http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/education/college-helps-foreign-students-get-through-to-american-ears.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
While several colleges across the country are pushing electronic textbooks, touting them as more efficient and less cumbersome than regular textbooks, students are reluctant. E-textbooks still account for only 9% of textbook purchases, says Student Monitor, which researches college student behavior. For University of Wisconsin senior Leslie Epstein, having to buy an e-textbook only added to her expenses. She still found herself printing a copy of her textbooks in the two classes that required an electronic version, and said despite the lower price tag of an e-textbook, she'd buy the print version of the text "every time." Read more at: http://www.usatoday.com/money/markets/story/2012-08-13/etextbooks/57039872/1
Educational design research (EDR) addresses educational problems in real-world settings and has two primary goals: to develop knowledge, and to develop solutions. EDR tends to evolve through three main phases—analysis, design, and evaluation—each of which may be repeated multiple times. EDR is particularly powerful because it addresses real needs in the here-and-now through the development of a solution to a problem, while also generating knowledge that can be used in the future. It can offer researchers and practitioners the opportunity to produce interventions of real value—tools, approaches, theories, and products—tested in the field and shown to be effective. Read more at:
http://www.educause.edu/library/resources/7-things-you-should-know-about-educational-design-researchf
The problem is that we write too many words. We simply make too much Content, and that starts with "C" which rhymes with "E" which stands for Education. As a teacher I've witnessed how we imply that an increase in word count equals an advancement in learning. In elementary school, we identify "key sentences" and write one- or two-page essays, which is wonderful, but then it all goes wrong. By junior high we're on to 10-page papers, by high school we're up to 25 pages, in college, the triumph is a 50-page thesis, and then the Ph.D. produces 100-plus pages to prove their smarts. Read more at:
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/yes_college_essays_are_ruining.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29
Ohio is pushing public universities to show students how they can earn a bachelor’s degrees in three years — potentially saving thousands in tuition, room and board and avoiding the kind of debt that cripples many families. But some worry that the accelerated pace, which requires taking college courses in high school and during summer months, doesn’t prepare students for life after college. State law requires that by October, Ohio’s 14 public universities must prove how 10 percent of their baccalaureate programs can be completed in three years. Read more at:
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/public-colleges-told-to-outline-3-year-grad-plan-1402608.html
Dozens of Michigan State University students survived a zombie pandemic this summer. Or at least a class about one. For the past seven weeks, Glenn Stutzky, an instructor in the School of Social Work, taught a course not previously offered at the East Lansing university. Called "Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse — Catastrophes and Human Behavior," the online class encouraged students to consider how human behavior and nature change after catastrophes, both historical and hypothetical. In this case, the hypothetical was a zombie apocalypse. Read more at:
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120702/SCHOOLS/207020322/1026/
Most community colleges would assign students like Yacuta to a remedial class, but he will avoid that fate at Long Beach. The two-year school is trying out a new system this fall that will place students who graduated from the city's high schools in courses based on their grades rather than their scores on the standardized placement tests. Long Beach is in the forefront of a movement in community colleges nationwide to reassess the use of placement tests for incoming students. Read more at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-college-remedial-20120625,0,6876733.story
Faculty members from San Francisco State University and City College of San Francisco have found a way to mimic the private university experience at public campuses for little extra cost to the schools, and it appears to be working. Metro, offered at San Francisco State and City College, is supposed to patch the leaks by carefully orchestrating students' freshman and sophomore years to give them a firm foundation for the rest of college. Read more at:
http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Public-campuses-mimic-private-university-3659575.php
Ohio colleges and universities spent $146 million in 2010 to educate incoming college students who were not ready for entry-level English and math classes. State law is set to change the way remedial courses are offered, with a plan to stop funding those classes at universities by the end of the decade. Ohio joins 21 other states and higher education systems either eliminating funding at the university level for what they call “developmental education”. Read more at:
http://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/ohio-universities-wont-offer-remedial-classes-1392325.html
Here's a statistic I found surprising: Roughly730,000 master's degrees will be awarded this spring. And it's estimated that another 2.2 million master's degrees will be handed out over the next three years. I knew a lot of young people were going beyond college, but I didn't know this many were. The problem, though, is that most master's degrees are granted in softer disciplines, and the contribution of all this education to the nation's human capital is questionable. Half of all master's degrees are in just two subjects: business and education. Read more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-callahan/masters-degree-mania-empl_b_1590291.html?utm_hp_ref=college
I am the Associate University Librarian for Research and Instructional Services at Temple University.
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