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This is one of those “thinking out loud” posts, as opposed to some sort of fully thought out proposal. Constructive feedback is very, very welcome.

Last week I felt depressed about how many automated approaches to producing and grading writing were coming on the market and I ended my gloomy thoughts with an exhortation. Think about your assignments that ask students to find sources and write about them. What are you hoping students will learn? Are they learning it? Is there a way to make the whole process less mechanical? I got an email suggesting that it would be useful if I actually tried to answer that question myself. Fair enough. I'll give it a shot.

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.