Dry Spell
Why It Makes Sense for Students to Grade One Another’s Papers
By Barry Peddycord III. By the time this post appears, the first peer-graded assignment in Cathy Davidson’s Coursera MOOC, “History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education,” will have come and gone, and students will be well into the second. Unlike programming projects, algebra exercises, and multiple-choice questions that can all be reliably graded by a computer, Coursera offloads the task of evaluating essays to students. After the deadline for an assignment has passed, students have a week to evaluate five of their classmates’ essays using a rubric developed by the teaching staff. A student who fails to evaluate his or her classmates does not get a grade for the assignment, and in our course will not be able to achieve the statement of accomplishment “with distinction.” Whether students see that as a chore, duty, or opportunity, the necessary assessment is eventually done—for better or for worse. More...
Study Examines Characteristics of Student-Loan Borrowers Who Default
By . A study released on Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research examines the loan-repayment and default outcomes, 10 years after graduation, of students who earned baccalaureate degrees in 1993. The study looks at differences across individual and family-background characteristics, as well as by factors such as college major, type of institution, debt levels, and post-graduation earnings. More...
New Approaches Are Urged for Adult Education and Skills Training
By . Colleges should take new approaches to adult education in order to ensure that workers’ skills can keep pace with employers’ needs in a changing economy, according to a report released on Wednesday by the American Council on Education. The report examines the findings of a study, released last fall, that found American adults were lagging behind many of their global peers in areas such as reading, mathematics, and problem-solving skills. More...
Education Dept.’s Biennial Report Examines State of Academic Libraries
By . Academic libraries lent about 10.5 million documents to other libraries in the 2012 fiscal year and borrowed some 9.8 million from their peers and commercial services during the same period, according to report released on Friday by the National Center for Education Statistics, the Education Department’s statistical arm. Those totals are lower than what the NCES reported in its previous survey of academic libraries, which reported the lending of 11.2 million documents and the borrowing of 10.2 million during the 2010 fiscal year. More...
White House Releases Framework Meant to Reduce Cyberattacks
By Megan O'Neil. The White House released on Wednesday a framework of best practices in cybersecurity designed to help businesses and organizations protect critical infrastructure and intellectual property. While the education-technology consortium Educause maintains a cybersecurity guide that dates back a decade, the new framework could still prove useful in higher education, where chief information and chief security officers cite cybersecurity attacks as a growing problem. During the last year, many colleges, including Stanford University, have acknowledged network breaches. More...
QuickWire: Pearson Offers a Badge Platform
By Lawrence Biemiller. Pearson, the publishing heavyweight that now calls itself “the world’s leading learning company,” announced on Thursday that it would follow Mozilla’s creation last year of an open standard for badges that recognize educational or professional achievement by offering a proprietary badge platform based on Mozilla’s standards. For the new platform, which Pearson is calling Acclaim, the company will “work with academic institutions and high-stakes credentialing organizations to offer diplomas, certificates, and other professional credentials as Open Badges.” Read more...
Harvard U. Will Offer Exclusive MOOCs to Alumni
By Steve Kolowich. You don’t need to be a Harvard University student to take a massive open online course from Harvard—throwing open the gates to all comers is the idea, after all. But being a Harvard graduate still has its perks, even within the democratized landscape of MOOCs. The university plans to make some MOOC materials available exclusively to alumni, in an effort to help Harvard graduates reconnect with the university and one another. The program, called HarvardX for Alumni and first reported in The Harvard Crimson, might also include opportunities to interact directly with professors, a rare privilege in an open online course. Read more...
What Experts on College-Ratings System Mean by ‘We Need Better Data’
By Jonah Newman. If any consensus arose last week at the Education Department’s daylong symposium on the technical challenges facing the Obama administration’s college-ratings system, it was on the need for better data about colleges and universities. More...