In light of today's EdLab Development & Research meeting about NLT promotional ideas and our overall marketing efforts around our various projects, the video below presents research on the effectiveness of Twitter as a marketing tool.

The European Commission, in conjunction with the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU), recently announced it would be creating Europe's first set of mooc offerings. These initial offerings would be handled by several open universities across all of Europe: Western Europe (e.g. France), Eastern Europe (e.g. Lithuania), the Mediterranean (e.g. Turkey) and Israel (technically in the Middle East but due to political reasons, has membership in many European organizations). The courses are offered on one single platform, OpenUpEd, and its free of charge though some courses and institutions require payment from interested students upon completion if they want a certificate.

This article in the Atlantic highlights a rising phenomena in higher education: the rise of the adjunct professor (see chart below). What implications does this have for the future of higher education, especially considering the rising costs for students?

As the EdLab ramp up its outreach efforts for several of our many offerings: publications (i.e. NLT), products (i.e. Survey Sidekick), and grants (i.e YoungArts MasterClass), we’ve all been thinking about building a team dealing with specific aspects of the outreach efforts for each offering. The author of this article highlights five things to look for when hiring people to form the ideal marketing team:

1. Realize there is no such thing as a perfect team.
2. Invest in 'students.'
3. Look for marketers who are strategic and tactical.
4. Always hire for culture fit over skill.
5. Plan for the next big challenge.

What other characteristics should we look for when hiring or putting together the ideal marketing team for our offerings?

We are looking for teachers in three subject areas (Humanities, Math & Science, Visual & Performing Arts) to create professional development videos for the YoungArts MasterClass study guide. If you know any educators in junior high school and high school who might be interested, please let me know so we can reach out to them.

We are hoping to create something similar to this pilot below:

I took a course, Economics and Educational Development, here at Teachers College this past semester and one of the topics we discussed in detail was government expenditure on education, especially tertiary education, in the developing world. Enrollment in public universities in most developing nations is almost exclusively linked to one’s economic class. Since there are very limited public university slots, those few that are available is allocated based on test scores, and quality of secondary education, etc., all of which are correlated to one’s family income. Governments in these nations spend a huge amount of resources financing few universities that are mostly attended by the higher-income population and thus creating a situation in which the poor is essentially left out.

As more prestigious institutions continue (in some cases begin) to offer their courses for free on the web as part of the massive open online courses, or MOOCs movement, a large number of participants in those courses are students from the developing world. In this article, the writer notes this phenomenon using the case of El Salvador, a nation of over six million citizens with just one public university serving 50,000 students. Students there have been flocking to moocs as an alternative or to supplement their education.

A new report by the Kauffman Foundation claims startups and new firms (created within the past two years) are leading the way in hiring and job creation following the recession of 2008. According to the study, “four out of every 10 hires at young firms are for newly created jobs, much higher than in older firms”. Though young firms may be leading the charge in job creation, employers at those firms earn less than those at more established firms. As we think of ways to promote Research Broker as well as the eventual “launch” of Launchpad 39, how can we keep in mind this shift in hiring? Is this a consequence of the recessions or a real shift where startups will become a primary source of jobs?

As we get ready to launch the YoungArts/MasterClass website, we’ve been thinking about how best to promote the study guide via social media and viral marketing. As some of you may know, YoungArts is a national program based out of Florida that chooses the best high school students in nine performing arts areas such as cinema, jazz, photography and dance, among others to perform in a series of workshops with “masters” in their respective field. The moments between the students and the masters were captured for the HBO Masterclass series that serves as the inspiration behind the study guide.

Frank Gehry and Mark Zuckerberg

One of the featured masters in Masterclass sessions is architect Frank Gehry, best known for his elaborate designs such as the Guggenheim in Spain and the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and more recently as the lead architect for the ongoing Dwight E. Eisenhower memorial in Washington, D.C. Gehry was recently chosen by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to expand the company’s new campus in Menlo Park, California. Dubbed the West Campus, the new facility will house all of Facebook’s engineers.

We’ve started mailing out hard copies of the UFR curriculum to those who registered via the UFR site as well as to members of organizations such as ASCD, NCSS and NASSP. This fall will be the first full school year where educators across the country (and some globally) will be teaching the curriculum. In addition to receiving the hard copies, all educators teaching the curriculum can sign up to create a blog for their classroom via the Teacher Network. The Teacher Network is a series of interconnected blogs that allows for educators to create lessons and activities from the materials in the UFR curriculum and affords students a chance to comment, vote and ask questions. It also serves as a repository and an additional resource for all educators interested in or teaching the curriculum. Educators can sign up for their own classroom blog by creating an account on the UFR main site.

We want to start promoting the Teacher Network and get as many educators on it as possible. Since we will be working on a Teacher Network for the YoungArts/MasterClass grant as well, it will be really great to have a sound, consistent and effective plan to reach out to educators. There are several lessons already up on the Network so please browse go through them, watch the video below on the Teacher Network and share any ideas or suggestions you have about promoting the Teacher Network.

Barry Elias, a weekly contributor to Newsmax on topics that include economics, public policy and politics, and an economic policy analyst to Dick Morris, a former political advisor to President Clinton, recently wrote a piece about the UFR curriculum to raise awareness about the importance of the subject. Elias focuses primarily on the need for high school students, who he sees as the instruments of change for our country in the coming years, to draw conclusions based more on inquiry and critical thinking and not on the very partisan political discourse in Washington.