By Barbara Fister. The recent reversal of a lengthy and long-awaited court decision about how fair use might apply in electronic reserve readings was disappointing in some ways and reassuring in others. We still will need to make complex decisions about whether making a digital portion of a book available to students enrolled in a course requires permission from and payment to a rights holder or whether it is a fair use. Every single time. Read more...
By Steven Mintz. The headlines are legion, the sentiment, widespread: “Why Social Media is Destroying Our Social Skills” (USA Today). “Evidence Grows That Online Social Networks Have Insidious Negative Effects” (MIT Technology Review).
The rise of social media, many fear, is ruining authentic interpersonal relationships. No amount of social media, we are repeatedly told, can ever equal face-to-face interaction. More...
By Allison Dulin Salisbury. An international group of higher education institutions—including UT Arlington, Stanford University, Hong Kong University and Davidson College—convened by learning researcher and theorist George Siemens gathered last week to explore the impacts of MOOCs on higher education (full list of participating institutions below).
The takeaway? Higher education is going digital, responding to the architecture of knowledge in a digital age, and MOOCs, while heavily criticized, have proven a much-needed catalyst for the development of progressive programs that respond to the changing world. More...
By G. Rendell. Social sustainability is hard to define and harder to measure, but achieving it determines success. Ecological sustainability – we’ve only got one planet, and all that – is at the heart of the challenge we all face. The concept of social sustainability addresses what it is we must achieve in the face of that challenge.
The wisdom of the crowd, distilled and recorded by Wikipedia, notes that the social aspect of sustainability is less discussed, less defined and less understood than environmental (ecological) and economic aspects. Read more...
By Wendy Robinson. My two-year-old daughter has been sick lately. Nothing serious, thankfully, but the kind of cold where she is sneezy, clingy, and generally miserable. Last night, as I was working on revisions to my dissertation proposal, she woke up coughing and started crying pitifully from her crib. More...
By Travis E. Ross. Until our son was born in November 2012—over Thanksgiving break, mercifully—going to graduate school was the most grown-up thing I had ever done. Up to that point, I thought of myself primarily as a student, albeit a graduate student, a modifier I emphasized by wearing collared shirts instead of hoodies on teaching days. Becoming a parent meant conceiving of myself in fundamentally different ways. First, I learned that the impostor syndrome that I shared with all graduate students had nothing on the impostor reality I experienced when we brought a newborn home from the hospital. More...
By Matt Reed. When Michael Dukakis ran for President, his slogan of “competence, not ideology” didn’t exactly stir the blood. But I saw competency stir the blood of some smart people on Monday, and it gave me hope. NEBHE - the New England Board of Higher Education - hosted a conference in Boston on Competency-Based Education, and it was one of the best I’ve attended in years. Read more...
By Matt Reed. A couple days ago, Sara Goldrick-Rab posted a tweet that I haven’t been able to shake. (In the world of Twitter, a tweet that lasts a couple of days is a classic.) She asked if anyone has done work looking at the consequences of change efforts always focusing on “low-hanging fruit.”
It’s easy to see where that critique could go. Read more...
By Matt Reed. IHE reported that Senator Patty Murray, of Washington, has proposed a limited reintroduction of the Ability to Benefit rule in the latest draft of the Higher Education Act. This is one of the better ideas I’ve heard from the Senate. And no, I don’t mean that as damning by faint praise Read more...
By Herman Berliner. I recently attended the latest Broadway revival of On The Town. The music for the show was written by Leonard Bernstein, the book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green all were based on an idea and a ballet by Jerome Robbins. The music is great - songs that are now classics such as “New York, New York,” “Carried Away,” “I Can Cook Too” and “Lucky To Be Me” make for an enjoyable listening experience. Read more...
/https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
