University Business: Black Students: Duke Study Shows Deeper Problems

http://www.universitybusiness.com/news/black-students-duke-study-shows-deeper-problems

An unpublished study by Duke University researchers that says black students are more likely to switch to less difficult majors has upset some students, who say the research is emblematic of more entrenched racial problems.

The study, which opponents of affirmative action are using in a case they want the U.S. Supreme Court to consider, concludes black students match the GPA of whites over time partially because they switch to majors that require less study time and have less stringent grading standards. Opponents of affirmative action cite the study in a case they want the U.S. Supreme Court to consider.
About three dozen students held a silent protest Sunday outside a speech by black political strategist Donna Brazile that was part of the school's annual Martin Luther King Jr. observance. Members of the Black Student Alliance have met with the provost to express their unhappiness with the study and other issues on the Durham, N.C., campus.
"I don't know what needs to happen to make Duke wake up," said Nana Asante, a senior psychology major and president of the Black Student Alliance.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/01/19/2940124/black-students-duke-...

Source:

AP via The Charlotte Observer

Campus Life

Research

Monday, January 23, 2012

University Business: Black Students: Duke Study Shows Deeper Problems

CIC: Nominations Invited for Slave Narratives History Seminar June 2012 at Yale University

http://www.cic.edu/meetings-and-events/Faculty-Development/Documents/brochures/2012GilderLehrman.pdf

Dear CIC Chief Academic Officer: (cc: President) In response to the enormous interest demonstrated in his previous seminars, CIC is delighted to announce that David W. Blight, Class of 1954 Professor of American History at Yale University, author of A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including their Narratives of Emancipation and the recently published American Oracle, The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era, has enthusiastically agreed to lead the seminar on Slave Narratives for a fifth year in a row. The seminar will be held at Yale University on June 10–13, 2012. This multidisciplinary seminar is open to full-time faculty members in history, English, and related fields at CIC member colleges and universities. This seminar is cosponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. For the faculty members who are selected to participate in the seminar, there will be no expense for room, board, books, or the seminar program itself. The only expense to participants or their institutions will be transportation to and from New Haven, Connecticut, although CIC will offer reimbursements of up to $200 toward travel expenses. This seminar offers a superb opportunity for members of CIC faculties to strengthen their teaching and to recharge their intellectual batteries. CIC is especially grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a generous grant to CIC that has made this seminar opportunity possible. Please note that the selection process is based on nominations by chief academic officers, not direct application by faculty members. Would you please forward this email to the faculty members of your history and English departments and to other members of the faculty who may be interested, and subsequently submit one or more nominations? The deadline for completed nominations is March 2, 2012. Further information, including guidelines and the nomination form, are available on CIC’s website at www.cic.edu/americanhistory. Questions should be directed to Stephen Gibson, CIC’s director of programs, at (202) 466-7230 or sgibson@cic.nche.edu. Sincerely yours, Richard Ekman President Council of Independent Colleges One Dupont Circle, NW Suite 320 Washington, DC 20036 202-466-7230 Fax 202-466-7238

CIC: Nominations Invited for Slave Narratives History Seminar June 2012 at Yale University

2012 Commemoration of the Presidential Apology for the U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study

http://www.tuskegee.edu/Articles/bioethics_center_to_commemorate_us_presidential_apology_for_syphilis_study.aspx

Featuring The First Public Health Ethics Intensive Course

SAVE THE DATE:

April 24-27, 2012

"The United States government did something that was deeply wrong—deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens...

To Macon, to Tuskegee, to the doctors who have been wrongly associated with the events there, you have our apology, as well. To our African American citizens, I am sorry that your federal government orchestrated a study so clearly racist. That can never happen again. It is against everything our country stands for..."

— President Clinton’s apology for the

Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment to the eight remaining survivors, May 16, 1997

National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care

For more information contact:

Beverly Ebo at 334-725-2319



National Center for Bioethics

in Research and Health Care

Bioethics Bldg. 44-107

Tuskegee, AL 36088

2012 Commemoration of the Presidential Apology for the U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study

NYU FRN Network Summer information and applications now online! Due February 3, 2012 to Dillard University Office of Academic Affairs

The Network Summer 2012 seminar descriptions and applications are now online! The series will be held from June 11-15, 2012 and features a diverse selection of seminars in current events, cinema, classics, music, technology in the classroom, evolution and genomics, women and oral history, and more.  For more information about these seminars and the application process, see the FRN Network Summer web link at:
http://www.nyu.edu/frn/programs.events/enrichment/network.summer.2012.html

Applications are due by Friday, February 10, 2012.

The application deadline for our 2012 Summer Scholar-in-Residence program is Friday, February 10, 2012. For more information and the application form, please see our website at:
http://www.nyu.edu/frn/programs.events/scholar.in.residence/Summer.SIR.info.page.html  

New this year – the Calvin B. Grimes Summer Scholar-in-Residence program – For additional information please check the website at: http://www.nyu.edu/frn/programs.events/scholar.in.residence/Grimes.Summer.SIR.info.page.html

For those interested in the Fall 2012 or Spring 2013 Scholar-in-Residence program, information and applications may be found at:

http://www.nyu.edu/frn/programs.events/scholar.in.residence/academic.year.scholar.html

The application deadline for Fall 2012 is Friday, February 10, 2012, and Friday, September 14, 2012 for Spring 2013.

Please be sure to share this information with your faculty members.

Regards,

Anne (on behalf of Debra and the staff at the FRN)
Anne L. Ward
Assistant Director
Office of Faculty Resources
Faculty Resource Network
New York University
194 Mercer Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10012
P: 212.998.2351
F: 212.995.4101
E: anne.ward@nyu.edu

NYU FRN Network Summer information and applications now online! Due February 3, 2012 to Dillard University Office of Academic Affairs

Register Today for Complimentary LiveText Webinar Series with National Experts!

LiveText will sponsor a year-long informational webinar series, each session presented by national experts in higher education who will share their insights and experiences. We encourage you to register for as many of the complimentary webinars as you like, and to visit www.livetext.com to check for additional webinar offerings throughout the year. Assessment Made Clear and Simple: Practical Strategies Wednesday, February 15th from 1:00 to 2:00pm CST Dr. Kevin Beach Outcomes Assessment Coordinator at the University of Tampa Dr. Beach will discuss the challenges associated with outcomes and course-embedded assessment when multiple needs are involved, such as programmatic, general education, and regional as well as discipline-specific accreditors. We will focus on the need for building a 'coalition of the willing' as new assessment strategies are implemented across a university. Register Online What if the Quality of Learning Really Mattered? Wednesday, March 14, 2012 from 1:00pm to 2:00pm CST Dr. Terry Rhodes Vice President for the Office of Quality, Curriculum and Assessment at the Association of American Colleges and Universities Dr. Rhodes will examine how the development of learning outcomes, rubrics, e-Portfolios, and assessment are creating an environment in which faculty expertise can be front and center in the higher education debate on assessment. We will briefly look at the Essential Learning Outcomes, walk through how some institutions are using the AAC&U's VALUE rubrics to assess levels of student learning, look at how the assessment results are being reported to stakeholders, and how results of the assessments are being used to improve. Register Online The Transformative Nature of Assessing Student Evidence in Electronic Portfolios Wednesday, April 4th from 1:00 to 2:00pm CST Dr. Trent Batson Executive Director for the Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL) Dr. Batson will explore creating a learning design where assessing student evidence in electronic portfolios is the primary assessment process, not testing. Such assessment is much richer and more valid than testing. We have said about teachers "you teach as you test," but for students the phrase would be "you learn as you are assessed." In this webinar, we will discuss ways to understand these deep changes in higher education. Register Online What Do Accreditors Want? Successful Strategies for Meeting Regional Accreditation Requirements for Learning Assessment Wednesday, May 2nd from 1:00 to 2:00pm CST Ms. Linda A. Suskie Assessment and Accreditation Specialist Ms. Suskie will discuss how the climate for higher education is changing rapidly today, as well as regional accreditors' standards and expectations for student learning assessment. How can your institution demonstrate compliance with student learning assessment standards? Ms. Suskie will present useful tips and strategies based on her 35 years of experience in assessment, institutional research, strategic planning, and quality management. Register Online Please forward this invitation to any faculty or colleagues whom you think would be interested. Space is limited so register for one or all today! Connect with us! 1 S. La Grange Rd, 2FL, La Grange, IL 60525 1-866-LiveText (1-866-548-3839) edu-solutions@livetext.com www.livetext.com © 2012 LiveText, Inc. All rights reserved.

Register Today for Complimentary LiveText Webinar Series with National Experts!

Campus Technology: Strategies for Blog-Powered Instruction

http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2012/01/01/Strategies-for-Blog-Powered-Instruction.aspx?p=1

21st Century Learning | Feature

Strategies for Blog-Powered Instruction

Three blog-savvy educators share their best practices for harnessing the unique strengths of blogs to supplement coursework and elevate student learning.

By Jennifer Demski - 01/01/12

Blogs are one of the oldest components of the web 2.0 toolkit, but their strengths as an instructional tool are still being discovered. It's all too easy to fall into the trap of seeing blogs as a substitute for online discussion boards or a new delivery system for traditional academic writing. As with any educational technology, blogs work best when instructors harness their unique features to supplement learning in the classroom.
"Blogs highlight individual contributions more than wikis," remarks Stuart Glogoff, senior consultant in the Office of Instruction and Assessment at the University of Arizona. "They're more flexible than threaded discussion forums, and they provide more room for expressing ideas than Twitter. Blogs provide an individual space where students can write publicly, where students can comment on each other's work, and where the professor's participation can subtly call attention to the best student work as a way of raising the bar for the rest of the class."

Glogoff has helped implement a variety of blogging initiatives at UA. In an upper-level Spanish course, for example, students wrote Spanish-language responses to the professor's posts on a shared blog. And in a recent Honors College "reading groups" initiative, students posted insights to their individual blogs on a variety of topics, such as ideas for economic development gleaned after meetings with local community leaders. "The blogs create an opportunity for shared understanding and an open exchange of ideas," explains Glogoff.

Blogging the Learning Process Just as blogs can help foster conversation among students and faculty, instructors are discovering that they can also serve a more personal role, as a tool of reflection and self-appraisal. "The blog's biggest strength is in the development and authentication of the student voice in learning," notes Ruth Reynard, associate professor of education and the director of the Center for Instructional Technology at Trevecca Nazarene University (TN).
Reynard uses blogs as a way to get students to reflect on their coursework--essentially by keeping an online journal in which they track their learning. As opposed to a traditional journal that is read only by the instructor, student blogs are digital, immediate, and published--raising the stakes and increasing the students' investment in their reflective writing.
"Also, visually, you have a track of how the students' thinking has developed throughout the course," explains Reynard. "Students can see where they've changed their minds, or where they became stronger thinkers. By showcasing that development, the blog empowers students to develop an authentic voice and to see themselves as growing experts in that field of study."

When used as a tool for reflection, blogs allow students to write at length about their own experiences as learners, and to read and comment on the insights posted on their classmates' blogs. This type of public, shared self-reflection is difficult to achieve in other forms of collaborative online writing, such as discussion boards. "If the students were to post this type of self-reflective piece in an online discussion board, it would throw the discussion off track," says Reynard. "In a blog, though, it's your environment, your voice, and you can take your time to say what you need to say."
Reynard has also found that blogs are a great tool for helping her graduate students learn to write academically. She requires her graduate students to embed hyperlinks to online sources that are influencing their thinking in their reflective blog posts.

"Referencing the authors and sources is a learned skill," explains Reynard. "Because blogs are naturally a hyperlink environment, they can link directly to articles in library databases. Then, when it comes time to write a reflective paper, they can just cut and paste from their blog, because they've essentially been writing small pieces of that reflective paper throughout the course."

Free-Range Writing Gardner Campbell, director of professional development and innovative initiatives in the Division of Learning Technologies at Virginia Tech, is also a strong proponent of blogs as tools for academic reflection. But he warns against falling into the trap of having blog posts become term papers by other means or just another kind of assignment that students must fit into their schoolwork.
Campbell prefers "free-range" blogging. In his courses, blogging is a requirement, not an assignment. It is graded as a participation component of the course. Students are given no prompts about what they should write, nor must they fulfill a specific word count.
"Blogs are a place where a student can find his own voice as a learner in an unusually powerful way," explains Campbell. "They offer a chance to get something that really comes from the whole person. They offer a window into the students' cognition. Blogs give you a fighting chance of seeing the work of understanding in its molten state, before it's congealed, before everything is rigid and turned to stone."
Campbell has found that free-range blogging--and the blogging platform itself--is also a great antidote to the tendency of students to write only what they think their professor wants them to write, rather than pushing themselves to discover what they truly understand about a topic. "Blogging seems to short-circuit that tendency and get students past that jam," notes Campbell. "Because blogging is so malleable, it's a wonderful platform for creativity."

At Virginia Tech, Campbell's students build their blogs on the WordPress platform, and he encourages them to spend time customizing the look of their blog, creating their own roll of blogs they follow, and incorporating audio and video elements into their posts.
Campbell, Reynard, and Glogoff all agree that blogging works best when it's blended into the curriculum, so posts are seen both as an extension of the discussions in the classroom and as an inspiration for future classroom conversations. "A student recently wrote a blog post that beautifully synthesized a number of classroom discussions and activities on various topics from the past month," recalls Campbell. "He'd obviously been mulling these ideas over in class, and had spoken up and participated. But it wasn't until he was able to get away and push at it on his own, and then share his ideas in the social context of the blog, that this powerful synthesis came out.
"When something like that happens, it draws from class. It pulls the coursework together in a way that's authentic to the individual learner, and then it is shared on the blog where classmates can comment on it. Then it comes back into the classroom discussion the next time we meet face-to-face. Learning becomes a virtuous cycle where the blog feeds the classroom and the classroom feeds the blog."

5 Tips for Blogging Have a clear pedagogical purpose for incorporating blogs into the instruction, and clearly state the purpose and requirements of student blogging on the class syllabus. "Students need to see a purpose for the blog, and they need guidelines for entries and comments," explains Stuart Glogoff, senior consultant in the Office of Instruction and Assessment at the University of Arizona. "In the cases where faculty have incorporated blogs without establishing their purpose, student participation has been uniformly low." Blog contributions and comments should be a graded element of the course. "Your grade is your currency for your course," explains Ruth Reynard, associate professor of education and the director of the Center for Instructional Technology at Trevecca Nazarene University (TN). "If you don't assign a score to blogging, students aren't going to take it seriously or treat it as a priority because they're too busy doing the work that they're earning scores for." Don't assume that students are familiar with the practical aspects of blogging. Exercises on uploading images and videos, embedding text links, and writing constructive comments on peer blogs should be required before content-specific blog entries are due. Model best practices by contributing to your own blog and commenting on students' blogs. "There's no shortcut to this," advises Reynard. "If you don't comment, then students feel as if they're talking to the air. Commenting gives you the opportunity to connect directly with each student, and makes students feel as though they're getting direct tutoring, which is actually the best way to teach." Simplify navigation between student blogs by having students subscribe to each other's blogs via RSS feeds, dividing students into small groups to comment on each other's work, or building a mother blog--a front page for the course that aggregates recent blog posts, comments, updates from course-related websites, and social-networking feeds. "I like the mother blog because it's a great lesson in how to make the web work for you," explains Gardner Campbell, director of professional development and innovative initiatives in the Division of Learning Technologies at Virginia Tech. "Understanding how to create a site where chosen content is aggregated onto a single page is a best practice, not just for the classroom but for living on the web in general."

About the Author

Jennifer Demski is a freelance writer in Brooklyn, NY.

Campus Technology: Strategies for Blog-Powered Instruction

2012-13 Visiting Faculty Fellowship at Duke

Attached please find the latest call for proposals for Visiting Faculty Fellows to join with Duke faculty in re-defining our common teaching and research approach to the humanities. This opportunity has been made possible by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation called Humanities Writ Large. Additional information is available at our website: http://humanitieswritlarge.duke.edu/

The deadline for proposals is February 12. Please forward to all your regular rank faculty at your earliest possible convenience.


Thank you for your support of Humanities Writ Large.


Sincerely,
Laura J. Eastwood
Humanities Writ Large Grant Management
Dean of Humanities Office
Duke University
Box 90029 Durham, NC 27708

(919) 684-8873

http://humanitieswritlarge.duke.edu



http://www.slideshare.net/ccharles/duke-u-visting-faculty-call-for-proposals-2012-13

2012-13 Visiting Faculty Fellowship at Duke

Mediasite by Foundry Webinar: And We’re Live: What You Need to Know about Live Webcasting and Lecture Capture

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/webcast/and-were-live-what-you-need-know-about-live-webcasting-and-lecture-capture

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/webcast/and-were-live-what-you-need-know-about-live-webcasting-and-lecture-capture?utm_campaign=And%20Were%20Live%20Webinar%20tomorrow%20Jan12&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elid=239647&fullscreen=1&elq=4308aceb5084479eaf8ddee85c558c07

Date: January 24, 12 - 11:00am - 11:45am

(convert your time zone)

Why go live? Brian Smith asks why not. As the Video Operations Supervisor for University of Florida, he’s been doing live streaming on campus for 11 years, with hundreds of live webcasts under his belt. And he believes going live was integral to the success of lecture capture on campus.
He’s overseen high-visibility, live webcasts for everything from homecoming parades to trustee and senate meetings, from commencement to alumni events to presidential search sessions. Even live webcasts with three Supreme Court justices and two governors.
And while the swine flu epidemic kicked off the lecture capture craze over fears that nearly 50,000 students would miss school for over a week, the university continues to go live with more material each day.
Research groups like the Clinical and Translational Science Institute are webcasting so researchers around the state can participate in live briefings, and the College of Medicine is doing online courses, psychiatry grand rounds and family medicine lectures. All live.
Join Brian Smith as he shares what you need to know about live webcasting and synchronous lecture capture:

• What do you look for in a reliable webcasting system when live is a requirement and failure is not an option?
• Are there differences between live webcasting from a smart classroom vs. hundreds of campus event venues vs. off campus sites? And what are the best practices for making sure all go live without a hitch?
• Why is live webcasting a self-fulfilling prophecy, driving more demand to go live? And does social media play a role?
• Is instructor involvement, and resulting faculty feedback, different for live vs. on-demand webcasting?
• Who manages the infrastructure, training and support for live webcasting on campus, and what can be automated?
• How can reporting of both live and on-demand views justify the cost of not just webcasting, but entire courses or events?

Presented By:

Brian Smith

Brian Smith is the Video Operations Supervisor for Academic Technology and Information Technology at the University of Florida. Brian has been working at UF since 2000, first as a student and then full-time upon graduating with a B.S. in Business Administration in 2002. Brian started live streaming with Real Producer before switching to Windows Media Player and finally Mediasite in 2004.

• 
  Moderated By:

  Sean Brown

  Sean Brown, Vice President Education, Sonic Foundry

Mediasite by Foundry Webinar: And We’re Live: What You Need to Know about Live Webcasting and Lecture Capture

Campus Technology Webinar: Lecture Capture: Learning-focused Features Make Big Impact on Students

 

http://campustechnology.com/webcasts/2012/01/tegrity_lecture-capture_learning-features-students.aspx

You are invited to attend an exclusive webinar to learn why the term "Lecture Capture" only scratches the surface of the ways to improve student interaction.

Despite the name "lecture capture," capturing content is only half the equation. Beyond just clicking a thumbnail and watching a video, lecture capture systems that focus on ways students learn from the content and learn from each other provide the biggest ROI, resulting in greater student retention and satisfaction. Attend this exclusive webinar on January 31 to learn how Athens State University uses a lecture capture system that enables students to:

• Take notes with their computer or iPad in class or during review, and then later clicking on the note to be taken automatically to the moment in the lecture recording when that note was taken.
• Collaborate with one another, while sharing context, so each can see what the other is viewing.
• Make recordings for language, communications and business courses.
• Speed up and slow down playback, especially helpful for ESL students.
• Stream recordings to just about any device anywhere, anytime.

Be a part of the discussion. Reserve your slot today.

PRESENTERS • Steve Clark, associate director academic support and instructional systems, Athens State University
• Michael Berger, senior director of marketing, Tegrity

MODERATOR
• Linda Briggs, contributing editor, Campus Technology


Thank you,

Campus Technology and Tegrity Campus

Campus Technology Webinar: Lecture Capture: Learning-focused Features Make Big Impact on Students