By Herman Berliner. As an economist, I always await all the major economic data that is released on a regular weekly or monthly or yearly basis. I always look for the more positive signs of economic growth and prosperity, and I worry when the signs reflect weaknesses or areas of concern. But what if I didn't have access to all this data? Could I still tell what was and was not happening? Would I be reduced to visiting a fortune teller on a regular basis? Or isn't this in the cards for me?
For broad trends (as opposed to very nuanced happenings), I would rely on observation and intuition and I would expect to be more right than wrong. Read more...
16 janvier 2014
Intuition
Librarians as Gatekeepers
By Barbara Fister. Earlier today a friend commented on Twitter that he hates it when librarians are called gatekeepers. But it occurred to me that's exactly what we are. Our job is to keep gates open. The rise of public libraries across the United States was at least in part about giving everyone a chance to read great literature and educate themselves as they wished. (It was also, in part, an attempt to bring immigrants into line with American cultural norms and give them opportunities to "improve themselves" that didn't involve strikes or political organizing. Nothing is ever simple.) Today we prop open gates by negotiating licenses to allow interlibrary lending and supporting open access publishing initiatives and helping students learn the confidence and skill to participate in the making of knowledge. Read more...
How to Read a Book in Two Hours or Less
By Shira Lurie. Most graduate students’ time, especially those in the liberal arts, is spent reading books, talking about books, or panicking about the books they have not yet read. In my first year of graduate study, I often found myself doing all three simultaneously (with heavy emphasis on the last). I came to revere the ability to read quickly as a rare superpower, akin to being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, except doubly as useful. I tried everything to expedite my reading, including speedreading software, timers, and noise-cancelling headphones (you know, like my own fortress of solitude). These methods served only to increase my stress and frustration; they did nothing, however, to improve my reading speed. I then realized that I didn’t need to develop superhuman abilities in order to crush multiple books in a day. All I had to do was pair my normal speed with a good reading strategy to become an efficient, as opposed to fast, reader. Read more...
You Are Unhome: Teaching French Literacy Narratives
By John Warner. Jennifer Solheim is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
While maintaining the UIC French department’s Twitter account some days after fall semester finals, I came across this Tweet from a French major who was in two of my classes this past term. Read more...
I Want My Students Discomforted
By John Warner. I have a confession. I tried McGraw-Hill’s LearnSmart Advantage software. It’s kind of fun. I’m a little scared to admit this because I’ve been hard on adaptive learning software previously, going so far as to urge others to “resist” its adoption. The LearnSmart trial module is on U.S. States and Capitals, and while the content is relatively basic, I believe the interface is consistent with how the software works for other subjects. Read more...
Entrepreneurs and Astronauts
By John Warner. Writing in the Inside Higher Ed blog StratEDgy, Dayna Catropa reports that students want courses and degrees in entrepreneurship, but colleges and universities aren’t keeping pace. Apparently, the Millennials want to be entrepreneurs, and they believe their educations should help foster this desire. Read more...
Learning from Hamburger U.
By G. Rendell. Over the past couple of weeks, there's been a bit of buzz in the sustainability community about McDonalds' commitment to sustainable beef. The attention was triggered, in part, by a series of three articles at GreenBiz,com, the first of which is here. In a nutshell, McDonalds has committed to begin purchasing sustainable beef in 2016, and eventually to buy nothing but. To put that promise in context, let's note that "sustainable beef" is nowhere defined, and the date by which they'll reach their final goal is anything but certain. Read more...
Why Use a Typewriter When You Can Use a Computer?
By Carol Levander. Why is a small, highly ranked residential university like Rice — a school that prides itself on a small student/faculty ratio and that has, according to the Princeton Review, the happiest students — elbow deep in developing MOOCS? This is the question that I inevitably get asked the minute I mention Rice’s partnerships with Coursera and Edx. And it’s a logical question, for at first glance the MOOC world, with its global delivery, open enrollment, and high attrition rates seems to be at dramatic odds with the highly selective residential four-year learning ecosystem that schools like Rice deliver to the small number of students who are accepted each year. Read more...
Back to the Future
By Nathaniel Levy. At least with movies, the sequels rarely live up to the original.
A little over two years into the great “disruption” what, if anything, can we say about MOOCs now that the version 2.0s are here?
To find out, let’s go back to the future.
2012-2013 was called the “Year of the MOOC” by the New York Times. MOOC-related hype was everywhere. Expectations were high and outcomes were hard to predict. The courses were “experiments”—and producing them was exhausting. Read more...
Creating Competent Students
By Michelle Navarre Cleary. In an era of soaring concern over student loan debt, the idea of awarding students credit for what they already know or can learn on their own is taking center stage, dubbed a top education trend of 2014. By putting the focus on outputs—on what students know and can do—so-called “competence-based” programs increase transparency and do away with rigid credit and classroom time requirements, saving students both time and money—often tens of thousands of dollars on the way to a college degree. Read more...
