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By Suzanne Bowness. Everything you wanted to know about digital humanities. If you’re old enough to remember a time before the Internet, cast your ears back to this sound: Pshhhkkkkkkrrrrkakingkakingkaking tshchchchchchchchcch*ding*ding*ding.
That’s right. That’s the irritating – and maybe for some nostalgic – ring of an old-fashioned modem connecting your computer to the Internet (with phonetics borrowed from The Atlantic).
Now, imagine yourself back in the era when that sound was a novelty, particularly in the quiet halls of an English or history department, where the loudest ambient noise up to that point may have been the quiet swish of pages turning. Or perhaps a pencil scraping lightly at their margins. If you were that reader, hearing that “ding” for the first time, you might have looked up from your book and wondered what exactly was going on. You might have heard the birth of a new discipline called the digital humanities.
For most digital humanities scholars, even that time-frame of the mid-1990s is a bit late. They date the field’s origins to well before modems and the Internet, although at first it didn’t really have a name until it was called humanities computing and later, digital humanities. Read more...

By Tema Frank. Alumni departments turn to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and more, to engage alumni. This past October, when Felix Baumgartner became the first person to break the sound barrier in a free-fall jump from the stratosphere, the alumni relations department at McGill University realized that the person who designed the outfit used for the jump was a McGill graduate. Within hours, the department had posted an article about the designer on three separate Facebook pages: that of the alumni department, the faculty he’d graduated from, and a volunteer-run branch of alumni. The opportunity to piggyback on news to deepen connections with alumni is one of the many ways social media can benefit university alumni and development offices across Canada. “We need to be where our alumni are,” says Derek Cassoff, director of communications for McGill’s office of development and alumni relations. “We need to be in their newsfeeds.”
And the alumni are decisively there – on all platforms of social media, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn. More than 90 percent of online adults now use social media regularly (according to the U.S. 2012 Digital Marketer Benchmark and Trend Report) and younger alumni prefer to communicate by social media rather than by email or print. This means that social media is no longer optional for effective communications with alumni. Read more...

By Elliot King and Neil Alperstein. The debate about massively open online courses, or MOOCs, has reached such a fevered pitch that we recently got to witness an internecine argument about it at the New York Times.
On one side was the technology-optimist columnist Thomas Friedman, who imagines a time when students in a remote village in Egypt could install a couple of computers with high-speed Internet access, hire a local facilitator and study with the best professors in the world.
On the other side, the Times editorial board felt compelled to point out that most online courses are pretty dreadful, with high dropout rates and poor learning outcomes.
Of course, online education and its first incarnation, distance learning, have been around for a long time. MOOCs have leapt onto the front pages because of their scale -- 10,000, 100,000, 200,000 students -- and the name-brand schools involved. Students can study with M.I.T. professors. Wow. As exciting as that may sound, the shortcomings and challenges have also been well known for years. Read more...

By Simona Chiose. What began last year as a technology upgrade in education has more recently become a revolution meme. At last week’s South by Southwest Edu conference (the education partner to the SXSW music and film festival), almost a dozen panels were devoted to the subject of massive open online courses. Known by the rather bovine acronym MOOC, the latest iteration of online learning was debated in panels with titles like Online Education: Will It Make Us Smarter? and Not Another Zombie Idea. Read more...

By Jim Lotz. University education has been described as the process whereby the notes of the professor become those of the student, without going through the minds of either. The lecture system began in early medieval Europe when the gilded youth of the time gathered to learn from scholars who had access to books and who had acquired much wisdom from other sources.
Universities remained elite institutions until after the Second World War, when demand for advanced education exploded. Governments poured money into existing universities as they expanded, and encouraged the creation of new ones. The lecture system remained the basis of teaching, even as knowledge in all fields expanded at an exponential rate. Read more...

By Michael Woods. Three-year total reaches $716 M. The federal government plans to write off $173 million in unpaid student loans in the coming fiscal year, which will bring its three-year writeoff total to $716 million.
Taxpayers were on the hook for $312 million in Canada Student Loan writeoffs in the 201112 fiscal year and $231 million in the current fiscal year (201213), although the loans in question span many years.
Most student finance experts say forgiving unpaid student debt is simply the cost of doing business, with the government taking on risk to help thousands of people get an education who otherwise couldn't afford it. They also say the federal student loans system is simpler and more forgiving than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Read more...

By Japreet Lehal. Throughout universities across North America, entrepreneurship and experiential education are challenging universities. Despite a greater emphasis on hands-on learning, the classroom still remains a model of the traditional “sage on the stage” style of teaching.
As a second-year undergraduate student, I have experienced many different teaching styles. However, I have consistently found that professors who have created their own start-ups are not only better communicators, teachers and mentors, but they also inspire students to at least consider entrepreneurship as a career. This is not to say that professors lacking an entrepreneurial background aren’t excellent teachers. However, those who have the experience of building a company from scratch understand the practical aspects of learning. In fact, my observation is not just limited to business professors, but even entrepreneurial health science and political science professors show a similar style. Read more...

By Martin Kirk. There is a “right” amount of administration in every organization that provides the appropriate level of support for the core mission of the business. This maxim is true of the administration of research.
At a university, the right level ensures that we comply with regulations and terms of grants and that friction-free systems for managing applications and grants are in place.  At the funding agencies, the right level ensures well-run programs, workable policies and terms, and excellent adjudication processes and support through the application process. In administration, the quality and effectiveness of the people involved add value. Read more...

Some universities could find themselves under threat in the next decade if they fail to keep up with a coming "avalanche'' of change, a report has warned.  Even elite institutions could find themselves at risk, said Sir Michael Barber, a former adviser to Tony Blair, in An Avalanche Is Coming, a study for the think tank IPPR.
Pressure on universities is greater than ever, he said, due to global competition as well as open online courses and consultancies. Sir Michael warned that while the next 50 years could be a "golden age" for higher education, "the ordinary red brick, one town university that just ticks over as it did at the second half of the 20th century will really suffer".
Universities that fail to find their niche, and are complacent about their current position, could find they are left behind, the report warned. Read more...