17 5 / 2013
"Many new open-access publishers are trustworthy. But not all. Anyone with a spare afternoon and a little computing savvy can launch an impressive-looking journal website and e-mail invitations to scientists to join editorial boards or submit papers for a fee. The challenge for researchers, and for Beall, is to work out when those websites or e-mail blasts signal a credible publisher and when they come from operations that can range from the outright criminal to the merely amateurish."
17 5 / 2013
"Non-completion is only a problem if we accept MOOCs as alternative revenue-generating credentialing system."
17 5 / 2013
"Before the campaign, Ghani said that he found it difficult to use his data skills for social good. There were plenty of corporate jobs that wanted people who could do analytics, but not many non-profits. “The reason I got on the campaign is that I was trying to connect things I cared about with what I was good at. I wanted to use analytics and data for social problems,” he said. “But when the campaign was done, I was back in the same place."
17 5 / 2013
Congress is close to making unlocking cell phones legal
Join the campaign asking Congress to fix the DMCA and make unlocking, jailbreaking, and modifying devices permanently legal.
17 5 / 2013
"Before 1992 most studies concluded that people read slower, less accurately and less comprehensively on screens than on paper. Studies published since the early 1990s, however, have produced more inconsistent results: a slight majority has confirmed earlier conclusions, but almost as many have found few significant differences in reading speed or comprehension between paper and screens."
17 5 / 2013
"Affluent students today learn to read for nuance in expensive private schools, but then are trained to read for simplicity by often expensive test-prep tutors. That they are coached to strategize the right test answer rather than respond meaningfully to the material doesn’t really matter, because when the testing is over, they will return to the classrooms where it is the play of ideas and the depth of thought that matter most, and where they will learn to interpret tricky texts and complex situations."
Monica Cohen, Los Angeles Review of Books, May 17, 2013.
Of course the rest of the piece is about why it does matter - not to these students but to others who cannot hope to compete in a world that chooses not to poke at the thin veneer of “fairness” that these gatekeeper tests provide.
I appreciate Cohen’s willingness to shift focus away from “do reforms increase access” and over to “access to what?” If the institutions for the privileged continue on as they always have — or outright reject these democratizing reforms (like standardized tests, which were intended to increase access) — we’re setting up two systems, not haves and have-nots but “us” and “them.”
01 2 / 2013
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In late 2011 the Stanford Social Innovation Review published a paper on collective impact. According to this article the five conditions of collective success, as demonstrated by Strive in Cincinnati are:
Common Agenda
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Shared Measurement System
Mutually Reinforcing Activities
Continuous Communication
Backbone Support Organizations
18 1 / 2013
Divided Conversations: Identities, Leadership, and Change in Public Higher Education: Kristin G. Esterberg, John Wooding: 9780826518996: Amazon.com: Books
“Through their interviews with faculty and administrators (from department chairs and deans to provosts and presidents) from a sample of eight public universities in the Northeast and their own experiences in both worlds, the authors provide a unique window into the life experiences and identities of those who struggle to make universities work. The book examines the culture of academic institutions and attempts to understand why change in public higher education is so difficult to accomplish.”
09 1 / 2013
Will University of Phoenix lose accreditation?
The company is also expecting to receive a draft report from its accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, said Gregory Cappelli, Apollo’s Chief Executive Officer, during a conference call with analysts and investors. He said the company believes it will be placed on notice, which would require follow-up reports and action.
Whoa. In my world, that’s stop-the-presses news. (Okay, I’m old. What’s the internet version of stop the presses?) The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association is planning to place the country’s largest for-profit college on notice?
(Source: google.com)
09 1 / 2013
Coursera's fee-based course option | Inside Higher Ed
“I never thought about the revenue part of it,” said Peter Lange, provost of Duke University, which will be participating in the pilot program for fee-based courses. Duke’s goal for participating is about the global classroom, he said. “All these MOOCs allow our faculty to extend their reach.”
