The Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Campus: 6 Top Tech Trends on the Horizon for Higher Education

February 8, 2011, 7:14 pm

By Ben Wieder

Mobile devices are one year away from transforming education. For the third straight year.

The 2011 Horizon Report, an annual look at technology trends affecting higher education, points to mobile devices as one of six technologies to watch. Of the other five trends, game-based learning and learning analytics—using data to track student progress—are new additions for 2011.

The report, produced by the New Media Consortium and Educause, notes that mobile devices have been listed before, but it says that resistance by many schools continues to slow the full integration of mobile devices into higher education.

Game-based learning is poised to see greater use within the next two to three years, the report says, and will follow one of two tracks. Game-playing itself may be used to develop decision-making and problem-solving abilities, as well as leadership skills, or educational content embedded into games can teach students as they play. The report points to multiplayer role-playing games as offering particular promise for higher education.

Learning analytics, the other new trend, is further down the line, with the report’s panel of 43 experts pegging its adoption as four to five years away. Using the growing amount of data available about students, learning analytics would allow instructors to tailor education more specifically to each student’s needs and make curricular changes on the fly. It also could help instructors gauge how well students are learning. Beyond traditional measures of assessment, such as assignments and tests, educators could look at online social interactions, discussion posts, and how students access information on Web sites to develop a more detailed, and timely, picture of a student’s understanding of course material. Challenges to adoption include incorporating information coming from a variety of sources and in different formats and concerns about privacy and profiling.

Of the trends that have been listed in other years, the use of electronic books is the one most likely to affect higher education in the next year, the report notes. While e-books have steadily grown in popularity among consumers, the report says adoption by the academic community was slowed by issues such as a limited number of available titles, restrictive publishing models, and rights issues. Those are mostly resolved, the report says, but accessibility issues remain.

Augmented reality, the layering of virtual information over actual locations, such as an interactive, mobile-based museum map, is another up-and-coming trend. It is two to three years away from adoption in education. Finally, gesture-based computing, which incorporates human movement, is already useful in training simulations, the report notes, and could allow students to virtually practice surgery or flip through a centuries-old text. It’s already seen commercial applications in popular video game systems such as the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect for Xbox. But the report says it is probably four to five years away from widespread use by colleges.

To complement the report, which is in its ninth year of publication, the New Media Consortium this year designed the Horizon Project Navigator, a social-media site to offer access to the materials experts looked at in preparing the report and share information related to the identified technology trends.

The Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Campus: 6 Top Tech Trends on the Horizon for Higher Education

Magna Online Seminar: Ten Ways to Actively Engage Your Students

Bridge the Practical and the Theoretical

Event Date: 5/3/2011
Time: 1:00 pm Central
Length: 60 minutes
Event Registration $239 Register today and save! (Price increases to $264 after 4/26/11)

Seminar CD now includes bonus material:
PDF Transcript of online seminar
Facilitator’s Discussion Guide
Supplemental Materials
Power Point Handouts
Event Description
The Seminar CD ships 7-10 days following the live seminar.

Featured Presenter: Alice Cassidy, Ph.D.
Alice Cassidy is principal of Alice Cassidy In View Education and Professional Development. She has a B.Sc. (honours) from the University of Victoria, an M.Sc. from McGill University and a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia (UBC). For the past 15 years, she held leadership roles at UBC’s campus-wide Centre for Teaching and Academic Growth (TAG) and associated Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISoTL).

Since the mid-1980s, she has designed, directed, facilitated and/or taught a wide variety of educational programs, including the award-winning Shad Valley Program for high-school students; university courses in biology and education for undergraduate and graduate students; science education and natural history field classes; teaching and learning seminars for instructors at post-secondary institutions in BC, Ontario and China, and customized workshops for professionals in organizations in the community.

Her areas of focus include active and participatory learning, professional development for organizations, use of self-directed learning, problems and cases in real-world settings, instructional and narrative skills, and students as active collaborators in the scholarship of teaching and learning.

________________________________

We all want to help students learn. Decades of classic publications provide the foundation. Yet educators also seek practical applications–the nuts and bolts of working with an educational strategy in the classroom.

Ten Ways to Actively Engage Your Students, an audio online seminar set for Tuesday, May 3, blends the theoretical with the practical, and explores it all in light of growing interest in active learning.

In this seminar presenter Alice Cassidy, Ph.D., will draw from her more than 20 years of teaching and facilitating to link examples of active engagement with their theoretical basis and demonstrate potential benefits to students.

This seminar and its supplemental material, including over 50 web links and examples from multiple disciplines, will give you a large collection of searchable and linkable ideas you can start using in your next class.

Learning Objectives for You and Your Students

During this audio online seminar you’ll learn how to:

Use 10 techniques to actively engage your learners
Get to know your students early in the term and ‘break the ice’
Invite students to start some classes, building community and responsibility
Design in-class activities where students connect current events and issues to course material
Have students come to class having done pre-readings or other prep work
Hear student voices in class using quick, easy-to-use methods
Add creativity to your teaching repertoire
Receive valuable feedback from students at various points during the course
Explore over 50 techniques and web links, adapting many examples to your own discipline and context
Facilitating Participatory Learning

Alice Cassidy, Ph.D. is principal of In View Education and Professional Development, designing and leading workshops and seminars on teaching, learning and professional development. Cassidy’s background includes 15 years as the associate director of the Centre for Teaching and Academic Growth at the University of British Columbia. She served in leadership roles with the Educational Developers Caucus and taught undergraduate and graduate courses in both Education and Zoology for 15 years.

Active Learning for You

In this seminar Cassidy models what she teaches. Fully 80% of this audio online seminar with Adobe Connect is devoted to participatory learning activities, so you can start boosting student engagement in your next class.

Most of the 10 teaching techniques to promote active student engagement will be modeled through poll questions and chat. You’ll have a chance to share your background, ask questions, practice techniques and share your thoughts on using these strategies in your classes.

You’ll receive supplemental tools you can use to build student engagement, including:

A summary of all contributions made during the seminar
Web links to more examples, details and references
Questions for self-assessment
Sample documents
Questions for further discussion.
Who Should Attend

This seminar is designed for people interested in active learning and who want to improve, refine or build on their teaching skills. If you work in an educational institution or setting, this seminar can expand your teaching techniques. People in the following positions will particularly benefit from this seminar:

University and college instructors
Educational and faculty developers
Take It Campus-wide for One Low Fee

Helping students learn is everyone’s business in higher education, and thanks to Magna’s audio online seminar fee structure you can afford to invite almost everyone. Since fees are assessed on a per site basis–not per person–all those interested in promoting active learning can attend at one site for one low fee of $239.

You’ll even get a chance to play “Snowball”–one of Cassidy’s Ten Ways to Actively Engage Your Students–the way you would with your students.

The Discussion Guide for Facilitators

To help you boost student engagement, put the strategies you learned to work and find ways to share best practices, you’ll also get a copy of the Discussion Guide for Facilitators, just for being a participant in a Magna audio online seminar.

Magna Online Seminar: Ten Ways to Actively Engage Your Students

Reuters: 10 Laws of Social Media Marketing

By Susan Gunelius at Entrepreneur.com

Wed Feb 16, 2011 5:00am EST

Leveraging the power of content and social media marketing can help elevate your audience and customer base in a dramatic way. But getting started without any previous experience or insight could be challenging.

It's vital that you understand social media marketing fundamentals. From maximizing quality to increasing your online entry points, abiding by these 10 laws will help build a foundation that will serve your customers, your brand and -- perhaps most importantly -- your bottom line.

1. The Law of Listening
Success with social media and content marketing requires more listening and less talking. Read your target audience’s online content and join discussions to learn what’s important to them. Only then can you create content and spark conversations that add value rather than clutter to their lives.

2. The Law of Focus
It’s better to specialize than to be a jack-of-all-trades. A highly-focused social media and content marketing strategy intended to build a strong brand has a better chance for success than a broad strategy that attempts to be all things to all people.

3. The Law of Quality
Quality trumps quantity. It’s better to have 1,000 online connections who read, share and talk about your content with their own audiences than 10,000 connections who disappear after connecting with you the first time.

4. The Law of Patience
Social media and content marketing success doesn’t happen overnight. While it’s possible to catch lightning in a bottle, it’s far more likely that you’ll need to commit to the long haul to achieve results.

5. The Law of Compounding
If you publish amazing, quality content and work to build your online audience of quality followers, they’ll share it with their own audiences on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, their own blogs and more.

This sharing and discussing of your content opens new entry points for search engines like Google to find it in keyword searches. Those entry points could grow to hundreds or thousands of more potential ways for people to find you online.

6. The Law of Influence
Spend time finding the online influencers in your market who have quality audiences and are likely to be interested in your products, services and business. Connect with those people and work to build relationships with them.

If you get on their radar as an authoritative, interesting source of useful information, they might share your content with their own followers, which could put you and your business in front of a huge new audience.

7. The Law of Value
If you spend all your time on the social Web directly promoting your products and services, people will stop listening. You must add value to the conversation. Focus less on conversions and more on creating amazing content and developing relationships with online influencers. In time, those people will become a powerful catalyst for word-of-mouth marketing for your business.

8. The Law of Acknowledgment
You wouldn’t ignore someone who reaches out to you in person so don’t ignore them online. Building relationships is one of the most important parts of social media marketing success, so always acknowledge every person who reaches out to you.

9. The Law of Accessibility
Don’t publish your content and then disappear. Be available to your audience. That means you need to consistently publish content and participate in conversations. Followers online can be fickle and they won’t hesitate to replace you if you disappear for weeks or months.

10. The Law of Reciprocity
You can’t expect others to share your content and talk about you if you don’t do the same for them. So, a portion of the time you spend on social media should be focused on sharing and talking about content published by others.

Reuters: 10 Laws of Social Media Marketing

Dillard University English Writing Proficiency Examination Instructions Spring 2011

Dillard University English Writing Proficiency Examination Instructions Spring 2011

Dillard University Athletics: Breast Cancer Awareness and Senior Night at the Battlefield Feb.19th 2011

New Orleans - Dillard University’s Athletic Department will host its Annual Breast Cancer Awareness Night at its final home basketball game on The Battlefield, in Dent Hall, Saturday, February 19 versus Tougaloo College.

It will also be Senior Night for the men’s and women’s basketball teams. The men’s basketball team will acknowledge Senior’s Lance Bell, Briant Jones and Kenyon Harper. The women’s basketball team will acknowledge Senior Jasmine Archie. Senior’s Leon Drabo from Men’s Track and Field and Kristi Coleman from the DU Dance Team will also be acknowledged.

The Bleu Devil Athletic Department encourages all students, faculty and staff to attend the game wearing pink in support of the cause.

There will be a “DU Pink Contest”, which will recognize the student organization who wears the most creative pink attire. Participants in the “DU Pink Contest” will be judged at halftime of the men’s game.

The Lady Bleu Devils game will start at 5:00p.m. and the Bleu Devil Men’s game will follow at 7:00p.m.

MEN’S BASKETBALL
Dillard Bleu Devils Can't Overcome Slow Start, Lose to Loyola 88-75
Wed, Feb 9, 2011 - [Men's Basketball]
New Orleans, LA-The Dillard Bleu Devils battled to stay close with Loyola all night, but they were unable to overcome the hot shooting by the Wolfpack and lost 88-75.

Loyola (12-9) jumped out to an early 15-5 lead, using their size advantage against the Bleu Devils' quickness. Myron McGowan had 7 points in the first half points for the Bleu Devils. Jermille Fluker and Lance Theard contributed 5 points apiece for Dillard, who trailed 47-27 at halftime.
The Bleu Devils found their shooting touch in the second half, outscoring the Wolfpack 48-41, but the lead was just too much for them to overcome. The Bleu Devils finished the game with four players in double figures, led by Myron McGowan with 14 points and 6 rebounds. Jermille Fluker had 13 points and 3 assist for the Bleu Devils (6-13, 1-3). Briant Jones came off the bench and contributed 12 points and 4 rebounds. Loyola was led by Ryan Brock with 33 points and 8 rebounds.

The Bleu Devils will now focus their attention back towards conference play on Saturday, February 12th versus another inner-city rival, University of Southern at New Orleans at 7:00 p.m.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
Jazzmin Smith Voted GCAC Conference Player of the Week
Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 4:21 PM - [Women's Basketball]

Dillard University Athletics is proud to recognize that Lady Bleu Devil Jazzmin Smith was voted GCAC Women's Basketball Player of the Week ending February 13, 2011. Smith, a 5-11 sophomore from Lake Charles, LA was recognized for her outstanding performances versus Loyola University and Southern University at New Orleans last week. The Lady Bleu Devils team finished last week with a record of 1-1.
In a 75-72 loss to Loyola University, Jazzmin Smith had 17 points, 6 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 blocked shot, 2 steals and shot 7-10 from the free-throw line.

In a 73-69 upset victory over Southern-University at New Orleans, Smith tallied a double-double, 16 points, 11 rebounds and 5 assist.
For the week, Jazzmin Smith averaged 16.5 points, 8.5 rebounds, 3.0 assist and 1.0 steal per game. She also shot 73% from the field.


Lady Bleu Devils lose to Talladega College 60-49
Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 4:13 AM - [Women's Basketball]
Talladega, AL-The Dillard Lady Bleu Devils were unable to find their shooting rhythm in the second half and lost to the Talladega Lady Tornadoes 60-49. The game was a defensive struggle between the two teams from the beginning. The Lady Tornadoes jumped out to a 10-0 lead on the Lady Bleu Devils. The Lady Bleu Devils (11-15, 2-3) stormed backed with a 14-2 run to take a 14-12 lead late in the first half. The Lady Bleu Devils' defense forced 14 turnovers and held the Lady Tornadoes scoreless for over eight minutes in the first half. The Lady Bleu Devils led the Lady Tornadoes 25-21 at halftime. Ariel Mitchell led the Lady Bleu Devils with 10 points in the first half.

The Lady Bleu Devils struggled to score in the second half. There were four different lead changes and three ties in the second half. Talladega (9-16) took a 40-39 lead with 8:39 remaining in the game and the Lady Bleu Devils were unable to get any closer. Ariel Mitchell finished with a game-high 17 points, including 2-for-3 from three-point range. Ebony Richardson had 17 points for the Lady Tornadoes.
The Lady Bleu Devils will come back home for an important conference match-up on Saturday, February 15 against the Tougaloo Lady Bulldogs at 5:00p.m.

The Lady Bleu Devils can even their conference record at 3-3. It will be the final home game of the season for the Lady Bleu Devils. It will also be Breast Cancer Awareness Night and Senior Night for the Lady Bleu Devils.

Jazzmin Smith leads Lady Bleu Devils to Victory over SUNO Lady Knights
Sat, Feb 12, 2011 - [Women's Basketball]

New Orleans, LA-Jazzmin Smith had 16 points and 11 rebounds as the Dillard Lady Bleu Devils upset the SUNO Lady Knights 73-69 at the Castle. The Lady Bleu Devils dealt the Lady Knights only their second loss of the season. In what was by far the Lady Bleu Devils (11-14, 2-3) most impressive victory this season, they held SUNO (18-2, 3-2) down the entire game, using a combination of an effective offense and a pesky defense to defeat the Lady Knights.

The Lady Bleu Devils shot a 62 percent from the field in the first half, en route to a 35-30 halftime lead. The Lady Bleu Devils' pressure defense forced the Lady Knights to take a lot of tough shots in the first half and shoot only 44 percent from the field. Six Lady Bleu Devils' players scored in the first half. Jazzmin Smith had 11 first half points and 5 rebounds. Ariel Mitchell contributed 6 points and 3 rebounds. Priscella Booker had an outstanding all around first half with 6 points, 2 rebounds, 2 assist and 2 blocked shots.

The Lady Bleu Devils clamped down on defense in even more in the second half, forcing the Lady Knights to only shoot 39% from the field. The Lady Bleu Devils maintained the lead throughout the second half and were able to seal the upset victory with clutch free throws in the end. Jazzmin Smith's double-double led the Lady Bleu Devils. Priscilla Booker finished with 15 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assist and 3 blocked shots. Ariel Mitchell and Jasmine Bradley had 10 points apiece for the Lady Bleu Devils.
The Lady Bleu Devils will now travel to Alabama on Tuesday, February 15 to take on the Talladega Lady Tornadoes. Tip-off is at 5:00 p.m.

Lady Bleu Devils squander lead late, lose in overtime to Loyola
Wed, Feb 9, 2011 - [Women's Basketball]
New Orleans, LA-Ariel Mitchell had an outstanding performance of 29 points, 5 rebounds and 2 blocked shots, but it was not enough as the Lady Bleu Devils lost a tough game to the Loyola Wolfpack 75-72 in overtime.
The Lady Bleu Devils (10-14, 1-3) led the entire first half, using a suffocating defense and excellent outside shooting to take a commanding 36-22 lead at halftime. The Lady Bleu Devils' pressure defense forced the Lady Wolfpack to shoot 30 percent from the field and commit 17 first half turnovers. Offensively, Ariel Mitchell led the way for the Bleu Devils with 15 points. Jazzmin Smith had 6 points in the first half and Jasmine Bradley grabbed 5 rebounds for the Lady Bleu Devils. The Lady Bleu Devils' bench also contributed 25 first half points.

In the second half, the Lady Wolfpack (14-9) capitalized off the Lady Bleu Devils' 14 turnovers and 17 fouls to get back in the game. The Lady Bleu Devils had a chance to win the game in regulation, but a three-point attempt by Ariel Mitchell bounced off the back of the rim. The Lady Wolfpack outscored the Lady Bleu Devils 9-6 in overtime to win the game.
Jazzmin Smith finished with 17 points and 6 rebounds for the Bleu Devils. Jasmine Bradley chipped in with 7 points and 12 rebounds. Kevia Council led the Lady Wolfpack with 43 points and 14 rebounds.

The Lady Bleu Devils look to recapture their winning ways on Saturday, February 12th with another important conference game against Southern University at New Orleans at 5:00 p.m

Dillard University Athletics: Breast Cancer Awareness and Senior Night at the Battlefield Feb.19th 2011