one context to another is their default modus operandi. It creates a cognitive diversity that is a strong enabler of interdisciplinary research and, hence, institutional success.
It is true that working-class people are less likely to be admitted to university. It is also true that the world of academia often seems alien to people whose families have had no previous exposure to it – and, for some, this may become a psychological barrier. But once you have finally entered the gates, my experience is that being different can serve academics extremely well.
Publicație : The Times
How the Open University helped to reshape global higher education
The UK’s largest university is respected for its innovative approach to distance learning, but its impact on wider higher education is varied, experts say
The Open University was the first of its kind, offering flexible distance learning to anyone who wanted it, regardless of previous qualifications. It quickly became an integral element of the higher education landscape and was, for decades, the only alternative in the UK to the campus-based, professor at the front of the classroom style of teaching.
The OU may no longer broadcast teaching materials on television in the middle of the night, but its model – and its philosophy – has stood the test of time: the university is marking its 50th anniversary this year. While this is undoubtedly cause for celebration at the OU, has the institution over these five decades had an enduring impact beyond its own activities on higher education more widely? And, as the popularity of studying for a degree part-time continues to nosedive in the UK, and as many more universities develop their online distance-learning offerings, does the OU have a sustainable future?
Sir John Daniel, the OU’s third vice-chancellor, cited the proliferation of “open universities” around the world that followed the foundation of the Milton Keynes-based OU in 1969 as evidence of its wide-reaching influence.
“In the early ’70s, it made a big splash internationally. Developing countries were looking for ways of expanding higher education at low cost,” said Sir John, who led the OU between 1990 and 2001. There are now more than 50 open universities around the world, including such places as China, India, Cyprus and Sudan.
“I remember as v-c that I didn’t have any authority over all these institutions, but they looked to the OU as their model and their inspiration,” Sir John said.
The potential of using distance learning to educate people who were too poor or lived too remotely to access traditional campus universities was one of the key attractions of the OU model around the world. But just as crucial in entrenching its influence were the impressive quality of the graduates that it produced and the strong reputation of its teaching.
For John Brennan, emeritus professor of higher education research at the OU, the big achievement of those early years was rapidly establishing academic credibility. “Given that there were no entry qualifications – anyone could do any course – it’s remarkable that it achieved such a good reputation so quickly,” he said.
High-quality support for students built on the latest techniques and innovations has been vital to the OU’s success, alongside the standard of its teaching.
Claire Callender, professor of higher education studies at the UCL Institute of Education and Birkbeck, University of London, said the OU’s course delivery was incredibly well thought through. Feedback to students is provided swiftly, which results in strong scores in this area in the UK’s National Student Survey – in contrast to many traditional institutions.
“There are lessons to be learned about replicating the kind of support the OU offers its students. The OU has an army of people and a range of people on hand to provide that support to its students,” Professor Callender said.
Daniel Weinbren, a curriculum manager in the OU’s Faculty of Arts and author of The Open University: A History, believes the institution is likely to remain a leader in distance learning because of its commitment to innovation in pedagogy.
“It is constantly and quickly introducing new ideas about teaching,” Dr Weinbren said. “The booklets it produces, such as ‘how to write a good social science essay’ and other fundamental study skills, sell in huge numbers once they hit the open market…it shows how influential and useful its teaching work is.”
Martin Weller, professor of educational technology at the OU, who joined the institution in 1995, agreed. “People were dismissive of the idea of part-time and distance education, but that changed when people saw the quality of what [the OU] was doing, particularly the printed materials. We found a lot of other universities were using them,” he said.
In recent years, the OU has pioneered the expansion of online education in particular. In 2013, it launched FutureLearn, the UK’s first platform for massive open online courses, hosting programmes from the OU and an array of other universities from around the UK – and now the globe. The OU sold a 50 per cent stake in FutureLearn to Seek, an Australian-based jobs board, earlier this year.
The move of distance learning online has also allowed the OU to lead the way in the development of learning analytics, using data on student achievement and engagement to predict their future performance and to identify learners who need additional support or who may be at risk of dropping out. The scale of the OU’s teaching activities has allowed it to draw insights about which pedagogical approaches are most effective based on datasets of tens of thousands of students.
Professor Weller said that the OU was “quite early in the field because we saw the potential of integrating analytics”.
“It’s difficult to get quick feedback from students in distance learning – in a lecture you can see if they look bored or are talking to each other…but analytics gives us the opportunity to see what students are doing in real time, what they have trouble with and what they are not engaging with,” he said.
While imitation remains the sincerest form of flattery, as the OU turns 50 the risks to its future prosperity are perhaps greater than they have ever been because the entry of more universities into online education erodes its unique selling proposition.
Rebecca Galley, the OU’s director of learning experience and technology, said she had seen a significant increase in recent years in outside interest in what the OU does. “We’ve always believed in sharing our materials and resources; much of the development in our learning platform we share with other organisations,” she said.
“Many of the organisations are snapping at our heels, and we will have to innovate – we’ve been experimenting with more rapid models of productivity – and we have maturity. It’s crucial that we stay ahead of the game, not just for innovation but also for improving the quality of the system and whatever the students need.”
For Professor Weller, the OU has “in some ways been a victim of its own success”. The internet has allowed other universities to jump into distance learning cheaply, whereas in the past the institution had a monopoly. “It’s a more competitive marketplace now,” he said.
However, Professor Weller pointed out that the OU was still set apart from its competitors by its ability to operate at scale. The OU is one of the largest universities in Europe, with 174,898 students.
“People underestimate how difficult it is to do distance learning. We saw that with the introduction of Moocs, and the cost for the support. You need a support structure and to understand its value,” Professor Weller said.
Professor Callender agreed. “Some might want to question whether the OU has lost that lead position, since more universities have become interested in online learning and are providing Moocs and blended learning,” she said. “But it is unclear whether those institutions have learned from the OU and whether those institutions’ motivations for providing distance courses are primarily driven by economic rather than pedagogical reasons.”
In the UK, the growth of online competition has been compounded by the 2012 reforms to student finance, which led to a huge cut in the OU’s block grant and a significant increase in tuition fees. Mature learners have proved unwilling to take on large debts, and student numbers fell by a third between 2009-10 and 2017-18.
The OU – which will welcome a new vice-chancellor, Tim Blackman, in October – is forecasting a £30 million deficit for this year, hot on the heels of a £17.9 million shortfall in 2017-18.
Diana Laurillard, professor of learning with digital technologies at the UCL Institute of Education, said the OU’s role in widening access to higher education in the UK and globally was important, “but there is a sense that it is being left to the OU to tackle those issues”.
“It’s extraordinarily influential. It has educated people who otherwise wouldn’t have learned,” Professor Laurillard said. “It’s a fantastic model, but that doesn’t seem to have been treasured by the leadership in this country.”
There is hope that the forthcoming post-18 review of higher education funding will go some way to tackle the UK’s decline in the number of part-time and mature students, which would be a boost to the university.
“Losing the OU would be a real tragedy,” Professor Laurillard said, especially as workplaces are changing rapidly and employees are at risk of being replaced by automation and artificial intelligence.
“We will need people who can bring creativity, a higher level of critical thinking, and to support them to do more sustainable practices in their work, for example,” Professor Laurillard added. “But that learning will have to be flexible, and that’s what the OU provides.”
Publicație : The Times
Stanford aims to keep its brainchild AI on straight and narrow
New institute intends to marshal all academic fields to nudge artificial intelligence and its uses to more positive place
Since computing legend John McCarthy arrived in the early 1960s, Stanford University has been a global leader in developing artificial intelligence – the use of massive computer processing power to replicate or surpass human brain capacity.
As that goal now comes within sight, Professor McCarthy’s successors are allocating real resources to allay long-held public fears that it could all go badly wrong.
Their chief mechanism is the new Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. With faculty drawn from every department within every school at Stanford, HAI hopes to provide holistic grounding to the world-renowned Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a prodigious assembly of computer scientists founded by Professor McCarthy in 1962.
Ambitions for HAI are broad, said one of its co-directors, John Etchemendy. It plans to help every academic field build AI into its work. It plans to envisage and predict AI’s impact across human society, economics and politics. It plans to suggest policy positions. It plans training sessions for lawmakers, journalists, lawyers and many other professionals. And it plans to encourage a global network of similar efforts.
Professor Etchemendy – a philosopher, mathematical logician and long-time Stanford provost – told Times Higher Education that he was not one to fuel public fears of killer robots driven by cold logic to turn on their human creators.
But he also does not downplay the implications of artificially multiplying a mysterious force – human thought and action – that already is fully capable of immense good and evil.
“We’re not going to be able to control every use of AI,” Professor Etchemendy said. “But I do think that there are appropriate ways to nudge in the right direction, and hopefully move the trend to a more positive place and move the thinking to a more positive place. And I think that’s all you can hope for.”
From his base in Silicon Valley, Professor Etchemendy does not have to go far for lessons on technology’s dark side. Popular villains include Facebook and Twitter, which began as places for sharing friendly banter and now stand accused of playing central roles in the overthrow of democratic norms.
It was over his backyard fence that Professor Etchemendy got the idea for HAI, which grew out of a suggestion from his neighbour, Fei-Fei Li, Google’s chief AI scientist. Professor Li, who has since returned to the Stanford campus to join Professor Etchemendy in co-leading HAI, would get her own taste of computer-generated controversy when she was found to be counselling her corporate colleagues to avoid the term “weaponised AI” when discussing Google’s work helping the Pentagon with drone-guided bombing.
While popular culture has long expressed fears that superhuman brains might eventually come to view ordinary humans as inferior and unworthy – such as HAL in the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey – Professor Etchemendy said actual AI technology had been too primitive to warrant such concern until just the past few years.
While noting that AI scholars were not concerned about rebutting science fiction, Professor Etchemendy said that the fears in such dystopian visions about “artificial general intelligence” did not seem realistic. Far more deserving of attention, he said, were real-world problems such as parole boards making criminal justice decisions informed by algorithms that have biases built so deeply into software that they cannot be seen, and computer systems that affect human survival making sudden unpredictable shifts in behaviour because of unforeseen quirks in the data on which they were trained.
AI research within the corporate world has actually been quite limited and incremental, Professor Etchemendy said. A university such as Stanford has the potential to be far more transformative in applications once it begins, as HAI intends, to integrate AI with its vast subject-specific expertise, he argued.
Professor Etchemendy said he was hopeful that companies would not then exploit such advances with more focus on profits than on human well-being. “We’ve had a fair bit of interaction with Microsoft, for example,” he said, “and I’ve been very impressed by the sincerity of the people that I’ve talked to, about wanting to figure out what is the right use of this technology, when should they say ‘no’ to a project.”
HAI also plans to recognise the even greater potential for unintended consequences, much of it centring on computers amplifying existing human biases. Yet the institute already has faced criticism for a seeming lack of diversity, based on photos of its top leadership that suggested an overwhelmingly white and male composition.
Professor Etchemendy, perhaps ironically, blamed a computer for causing that misperception. While it is true that the field of computing lacks women and minorities, he said, a website glitch had led to a mix-up in photos that made the imbalance at the institute look even worse.
Professor Li brings to HAI a track record as founder of efforts to integrate and diversify computing, including AI4ALL, a teaching and mentoring initiative aimed at attracting and keeping women and minorities working in AI.
At the same time, initiatives such as HAI must also compete with industry for talent. In this, Stanford fares well, Professor Etchemendy said, attracting experts who embrace the freedom to explore problems and the challenge and responsibility of teaching the next generation despite the far higher salaries and greater raw resources to be found at many companies.
“At Stanford, I think we’ve reached a good steady state” with companies, which realise the benefits of cooperation, he said. “It would be an absolute disaster if industries took all of the AI talent out of universities – it would be a disaster, even for them.”
Publicație : The Times
Should the ideals of the Floating University set sail once more?
Ostensibly unsuccessful educational experiment still has important lessons for us today, claims historian
On 18 September 1926, 50 faculty members and nearly 500 students boarded the SS Ryndam in New Jersey to embark on an eight-month educational cruise designed to help students “develop an interest in foreign affairs [and] think in world terms”. The “Floating University” – the brainchild of James Lough, a professor of psychology at New York University – was setting sail.
The students visited 47 ports and met a number of foreign dignitaries, including Mahatma Gandhi, Benito Mussolini, the King of Siam and the Queen of Spain, and many later said they had been transformed by the experience. Yet the voyage was deemed an educational failure at the time and has been largely forgotten since. It has now been reconstructed by Tamson Pietsch, senior lecturer in social and political sciences and director of the Australian Centre for Public History at the University of Technology Sydney, who recently visited the UK to deliver papers at Loughborough University and the University of Edinburgh.
On one level, Dr Pietsch told Times Higher Education, the educational experiment was dismissed as a failure because “the rules were written in the course of the voyage by the American newspapers”, whose articles focused on student misbehaviour. “They got drunk in Japan, got into a street fight with policemen, robbed graves. There were lots of sex scandals, skipping at-shore excursions – the list went on,” Dr Pietsch said.
At a deeper level, as Dr Pietsch’s research makes clear, the story of the Floating University is revealing about “the changing politics of knowledge in the 1920s”.
Inspired by the progressive educational ideals of John Dewey, Professor Lough, on being appointed dean of NYU’s new Extramural Division in 1908, turned the whole city into “the university’s laboratory” and “established instruction in accounting, foreign trade, investment and finance at various locations in the Wall Street district; courses in government in the Municipal Building; courses in art appreciation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and an extensive programme of engineering courses at Grand Central Station”. A Floating University was only a logical extension of what he had done in New York.
Although NYU was initially supportive of his plans, by 1926 times had changed. Financial pressures had spurred “a profound shift in the university’s sense of its own dominion”, Dr Pietsch said. By establishing schools and credentials in fields such as business, engineering, journalism and retail, where people had traditionally learned on the job, “they were staking a claim for their higher authority, not only over the ways mastery in these domains might be acquired, but also over the ground on which knowledge claims could be made”. The institution’s new business model “increasingly rested on a claim to authority over knowledge that was completely incompatible with Lough’s ventures”.
As a result, NYU distanced itself from the Floating University before it set sail and granted Professor Lough leave of absence on half-pay, on condition that he find another job afterwards.
Although they set off to see the world, Dr Pietsch said, the students aboard the Floating University visited jazz clubs and war graves, met ambassadors and consular officials and so largely learned about “America’s emerging global power”. Some returned home to become missionaries or international businessmen, while a man called Bishop Chance, said Dr Pietsch, “built a garden in the middle of Centralia, Missouri which had plants from all the over the world, because he wanted to give people the opportunity to feel the international in the same way that he did”.
Apart from such human interest stories, though, why should we care about the Floating University today?
If the events mark a turning point in the “politics of knowledge”, Dr Pietsch explained, “we may be reaching the end of an era when the university is able to claim a monopoly over all forms of knowledge, not least because there is a response from publics saying ‘I know things, too. Technocrats and experts can’t capture what it is like to live my life.’ Universities need to listen to that a lot more.”
In revisiting “the relationship between experts and their publics”, Dr Pietsch said, it could be useful to go back to the progressive educational ideas that Professor Lough embraced. “John Dewey thought that publics were really good at defining problems, because they lived them, and that the job of the intellectual was to go off and find the solution,” she said. “That is the inverse of how we understand the role of the university and experts at the moment, where they can define the problem and generate the solution, and the job of getting publics on board is just a translation exercise.”
Publicație : The Times
‘Star’ academics’ PhD students no happier than peers
Supervisors’ supportiveness, not their academic ability, found to be key driver of satisfaction in survey
A survey of 409 doctoral candidates from 20 countries found that the supportiveness of supervisors was the key driver of satisfaction, rather than their scholarly capabilities.
The academic characteristics of PhD students’ departments – as well as the supportiveness of this wider environment – were also found to be more influential than individual supervisors’ academic qualities.
The survey was completed by students from across the sciences, social sciences and humanities in 63 universities in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.
An article outlining the findings, published in Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, says that “supervisors are the largest contributors to PhD student satisfaction, but this is driven solely through their supportiveness and not academic qualities”.
As a result, attracting individual star academics would seem to be “less advantageous than equivalent efforts at cultivating more broadly collegial but capable faculties”.
Gerard Dericks, a senior lecturer in the School of the Built Environment at Oxford Brookes University and one of the authors of the paper, said the findings “highlight the importance of the overall department in PhD student satisfaction” and illustrate that “academic qualities of the overall department trump those of the supervisor in importance”.
PhD supervisors and their departments should “perhaps seek to work jointly, and perhaps more closely, than many currently do”, the paper says.
“Our results would seem consonant with recent trends towards PhD programmes that both increasingly incorporate supervisory teams rather than single supervisors, and provide more formal research training that is often department- rather than supervisor-led,” said Dr Dericks.
“An implication of this is the importance of promoting interaction between PhD students and researchers throughout their department.”
The research was co-authored by Edmund Thompson of the University of Bath, Margaret Roberts of the University of the West of England, and Florence Phua of the University of Reading.
Dr Dericks added: “PhD students have historically had about a 50 per cent dropout rate. Better understanding the determinants of PhD student satisfaction may help reduce student attrition and improve the overall experience of PhD students who do complete, which is often poor.”
Publicație : The Times
Les dérives du « volontourisme » chez les étudiants
Des agences à but lucratif ont fait de l’engouement pour l’humanitaire un florissant business. Des séjours qui se révèlent finalement peu éthiques.
Pour son premier voyage en Afrique, Timothée (les prénoms ont été changés) avait choisi le Kenya. Une mission de volontariat dans un orphelinat de deux semaines encadrée par Projects Abroad, une entreprise qui vend des séjours humanitaires « clés en main » à de jeunes volontaires. Alors âgé de 16 ans, Timothée avait convaincu ses parents de le laisser partir grâce à cette structure qui garantit la sécurité des volontaires, parfois mineurs. Sur place, il était logé chez l’habitant. Il participait à la rénovation d’un orphelinat dans une zone rurale, il lui arrivait aussi de s’occuper des orphelins.
« J’ai préparé des repas, organisé des jeux pour les enfants les plus grands, donné des cours de maths ou de géographie, et même changé les couches des bébés », détaille aujourd’hui le jeune homme de 23 ans, étudiant en sciences politiques, qui est reparti à deux reprises en Afrique avec cet organisme. Parfois, sa mission lui semble plus dure. « J’ai vu des enfants en mauvaise santé. Je me souviens de cette petite fille qui avait des marques de strangulation sur le cou. On nous a dit que sa mère en était l’auteure… », raconte-t-il.A la fin de son séjour de deux semaines, il dit avoir ressenti une certaine frustration de ne pas avoir pu faire plus.
Une jolie ligne sur un CV
En France, la demande pour le volontariat à l’étranger est en pleine expansion. Une tradition venue des pays anglo-saxons, où les « séjours humanitaires » se font lors d’une gap year (année de césure) ou des vacances d’été. Ils permettent – entre autres choses – d’afficher des expériences valorisantes pour entrer dans les meilleures universités. « Cette tendance répond au désir des étudiants de donner du sens à leur parcours, et les grandes écoles s’y adaptent », décrypte Julie Joly, directrice du Centre de formation des journalistes (CFJ) et élue de la Conférence des grandes écoles (CGE).
« Partir en volontariat à l’étranger, nous y sommes favorables, mais attention, l’humanitaire est un métier qui demande des compétences. Nous conseillons aux jeunes d’être vigilants et de ne pas faire du “volontourisme” », alerte Marie-Albane Ully, responsable de la communication de France Volontaires, une plate-forme française sous tutelle du ministère des affaires étrangères créée après les dérives de l’affaire de « L’Arche de Zoé ».
Publicație : Le Monde
Prosecco, ecco la ricerca che piace agli inglesi: "Record di erosione nelle aree dove si produce il vino"
Un lavoro lungo sette anni dei geografi dell'Università di Padova: l'impronta ecologica in provincia di Treviso è trentun volte superiore alla media europea. "Bisogna diminuire la produzione e alzare siepi". Il Consorzio di tutela: "Siamo i primi a voler fermare il consumo delle colline". Il presidente Zaia: "In Gran Bretagna sono invidiosi"
ROMA - Nei giorni in cui il Prosecco fa segnare record di vendite nel mondo, l'Università di Padova pubblica sulla prestigiosa rivista Plos One - rivista open access - un'accurata ricerca che monitora i terreni del Prosecco docg dal 2012 a oggi e certifica che quel territorio ha un indice di erosione trentun volte superiore ai limiti considerati tollerabili all'interno dell'Unione europea. Per arrivare a una bottiglia di Prosecco si consumano, sostiene il lavoro, 3,3 chili di terra e il fatto che di Prosecco se ne producano 446 milioni di bottiglie l'anno (90 milioni nell'area storica nella provincia di Treviso) dimostra come l'impronta ecologica del prodotto sia notevole. Si chiama così, soil footprint, ed è un indicatore di sintesi in questo campo di ricerca scientifica, "soil geography", attivo da mezzo secolo.
I geografi e ingegneri ambientali dell'Ateneo padovano - a cavallo di tre dipartimenti e sotto la guida del professor Massimo De Marchi - hanno analizzato i 215 chilometri quadrati orginari, il "Conegliano-Valdobbiadene" dove la coltivazione della vite che darà il Prosecco a denominazione di origine controllata e garantita occupa il 30 per cento del terreno disponibile. Il territorio del Prosecco, sì, si è allargato nel tempo e oggi la vigna si trova in ampie zone sia del Veneto che del Friuli Venezia Giulia. Bene, la ricerca avanza il dubbio che un'attività agricola così intensiva come quella sviluppata nell'"area docg" non sia più sopportabile sul piano ambientale. In "Estimation of potential soil erosion in the Prosecco Docg area" si legge: "Il suolo è una risorsa non rinnovabile, per questo motivo bisogna avere un approccio integrato alla gestione dell'agroecosistema. Un territorio come quello dell'area Prosecco oggi dà ottimi risultati dal punto di vista economico, ma questo tipo di produttività alla lunga difficilmente sarà sostenibile".
Nei fatti, con l'erosione il suolo si abbassa - sul piano topografico - e il terreno s''impoverisce, in termini di sostanza organica e nutrienti. L'erosione è in natura, in media un millimetro l'anno: quel che preoccupa è la velocità con cui può avvenire. La soglia tollerabile di abrasione del suolo è stata individuata dagli esperti tra 0,3 e 1,4 tonnellate per ettaro l'anno. E' un indice di carattere europeo, ma nei terreni del Prosecco docg i valori riscontrati dall'équipe di geografi sono trentun volte superiorI.
Le colture di vigneti, altrimenti dette "agricoltura da versante", sono tra quelle che più stimolano processi erosivi. La ricerca dell'Università di Padova stima che si possono perdere da 150 mila a 400 mila tonnellate l'anno di suolo. Il processo degenerativo può essere dimezzato se intorno alla produzione si allarga, invece, una fascia di contenimento green: "Siepi intorno ai filari, fasce tampone e inerbimento delle aree dei vitigni". Chris Foss, conosciuto ricercatore del Plumpton College, East Sussex, ha suggerito di piantare altre siepi e passare a terrazze orizzontali invece di continuare a sviluppare i vigneti in pendenza.
Anticipi della ricerca, non precisi in verità, erano usciti sui giornali inglese lo scorso gennaio. Nelle ultime stagioni è in atto un'offensiva della stampa inglese nei confronti delle bollicine del Prosecco, la cui affermazione commerciale ha fatto scendere la vendita di birra nei pub della Gran Bretagna. Il presidente della Regione Veneto, Luca Zaia, che ha candidato già due volte le colline del Prosecco a patrimonio Unesco, ha parlato di "pura invidia" degli inglesi. Diversi viticoltori hanno contestato i dati della ricerca e aggiunto: "Frenare l'erosione è interesse primario di chi produce vino". Processi di mitigazione della produzione sono già avvenuti negli anni scorsi nelle zone del Chianti e delle Langhe, nello Champagne e nella Borgogna francesi.
Lo scorso 24 maggio il presidente del Consorzio di tutela del Prosecco Doc, Stefano Zanette, presentando il nuovo rosée doc (sarà in produzione dall'autunno 2020), ha messo a bilancio la vendemmia 2018 con questi numeri: produzione di 3,6 milioni di ettolitri, il 10,7 per cento in più rispetto all'anno precedente. Crescita del 13,4 per cento del valore economico, pari a a 2,369 miliardi di euro. L'80 per cento del Prosecco viaggia all'estero con una crescita esponenziale - appunto - in Gran Bretagna.
Publicație : La Repubblica
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