Standards for Colleges and Universities
November 14, 2007
This will have an affect on data collection and methodologies of reporting at Universities:
http://www.nasulgc.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=788&srcid=183
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I came across this Learning 2.0 site. Set the bar, set the deadline, offer incentive and off the team goes. Interesting.
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Testing a ePortfolio tool.
April 4, 2007
I was asked to review the ePortfolio tool from Epsilen. Here’s my page and initial effort. http://ken.plymouth.epsilen.com So far it has been fairly straight forward, but I haven’t seen the ability to allow faculty contributions to the portfolio, which I believe would be a requirement in our environment.
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Second Life Resource - Higher Education
April 4, 2007
Here’s a good resource to guage Higher Education activity in Second Life. http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life:_Universities_and_Private_Islands
I’ve been in 2nd life for a bit, but I haven’t had the time or inclination to really dig in. I understand that they have or are developing voice/conferencing capabilities. That would take the game up a notch for potential impact on distance learning opportunities.
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Google Trends - Interesting.
April 2, 2007
I finally got around to checking out Google Trends. Interesting. Add it to Google Analytics and Alexa.com and one has a pretty good external picture of any site.
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Campus Communication Strategy
April 2, 2007
Our institution is reviewing communication strategies. This tool has some user self-service features that may be of interest.
e2campus.com
Connect-Ed now NTI Group
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Migratory Faculty, Part III
September 15, 2006
In my first post on migratory faculty I noted that faculty would use non-institutional resources to house their content, potentially side-stepping the institutional LMS and that this would be a characteristic of Higer Education 2.0. In Migratory Faculty, Part II, I shared a link to an article about a faculty member who decided that he would not use lecture hall lectures, but rather just podcast his lectures. My colleague, Zach Tirrell at nosheep.net posted an article about a professor who was charging $2.50 to his recorded lectures online at a non-university site. I thought that was a pretty interesting approach although I was certain that this would raise the interest of his school’s administration. Well sure enough, looks like they asked that he shut down his service as reported in this Chronical article. Too bad. I would have like to seen how that would have worked out. From the faculty perspective, here would be a way of supplementing what are sometimes low salaries (think adjuncts), especially if the lecture material became popular beyond the instiution. I could only imagine how popular blogging and podcasting would then become for faculty if there were finanical motivators. It could motivate a student to attend the free/live lecture and provide the flexibility for the occasional missed class and of course help the student for review and study purposes. Parents of undergraduates, would probably be less than happy as the financial burden is already great without faculty setting prices for their services. Imagine $2.50 for a missed lecture, $5.00 for an assignment handed in late, and “oh, you want to take the final on online? That will be $25.00 please. Does anyone have change for a twenty?”
I am certain there will be more creative models and entreprenurial opportunities that will be examined in the months and years ahead.
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What’s the three hottest topics in Higher Ed IT? Security, security and security.
September 14, 2006
We making some positive steps towards mitgation of our data security risks. Here’s a good article on the topic that provides a summary of the what’s and why’s: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/05/02/hack
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I don’t know who said it, but the following pretty much sums up how I feel: “just when I started to know the answers, they changed the questions.” My institution has theSunGardHE portal, Luminis. We have WebCT CE, now Blackboard CE. We’re in the process of implemeting Hannon Hill’s Content Management System. We are exploring Identity Management directions. We have a fairly well integrated environment.
Now for the latest opportunity.
My colleague, Zach Tirrell, shared this link to Google’s latest effort with me today. I have waxed on the impact of web based services before, but it’s definitely a direction that is now plainly obvious. While the current state of web-applicatons such as Writely and Google Spreadsheets offers a compromise in functionality that is largely offset by collaborative opportunites and ease of access, there should be little doubt in anyone’s mind that these services will only improve over time in both functionality and collaborative capabilities.
The question is, how will this affect the current slate of 3-5 year plans and iniatives at higher education institutions? Here’s what the NY Times is saying the impact will have on businesses. This is clearly disruptive technology. Just see where Google’s chief rival, now being lead by Ray Ozzie, is taking Microsoft:
Microsoft is taking a very pragmatic approach; a seamless, blended, client-server-service approach. We want to make sure that you can easily transition client and server-based applications to services, or vice-versa. Our services won’t be disconnected from existing applications, but instead are going to be designed to complement and extend our Windows and Office platforms to the Internet.
Under the name Live, we’ll provide a blend of desktop software, server-based software, and our own enterprise service offering, and our partners’ offerings, enabling you to make the right tradeoffs that make the most sense for your business. One notable example of this client-server-service synergy can be found in our approach to information management and search. Our goal is to provide the people within your organization a simplified, unified way of getting at the information that they need, no matter where it resides.
So if Google and Microsoft are busy charting a course to web-based services world, what should we be doing in Higher Education to leveage and prepare our institutions for this environement? Clearly, one area that will heat up is Identity Mangement. We can’t even begin to think of integration with web-based applications or social networking environments unless the IdM house is in order. Secondly, we need to excerise pressure on all our vendors to start to think along these lines if we are truely going to work together to create a seamless experience from a prospective student making general inquries about an institution, to providing life-long services to alumns via integrated environments.
How many of those life-long services remain exclusively the domain of Higher Education institutions and how much of it will be hosted at vendor sites remains to be seen. In the future, will Higher Ed need to provide their users with email? How can social networking environments, such as FaceBook, be integrated with the efforts of Alumni and Advancement offices or perhaps be extended in online e-portfolios. Speaking of electronic portfolios, while they are a current hot topic in Higher Education, they have not yet gained as much widespread adoption in the corporate sector as anticipated, but apparently there is enough belief in the concept by Microsoft that they have made an investment in Onfolio.
Increasingly, online education will include a mash up of web-based services that augment learning management systems will be significant. Well, as long as innovation is not inhibited by the legal efforts of such companies as Blackboard to protect their alledged intellectual property.
The bottom line is that students will live in an increasingly integrated world. That world is increasingly going to become user centric. Higher Education institutions who fail to integrate, adopt and adapt, risk becoming marginalized.
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Higher Education Blogs and Liability
August 18, 2006
Higher Education and Blog Liability. Blogs are somewhat of a topic at my institution. Specifically, the liability issue. So I thought it might be a good idea to just start a post that points to relevant blog/liability issues for reference. Someone has probably already done this, but I haven’t found it with a quick search. If you know of any, please comment or if you find interesting sites that fall into the following categories, let me know and I’ll update this post. I’m also looking for University and Colleges that embraced blogs as part of the culture and strategic effort to facilitate their online sense of community. Thanks.
Education and Blogs
7 Things you should know about Blogs
Blog Policy and Liabilty Articles:
University of Minnesota Blog Policies - Good policies.
OSUWrite: A University Blog Solution Proof of Concept
Chronicle of Higher Education Article
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Burleson Consulting
Warwick University Terms and Conditions
Editor and Publishing (Good article)
Electronic Frontier Foundation Site
EFF Student Blogs
Unversity Business Article
Harvard Law school Terms of Use
Institutional Blogs, i.e. IHE that are making hey with blogs:
University of Minnesota - Here’s a good example.
Harvard Law - Here’s a marquee school’s effort.
Seton Hall - Another good example
Penn State - Solutions Institute
Warwick University - UK
U. of Chicago - Faculty Blog
Standford Law
Dickinson College Blog
Regent College (Alumni Blog list)
Seton HillPrinceton University
Belmont University ( Seems to be an administrative blog)
Rider University ( Admissions Blog)
Georgia State University Library
Not really an IHE blog, but an interesting perspective nonetheless from Sam Jackson College Experience
Corporate Blogs: (Whose using blogs in the corporate world and why?)
