By Asking students to use their own tech in lectures could save money, but will it damage attention spans? A few years ago, if a student got their phone out in a lecture, this was quite a clear sign that they were no longer paying attention. But today, using a phone or tablet in the lecture hall is actually encouraged by universities, many of which are asking students to use their own technology to access learning resources. Read more...13 avril 2014
Students: bring your own technology to uni
By Asking students to use their own tech in lectures could save money, but will it damage attention spans? A few years ago, if a student got their phone out in a lecture, this was quite a clear sign that they were no longer paying attention. But today, using a phone or tablet in the lecture hall is actually encouraged by universities, many of which are asking students to use their own technology to access learning resources. Read more...Part-time student numbers plummet – thanks to government indifference
By Part-time study is the key to skilling the workforce and educating the disadvantaged. But it is not a priority for this government. The news this week that the number of people coming to university to study part-time has almost halved since 2010 may be shocking, but it is not surprising. Read more...Fewer international science students come to 'unwelcoming' UK
By Enrolments on Stem courses have dropped 10%, says House of Lords report. An "unwelcoming UK" has seen a drop in the number of international students studying science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem subjects), according to a House of Lords report. The report says the policy on immigration has had a negative impact on international student enrolments on UK Stem courses, which have fallen by more than 10% in the past two years. Read more...NO CLASSROOMS, JUST EXPERIENCES: “free thinking” the future of higher ed
By Brian Mathews. I’m serving on a “Student Experience Task Force”— which among other things is exploring the relationship between residence halls, classrooms, laboratories, dining facilities, student centers, libraries, gyms, and outdoor spaces across my campus—with an eye toward long-term strategies. This is a yearlong process. Our first assignment was to “free think” one possibility twenty to thirty years from now. More...
I, the Gentry
By David Silbey. A year ago, Rebecca Solnit wrote a “Diary” item for the London Review of Books titled “Google Invades”, complaining of the influx of moneyed Silicon Valley types, from Google, Apple, Facebook, Genentech, etc., into San Francisco. I sent in a short response, and the LRB published it (it’s appended to the piece online). Since then, the argument has grown livelier, and I’ve even heard from a couple of journalists. (See “The dawn of the ‘start-up douchebag’”, in the Independent. I’m not the douchebag — I almost wish I could boast I was.) But I don’t think I’ve managed to get across what needs to change. More...
Brain Rewires Itself, Panic at Eleven
By David Silbey. Neuroscientists are discovering that online reading rewires the brain in favor of high speed sorting and filtering, rather than deep concentrated reading:
To cognitive neuroscientists, [the rewiring] is the subject of great fascination and growing alarm. Humans, they warn, seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online. This alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia.
This “eye byte culture” (awesome phrase, by the way) becomes, of course, a source of panic. English professors are consulted. More...
The problem is not the students
By Robert Talbert. Last week I posted what I considered to be an innocuous and mildly interesting post about a proposed formal definition of flipped learning. I figured it would generate a few retweets and start some conversations. Instead, it spawned one of the longest comment threads we’ve had around here in a while – probably the longest if you mod out all the Khan Academy posts. It was a comment thread that made me so angry in places that it has taken me a week to calm down to the point where I feel I can respond. More...
‘What Is College For,’ Third Discussion: Does Consumerism Conflict With Civic Virtue?
By Vincent DeFrancesco. In Chapter 3 of What Is College For? Elaine Tuttle Hansen proposes that the public purpose of higher education is to “emancipate students from the shackles of consumerist society,” to produce “liberated consumers.”
It’s a bold statement. And the phrase is contradictory at first blush. More...
‘What Is College For,’ Second Discussion: Anti-Intellectualism and Academe
By Vincent DeFrancesco. While teaching a class one day, Douglas Taylor writes in Chapter 2 of What Is College For?, he discussed the evolutionary history of the many species of snapping shrimp that inhabit the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. He called the subject “one of the most elegant examples of evolution in action.”
Mr. Taylor wondered aloud how anyone could deny the existence of the evolutionary process given such evidence. More...
Embracing the Unexplained, Part 2
By Jeffrey J. Kripal. It was an odd but invigorating media cycle for me last week. The week began with The Chronicle’s publication of my essay on why the “impossible” experiences of precognition, clairvoyance, and mystical experience may well be keys to unlocking the nature of consciousness and the mind-brain relationship and why the sciences and the humanities need one another to address those questions. The piece quickly became the object of a materialist screed in The New Republic by Jerry A. Coyne entitled “Science Is Being Bashed by Academics Who Should Know Better.” More...
