Are University Museum's an Educational Necessity?

The question as to whether a university’s museum is an educational necessity is a good one in this time of recession. According to Rudolph Weingartner in his Views column of October 23 for Inside Higher Ed, Weingartner believe Brandeis was correct in its view regarding the famous Rose Museum.

However, in today’s article by James Christian Steward, The Museum at the Heart of the Academy, Steward provides a much needed look at how universities “use” their museums in education.

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Wisdom of raising the "dropout" age

The Boston Globe ran a thoughtful article yesterday regarding two legendary educators possible ideas to move the dropout age for students from 16 to 18.

The state panel said the right things about the crisis of 10,000 students dropping out each year. It acknowledged that raising the compulsory age will “only retain a handful of students’’ unless the state offers “programs and services that address the underlying reasons that students drop out of school.’’

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SunGard Offers Alternative to Blackboard

Labeled E-Learning's "Third Phase" today's Inside Higher Ed article states SunGard Higher Education learning based social-networking platform offers an alternative to Blackboard.

When professors are building a course, said Felice Nudelman, executive director of education at the Times, they will be able to use keywords to locate relevant Times content on particular topics and events, and integrate the material into their classes.

Students, meanwhile, will be able to manage and share their Epsilen e-portfolios through the SunGard portal. While the combination of services doesn't equal everything Blackboard offers, given that Blackboard's services go beyond classroom experience, it represents a significant addition of content and online communities to the SunGard product for courses.

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New UNESCO Director Makes Education of Women a Priority

An article in the University World News yesterday declares Irina Bokova, Director General-elect of the UN education, science and cultural organisation Unesco, and its first woman head, has said her priorities will be education, Africa and gender equality when she takes over on 15 November.

In her first public comments since her election, Bokova, 57, from Bulgaria, who was her country's former ambassador to the UN in New York and is currently ambassador to France, said the education of women and girls was a particular concern, and not just formal education but general access to information and knowledge.

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$564,000 NASA Award to Challenger Center

Challenger Center for Space Science Education has received a three-year $564,000 climate education grant from NASA to enhance learning through the use of NASA's Earth Science resources.

Fifteen organizations were selected from more than a hundred applications, and include colleges and universities, nonprofit groups, museums, science centers and a school district. The winning proposals illustrate innovative approaches to using NASA content to support elementary, secondary and undergraduate teaching and learning, and through lifelong learning. There is a particular emphasis on engaging students using NASA Earth observation data and Earth system models.

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Education Secretary Says Teacher Training "Mediocre"

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is today giving a talk in which he will denounce most teacher education colleges for offering "mediocre" training, and call for major reforms of those programs, The Washington Post reported. Duncan will make these remarks at Teachers College of Columbia University, and his comments follow similar criticism in a recent speech at the University of Virginia. In today's talk, Duncan will say that many colleges and universities treat their teacher education programs as "cash cows," enrolling many students but not focusing on what they learn. The key to reform, Duncan will say, is linking programs directly to the ability of graduates to achieve good outcomes with students they go on to teach.

College tuition up, bring students down

Over the last couple of weeks, my blog has been centered around the cost of education and tuition. Well today is no different. Here is a details account from the Associated Press regarding the increase in college tuitions during the recession.

Review the graphic showing the average college costs and available federal and nonfederal aid by year. Four year college tuition rose 6.5% this fall, private colleges 4.4 percent.

"Every sector of the American economy is under stress and higher education is no exception," said Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education. "It's regrettable, and it's yet another piece of disappointing economic news that affects families."

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Florida takes on the high cost of textbooks

A recent article in 4 Your Money talks about a pilot program in Florida whereby college students can obtain online textbooks for free.

A new online program launched in Florida is aimed at providing relief to students by offering digital textbooks. The idea is to offer textbooks that are used in common general education courses online free of charge.

"Open access textbooks is the real solution to reducing the cost of textbooks for our students," Orange Grove Digital Repository Director Susie Henderson said. "Currently our students pay, in many cases, more than the cost of tuition for their textbooks, there's something wrong there."

The program, called Orange Grove Texts Plus for the repository where most of the digital books are coming from, has received a federal grant and is being made a pilot program for the rest of the nation.

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High Cost of College Getting You Down?

SayCompusLife just posted an article by Matthew C. Keegan regarding how many colleges are offering classes online. Good news, but also read the comments. It is entertaining and informative.

Colleges/Universities evaluating attrition

Yesterday my blog post dealt with many students having to leave college or university before graduating due to increased years of commitment from many institutions limiting class size and courses per semester. Then I read and article by John Thelin for Inside Higher Ed outlining the critical state of attrition at colleges/universities.

Most influential is the publication of Crossing the Finish Line, a study of completing college at America’s public universities, written by William G. Bowen, Matthew M. Chingos, and Michael S. McPherson. It’s reinforced by the June 2009 report, "Diplomas and Dropouts: Which Colleges Actually Graduate Their Students (and Which Don’t)," by Frederick M. Hess, Mark Schneider, Kevin Carey, and Andrew P. Kelly of the American Enterprise Institute. The two studies rekindled concern about the percentage of undergraduates who fail to complete their bachelor degrees.

It would appear there is definitely a correlation between students leaving university prior to receiving their degree due to cost and time and the attrition rate.

As we as a nation compete with the global marketplace of highly educated and skilled workers, these issues will become even more paramount.

Students financial commitment increasing

Colleges and universities around the country are cutting back on faculty and classes, meaning many students are finding a four-year degree turning into five or six years. The increase time in school is hitting the student’s wallet dramatically. This is forcing many students to quit college before obtaining degrees or leaving them in a financial quagmire.

A recent article Associated Press article details the dilemma.

State universities step up outside recruitment

I’ve been seeing quite a few television commercials recently for the University of Massachusetts. UMass has joined the ranks of many state colleges/universities in a quest for out-of-state students to increase their diminishing coffers.

UMass-Amherst Chancellor Robert Holub is seeking new sources of income, amid dwindling state subsidies, to increase the size and prominence of the faculty, update deteriorating postwar buildings, and invest in scientific research. To help reach that goal, he envisions increasing undergraduate enrollment by 15 percent, to 22,500 students, over the next decade by exclusively courting out-of-state students.

But Holub’s vision, coming as Bay State residents are facing stiffer competition to gain admission, is raising some concerns on a campus whose traditional mandate has been to make higher education accessible to citizens of the Commonwealth.

“We’re not abandoning our obligation to our students, but in order to provide a very good education for them, we obviously need to have real revenue sources. And one of them has to do with increased tuition and fees that come with a higher number of out-of-state students,’’ said Holub, who became chancellor a year ago. “It’s an important shift, one we haven’t really done in the past.’’

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Louisiana Tech lands DOE grant for cyberspace instruction

The U.S. Department of Education has awarded Louisiana Tech University a $951,000 grant to support interdisciplinary cyberspace and science education programs throughout northern Louisiana.

Dr. Galen Turner, associate professor of mathematics and associate dean of graduate studies for Tech’s College of Engineering and Science, has worked with professors from a number of different disciplines on the Tech campus to develop Cyber K-12: Building a foundation for cyber education in North Louisiana.

Cyber K-12 will provide professional development opportunities for K-12 educators throughout northern Louisiana, yielding an increased number of teachers who will gain insight into our nation’s cyber challenges. The project is a product of Louisiana Tech’s STEM Talent Expansion Program and builds upon a strong collaborative partnership with the Cyber Innovation Center in Bossier City.

“This project will help advance Tech’s cyberspace initiatives by further developing the high school professional development model produced by our engineering and science faculty over the past few years,” says Turner.

“Cyber K-12 has also led to the recently approved Integrated STEM Education Research Center (ISERC) housed in the College of Engineering and Science. This Department of Education grant will be pivotal in continuing to advance the university as a leader in STEM education in North Louisiana.”

The strength of Cyber K-12 is rooted in Louisiana Tech’s highly-interdisciplinary approach to cyber education. The Cyber Discovery Summer Camp, for example, is a collaborative between Tech and the CIC that exposes student and teachers to the technological, social, political and historical aspects of cyber.

“It shows students how life is interconnected and that they must pay attention to all of the issues surrounding the real problems that we face as a society,” says Turner.

'Online Skills Laboratory' Questioned

Fredrick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, writes a detailed article regarding a new department of education policy called the ‘Online Skills Laboratory.’

The Obama administration has “launched a worrisome but largely unnoticed assault upon the nation’s publishers and the vibrant market in online learning. The U.S. House has approved a White House-backed provision to provide $500 million to develop free, and “freely available,” online college courses,” states Hess.

Providing everyone an education at a low cost is a good idea. What is unclear is how the money will be distributed and what current online courseware, if any, will be used in this new ‘Online Skills Laboratory.’

Read the full article here

Students 'Going Green'

Many colleges and universities are now instituting sustainability standards for students.

Curricular innovation has been a hot topic on the Green Schools List the past week or two. And no wonder -- getting colleges and universities to operate sustainably is hard, but not nearly as hard as getting them to teach sustainability in all its variety and complexity.

The standards aren’t only being developed at the college/university level. Here is what Washington state high schools are now required to do in creating sustainability. The standards are pretty detailed.

Create realistic models with feedback loops, and recognize that all models are
limited in their predictive power.
Analyze relationships between national
interests and international issues; evaluate impacts of international agreements
on contemporary global issues.
Analyze how economic choices by groups and
individuals impose costs and provide benefits.
Analyze and evaluate
(dis)advantages of different economic systems, and the effects of specialization
on global trade.
Analyze and evaluate effects of distribution of resources
on sustainability.
Evaluate the ethics of technology use based on historic
patterns.
Understand and analyze the causal factors that have shaped major
events in history.
Evaluate how human interaction with the environment has
affected economic growth and sustainability.

Read the complete list.

Face-to-Face vs. Online Education

There were two articles yesterday that caught my eye; a blog post from Tony Karrer, CEO of Techpower, discussing online conferences versus face-to-face conferences and an article from T.H.E. Journal detailing the technological impact in the classroom regarding online learning versus in classroom teaching.

The United States Department of Education published a report over the summer titled, "Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning; A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies" (Center for Technology in Learning, 2009). What's interesting about this report is that it confirms what many who actual teach or have taught either distance or online courses already know: that there is no significant difference between online learning and the face-to-face experience.

Both present good views on the single thread that “students” whatever the age or at whatever level in their educational process are online. They are texting, twittering, reviewing emails, researching, etc. while listening in class or web conference.

Whether you are a teaching professor at a university or college or a conference presenter it is imperative you are aware of your audience’s mobility and adjust accordingly.

The Report Abstract