Learning Innovation

I'm a huge fan of what Drexel University Online has done in online learning. A recent example of Drexel’s leadership role in the development of online learning is its Gateway to Online Learning Scholarship, a program designed to allow an initial group of RN's to pursue a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN).

A few years ago many were predicting the demise of the onsite sales call. Why should a sales team get on an airplane when Web conferencing was available?

Are we paying close enough attention to the lessons we can learn from our colleagues in for-profit higher education? Will the for-profits invest the resources and maintain the long-term focus necessary to develop educational platforms and post-secondary services that elevate them into the elite tier of higher education?

William Rieders is Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer for Cengage Learning. Prior to joining Cengage Learning, William was a partner at The Parthenon Group, a consulting company with a robust practice in education. Moving from consulting to publishing gives William a perspective on higher ed that is different from those of us that make our living teaching and working within the walls of the university.

My girls will head off to college in 2015 and 2017. They are in the 10th and 8th grade of our our local public high school and middle school. We are already getting glossy university brochures in the mail (I guess from my older daughter's PSAT scores).

House of Cards, a Netflix streaming only drama starring Kevin Spacey, may have a few things to teach us in higher ed:

There seems to be a good deal of chatter in the system about students eventually (or sooner) ditching laptops for tablets. Today, a student tablet is mostly synonymous with a student iPad - but maybe that will change in the future. (Are you seeing your students carrying around Android devices?)

The highlight for me of Super Bowl XLVII (which I watched by streaming online) was when the power went out in the Superdome. This was a perfect tech failure because it makes us feel so much better about all of our tech failures.