Science Education & Policy

By Neil Morris, University of Leeds Over the past couple of years, massive open online courses (MOOCs) have taken the academic world by storm. Despite much debate about whether the idea of running free online courses for everyone is both a good and cost-effective idea in the long-run, MOOCs are teaching universities valuable lessons about how students want to learn. In a recent article for Times Higher Education that shocked many academics, Diane Laurillard claimed “free online courses that require no prior qualifications or fee are a wonderful idea but are not viable”. I sincerely hope we…

A group of ecotoxicologists claim that the US Environmental Protection Agency's evaluations of pesticide safety are inadequate and lead to bias. Writing in BioScience, Michelle Boone of Miami University and colleagues worry note that most pesticide toxicity tests used in risk assessments are conducted by pesticide manufacturers themselves, which the authors believe can result in untenable conflicts of interest. This has been longstanding policy since the beginning of the EPA; manufacturers are required to prove product safety according to EPA guidelines, to prevent taxpayers from having to…

Scholars from Tufts University, Harvard University and Boston Children's Hospital are calling for the implementation of taxes and subsidies to improve dietary quality in the United States.   They want special levies on all packaged foods which would then be used to make healthier foods cheaper. That would substantially reduce health care costs, especially with an $8 billion Affordable Care Act bill due at the end of this month, which is going to come from taxpayers. How much of a new tax do the academics say is needed to cure obesity? They suggest a 10-30% flat tax on packaged foods…

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields used to be considered the domain of white men, especially in academia, and that has changed, but universities are criticized because of the pace of change - researchers with tenure cannot just be fired and replaced. Change is instead happening over time - women are hired in greater percentage than their representation in most academic fields now, but that only happens when new jobs open up. The social sciences are heavily dominated by women today and the life sciences are not far behind - more than 50 percent of PhDs are women and…

While MOOCs are free, their value lies in providing information about how students. Credit: learnFlickr/Ilonka Talina, CC BY-SA By Gregor Kennedy, University of Melbourne Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, took the world by storm in 2012. After years of experimentation at the fringes of higher education, prestigious universities from around the world progressively surged towards MOOCs, developing free online courses that were open to anyone, anywhere, with access to the Internet. Almost as quickly as universities climbed aboard, the backlash began. Commentators criticized the teacher-…

Even for experienced readers, mirror-image letters like b/d or p/q can be confusing. Why is it difficult for some to differentiate these letters?  When learning to read, our brain must be able to inhibit the mirror-generalization process, a mechanism that facilitates the recognition of identical objects regardless of their orientation, but also prevents the brain from differentiating letters that are different but symmetrical. In recent years, many studies on the process of learning to read have been based on the neuronal recycling hypothesis: the reuse of old brain mechanisms in a new…

In almost 20 years, China's Research  &  Development (R&D) expenditure as a percentage of its gross domestic product has more than tripled, reaching 1.98 percent in 2012.  That is a big improvement, it surpasses all 28 countries that make up the European Union, which collectively managed 1.96 percent. But where is the money going?  Applied research, which transforms science into practical human benefit, plummeted by over 50 percent (from 26.4 percent of spending to 11.8 percent) and basic research also dropped, from 5.2 percent in 1995 to 4.7 percent in 2011.…

By George Veletsianos, Royal Roads University The belief that technology can automate education and replace teachers is pervasive. Framed in calls for greater efficiency, this belief is present in today’s educational innovations, reform endeavors, and technology products. We can do better than adopting this insipid perspective and aspire instead for a better future where innovations imagine creative new ways to organize education. In the 1920s and 1930s, American psychologist Sidney Pressey worked to create a future in which machines would eliminate “the grossly inefficient and clumsy…

Though the rich get richer and the stock market is booming, which has led to claims by the administration that things are fine, the American public hasn't been this pessimistic about the future since Jimmy Carter was president. Pessimism has instead leaped 40% higher since 2009, when the Great Recession was in full swing. The protracted and uneven hints of recovery, where the only sector with low unemployment is government, has led most Americans to conclude that the U.S. economy has undergone a permanent change for the worse, according to a new national study at Rutgers. 70 percent now…

Credit: Birkbeck Media Services Centre, CC BY-NC-ND By Gina Rippon, Aston University International orientation weeks for new overseas students are looming for universities across the UK. At all our international airports you will soon see welcoming parties assembling to meet and greet these new arrivals. At my university, Aston, more than 20% of our students are from overseas, from more than 120 different countries. But across the UK there a threat is emerging to our ability to attract overseas students and reap the rewards they bring – over £4bn in fees and accommodation in 2011-2012. It’s…