Tag Archives: Online

If professors record their lectures and put them online, will students still come to class?

Posted on November 9, 2009 by | Comments Off on If professors record their lectures and put them online, will students still come to class?

Inside Higher Ed: Fans and Fears of ‘Lecture Capture’

DENVER — If professors record their lectures and put them online, will students still come to class?

That question came up in two different sessions at the 2009 Educause Conference here on Friday. And in both cases, the panelists cited research indicating that students’ likelihood of skipping class has no correlation with whether a professor decides to capture her lecture and post it the Web.

Attendance is much more contingent on whether the professor is an engaging lecturer, said Jennifer Stringer, director of educational technology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, at one of the sessions. “Well-attended lectures were well-watched; poorly attended lectures were not watched,” Stringer said, pointing to research she had conducted at Stanford. “If you’re bad, you’re bad. If you’re bad online, you’re bad in lectures, students don’t come.”

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Posted in Academics

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Case Western Reserve University and Second Life building a private virtual world for college

Posted on May 8, 2009 by | Comments Off on Case Western Reserve University and Second Life building a private virtual world for college

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Case Western Reserve University and Second Life building a private virtual world for college

Students in Carolina Perera’s Spanish language class don’t need an airplane to visit Mexico, Spain or Colombia.

They go virtually.

Perera, a lecturer at Case Western Reserve University, assigns her students to use Second Life, an online 3-D virtual world, to visit other countries and interact with native Spanish speakers.

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Posted in Academics

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2 Professors Rock Out Online to Study Fame — and Us

Posted on April 30, 2009 by | Comments Off on 2 Professors Rock Out Online to Study Fame — and Us

The Chronicle: 2 Professors Rock Out Online to Study Fame — and Us

Most people who stumble across the YouTube video of the self-proclaimed rock star Gory Bateson singing to a scantily clad prostitute in Amsterdam’s red-light district probably have no idea that the work is part of a research project — or that the man holding the guitar is a tenured professor. The video has attracted more than 12,000 views and won a few online fans. But it has upset some of the professor’s colleagues, who say that whatever this two-minute clip is, it is definitely not academic work.

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AAUP: Online Education Based on ‘Slave Labor’

Posted on April 23, 2009 by | Comments Off on AAUP: Online Education Based on ‘Slave Labor’

Times Daily: Online study ups workload for instructors

Debbie Benson can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to teach.

“I really never saw myself in a college classroom, but I got part-time jobs at Northwest-Shoals (Community College) and the University of North Alabama in 1991, and I’ve been doing that ever since,” said the English instructor.

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Posted in Unions

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Valley City State University moves all instruction online after flooding closes campus

Posted on April 17, 2009 by | Comments Off on Valley City State University moves all instruction online after flooding closes campus

Inside Higher Ed: A River Runs Alongside It

This is Steven W. Shirley’s first year as Valley City State University president; he’s 36. “Although I felt a lot older after some of the sand bagging I was doing over the last few days.”

It’s a first year with an unusual end. Valley City on Wednesday announced it would move all instruction online for the remainder of the semester, as the Sheyenne River rose to record levels and officials called for an evacuation of the city’s flood plain (where much of the university is located). According to Mayor Mary Lee Nielson’s statement, the river’s elevation had never before exceeded 20 feet; a crest at 22 feet or higher is expected and, “additionally, the Corps of Engineers also predicts that we will likely remain at this elevated level for up to two weeks, adding additional strain to our dike system.”

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M.A. in “Twitter Studies”?

Posted on March 31, 2009 by | Comments Off on M.A. in “Twitter Studies”?

Inside Higher Ed: Master’s Degree in Twitter Studies

Birmingham City University, in Britain, is attracting attention and some skepticism with its announcement that it is starting a new master’s degree program in social media, with an emphasis on training people to work in marketing or consulting for those who want to better understand Twitter, Facebook and other popular online services. One student told The Telegraph: “Virtually all of the content of this course is so basic it can be self taught. In fact most people know all this stuff already. I think it’s a complete waste of university resources.” One faculty member responded (on Twitter, of course) that the student was “uninformed.”

Master’s Degree in Twitter Studies

Birmingham City University, in Britain, is attracting attention and some skepticism with its announcement that it is starting a new master’s degree program in social media, with an emphasis on training people to work in marketing or consulting for those who want to better understand Twitter, Facebook and other popular online services. One student told The Telegraph: “Virtually all of the content of this course is so basic it can be self taught. In fact most people know all this stuff already. I think it’s a complete waste of university resources.” One faculty member responded (on Twitter, of course) that the student was “uninformed.”

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Revolt Against Outsourced Courses

Posted on March 31, 2009 by | Comments Off on Revolt Against Outsourced Courses

Inside Higher Ed: Revolt Against Outsourced Courses

Here’s the pitch: “Can you really GO TO COLLEGE for LESS THAN the cost of your monthly CELL PHONE BILL? We can’t say that this is true in ALL cases — hey, you might have a GREAT cell phone plan. But maybe it’s your cable bill, electric bill, or your GAS bill. … The point we’re trying to make is that taking general education, required college courses just became A LOT more affordable.”

How affordable? $99 for a course. And if you take the courses offered by StraighterLine — in composition, economics, algebra, pre-calculus, and accounting — you don’t need to worry that the company isn’t itself a college. StraighterLine has partnerships with five colleges that will award credit for the courses. Three are for-profit institutions and one is a nontraditional state university for adult students. But one college among the five is more typical of the kinds of colleges most students attend. It is Fort Hays State University, an institution of 10,000 students in Kansas.

There, even as professors are still pushing to get information about StraighterLine so they can evaluate it, students have taken a look and decided that they don’t like what they see. In articles in the student newspaper and in Facebook groups (attracting debates with the university’s provost and the company’s CEO), the students argue that StraighterLine is devaluing their university and higher education in general.

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Posted in Corporate University

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Pasadena-based plan for online university draws interest, skepticism

Posted on March 10, 2009 by | Comments Off on Pasadena-based plan for online university draws interest, skepticism

Los Angeles Times: Pasadena-based plan for online university draws interest, skepticism

An Israeli entrepreneur hopes to start a global, very-low-cost institution soon. But by dispensing with professors, it’s already a tough sell for some.

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Posted in Corporate University

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