Blogs

I’m returning from the AACSB conference in San Diego and had the opportunity to attend several interesting sessions. One, in particular, stood out and echoed some of the “What Keeps Us Awake At Night” post from last week (and much of what we’ve been discussing in the Strategy and Competition in Higher Education class this semester).

Campus ID cards aren't sexy. It's true. However, campus ID cards provide access to a variety of both on-campus and off-campus services. The number of services that cards provide is astounding when you start to look at all of the ways in which students, staff, and faculty can use them.

My older daughter came home last week, after taking a New York State ELA (English Language Arts) statewide exam. Normally after she takes a test, she mentions whether the test was easy or hard and what, if any, were the areas that give her difficulty. This time it was different. She complained about a reading passage concerning a race between a pineapple (that did not move) and a hare.

It's big news, but it's not really that surprising -- Harvard is getting in to the MOOC scene. What is interesting to me about today's edX news is the universities' commitment to a research component, thinking about how these new initiatives work for learners both online and on campus.

I'm not sure if this Grad Student phenomenon has a name yet, but I'll give it one - "The mid-degree crisis". You are about two years into your degree, but still two (or more) years away from finishing. Most of your structured requirements are finished, but you've done less than half the work that you'll need to do for your degree. And one day… you can’t remember why you pursued your PhD to begin with.

This deal could either mean very little or quite a bit for higher ed, depending on how committed Microsoft is to education. Barnes & Noble has 641 college bookstores. Someday soon these bookstores will stop selling dead tree textbooks. Every book, article and textbook on your syllabus will be digital.

My state is considering tying individual colleges’ shares of the state higher ed allocation to “performance” on a series of measures. And it has no intention of increasing the size of the allocation. In other words, for Northern State to get more, Southern State would have to get less. We’ll be funded on a curve.

Reflections on a second semester using peer-driven learning, and how social media makes me a better teacher.