By Matt Reed. Can colleges charge a fee to accept transfer credits?
I had never heard of that until this week. Tressie McMillan Cottom -- if you’re on Twitter and not following her, you’re doing Twitter wrong -- did a tweet about a specific clause in the edX-ASU agreement that stopped me short. Read more...
By Matt Reed. You may find yourself approached by students who aren’t happy with their grades so far, and who are asking for extra credit assignments to bring their grades up. These may be the students who want to move from failing to passing, or they may be the B-plus students who want A’s. Read more...
By Matt Reed. The proposed cuts to Louisiana’s higher education sector are breathtaking, but not only for their size. According to yesterday’s IHE piece, they could be over 80 percent drops in a single year. Both parts of that description matter: “over 80 percent” and “in a single year.” They offer a sort of object lesson. Read more...
By Steven Mintz. If there's a domain where college faculty could most stand to learn from K-12 educators, it is assessment. Too often, assessment is treated in postsecondary education as synonymous with grading: as a matter of ranking students against a rubric or their peers on the basis of a quiz, a problem set, a multiple choice or essay exam, or a report or research paper. Read more...By Steven Mintz. Textbooks evoke a great deal of ambivalence among instructors. Their expense and back-breaking heft are two sources of concern. More troubling is their tone – too often bland and tedious; their use of language – generally dreary and uninspired; and their content – frequently generic and excessively detailed. These are not books to be read for pleasure. They do not provoke, delight, or inspire. Read more...
By Barbara Fister. Did you hear the one about John Deere tractors? That when you pay for one, you’re not buying it, you’re licensing software that happens to come with some parts?
Unfortunately, it’s not a joke, and the same property argument is being made by automotive corporations, coffee pot makers, and manufacturers of kitty boxes. Oh, and publishers, of course. Read more...
By Ana García de Fanelli. Liz Reisberg complains about the importance stakeholders outside the academy give to one-dimensional research-oriented rankings in their eager search for the best universities in her recent blog on “Rankings and Quality”. Frank van Vught and Frank Ziegele’s responded in their blog, “A Ranking to Fit Individual Needs”, that describes a most welcome initiative – the U-Multirank—to overcome some of the flaws in the indicators and to produce more valuable information. Read more...By Frans van Vught and Frank Ziegele. In a blog published in Inside Higher Ed, Liz Reisberg raised the issue of “rankings and quality”. She made good points about major contradictions between traditional rankings and quality management, but left out a vital third option—a way of reconciling rankings and quality. Read more...
By Lee Skallerup Bessette. We’re three weeks into the Great Soccer Coaching Experiment. If you had asked me last week how it was going, you would have gotten a very different answer than what you’re getting today. Read more...
By Heather VanMouwerik. On most campuses, the debate over whether or not technology has a place in the undergraduate classroom is over. Lectures without PowerPoint are a rarity, while Blackboard and other learning systems dominate grade reporting, syllabus distribution, and student-teacher communication. Technology won; however, the discussion over the form, format, and pedagogical role of this technology has only begun. Read more.../https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
