Text b. Online education

Exercise 4. You have been exposed to the higher education system for some years now. What is your opinion of the modern higher education? Discuss the questions:

1. What difficulties and challenges have you experienced as a student?

2. What suggestions can you propose to improve the current situation?

Exercise 5. Are you familiar with massive online courses (MOOC)? This type of instruction is becoming increasingly popular as the education world shifts from the classroom to the Internet. Match the following teaching techniques on the left with their definitions on the right:

1. active learning (project method, activity-based learning)	a) an educational practice in which students interact with other students to attain educational goals. Whether it takes place in a formal or informal learning context, in small groups or online, it manifests aspects of self-organization that are mostly absent from pedagogical models of teaching and learning.
2. self-pacing	b) an educational practice when the computer grades exercises which allows to check large numbers of student papers almost instantly after they have been submitted. If students get the answers wrong, they can try it again and again, and this really becomes much more engaging.
3. instant feedback	c) application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts.
4. peer learning	d) a teaching method that strives to more directly involve students in the learning process. It is learner-centered, not teacher-centered, and requires active participation of each student rather than just listening.
5. gamification	e) a kind of instruction that proceeds based on learner response. The content itself can be curriculum, corporate training, technical tutorials, or any other subject that does not require the immediate response of an instructor. It is constructed in such a way that the learner proceeds from one topic or segment to the next at their own speed.

Exercise 6. Watch the talk given Daphne Koller: What we're learning from online education (Video 11, listening for detail) which explores technologies we are developing in the large and applying them in the small to create a blended model of education to really reinvent and reimagine what we do in the classroom Which of the techniques listed in Exercise 5 are ?

Exercise 7. Using information from the lecture discuss the questions:

1. What obstacles do people face on the way to education?

2. What demographic benefits from online courses?

3.

Do you think that MOOCs may one day replace traditional colleges with face-to-face classes?

Exercise 8. Write a summary of the videolecture (200-250 words).

Text c. Foreign study

Exercise 9. Before listening to the text discuss the questions:

1. What do you know about the following: mortar board, Ivy League?

2. Whould you like to study abroad? Why? Where? What factors determine your choice of the University?

Exercise 10. Listen to the text (Script 2, listening for general idea) which examines current trends in .

to poach – переманивать, присваивать чужое to lament – сокрушаться, горько жаловаться

Exercise 12. What do the following figures refer to in the text:

4.3m 2000 40% 819,644 2012/13 decade 76%

283,000 a quarter a fifth 23% 17% $24 billion two-thirds

9% 12.2% 10.5% 9.3% 6.1% 5.3% ten

Exercise 13. What information does the text provide on:

1 . the current shifts in the American society and worldwide

2. the difference between the current shifts and earlier transformations

3. the dynamics of the economy and the labour market

4. the set of skills required by modern economy from employees and leaders

5. the education patterns of the genders

6. the changing family and social roles

Exercise 14. Write a summary of the text (about 150 words).