higher_ed - Will Richardson on Diigo

24 Oct 09

Everyday Life, Online: US College Students' Use of the Internet

The goal of this study was to learn about how college students are using the Internet and to compare their use of it to that of college students as reported in 2002 by replicating and extending previous research. A survey of college students at 40 U.S. higher education institutions was conducted, along with observations and interviews at several Midwestern universities. For comparison to the general population a nationwide telephone survey was undertaken. The study found that Internet use had predictably increased but that college students continued to prefer using multiple methods of communication to stay in touch with friends and family. College students continue to be early adopters of new Internet tools and applications in comparison to the general U.S. Internet–using population. For U.S. college students, Internet technologies have become so ubiquitous as to seem invisible.

firstmonday.org/...2301 - Preview

4thedition pres_ideas higher_ed research

16 Aug 09

How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education

But higher education remains, on the whole, a string quartet. MIT's courseware may be free, yet an MIT degree still costs upward of $189,000. College tuition has gone up more than any other good or service since 1990, and our nation's students and graduates hold a staggering $714 billion in outstanding student-loan debt. Once the world's most educated country, the United States today ranks 10th globally in the percentage of young people with postsecondary degrees. "Colleges have become outrageously expensive, yet there remains a general refusal to acknowledge the implications of new technologies," says Jim Groom, an "instructional technologist" at Virginia's University of Mary Washington and a prominent voice in the blogosphere for blowing up college as we know it. Groom, a chain-smoker with an ever-present five days' growth of beard, coined the term "edupunk" to describe the growing movement toward high-tech do-it-yourself education. "Edupunk," he tells me in the opening notes of his first email, "is about the utter irresponsibility and lethargy of educational institutions and the means by which they are financially cannibalizing their own mission."

www.fastcompany.com/...print - Preview

higher_ed shifts stats

Today, "open content" is the biggest front of innovation in higher education. The movement that started at MIT has spread to more than 200 institutions in 32 countries that have posted courses online at the OpenCourseWare Consortium. But, as Wiley points out, there's still a big gap between viewing such resources as a homework aid and building a recognized, accredited degree out of a bunch of podcasts and YouTube videos. "Why is it that my kid can't take robotics at Carnegie Mellon, linear algebra at MIT, law at Stanford? And why can't we put 130 of those together and make it a degree?" Wiley asks. "There are all these kinds of innovations waiting to happen. A sufficient infrastructure of freely available content is step one in a much longer endgame that transforms everything we know about higher education."
He has also offered five of his courses to anyone on the Web for free; he donates his own time to review nonenrolled students' work, awarding a signed certificate in lieu of course credit. Wiley's most recent open course was formatted as an online role-playing game, with students divided into "guilds" completing "quests" -- a learning community inspired by the world of online gamers. "If you didn't need human interaction and someone to answer your questions, then the library would never have evolved into the university," Wiley says. "We all realize that content is just the first step."
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- Ultimately what interests Paharia is proving the model, demonstrating that there's a way to provide education cheaply or even for free to all who are qualified. "I ride the Boston T around and I see these ads for schools, and it bothers me that so much hope is rested on having an education, and yet at the end of the day you end up with $100,000 in debt. What are you paying for? And is this the best way of setting up the system?"
- When you look at the cultural industries that have fallen under the spell of the Internet, the transformation has happened unevenly: newspapers before television, music before books. Hulu.com, launched just 18 months ago, is widely considered to be the first Web site to prove that mass broadcast-television viewing as we know it can and will shift online. Hulu did that by being attractive, well-designed, and easy to use, and by having a viable business model with actual paying advertisers -- and soon, subscribers.
- "We said, 'Let's create a university that actually measures learning,' " Mendenhall says. "We do not have credit hours, we do not have grades. We simply have a series of assessments that measure competencies, and on that basis, award the degree."
- "Technology has changed the productivity equation of every industry except education," he says. "We're simply trying to demonstrate that it can do it in education -- if you change the way you do education as opposed to just adding technology on top."
- The transformation of education may happen faster than we realize. However futuristic it may seem, what we're living through is an echo of the university's earliest history. Universitas doesn't mean campus, or class, or a particular body of knowledge; it means the guild, the group of people united in scholarship. The university as we know it was born around AD 1100, when communities formed in Bologna, Italy; Oxford, England; and Paris around a scarce, precious information technology: the handwritten book. Illuminated manuscripts of the period show a professor at a podium lecturing from a revered volume while rows of students sit with paper and quill -- the same basic format that most classes take 1,000 years later.
  
  Today, we've gone from scarcity of knowledge to unimaginable abundance. It's only natural that these new, rapidly evolving information technologies would convene new communities of scholars, both inside and outside existing institutions. The string-quartet model of education is no longer sustainable. The university of the future can't be far away.

22 Jun 09

10 Ways Journalism Schools Are Teaching Social Media

"With news organizations beginning to create special positions to manage the use of social media tools, such as the recently appointed social editor at The New York Times, journalism schools are starting to recognize the need to integrate social media into their curricula. That doesn’t mean having a class on Facebook (Facebook) or Twitter (Twitter), which many college students already know inside and out, but instead means that professors are delving into how these tools can be applied to enrich the craft of reporting and producing the news and ultimately telling the story in the best possible way.

And though many professors are still experimenting and learning how these tools can be used, below are the 10 ways journalism schools are currently teaching students to use social media. Please share in the comments others that you have found to be important and effective as well."

mashable.com/...teaching-social-media - Preview

journalism social classroom higher_ed shifts

18 Jun 09

Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers - Chronicle.com

The rise of online media has helped raise a new generation of college students who write far more, and in more-diverse forms, than their predecessors did. But the implications of the shift are hotly debated, both for the future of students' writing and for the college curriculum.

Some scholars say that this new writing is more engaged and more connected to an audience, and that colleges should encourage students to bring lessons from that writing into the classroom. Others argue that tweets and blog posts enforce bad writing habits and have little relevance to the kind of sustained, focused argument that academic work demands.

chronicle.com/...39writing.htm - Preview

connective_writing writing shifts higher_ed

The rise of online media has helped raise a new generation of college students who write far more, and in more-diverse forms, than their predecessors did. But the implications of the shift are hotly debated, both for the future of students' writing and for the college curriculum.

Some scholars say that this new writing is more engaged and more connected to an audience, and that colleges should encourage students to bring lessons from that writing into the classroom. Others argue that tweets and blog posts enforce bad writing habits and have little relevance to the kind of sustained, focused argument that academic work demands.
The rise of online media has helped raise a new generation of college students who write far more, and in more-diverse forms, than their predecessors did. But the implications of the shift are hotly debated, both for the future of students' writing and for the college curriculum.

Some scholars say that this new writing is more engaged and more connected to an audience, and that colleges should encourage students to bring lessons from that writing into the classroom. Others argue that tweets and blog posts enforce bad writing habits and have little relevance to the kind of sustained, focused argument that academic work demands.
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- "What was interesting to us was how small a percentage of the total writing the school writing was," says Jeffrey T. Grabill, the study's lead author, who is director of the Writing in Digital Environments Research Center at Michigan State. In the diaries and in follow-up interviews, he says, students often described their social, out-of-class writing as more persistent and meaningful to them than their in-class work was.
  - This isn't surprising, is it? - on 2009-06-18
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- "Digital technologies, computer networks, the Web — all of those things have led to an explosion in writing," Mr. Grabill says. "People write more now than ever. In order to interact on the Web, you have to write."
- Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, cites the reading and writing scores in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which have remained fairly flat for decades. It is a paradox, he says: "Why is it that with young people reading and writing more words than ever before in human history, we find no gains in reading and writing scores?"
  - I just find this so disingenuous. First of all, what are we assessing in order to find out if there has been improvement? Second of all, I just hate how he blames the kids. - on 2009-06-18
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- Students in the study "almost always" had more enthusiasm for the writing they were doing outside of class than for their academic work, says Andrea A. Lunsford, the study's director. Mr. Otuteye submitted about 700 pieces of writing and became the study's most prolific contributor.
- In looking at students' out-of-class writing, the Stanford researchers say they found several traits that were distinct from in-class work. Not surprisingly, the writing was self-directed; it was often used to connect with peers, as in social networks; and it usually had a broader audience.
- "When you talked to them about their out-of-class writing, they would talk about writing to coordinate out-of-class activity," says Mr. Rogers, an assistant professor of English at George Mason University. "A lot of them were a lot more conscious of the effect their writing was having on other people."
- students who compose messages for an audience of their peers on a social-networking Web site were forced to be acutely aware of issues like audience, tone, and voice.
- "Everybody was writing in class, but the people who were writing out of and inside of class, that was sort of critical to accelerating their growth as writers."
- The implications of the change in students' writing habits for writing and literature curricula are up for debate. Much of the argument turns on whether online writing should be seen as a welcome new direction or a harmful distraction.
- to help students become better academic writers, and to help them become better writers in the outside world. The second, broader goal is often lost, he says, either because it is seen as not the college's responsibility, or because it seems unnecessary.
  - I agree. - on 2009-06-18
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- Much out-of-class writing, he says, is for a broad audience instead of a single professor, tries to solve real-world problems rather than accomplish academic goals, and resembles a conversation more than an argument.
- Rather than being seen as an impoverished, secondary form, online writing should be seen as "the new normal," he says, and treated in the curriculum as such: "The writing that students do in their lives is a tremendous resource."
  - I love that: The new normal. - on 2009-06-18
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- In one exercise she uses, students are asked to trace the spread of a claim from an academic journal to less prestigious forms of media, like magazines and newspapers, in order to see how arguments are diluted. In another, students are asked to pursue the answer to a research question using only blogs, and to create a map showing how they know if certain information is trustworthy or not.
  - Great information literacy exercise. - on 2009-06-18
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- "If we don't invite students to figure out the lessons they've learned from that writing outside of school and bring those inside of school, what will happen is only the very bright students" will do it themselves, Ms. Yancey says. "It's the rest of the population that we're worried about."
- Students must be taught to home in on the words they write and to resist the tendency to move quickly from sentence to sentence, he says. Writing scholars, too, should temper their enthusiasm for new technologies before they have fully understood the implications, he says. Claims that new forms of writing should take a greater prominence in the curriculum, he says, are premature.
  - Not sure why we can't do both. - on 2009-06-18
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- Some of the resistance to a more writing-centered curriculum, she says, is based on the view that writing without reading can be dangerous because students will be untethered to previous thought, and reading levels will decline.
  - Interesting observation - on 2009-06-18
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- But that view, she says, is "being challenged by the literacy of young people, which is being developed primarily by their writing. They're going to be reading, but they're going to be reading to write, and not to be shaped by what they read."
  - Yes, Yes, Yes. - on 2009-06-18
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11 Jun 09

Death by e-learning | The Australian

However, recently I attended a presentation of the latest generation e-learning system that incorporates text, audio and video, all of which can be used from a computer or mobile phone. Students can choose to interact live with lecturers and other students or, since everything can be recorded, students can use it at a time to suit themselves. There are no delays. On the internet Harvard University in the US is just as close as the University of Sydney.

Distance learning programs have become weapons in an international educational arms race. Already the top 10 universities in the Times Higher Education-QS World University and the Shanghai Jiao Tong rankings for 2008 offer distance learning; students can register online, pay online and study online.

www.theaustralian.news.com.au/...0,25197,25612030-25192,00.html - Preview

higher_ed e-learning shifts future

07 Jun 09

English 202 Re-Design Penn State

Using the Blogs at Penn State platform and Digital Commons studios, students are creating online portfolios, using multimedia to enhance assignments, and reflecting on digital literacy through individual and course blogs. What was a paper resume is now an interactive professional Web space.

blogs.tlt.psu.edu/...english202 - Preview

connective_writing higher_ed shifts

Using the Blogs at Penn State platform and Digital Commons studios, students are creating online portfolios, using multimedia to enhance assignments, and reflecting on digital literacy through individual and course blogs. What was a paper resume is now an interactive professional Web space.

04 Jun 09

The Impending Demise of the University

Universities are finally losing their monopoly on higher learning, as the web inexorably becomes the dominant infrastructure for knowledge sweeney both as a container and as a global platform for knowledge exchange between people.

Meanwhile on campus, there is fundamental challenge to the foundational modus operandi of the University — the model of pedagogy. Specifically, there is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital best learn.

www.edge.org/...edge288.html - Preview

higher_ed shifts learning pedagogy

Universities
are finally losing their monopoly on higher learning, as the web inexorably
becomes the dominant infrastructure for knowledge sweeney both as a container
and as a global platform for knowledge exchange between people.

Meanwhile
on campus, there is fundamental challenge to the foundational modus operandi of the University — the model of pedagogy. Specifically, there
is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big
universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up
digital best learn.
- I really hate blanket statements like this though I think it is true for some schools. - on 2009-06-04
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The old-style
lecture, with the professor standing at the podium in front of a large
group of students, is still a fixture of university life on many campuses.
It's a model that is teacher-focused, one-way, one-size-fits-all and
the student is isolated in the learning process. Yet the students,
who have grown up in an interactive digital world, learn differently.
Schooled on Google and Wikipedia, they want to inquire, not rely on
the professor for a detailed roadmap. They want an animated conversation,
not a lecture. They want an interactive education, not a broadcast
one that might have been perfectly fine for the Industrial Age, or
even for boomers. These students are making new demands of universities,
and if the universities try to ignore them, they will do so at their
peril.
- Nothing really new here, is there? - on 2009-06-04
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- a deep debate on how universities function
  in a networked society.
  - We all need to be more open to this debate or conversation, even in K-12. - on 2009-06-04
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- "Broadcast learning"
  as I've called it is no longer appropriate for the digital age and for
  a new generation of students who represent the future of learning.
  - Again, nothing new here. - on 2009-06-04
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- If someone frozen 300 years ago miraculously came
  alive today and looked at the professions — a physician in an operating
  theater, a pilot in a jumbo cockpit, a engineer designing an automobile
  in a CAD system — they would surely marvel at how technologies had
  transformed the knowledge work. But if they walked into a university
  lecture hall, they would no doubt be comforted that some things have
  not changed.
  - Ugh. You're kidding me right? We can't come up with something original? - on 2009-06-04
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- My research
  suggests these critics are wrong. Growing up digital has changed the
  way their minds work in a manner that will help them handle the challenges
  of the digital age. They're used to multi-tasking, and have learned
  to handle the information overload. They expect a two-way conversation.
  What's more, growing up digital has encouraged this generation to be
  active and demanding enquirers. Rather than waiting for a trusted professor
  to tell them what's going on, they find out on their own on everything
  from Google to Wikipedia.
  - This is where he really riles me. Most of this is fiction. And I wish he would use the correct adverb. Sheesh. - on 2009-06-04
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- The professors
  who remain relevant will have to abandon the traditional lecture, and
  start listening and conversing with the students — shifting from a
  broadcast style and adopting an interactive one. Second, they should
  encourage students to discover for themselves, and learn a process
  of discovery and critical thinking instead of just memorizing the professor's
  store of information. Third, they need to encourage students to collaborate
  among themselves and with others outside the university. Finally, they
  need to tailor the style of education to their students' individual
  learning styles.
  - Again, anything new here? - on 2009-06-04
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- Smart but impatient, they like to collaborate and they reject
  one-way lectures, he notes.
  - Didn't he just say that one way lectures online was a threat? - on 2009-06-04
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- One strategy being used in this program is called just-in-time teaching;
  it is a teaching and learning strategy that combines the benefits of
  Web-based assignments and an active-learner classroom where courses are
  customized to the particular needs of the class. Warm-up questions, written
  by the students, are typically due a few hours before class, giving the
  teacher an opportunity to adjust the lesson "just in time," so
  that classroom time can be focused on the parts of the assignments that
  students struggled with. Harvard professor Eric Mazur, who uses this
  approach in his physics class, puts it this way:
  "Education is so much more than the mere transfer of information.
  The information has to be assimilated. Students have to connect the information
  to what they already know, develop mental models, learn how to apply
  the new knowledge, and how to adapt this knowledge to new and unfamiliar
  situations.
  - Better, but still not original thinking here. - on 2009-06-04
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- Universities should be places to learn, not to teach.
  - Der - on 2009-06-04
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- Yet the individual learning model is foreign territory for most Net Geners,
  who have grown up collaborating, sharing, and creating together online.
  - This is what he wants us to believe, but for the vast majority of kids, they haven't been doing much of this at all. - on 2009-06-04
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- Created by Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology
  at Kansas State University, it is a stinging indictment of the education
  delivered by standard large-scale American university.
  - Oddly, this was the one video of Wesch's that I really didn't like. - on 2009-06-04
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- Anyone in the world can watch the entire series of lectures for some
  30 courses, such as Walter Lewin's ever-popular introductory physics
  course, which gets viewed by over 40,000 people a month on OpenCourseWear,
  MIT's version of intellectual philanthropy. Universities worldwide have
  joined the movement.
  - But why would they if they couldn't connect and collaborate and co-create etc? Or are we just expecting them to figure that out? - on 2009-06-04
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- But a credential and even the prestige of a university is rooted in
  its effectiveness as a learning institution. If these institutions
  are shown to be inferior learning environments to other alternatives
  their capacity to credential will surely diminish.
  - I do wonder about this. How will credentialing change in a transparent world? - on 2009-06-04
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- The university campus has been "a wonderful place for young people
  to go for four years to get older", as Princeton sociologist Marvin
  Dressler told me a decade ago. "While they're there they're bound
  to learn something" he said.
  - Nice quote - on 2009-06-04
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- The video lectures allow students to absorb the course content
  online — whenever it's convenient — and then get together to tinker,
  invent new things, or discuss the material.
  - Would love to know how much this happens absent the physical space. - on 2009-06-04
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- Why should a university student be restricted
  to learning from the professors at the university he or she is attending.
  - Great question, and this holds true for high schools to some extent as well. - on 2009-06-04
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- "We're more like health care. We're challenged by obstructive, non-market-based
  business models. We're also burdened by a sense that doctor knows best,
  or professor knows best."
  - That's a stretch though, too. - on 2009-06-04
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- The digital world, which has trained young minds to inquire and collaborate,
  - I really wish he would stop saying this. - on 2009-06-04
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- And sparks are flying today. There is a huge generational clash
  emerging in these institutions. It turns out that the critique of the
  university from years ago were ideas in waiting — waiting for the new
  web and a new generation of digital natives who could effectively challenge
  the old model.
  - This I agree with. - on 2009-06-04
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26 May 09

University of the People > Home

University of the People (UoPeople) is the world’s first tuition-free, online academic institution dedicated to the global advancement and democratization of higher education. The high-quality, low-cost and global pedagogical model embraces the worldwide presence of the Internet and dropping technology costs to bring collegiate level studies to even the poorest and most remote places on earth. With the support of respected academics, humanitarians and other visionaries, the UoPeople student body represents a new wave in global education.

www.uopeople.org/Default.aspx - Preview

higher_ed pres_ideas online_learning

25 May 09

DIY Education - Associated Content

Kalin's approach radically challenges how we teach students and the value of college. A diploma is irrelevant to Kalin. The end result College has devolved. College is no longer about gaining knowledge. It is about that piece of paper that "proves" to an employer that you know something. The internet is turning that idea on its head. As the article states employers no longer need diplomas as the sole evaluation of a students work. Now an employer can potentially view the entire body of work online. The employer can evaluate the work themselves.

www.associatedcontent.com/...diy_education.html - Preview

higher_ed shifts parent_book credentials kids future

Today, no one is going to ask Rob for his college transcript. His credentials are the companies he has created. Not every student can be so cavalier about the lack of a diploma, but the web is having an interesting impact on the value of credentials. In an earlier era, it was very difficult to evaluate a student's work directly, so a grade from an accredited institution served as a proxy. Now, if an employer wants to hire a video editor, Geppeto's work is on the web readily accessible. Students in the future will be as likely to be evaluated on their portfolio of work, as they are on their grades.
Kalin's approach radically challenges how we teach students and the value of college. A diploma is irrelevant to Kalin. The end result College has devolved. College is no longer about gaining knowledge. It is about that piece of paper that "proves" to an employer that you know something. The internet is turning that idea on its head. As the article states employers no longer need diplomas as the sole evaluation of a students work. Now an employer can potentially view the entire body of work online. The employer can evaluate the work themselves.
1 more annotations...
- Kalin's approach radically challenges how we teach students and the value of college. A diploma is irrelevant to Kalin. The end result College has devolved. College is no longer about gaining knowledge. It is about that piece of paper that "proves" to an employer that you know something. The internet is turning that idea on its head. As the article states employers no longer need diplomas as the sole evaluation of a students work. Now an employer can potentially view the entire body of work online. The employer can evaluate the work themselves.

18 May 09

Psst! Need the Answer to No. 7? Click Here. - NYTimes.com

In the old days, college students might turn to classmates for help during all-night cram sessions before final exams. Now their study buddies are just as likely to be commercial Web sites with step-by-step solutions to textbook problems, copies of previous exams, reams of lecture notes, summaries of literary classics, and real-time help with physics, math and computer science problems.

www.nytimes.com/...18cram.html - Preview

cheating shifts higher_ed teaching network_literacy

23 Apr 09

Deseret News | Universities will be 'irrelevant' by 2020, Y. professor says

Wiley is an amiable firebrand who helped launch the nation's "open content" movement a decade ago while he was getting his Ph.D. at BYU. Like the "open source" software movement that preceded it, open content makes it easy for authors, teachers and others to sign licensing agreements to freely share their copyrighted materials.

At its core, the open education movement and the larger open content, copyleft movement has "a fundamental belief that knowledge is a public good and should be fully shared," explains Catherine Casserly, senior partner with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Wiley, she says, is viewed in the open education realm as an imaginative innovator who is always thinking of new applications for disseminating knowledge to the many instead of keeping it "locked up" for the benefit of the few.

www.deseretnews.com/...-by-2020-Y-professor-says.html - Preview

open_content higher_ed shifts parent_book

08 Apr 09

Wired Campus: Professor Encourages Students to Pass Notes During Class -- via Twitter - Chronicle.com

Cole W. Camplese, director of education-technology services at Pennsylvania State University at University Park, prefers to teach in classrooms with two screens — one to project his slides, and another to project a Twitter stream of notes from students. He knows he is inviting distraction — after all, he’s essentially asking students to pass notes during class. But he argues that the additional layer of communication will make for richer class discussions.

Mr. Complese first tried out his idea in a course he co-taught last spring to about 20 graduate students at Penn State. He couldn’t get two screens, so he had students bring in their laptops and follow the Twitter-powered peanut gallery on their machines during discussions.

chronicle.com/...notes-during-class-via-twitter - Preview

higher_ed twitter network_literacy parent_book

Cole W. Camplese, director of education-technology services at Pennsylvania State University at University Park, prefers to teach in classrooms with two screens — one to project his slides, and another to project a Twitter stream of notes from students. He knows he is inviting distraction — after all, he’s essentially asking students to pass notes during class. But he argues that the additional layer of communication will make for richer class discussions.

Mr. Complese first tried out his idea in a course he co-taught last spring to about 20 graduate students at Penn State. He couldn’t get two screens, so he had students bring in their laptops and follow the Twitter-powered peanut gallery on their machines during discussions.

24 Feb 09

Wired Campus: Lev Gonick: How Technology Will Reshape Academe After the Economic Crisis - Chronicle.com

Future generations of learners will no doubt look back at the global economic crisis of 2008-9 and reflect on which institutions were agile enough to make a difference by bringing the wisdom of their scholars together with the acumen of their technology officers and the ingenuity and determination of their university leaders. It’s actually not only the future of the university that is in play. How we produce, organize, and distribute open education resources is at the heart of the future of education around the world.

chronicle.com/...deme-after-the-economic-crisis - Preview

shifts higher_ed parent_book

20 Feb 09

'iTunes university' better than the real thing - science-in-society - 18 February 2009 - New Scientist

To find out how much students really can learn from podcast lectures alone - mimicking a missed class - McKinney's team presented 64 students with a single lecture on visual perception, from an introductory psychology course.

Half of the students attended the class in person and received a printout of the slides from the lecture. The other 32 downloaded a podcast that included audio from the same lecture synchronised with video of the slides. These students also received a printed handout of the material.

Students who downloaded the podcast averaged a C (71 out of 100) on the test - substantially better than those who attended the lecture, who on average mustered only a D (62).

www.newscientist.com/...etter-than-the-real-thing.html - Preview

itunes higher_ed parent_book learning

19 Feb 09

Houston college class gets $100,000 to teach by iPhone | Houston & Texas News | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Studying on your laptop is so 2007. A group of biology students at Houston Community College’s southeast campus just turns on iPhones.

"Instead of bringing your book to class, you bring your phone," said Lisa Jackson, one of 15 students enrolled in Anatomy and Physiology II as part of a pilot project to deliver course work on Apple’s trendy smart phones.

Lifang Tien, a biology professor, and Roger Boston, who teaches computer science and business technology, received $100,196 from a fund created by HCC Chancellor Mary Spangler to encourage innovation, then used the money to buy phones and pay the monthly bills. Students have to give the phones back at the end of the semester.

www.chron.com/...6265145.html - Preview

phones higher_ed shifts

Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes - NYTimes.com

A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.

“I noticed an increased sense of entitlement in my students and wanted to discover what was causing it,” said Ellen Greenberger, the lead author of the study, called “Self-Entitled College Students: Contributions of Personality, Parenting, and Motivational Factors,” which appeared last year in The Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

www.nytimes.com/...18college.html - Preview

parent_book higher_ed grades

18 Feb 09

Generational Shockwaves Changing Higher Education

"We must shift from linear presentation to hypermedia and from emphasizing instructing to emphasizing discovery," says one contributor to the book. "Education must shift from teachers who present one size fits all to customized learning; from being the main source of answers to being a guide."

With the advent of web-based learning, students today have many more higher education options; they can take courses at colleges and universities around the world and they can choose the medium that best suits their education needs, posing yet another challenge to higher education.

Higher education must embrace the complexities presented by the differences among generations and find ways to effectively respond to and communicate with each group.

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28 Jan 09

Imagining College Without Grades :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs

Many said they assumed that it was politically impossible to eliminate grades. But they heard from educators at colleges that have done so and survived to tell the tale. And notably, they heard from colleges offering evidence that the elimination of grades — if they are replaced with narrative evaluations, rubrics, and clear learning goals — results in more accountability and better ways for a colleges to measure the success not only of students but of its academic programs.

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grades shifts higher_ed

19 Jan 09

Wake Up and Smell the New Epistemology - ChronicleReview.com

But this new epistemology carries some heavy baggage — indeed, it is inseparably conjoined with personal economics. Short of fame or a lottery win, today's students recognize that a college degree is the minimum credential they will need to attain their desired standard of living (and hence "happiness"). So this new epistemology produces a rather odd kind of student — one who appears polite and dutiful but who cares little about the course work, the larger questions it raises, or the value of living an examined life. And it produces such students in overwhelming abundance.

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higher_ed shifts education

By respecting students as thinkers and meeting them where they are, we set the stage for good pedagogy and take a critical first step toward rebuilding the public's trust. But we must be realistic about what good pedagogy can accomplish. It is not a panacea — it will not create a society of lovers of learning in which our social ills will finally be cured. (A well-known pedagogy expert came to my institution and ended his talk with that very claim.) Even the best teachers will not convert every student into a lifelong learner who embraces knowledge for its own sake. That is a commitment that must come from within; it is an intentional decision to swim against powerful cultural and economic currents.

We need to understand that college students with an intrinsic love of learning, an appreciation for complexity, and a drive for discovery almost always possess those traits before they report to our campuses. Though we can fan into flames the sparks that these future intelligentsia bring with them, except for the occasional late bloomer, we fail miserably at creating sustained intellectual fires among the vast majority of our practical, credential-driven students.

A better and more widely achievable educational goal should therefore be to inculcate a respect for learning and the pursuit of knowledge. I doubt anyone can teach another to love learning, and the attempt frustrates students and professors alike. (Imagine a dance instructor trying to turn every student into a season subscriber to the local ballet company.) But I do believe effective teaching can instill respect — specifically, respect for the critical work we do as scholars and educators. Such respect is the seed from which the public's trust in us will grow.
- I think a lot of this can be said for high school as well. Much of a love for learning is intrinsic and is either developed or extinguished in K-12 school. - on 2009-01-20
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The Last Professor - Stanley Fish Blog - NYTimes.com

“Such a vision of restored stability,” says Donoghue, “is a delusion” because the conditions to which many seek a return – healthy humanities departments populated by tenure-track professors who discuss books with adoring students in a cloistered setting – have largely vanished. Except in a few private wealthy universities (functioning almost as museums), the splendid and supported irrelevance of humanist inquiry for its own sake is already a thing of the past. In “ two or three generations,” Donoghue predicts, “humanists . . . will become an insignificant percentage of the country’s university instructional workforce.”

How has this happened? According to Donoghue, it’s been happening for a long time, at least since 1891, when Andrew Carnegie congratulated the graduates of the Pierce College of Business for being “ fully occupied in obtaining a knowledge of shorthand and typewriting” rather than wasting time “upon dead languages.”

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