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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Social Media: A Guide for Researchers

Social media is an important technological trend that has big implications for how researchers (and people in general) communicate and collaborate. Researchers have a huge amount to gain from engaging with social media in various aspects of their work.

This guide has been produced by the International Centre for Guidance Studies, and aims to provide the information needed to make an informed decision about using social media and select from the vast range of tools that are available.



One of the most important things that researchers do is to find, use and disseminate information, and social media offers a range of tools which can facilitate this. The guide discusses the use of social media for research and academic purposes and will not be examining the many other uses that social media is put to across society.


Social media can change the way in which you undertake research, and can also open up new forms of communication and dissemination. It has the power to enable researchers to engage in a wide range of dissemination in a highly efficient way.

Social media: A guide for researchers (links and resources)
This page provides the list of resources outlined in the publication Social media: A guide for researchers. http://www.rin.ac.uk/node/1009
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University Business: College Graduation Rates Are Stagnant Even as Enrollment Rises, a Study Finds

The group, Complete College America, is a nonprofit founded two years ago with financing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Lumina Foundation and others. Its report, which had the cooperation of 33 governors, showed how many of the students in states completed their degrees, broken down into different categories , including whether enrollment is full- or part-time, or at a two- or four-year institution.



The numbers are stark: In Texas, for example, of every 100 students who enrolled in a public college, 79 started at a community college, and only 2 of them earned a two-year degree on time; even after four years, only 7 of them graduated. Of the 21 of those 100 who enrolled at a four-year college, 5 graduated on time; after eight years, only 13 had earned a degree.


Similarly, in Utah, for 100 students who enrolled in a public college, 71 chose a community college, 45 enrolling full time and 26 part time; after four years, only 14 of the full-time students and one of the part-time students graduated. Of the 29 who started at a four-year college, only 13 got their degree within eight years.


The New York Times
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The Chronicle of Higher Education: Controversial Bake Sale at Berkeley Stirs Debate Over Affirmative Action

September 27, 2011
A controversial bake sale at the University of California at Berkeley on Tuesday that was designed to satirize affirmative action drew allegations of racism and a wave of media attention.
The sale, by the Berkeley College Republicans, charged customers different prices for cupcakes and cookies based on race and gender. White males paid $2, black men paid 75 cents, and Native American men paid 25 cents. Women got 25 cents off. The group sold 300 cupcakes.
"There were some aggressive people who came up with angry things to say, but there was no violence," Shawn Lewis, president of the Republican student group, told CNN.
The sale resembled events that have taken place or have been blocked at other campuses across the country. But the Berkeley event captured national media attention, in part because it was timed to protest recent California legislation that, if signed into law by Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., would allow state universities to consider race, gender, ethnicity, and national origin in their admissions decisions.
Opponents of the bill, SB 185, say it would violate Proposition 209, an amendment to the California Constitution that bans the use of affirmative-action preference by public colleges and other state and local agencies. But supporters say the bill does not call for preferential treatment and is not unconstitutional.
As the Berkeley Republican group's bake sale was under way on Tuesday, other students held counterdemonstrations urging Governor Brown, a Democrat, to sign the bill. The student government set up a phone bank where students could call the governor's office to express their support for the bill.
The bake sale was denounced by many as racist soon after it was advertised. One student told CNN she was "appalled" not only by the different prices, but also by the implied ranking of races. "It trivializes the struggles that people have been through and their histories," she said.
In a written response to such complaints, Mr. Lewis, the group's president, agreed that the event was inherently racist, but he said that was the point. "It is no more racist than giving an individual an advantage in college admissions based solely on their race or gender," he wrote.
The university is not taking an official position on the bill, Steve Montiel, a spokesman for the system's Office of the President, told The Daily Californian. "We support its underlying goal and would welcome additional tools to achieve a more diverse student body," he said, "but we are neutral."

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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

EBSCOhost® Becomes the Platform for eBooks


More than 300,000 eBooks and Audiobooks From Top Publishers and Introduces Multiple Access Options

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A List Apart: Findings from the Web Design Survey, 2010


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Tomorrow's Professor: Organizing Higher Education for Collaboration: A Guide for Campus Leaders


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Teacher Learning Community Upcoming Webinars Sept-Dec 2011

  • No More Excuses! It’s Time To Overcome Your Techphobia!
  • Flip Your Classroom with Online Discussions
  • Break Down Classroom Walls with Social Media and Online Tools
  • Using Your iPad to Break Free: Don’t Be Chained to Your Desktop Computer
  • Digital Storytelling using the iPad
  • Save Time and Simplify Your Grading
  • Supporting Bloom’s Taxonomy in a Digital World
  • Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock...Saving Time with Innovative Web Tools
  • The Right Tools for the Right Job: 30 Tools in 50 Minutes – Round Two!
  • Lessons That Talk: Create Differentiated and Online Lessons with Screencasts and Audio
  • Digital Storytelling using the iPad
  • Google Sites: Web Sites Made Simple
  • Keynote Kickoff: Interactive Sites for Your Interactive Whiteboard
  • Make Google Forms Work for You!
  • Beyond Pen and Paper: Online Notetaking with the iPad
  • 3 Keys to Having a Successful Blog
  • 6 Steps to Becoming a Viral Educator
  • Improved Engagement and Better Behavior: Just a Few Clicks Away!
  • Screencasts Made Easy: Create and Share Your Own Tutorials
  • 5 Steps to Begin Harnessing the Power of Cells in Ed Today (Even if They Are Banned!)

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Faculty Handbook for Online Teaching and Learning

Written by Page Wolf
Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning
College of Lake County
Grayslake, IL
Fall 2003
With contributions by: Carole Bulakowski, Connie Bakker, Annette Bigham, Natalia Casper,
John North, and Penne Devery
A project of the College of Lake County’s Distance Learning Advisory Committee

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SUNO News: SUNO awarded grant to support retention

September 14, 2011


The University has been selected to participate as a protégé institution for the Wal-Mart AIHEC/HACU/NAFEO Student Success Collaborative. The project is a collaboration among the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), the Hispanic Association of College and Universities (HACU), and the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO). Combined, the minority-serving institutions educate more than one-third of all students of color in the United States according to the award letter SUNO received from NAFEO. SUNO will receive a total of $100,000 to assist in retention and graduation rate project implementation.


“We cannot thank Wal-Mart and NAFEO enough for paying attention to such a critical issue,” said Dr. Victor Ukpolo. “These funds will help us take a nice leap forward in our efforts to better serve our students in their respective efforts to obtain their degrees from SUNO.”


Dr. Donna Grant, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Enrollment Services said, “Every little bit helps in our retention efforts. For the average person to understand the impact of this kind of grant, we would like them to consider some of the everyday challenges our students have in staying in school such as money for books, which can cost hundreds of dollars, on top of tuition, housing and other fees. So this kind of funding helps support our efforts to provide financial resources for deserving student who have challenges.”
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Howard University News: UNCF President Lomax Challenges Howard, HBCUs




By Olivia Drake

University News
September 23, 2011
WASHINGTON – Michael L. Lomax, Ph.D., president and chief executive of the United Negro College Fund, was the keynote speaker and received a Doctor of Humane Letters at the University’s 144th Convocation. Lomax emphasized the importance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the United States.


“We cannot afford to lose any more black colleges,” Lomax said. “[They] need to all perform at the top of their game.”


As UNCF president, Lomax leads the nation’s largest private provider of scholarships and other educational support to minority and low-income students. Lomax encouraged administrators, faculty and the student body to promote civility and dialogue within academia.


“Great colleges must not be complacent,” said Lomax, the former president of Dillard University. “They must welcome the struggle to become stronger.”


He lauded Howard as a leader among HBCUs. He said current alumni and students at the event, as future alumni, would have to step up as donors to “become our alma mater’s funder of first resort.”


“Howard was there for you, now Howard needs you,” Lomax said.


Lomax had oversight of 450 programs at UNCF, including the UNCF Gates Millennium Scholars Program, a $1.6 billion project whose 14,000 low-income minority recipients have a 90 percent college graduation rate. Lomax also launched the UNCF Institute for Capacity Building, which seeks to strengthen 39 private historically black colleges and universities around the country.


Prior to joining the UNCF, Lomax served as president of Dillard University in New Orleans for seven years and a professor of literature at Morehouse and Spelman Colleges. He was also chairman of the Fulton County Commission in Atlanta, the first African American elected to that post.


WHUT-TV will broadcast the Opening Convocation on Sunday, Oct. 16 at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.




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University Business: Why You Should Root for College to Go Online (Opinion)


In early August, Apollo Group, parent company of the University of Phoenix, made an acquisition that is small compared to the billion-dollar deals common to high-tech industries. Apollo paid less than $100 million to acquire Carnegie Learning, a provider of computer-based math tutorials. Such technology acquisitions are rare in higher education, to say the least. Yet this seemingly small deal is a signal of disruptive revolution in higher education.



Carnegie Learning is the creation of computer and cognitive scientists from Carnegie Mellon University. Their math tutorials draw from cutting-edge research about the way students learn and what motivates them to succeed academically. These scientists have created adaptive computer tutorials that meet students at their individual level of understanding and help them advance via the kinds of exercises they personally find most engaging and effective. The personalization and sophistication is hard for even an expert human tutor to match. It is a powerful, affordable adjunct to classroom instruction, as manifest by Carnegie Learner's user base of more than 600,000 secondary students in over 3,000 schools nationwide.


Some of Apollo's potential uses of this software are immediately apparent. It will prove a boon to the hundreds of thousands of University of Phoenix students who take math courses in almost all of its programs of study. Also, the underlying learning and computer science technology are likely to be applied to math-related courses, such as those in economics, finance, and accounting that the University of Phoenix offers its undergraduate business and MBA students.


Then there are the strategic marketing possibilities. The secondary school students who have come to value and rely on Carnegie Learning's math tutorials are future college students. They might not think now of the University of Phoenix for college. But Sony discovered something interesting about the teenagers who bought its inexpensive pocket-size transistor radios and Walkman cassette tape players: they grew up to be faithful consumers of its larger stereos and television sets. Initially, Magnavox and RCA didn't worry about the low-profit-margin products for kids. In hindsight, they should have.


Tuesday, September 27, 2011
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Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org: Is Facebook the new Study Hall?


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Monday, September 26, 2011

Innovative Educators Webinar: The Nuts And Bolts Of Learning Community Development And Implementation


Speaker SpotlightTuesday, October 25 ~ 1:00-2:30pm EDT Webinar Description

"As designers of educational experiences for students, faculty and administrators are using learning communities to integrate the intellectual and social aspects of learning. Learning communities are effective in promoting student learning and in fostering faculty development and renewal."
~ Anne Goodsell Love, Ph.D.


Webinar Presenter





Growth in learning communities has increased steadily in the past two decades. Colleges and universities of all sizes and types have implemented them for some or all of their students, usually with the aim of improving student learning, improving students' experiences in and out of the classroom, providing integration of ideas and disciplines across campuses, and increasing rates of student retention and degree completion. Colleges have turned to learning communities as an effective way to change the behaviors and organization of students, faculty, and student affairs professionals such that they work together to form a more holistic learning experience than what is experienced when courses are taken in isolation from one another.


This webinar will provide an overview of learning communities and take participants step-by-step through a planning process for learning community development. Participants will learn how to create a learning community development team and will walk away with a clear idea of how to build a timeline for implementation. Our expert speaker will also provide resources for continued work after the webinar.


Objectives



Participants will:
Identify reasons for Learning Community development
Develop goals, objectives, and timeline for Learning Community implementation
Identify people to be on Learning Community development team
Learn about resources for Learning Community development and implementation


Who is the Speaker?

Anne Goodsell Love is Associate Provost for Assessment at Wagner College, working with students and faculty to support learning in and out of the classroom, and the coordination of college-wide assessment efforts. Previously at Wagner she was Dean of the College, overseeing residence life, health services, academic advising, co-curricular programs and student organizations, judicial affairs, and leadership development.


In addition to her work at Wagner, for the past ten years Dr. Love has been Co-Director of the Atlantic Center for Learning Communities, a regional leadership network dedicated to supporting colleges and universities in their development of learning communities and other learner-centered pedagogies.


Before coming to Wagner College, Dr. Love was Assistant Dean of University College at The University of Akron. There, she had oversight for orientation and the first-year seminar, academic advising, learning communities, developmental programs, and students on academic probation.


Dr. Love is the editor of Collaborative Learning: A Sourcebook for Higher Education, co-author of Enhancing Student Learning: Intellectual, Social, and Emotional Integration, and has published articles and made many presentations related to the implementation and assessment of learning communities. She earned a B.S. in psychology at St. Lawrence University, a M.Ed. in Counselor Education from The Pennsylvania State University, and a Ph.D. in Higher Education from Syracuse University.
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U.S. History: 10 Speeches and News Conferences by JFK Now Available on iTunes via U. of North Dakota


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Inside Higher Ed Career Advice: Ph.Do Journal Submissions

September 2, 2011
By Eszter Hargittai

Publishing one's own work is essential in most academic areas. While some fields continue to put a lot of weight on books, writing journal articles is important in an increasing number of areas. The logistics of journal submission are not obvious. Nonetheless they are yet another aspect of academic professionalization that seems to go unaddressed in many graduate programs. In this piece I cover how you go about picking an appropriate journal for your paper and how you prepare it for submission. The assumption is that you have prepared a manuscript that you and your mentors feel is ready for consideration by a journal. (In some disciplines, refereed conference proceedings are more the norm. I suspect much of what is below applies to those cases as well.) MORE
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Teacher Learning Community: Hidden Webtools_11 Tools for 2011


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AJC.com: TSU Freedom Riders get hall of fame nod; just wanted to do the right thing

September 22, 2011


By Ernie Suggs


Growing up in Nashville, in the deeply segregated South of the 1940s and 1950s, it was almost a given that Pauline Knight-Ofosu would stay in town and attend Tennessee State University.


Most of her relatives -- except a brother who got a full scholarship to Fisk University, also in Nashville -- had attended TSU, and both schools served as beacons for black achievement.


“When I was growing up, an HBCU was really the most prestigious place for anybody to work in or come out of,” Knight-Ofosu said. “There was a time when our professionals were comprised of teachers, undertakers, people at the post office and maybe people who owned barber and beauty shops. We didn’t have that many people – because of segregation -- who could express their talents the way they could be expressed. But HBCUs were that place.”


Knight-Ofosu 's stay at TSU would prove to be eventful. While her classmates, the Tigerbelles were becoming legends after winning several gold medals in track & field at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, she was risking her life – and her education -- as a Freedom Rider, traversing the South to bring attention to segregated facilities.


On Friday, she and 15 other members of the TSU Freedom Riders – including Atlanta residents William Harbour and Larry Hunter -- will be inducted into the National Black College Hall of Fame.


“It is a heartwarming thing for all of us to be honored by the people who we have admired all of our lives,” said Knight-Ofosu, a retired biologist from the Environmental Protection Agency, who now lives in Rex. “We weren’t doing it for whatever it might bring us. It was hard to watch your mother and father -- who deserved to be treated like citizens – being treated unjustly. That was wrong and if something is going on you don’t like stop complaining and do something.”


The TSU Freedom Riders are being inducted specifically for the contributions they made in college. In 1961 they were at the forefront as early Freedom Riders, along with students from other Nashville colleges like Fisk and Meharry Medical School.


Braving beatings and death, TSU students who were arrested were expelled from school, before suing for re-admission.


“We were thought of as bad people, because we railed against the establishment in a way they had never seen. The sit-ins were one thing, but the Freedom Rides were on a whole different level,” Hunter said. “I am happy about this honor, but the original intent was not to be inducted into a hall of fame. It was to set this country on a path to where it is now -- moving to a society that is not biased towards anyone."


The induction is the highlight of the 26th Annual Hall of Fame Weekend Conference, which shines a spotlight on the history and importance of historically black colleges. Other activities include a lectures, a recruitment fair, a golf tournament, a gospel choir competition and queens pageant.


Other inductees into the hall of fame Friday include:
Two Spelman College graduates and Atlanta residents Pearl Cleage in Arts & Entertainment and Brenda Hill Cole in Law; Lonnie Bartley of Fort Valley State University in Athletics; Johnnie B. Booker of Hampton University in Business; Ruth Crawford of Paine College in Community Service; Henry Tisdale of Claflin College in Education; the Rev. Charles B. Jackson of Benedict College in Faith & Theology; and Henry M. Michaux of North Carolina Central University in Government.

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Howard University News: Howard Receives $2.2 Million to Strengthen Health Workforce Diversity


September 22, 2011


Award helps students from disadvantaged backgrounds enter health professions


WASHINGTON – The Howard University Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP), a collaborative effort by three of the University’s colleges to create a more diverse healthcare workforce, has been awarded $2.2 million by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).


The University will receive $737,693 annually for three years to attract students to the health care profession beginning in kindergarten and ultimately train them to become physicians and dentists. The first year grant is part of $9.7 million in awards HRSA awarded to 14 educational institutions recently to increase diversity in the health professions workforce through the HCOP.


The money is to help develop an educational pipeline for economically and educationally disadvantaged students, and prepare them for careers in the health professions.


At Howard, the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Medicine and the College of Dentistry will work jointly. Dr. Robert E. Taylor, who recently stepped aside as dean of the College of Medicine, was instrumental in securing the grant and is the program director.


“The HCOP grants allows us to continue the essential mission of the colleges, which is to train promising students who desire to become physicians or dentists but who are from disadvantaged or underserved backgrounds,” Taylor said. “This program is so important that before we received this grant, we supported it through funds from donation to the medical school.”


About one of every 10 students graduating from the medical and dental schools will benefit from the grant, Taylor said.


Dr. Mark S. Johnson, the new dean of the College of Medicine, said the program fits perfectly with the college’s mission to serve the underserved.


“In order for us to expand the pipeline of disadvantaged students who are prepared to enter college and subsequently careers in the health sciences, we must provide programming such as that which is included in the HCOP program,” Johnson said. “We are proud to have been selected to continue our work in this area.”


Howard’s HCOP brings together three of the University’s colleges, selected K-12 schools of the Washington metropolitan area, and the D.C. Area Health Education Center. The program is designed to increase the pool of qualified medical and dental school applicants, facilitate their entry into professional school and ultimately increase access to quality health care for communities that are medically underserved.


The Center for Preprofessional Education in the College of Arts and Sciences will expose K-12 students to health professions careers.The center will provide science knowledge enhancement activities for disadvantaged students in grades 7-12 and an academic summer enrichment program for underserved pre-medical and pre-dental students prior to their freshman year at Howard University.


It will provide assistance to disadvantaged college juniors, seniors and graduates with the Medical College Admissions Test and the Dental Admissions Test.


Additionally, the College of Dentistry and the College of Medicine will offer disadvantaged dental and medical applicants who have been granted conditional acceptance a strong program of retention counseling and mentoring designed to enhance their academic success.


“This grant continues and sustains our efforts in increasing the pipeline of under represented minorities young men and women with outstanding potential for success as future health care providers,” said Dr. Leo Rouse, dean of the College of Dentistry. “This allows us to develop the next generation of health care providers who will continue our mission of serving the underserved.”
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Dr. Mona Lisa Saloy at the Louisiana Book Festival October 29, 2011 9am-5pm Baton Rouge, LA



Red Beans and Ricely YoursDr. Mona Lisa Saloy is Professor of English and founder of the Creative Writing Program at Dillard University. Saloy’s new verse appears in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume IV: Louisiana, 12/2011; the Pan African Literary Journal, Fall 2010. Her essay, “Disasters, Nature, and Poetry” is in Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, University of Georgia Press. Red Beans and Ricely Yours: Poems won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize in poetry.



SCHEDULE
9 AM – 9:45 AM
House Committee Room 1
Reading
Louisiana's Poet Laureate Presents Louisiana Voices: A Poetry Panel
Book Signing
11:15 AM - NOON
_________________________________________________________
Dr. Mona Lisa Saloy

Author, Folklorist
Professor of English
Humanities Department
College of Arts & Sciences
Dillard University
2601 Gentilly Boulevard
New Orleans, LA 70122-3097
Cell: 504-343-0689
Office: 504-816-4354
FAX: 504-816-4381

"Every person in the world is born to do something unique and something distinctive. And if he or she does not do it, it will never be done."


----Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays (1884-1984), Scholar & President, Morehouse College


www.monalisaslaoy.com
saloy1@aol.com
msaloy@dillard.edu


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Dillard University Participates in the 24th Annual 2011 UNCF Walk for Education



The 24th Annual 2011 UNCF Walk for Education is scheduled for this Saturday, 10/01/2011 at Audubon Park. We have over 300 students signed up for this fun filled event, and we want you all to be a part of the fun!



UNCF will host a Kick Off party on September 28th at the Audubon Tea Room from 5:00pm to 8:00pm (See Attached). Faculty and Staff are invited to attend this event. By simply clicking this link http://give.uncf.org/site/TR?pg=team&fr_id=1660&team_id=15463 , you can go to the Faculty/Staff walk page and join the TEAM in less than five minutes. If you prefer, you can write a check to UNCF NEW ORLEANS for $30.00. The Development Office (Rosenwald #222) will be collecting those checks and going to various departments to encourage everyone to participate. Thanks for your continued dedication and support of our Dillard students, and special thanks to those who have already joined TEAM DU.


Sincerely,
Travis Chase
Ext. 4713
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Amy Porterfield: 6 Steps to Instantly Connect With Your Blog Readers



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Sunday, September 25, 2011

360 Action Verbs for Writing Student Learning Outcome Statements in Higher Education


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Friday, September 23, 2011

YouTube: Concept Scope and Features of Distance Education


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YouTube: The Ten Guiding Principles of Distance Education


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Campus Technology Free Podcast: Blackboard Collaborate: Helping higher education do more with less



09/01/11

In this podcast, Rajeev Arora, vice president of marketing and strategy for Blackboard Collaborate, explains how Blackboard Collaborate can help higher learning institutions tackle Web conferencing, voice authoring and instant messaging, and how the solution helps colleges and universities stretch IT budgets farther than ever before.
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Learning Online Info: Three Valuable Web Tools for Improved Online Learning

September 12, 2011 in Guest,Resources,Tools,Web 2.0


As the web continues to evolve and mature, the tools that expand humanity’s options for learning and knowledge grow exponentially. If you think back just 15 short years, answering a quick question about the world required cracking open a dusty old encyclopedia. There was a 50/50 chance that the information it contained was still correct, and you could never rely on encyclopedias to learn about new or breaking information.


Today, to learn something new, we simply Google it or check with others on Twitter, Facebook, Quora, etc. Rarely, when we need a quick answer, do we pull a book off the shelf. These online tools and communities are becoming so efficient at distributing fresh, quality information, that society has completely changed its go-to sources for knowledge.


What I’d like to share today are three online tools that are real game-changers in terms of learning and enhancing your knowledge. These websites span areas such as English grammar, foreign languages, and computer literacy. Whether you use them independently, or as an enhancement to existing online learning you may already be taking, diving into each of these tools can be very valuable for gaining insight and experience into specific topics.

Grammar Improvement

The first tool that is a regular go-to for me is Grammarly. Grammarly is a spelling, grammar, and plagiarism tool all rolled up into a single interface. In terms of usability, it couldn’t be simpler. Simply paste text into the window and click ‘start’. What you get back is the standard spelling and grammar issues, but also rich information on your writing style, tips for improvement, and very advanced reporting on your work. With online learning, this is a great tool to be your final ‘proof reader’ before submitting a document.

Language Learning
Have you heard of LiveMocha? Imagine a social network like Facebook, except instead of connecting with friends, you are connecting with people who want to communicate in other languages.


For example, lets say you speak English but are learning Spanish. The rate at which you learn the new language would skyrocket if you were continually communicating with someone who spoke Spanish fluently. Now, there is very likely someone out there who speaks Spanish fluently, and is trying to learn English. Doesn’t it make all the sense in the world for you both to work on your language learning together?


This is the basic premise behind LiveMocha. In addition to connecting people who want to help each other improve their learning of a second language, there are also training modules, games, and other tools that help you learn faster than just a textbook and translation dictionary.


Online Training Courses
There’s nothing like a good video training course when you are trying to learn something technical. While lectures and labs help, sometimes you just really need to see someone else do it (and have a rewind button handy!). More and more people are using Lynda.com to learn and become proficient with a wide-range of technical skills. From Excel and Photoshop to PHP coding and database development, if you are trying to learn something technical, there is a very good chance that Lynda.com has a course that will help you along your way.


These tools are just three that we feel breathe new life into the options for learning a skill. The days of encyclopedias, textbooks, and lectures being the only way to learn are long gone. These great social and rich-media technologies are empowering students to learn in new and innovative ways that didn’t exist just a few short years ago!


Brian Patterson is a web and IT consultant, passionate about new and innovative technologies. From working with federal agencies on large enterprise applications, to small businesses with small websites, his experience has run the gamut in the IT world. Brian is a partner at MangoCo, an web consulting agency.
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Tomorrow's Professor: Organizing Higher Education for Collaboration: A Guide for Campus Leaders

Folks:


The posting below is a review by Connie D. Foster of the book, Organizing Higher Education for Collaboration: A Guide for Campus Leaders, by Adrianna J. Kezar and Jaime Lester. The review appeared in April/June, 2010 issue of Planning for Higher Education 38(3): 66-68. Copyright © 1998-2010 by Society for College and University Planning ( www.scup.org ). Reprinted with permission. Planning for Higher Education book reviews appear at:( www.scup.org/phe ).


Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
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Dillard University Library Blog: The Chronicle of Higher Education: A Philosophy of...



By Rob Jenkins

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Dillard University CTLAT Workshop: Promotion and Tenure at Dillard University


11am-1:00pm
September 30th, 2011 
Kearny Hall West/Working Lunch
Presenters: Drs. Mona Lisa Saloy & Keith Weismar
Facilitators: Drs. Eartha Johnson and Steve Buddington

Dillard University Promotion and Tenure Timetable 2011-2012

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Request for Proposals - Sophomore Summer 2012 Policy Institute: UNCF Special Programs Corporation (UNCFSP)


The UNCF Special Programs Corporation (UNCFSP) seeks a partner organization or higher education institution to administer the Sophomore Summer Policy Institute (SSPI) component of its Institute for International Public Policy Fellowship Program. UNCFSP administers the Institute under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Education. As the first of six Fellowship Program components, SSPI provides an introduction to international affairs concepts and practices to a cohort of 25 student Fellows who have just completed their sophomore year of college. The 25 Fellows are selected through a national competition. Upon acceptance to the fellowship, new Fellows begin the program with a seven-week residential academic program.


The SSPI will introduce Fellows to the basics of international policy development, foreign affairs, study abroad, cultural competence, careers in these fields, and options for graduate study. To assist Fellows in putting what they learn at SSPI into context, the awardee will coordinate a field experience in Washington, DC called the Study Mission, which exposes Fellows to a variety of international affairs organizations, including government agencies and nonprofit organizations/NGOs. The SSPI program runs annually from early June through mid July. Please visit http://www.uncfsp.org/iipp-sspi  to download the full announcement.


_______________________________________


Nicholas M. Bassey, Director


Institute for International Public Policy


UNCF Special Programs Corporation


6402 Arlington Boulevard, Suite 600


Falls Church, VA 22042


www.uncfsp.org


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Diverse Issues in Higher Education: Black Meeting House in Boston Restored


September 22, 2011


By Bob Salsberg


BOSTON — The nation's oldest existing Black church building, where the abolitionist movement gathered steam in the 19th century and where the first Black Civil War regiment had its roots, is nearing completion of a restoration project done with the help of $4 million in federal stimulus funds.


Gov. Deval Patrick on Monday toured the renovated African Meeting House, a three-story brick building constructed in 1806 in Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood and standing just blocks from the Massachusetts Statehouse.


The meeting house, a national historic landmark, is “an extraordinary piece of our Commonwealth's history, the history of African-American people and the history of freedom in the western world,” said Patrick, the state's first Black governor.


During his tour, the governor was shown examples of the painstaking detail that went into the project, including the restoration or replication of all original pews, wall finishes and cast-iron posts in the 1,500-square-foot building.


John Waite, whose Albany, N.Y.-based architectural firm specializes in historical preservation, said paint chips were examined through a high-powered microscope and chemically analyzed in an effort to determine the color of the original paint on the walls so it could be duplicated in the restoration.


The site is scheduled to reopen to the public Dec. 6, the 205th anniversary of the founding of the meeting house, said Beverly Morgan-Welch, executive director of the Museum of African American History.


“The meeting house was used, of course, as a place of worship, but also as a place of school, for lectures, for music, opera even,” Welch said. “But, most importantly, to gather around the discussions to bring slavery to an end in this nation.”


“When you walk inside and walk into that sanctuary, you're going to walk directly up the aisle where Frederick Douglass walked and talked about what needed to be done to end slavery,” she said.


“On the very same floor boards,” Patrick added.


Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison were among the leading abolitionists who spoke at the meeting house and helped form the New England Anti-Slavery Society. Leaders later met there to help create the all-Black 54th Massachusetts Regiment, which fought in the Civil War and was chronicled in the 1989 film “Glory.”


About half of the $9.5 million cost of the restoration came from private donations, Welch said. The remainder was provided by the National Park Service, including the $4 million in stimulus funds.


Among the surprises discovered during the project was a chimney dating back to the time when the building was heated by cast-iron stoves; the chimney had stayed hidden behind a wall for decades.


Sold late in the 19th century, the building housed a synagogue until 1972, when it was purchased by the Museum of African American History.
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Thursday, September 22, 2011

Diverse Issues in Higher Education: Federal Student Loan Default Rate Rises Sharply

September 13, 2011
by Jamaal Abdul-Alim


WASHINGTON, D.C. - The federal student loan default rate for borrowers who entered repayment in 2009 shot up to 8.8 percent from 7 percent for the previous year’s cohort—a disquieting trend that Obama administration officials attributed to the state of the economy and expansion of the for-profit college sector.


“We think there are two trends behind this default rate that are worth highlighting,” James Kvaal, deputy undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Education, said Monday during a press call.


“One is that borrowers are struggling in the economy,” Kvaal said, noting what he referred to as the “strong relationship” between student loan default rates and unemployment rates, which have remained above 9 percent for most of the past two years.


Kvaal also said the increase in the number of defaulters was due to the growth in the number of for-profit colleges, whose students tend to default on their federal student loans more often than those who attended private non-profit or public institutions.


According to data released Monday by the Education Department, the number of for-profit schools increased from 2,118 in 2008 to 2,147 in 2009—a rise of 29 schools—whereas public colleges increased by only nine schools to 1,627, and private colleges increased by four schools to 1,706 during the same period.


“Many of those (for-profit) colleges offer excellent, innovative programs,” Kvaal said in what has become the administration’s standard way of not branding the entire sector as being ineffective, “but we also see disproportionate federal default rates among students enrolled in those programs.”


Indeed, the default rate at for-profit colleges shot up higher from the 2008 to 2009 cohorts than it did for the same cohorts at other colleges. Specifically, the default rate at for-profits went from 11.6 percent for the 2008 cohort to 15 percent for the 2009 cohort, whereas the default rate only went from 6 percent to 7.2 percent at public institutions, and from 4 percent to 4.6 percent at private, non-profit institutions.


The 8.8 percent of borrowers who defaulted on their loans represent about 320,000 of the 3.6 million borrowers who entered repayment in 2009. The 8.8 percent figure is the highest the default rate has been since the 1997 cohort, which also had an 8.8 percent default rate. The rate eventually went down and fluctuated between 4 percent and 6 percent for subsequent cohorts in the following years but started inching up again in 2007 when it reached 6.7 percent.


Brian Moran, interim CEO, President and General Counsel at the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, which represents the for-profit college sector, said the higher default rates were disappointing but noted that the rates have gone up in all sectors. He also called attention to the role that the economy plays in default rates and sought to focus attention on the future rather than the current state of affairs.


“While default rate calculations are important, to a certain extent this is moving forward by is looking in the rear view mirror,” Moran said in a statement. “Despite today’s disappointing news, we should remain focused on the overarching mission, which is to help individuals rise as high as their talent, ability and ambition will take them.”


Debbie Cochrane, program director at The Institute for College Access &


Success (TICAS), which houses the Project on Student Debt, said the for-profit sector’s role in the default rate increases are too glaring to overlook.


"Certainly, the thing that stands out to us the most is the growth in the for-profit sector and the disproportionate rate at which their borrowers are defaulting,” Cochrane said in an interview with Diverse. “For profits not only have the largest default rate but the largest increase in default rates from the previous year.”


In a statement, Cochrane said that the two-year cohort default rates “are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to demonstrating the extent of borrower difficulty.”


“Research indicates that most student loan borrowers who default do so after the two-year window is over,” Cochrane’s said in her statement.


Along those lines, Kvaal, of the Education Department, said the department will begin next year to calculate default rates based on three years instead of two in order to get a better sense of how many students are defaulting on their loans.


“We know there are significant numbers of students who default after that two-year period,” Kvaal said. “We think a three-year rate will be a better measure.”


Asked by Diverse for an ethnic or racial breakdown of student loan defaults, Kvaal said the department did not have data to do such a breakdown.


In terms of institutions, the default rate problem did not hit HBCUs—at least not to the point where they would be threatened with the loss of federal funds.


"As of September 2011, all 98 eligible HBCUs have official FY 2009 cohort default rates that fall below regulatory thresholds,” an Education Department web page states. It noted that only one HBCU is subject to cohort default rate sanctions or the consequent loss of Title IV student financial assistance program eligibility.
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The Brown Daily Herald Ed News Round Up: Tupac Lives on in Libraries


September 22, 2011
Fifteen years after his death, rap icon Tupac Shakur has been honored by the opening of a collection in his name at the Atlanta University Center, a consortium of four historically black colleges and universities.


The collection includes 30 boxes of Shakur's written and video work, personal letters and memorabilia as well as work by Shakur's family members and collaborators, according to the center's press release. Artifacts within the collection date from 1969 to 2008.


The collection is intended for research purposes, according to the press release. It is housed in the Robert W. Woodruff Library in Atlanta.


Students celebrated the opening of the collection at a block party Sept. 13, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution blog post.
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Penn State Faculty Center for Teaching and Instructional Technology: The Power of Hybrid and Online Teaching & Learning


By CAROL A. MCQUIGGAN on May 16, 2011 9:20 AM

A Regional Colloquy facilitated by Penn State Harrisburg and Penn State Erie, and sponsored by The Schreyer Institute for Teaching Effectiveness, was held May 11, 2011 (see schedule details). The Harrisburg location had 60 attendees from 10 campuses, a morning keynote, and 10 concurrent sessions. Below is a listing of the sessions held at Harrisburg, including the morning keynote, and the luncheon keynote from Erie, with links to the presentations.



Morning Keynote at Harrisburg: Best Practices and Practical Strategies for Designing and Facilitating More Effective Hybrid & Online Courses by Susan Ko (Presentation file: Ko-BestPracticesandPracticalStrategiesPresentation.pdf)



Session 1A: Examining the Quality of Course Delivery: A Guide for Conducting Online Peer Reviews by Ann Taylor (Presentation file: TaylorPeerReview.pdf)



Session 1B: Social Media and Higher Education by Shannon Ritter (Presentation file: ShannonRitterSocialMedia.pptx)



Session 2A: Using the "From the Field" Recorded Interviews in an Online Introductory Course by Barb Sims



Session 2B: Nested Upside Down Traffic Light for Communicating the Learning Objectives of a Course by Emilia Kenney (Presentation file: KenneyPresentation.pdf)



Session 2C: If You Digitize It Will They Read? Digital Textbooks in the Classroom by Peter Eberle, Bill Gardner, and Tony Hoos (Presentation file: DigitalTextbooksHarrisburg0511R.pdf)



Session 3A: Learning by Doing What Works On-Line by Vera Cole (Presentation file: VERACOLELearningByDoing.pdf)



Session 3B: Teacher-Student Interactions in Hybrid and Online Courses: An Echo Analysis by Bing Ran (Presentation file: BingRanEchoAnalysis.pdf)



Luncheon Keynote: Teaching and Learning in the Cloud by Alexandra Pickett (Page of links from her talk: AlexLinks.doc)



Session 4A: The Nexus of Learning for Digital Natives: The Emergence of Digital Learning Materials (DLMs) & Open Educational Resources (OERs) by John Shank (Presentation file: JohnShank2011.pdf)



Session 5A: The Video Learning Network Project: Teaching Hybrid Courses Through Video Conferencing Technology by Lynne Johnson and Dean Shaffer (Presentation file: VLN_presentation_colloquy.pdf)



Session 5B: Using VoiceThread in Online Courses by Jeremy Plant and Wenyi Ho (Presentation file: UsingVoiceThread.pdf)



Tags:colloquy,digital textbooks,hybrid,interviews,online,peer review,social media,VLN,VoiceThread
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