Formation Continue du Supérieur

By G. Rendell. Probably the most common gripe I hear from teachers -- professors, instructors, trainers, high school teachers, the lot -- is that students don't know how to write any more. I ran into an extreme case of that a few years back, when I tried to mentor a recent high school graduate who just wasn't clicking in community college.  One of his courses had a title along the lines of "College Writing 101", and every week his homework consisted of writing sentences, paragraphs, eventually short essays.  He didn't have a clue. Read more...

By Barbara Fister. Some valuable commentary has come out since John Bohannon’s article on dubious open access journals was published in Science. The Library Loon has written several useful posts reflecting on what the sting failed to accomplish, pointing out that “the usual means that academic stakeholders, from tenure-and-promotion committees to collection-development librarians, use to judge journal quality are rapidly proving untrustworthy and gaming-prone.” Yet scaling up the kind of work Bohannon did would overtax everyone involved in scholarly publishing. She asks us to think about alternative ways to figure out which publishers and publications have credibility. That attracted a promising proposal from the Digital Drake, to create a well-edited crowd-sourced scholarly answer to Writer Beware, a volunteer project that operates under the aegis of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Read more...

By John Warner. One of the more common issues my first year writing students struggle with is the propensity to write what I’ve come to refer to as, “Pseudo-academic B.S." (PABS). Anyone who’s taught first-year writing knows the symptoms of PABS, a ten-dollar word substituted for a ten-cent one, sprinklings of “plethora,” “myriad,” and “quintessential.” The tone of the prose sounds like a Masterpiece Theater host who’s swallowed a dictionary and enjoys mangling syntax. A simple idea like, “Smart phone use has increased by 43% among today’s college students,” comes out as: “University undergraduates engage with new touch screen technology phones in increasingly significant ways, which is belied by the fact that 43% of them now do it more.” Read more...

By Herman Berliner. There are many situations where as an administrator or as a not-for-profit board member it is necessary to engage strangers or almost strangers in conversations for the good of the organization.  Often these conversations go well but first there is that awkward introductory phase. I am sure there are many good alternatives but I have one that may be a guaranteed success.  A cute dog is a great ice breaker. The latest personal example of the effectiveness of a cute dog was yesterday’s homecoming parade at my local school district.  As a board of education member, I march in the parade, which I enjoy doing, but there are always a significant number of parents and students who I don’t know. Read more...

By Joshua Kim. What do you think the big company news and announcements will be at EDUCAUSE 2013?
My edtech company crystal ball is telling me a few things to look for at EDUCAUSE:
Prediction 1:  Some Sort of Rollup in the Media Management / Presentation Capture Space
The presentation / lecture capture and media management space continues to be fragmented and immature. Read more...

By Joshua Kim. Like almost all of the ideas below, the title for this post has been shameless ripped off from the ideas that I've been getting from various folks that I've been chatting with at EDUCAUSE.  
The question that I've been asking everyone is: "So what is the big story at EDUCAUSE this year?". 
One of my colleagues, a card carrying member of our edtech tribe and an academic professional with a large and challenging set of technology leadership responsibilities, suggested the calm before the storm analogy to describe EDUCAUSE 2013. Read more...