If “the medium is the message” as Marshall McLuhan so famously proclaimed in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, then what is the message of contemporary distributed learning? One can only wonder what McLuhan would say in 2014. Yet, as far back as 1967, McLuhan predicted that “the little red schoolhouse is already well on […]
Consider the accounting clerk who coordinates community events; the help desk manager who moonlights as an exercise coach; or even the campus registrar who is also a freelance writer. Colleges and universities are loaded with talent, yet many employees’ competencies unrelated to their job are virtually unknown. At a time when budgets are tight, activities […]
If you build it, they will come. Your alumni are already Facebooking, tweeting and linking in, in ever-increasing numbers. Colleges and universities are taking advantage of this activity to launch and grow robust social networks of graduates that strengthen alumni engagement, boost volunteerism and stimulate giving. “Over the years we’ve spent so much time and […]
At a time when the gulf between liberals and conservatives seems to be wider than ever, there is one topic about which they agree: the reasons for the rising cost of a college education. Why do colleges and universities keep raising tuition, asks Timothy Noah in The New Republic? Because they can. And Allysia Finley […]
Despite technology’s critical role in higher ed, there remains a gap between central IT and the rest of campus that can lead to unnecessary spending. Recent findings of a MeriTalk survey of 52 U.S. higher ed IT professionals illustrate this discrepancy. An average of 18 percent of campus IT systems are redundant, and 19 percent […]
There’s a standard practice in academia that’s highly valued; yet, at many colleges and universities, the policies and procedures surrounding it haven’t changed in decades. Until now. The faculty sabbatical has been around since Harvard University first offered it to its teaching staff in 1880. Since then, sabbaticals have become a rite of passage for […]
First-year MBA students in the action-based degree program at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business spend seven weeks working with a U.S. or international company. After that, they form seven-member teams to propose a solution to a problem they encountered in the corporate world. But this learning process isn’t just about the instruction—it’s also […]
“Don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness.” This rallying cry against the “let’s do as we always did” approach has helped the digital professionals take their seat at the decision table in many institutions. Yet this unorthodox advice may have been embraced too literally in the social media field. It’s no wonder that some enthusiastic […]
"The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life." […]
Until the summer of 2013, the primary sources of technology support services at Fairfield University in Connecticut were the reference librarians and circulation staff at the DiMenna-Nyselius Library—not the technology help desk. Questions about software, using campus printers or accessing the university’s wireless network were most commonly answered by the library professionals who were within […]
