By Carl Straumsheim. Have the digital humanities gone mainstream? Sessions on the role of technology in humanities scholarship at the Modern Language Association’s annual meeting last week may have made up less than 10 percent of the conference’s overall schedule (and almost everything seemed overwhelmed by the tumult over the Israel censure vote), but speakers and attendees alike said they felt the contents of those sessions had changed from previous years. While earlier conferences often discussed the potential of the digital humanities, this year’s meeting frequently featured traditional research methods alongside data visualization, gaming and text minin. Read more...
16 janvier 2014
Digital Humanities in Demand
No Longer Free
By Ry Rivard. Cooper Union trustees rejected a last-ditch effort to keep the New York City college free. Their vote Friday makes it all but certain, following months of controversy, that the college's legacy of free education will end for incoming students this fall. Opponents predict the $20,000 tuition will badly hurt the college, which was founded by industrialist Paul Cooper to educate the working class and has become a well-regarded training ground for artist, architects and engineers. Read more...
Right for the Consumer
By Carl Straumsheim. The education software giant Blackboard delivered an endorsement of the "consumerization" of higher education on Wednesday, acquiring MyEdu, an Austin, Texas-based company that combines data, e-portfolios and recruitment tools to guide students through college and into the work force. The acquisition is small in scale but significant in scope, as it signals the direction in which president and CEO Jay Bhatt, who joined the Blackboard in 2013, intends to steer the billion-dollar company. Read more...
Brazil’s Home-Grown MOOC
By Holly Else for Times Higher Education. An online education platform in Brazil could become a major player in the competition for massive open online course students by tapping into a key emerging market. Veduca was launched in March 2012 and provides online courses aimed at Portuguese speakers. The platform features video lectures from universities such as Harvard, Stanford and Princeton Universities in the United States and Oxford University in Britain, translated into Portuguese. Read more...
Pledges for Low-Income Students
By Michael Stratford. The Obama administration on Thursday unveiled more than 100 commitments from colleges and universities and millions of dollars in philanthropic donations aimed at helping more low-income students attend and complete college. The lengthy list of new promises doubles as the guest list to Thursday’s higher education summit hosted by the White House. In order to attend the daylong event, which will include remarks by President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as well as discussions with top administration officials, college presidents were required to make new pledges, financial or otherwise, to helping low-income students. Read more...
Students Just Want to Be Happy
By Scott Jaschik. The Obama administration wants to produce new ratings that will allow prospective college students to identify institutions with high graduation rates, solid job placement records and generous student aid. But what if students just want to be happy?.
A study being released today documents the statistically significant impact of several Princeton Review rankings of colleges on quality-of-life issues. Read more...
Five myths about Moocs
By Diana Laurillard. Diana Laurillard explains why a model based on unsupervised learning is not the answer. In last week’s Times Higher Education, University of Greenwich vice-chancellor David Maguire called massive open online courses the most-hyped new idea in higher education in 2013. He predicted that a “trough of disillusionment” would open up in 2014. Well he might. Free online courses that require no prior qualifications or fee are a wonderful idea but are not viable. Mooc students spend the majority of their study time watching videos and reading. Read more...
Overseas student total falls ‘for first time’ as Indian numbers collapse
By John Morgan. The number of non-EU students at UK universities fell by 1 per cent last year, the first such decline ever recorded. The fall in the number of students from outside the EU in 2012-13, revealed in Higher Education Statistics Agency figures published today, will heighten concerns among universities over the impact of the coalition government’s drive to cut immigration. Read more...
Becoming a student entrepreneur
By Graham Cooper. You don’t have to study business to be a successful entrepreneur, according to Graham Cooper, it can all start at university.
You’re a student at university and you think you have a great business idea, but you have no idea where to go next to progress the idea. Where do you start?
For many students, a lack of business knowledge can overwhelm your ideas, proving a barrier that prevents many from moving beyond the ideas phase. More...
Student finance: how to apply for funding
By Nichola Malton. As Ucas deadlines arrive today, if you're planning to start university in September, it’s time to turn your attention to university funding, says Nichola Malton.
Whether you’re planning to start university for the first time this year, are returning to your studies or have a son or daughter at university, it’s time to turn your attention to university funding for the year. Student finance is essential for most people attending university or college, to assist with everyday living costs. More...
