After a decade of living abroad, in fall 2016 I returned to the US and accepted a position as Assistant Professor at a state university in the Midwest. Eager and hyper-alert, I began noticing that American students, both graduate and undergraduate, were encountering significant difficulties in writing academic papers. I was dumbfounded. Having spent many […]
Like most institutions, the University of Arizona began utilizing lecture capture technology through small-scale experimentation, starting at the departmental level. And those experiments would bear fruit—in just a few years lecture capture had taken hold at UA, with faculty producing more than 2TB of video every week, and students viewing more than 30,000 hours of […]
A recent heavy rainstorm flooded an apartment complex near Central Michigan University, displacing a number of students. Several had nowhere else to stay. To the rescue: Central Michigan's Student Emergency Fund, a financial reserve provided by private donors to help students manage unexpected emergencies such as illness, death of relatives, eviction or medical bills. "The […]
Dual enrollment is designed to increase access and degree attainment. In fact, a 2007 study found that 67 percent of dual-enrollment students enrolled in college after high school (compared to 50 percent of their peers), with 30 percent earning an associate's degree along with their high school diploma. Yet students often experience barriers to enrollment. […]
A failure to gather data—not rigor or readiness—may be the biggest issue facing early college programs, believes Jason Taylor, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Utah who has devoted his career to studying dual enrollment. "There is not a lot of empirical evidence on whether the benefits outweigh the costs," he […]
Live interpreters had long been the gold standard for colleges committed to having the hearing-impaired participate in campus activities. From classes to sporting events to guest lectures, theatre performances and commencement, American Sign Language interpreters were often on stage, in front of class or down on the sidelines. Now technology offers additional options for live […]
As an expert microeconomist, William Massy approaches the challenge of reform by applying rigorous economic principles—informed by financial data and other evidence—to explain the forces at work on universities and the flaws in the academic business model. In his book Reengineering the University: How to Be Mission Centered, Market Smart, and Margin Conscious (Johns Hopkins […]
CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA—Jairy Hunter's introduction to higher ed came when he failed to land a starting position on the football team at Wingate University in North Carolina. That setback led the former high school state champion to drop out only a year later and enlist in the Army. After finishing his military service, he found […]
Who could conceive that the Granite State would adopt as its motto part of the historic volunteer toast offered by General John Stark in his response declining the invitation to head up the 32nd reunion of the Battle of Bennington – "Live free or die; death is not the worst of evils." Now more than […]
Do you find it difficult to know just how to make your classes truly accessible? Are you struggling to know where to start? Join the club. This web seminar covered both the technical and pedagogical considerations for creating accessible video. Presenters outlined some planning considerations and efficient ways of sharing accessible instructional video, as well […]