Blogs

The news from Michigan that Northwestern Michigan College, a two-year school, has applied for permission to offer four-year degrees got me thinking about the entire concept.

Academics are some of the best complainers I know. In my field of English, I explain our penchant for complaining by saying that we are, after all, critics — and we can always find something to criticize. But it may be an occupational hazard for all academics — we spend an awful lot of our time, after all, grading, reviewing, and measuring, and things are bound to fall short more often than not. So we complain.

Much has been said about the (potential) impact of recent higher education policies of the English government, particularly regarding the effects of the increased fees on student access and participation and on the higher education institutions’ budgets. Now closer to the date—from September 2012—it is worthwhile to take stock.

These days, you can use a search engine like Google to find pretty much anything - from a local spa to information about Vienna. Noodle is attempting to allow users to find a wide range of learning opportunities.

Where will the next generation of deans come from? It’s an increasingly urgent question, since the current crop is largely aging out of the profession. And in many settings, there’s no heir apparent at the ready.

My friend Joe Storch, who works as an attorney at the SUNY System Office, calls an idea that has been...

If we begin to ask students to write in different forms using electronic mediums and digital tools, do we also need to teach them about design?

Recently, there’s been considerable interest in how academics can evaluate the impact of social media outputs. A recent article, titled “Who Gives A Tweet? Evaluating Microblog Content Value” [PDF] and signed by Paul André, Michael S. Bernstein and Kurt Luther, shares the results of a study which involved the creation of an online tool, titled “Who Gives ATweet?” (WGAT).