Weekly reader

Leading British Universities Join New MOOC Venture
"Earlier this month, one of Britain’s top newspapers noticed a glaring absence on the British education scene: MOOC’s. “U.K. universities are wary of getting on board the MOOC train,” read The Guardian’s headline. Two institutions, the Universities of Edinburgh and London, have recently signed on to offer massive open online courses via the American company Coursera. Yet in Britain, said the newspaper, “there is scarcely a whiff of the evangelism and excitement bubbling away in America, where venture capitalists and leading universities are ploughing millions” into MOOC’s." -- Marc Parry, Wired Campus, 12/13/12

Let's (Not) Do the Numbers
"Over the weekend I had a fascinating conversation over Twitter with Aaron Tay, a brilliant young academic librarian at the University of Singapore. (I’m not the only one who thinks he’s smart; Library Journal named him a Mover and Shaker last year.) We were discussing Library Journal’s recent report, covered right here in Inside Higher Ed, about students’ views of academic libraries." - Barbara Fister, Library Babel Fish, 12/4/12

Common Craft: Online Citizenship
"Sometimes communicating via computers can feel anonymous and make people lose touch with the impact of what they say online. This video highlights the problems this causes and explains a basic idea: that our words matter, online and off." -- Lee LeFever, Common Craft Blog, 12/4/12

Why Women Should Lead Boldly
"For many years, we’ve known intuitively that having women in top leadership positions means superior organizational performance. Today, a body of data from prestigious research organizations documents the positive impact women leaders have on their organizations." -- Sharon Hadary and Laura Henderson, SmartBlog on Leadership, 12/3/12

Badges, We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges
"Inside Higher Education published a story on changes at the University of Oxford’s libraries, implying that the changes were treating librarians like baristas, who apparently all wear “large bright badges offering help to customers,” at least in the UK.(Is that an American thing as well? Whenever I see baristas I’m often still a little groggy waiting for my caffeine that I don’t notice.)" -- Annoyed Librarian, 12/3/12