Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Susan O'Doherty. Last week, Bill, Ben and I left our hotel in Shanghai at 5:30 AM China time (13 hours ahead of Eastern US time). Our second plane landed at JFK at around 2PM, half an hour late.. The second flight, from Beijng to New York, was difficult — the seats were cramped, even for a smallish person like me. Bill and Ben, on either side of me, were eating their knees, and of course spilled over into my space. When the passengers in front of us reclined, our tray tables were forced into my chest/their midsections. I am usually a good plane sleeper, but sleep wasn't an option on this trip. Read more...

By Joshua Kim. Does Google’s $3.2 billion dollar acquisition of Nest Labs have any relevance to higher education?
Why should it matter to us if Google buys a maker of fancy thermostats and smoke detectors?
Drawing a connection between Nest and the Google / higher ed potential requires a few leaps. Read more...

By Joshua Kim. Last week my institution announced that it is joining the edX consortium, and will start offering open online courses this fall.
Over the next weeks and months I’m hoping that our IHE community can utilize this platform to engage in a discussion about how to best leverage open online education to improve an intimate, campus-based, learning experience. Read more...

By Joshua Kim. This February we will pack up the car and leave our small NH town for an 6-day campus tour roadshow. 8 campus tours booked. 8 info sessions arranged.
Our future class of 2019 daughter will be listening closely to the campus tour guide, checking out the classrooms, sampling the food, and investigating the student center and athletic facilities. Read more...

By Matt Reed. Has anyone out there figured out how to quantify the number of students who would have signed up for a given class if seats were available?
We don’t have a system for waiting lists, which would be the most obvious way.  I’m told, by people who have worked in places that had waiting lists, that they’re nightmares to manage.  Apparently, when the waitlists are automated, students will game the system by signing up for far more classes than they actually intend to take, and then cobbling together the most amenable schedule they can at the last minute.  As a result, the waitlists are full of people who don’t really mean it. And if you put them in automatically and force them to back out again when they’re clogging the system, you create a manual processing nightmare in financial aid. Read more...