At the University of Leeds in England, students taking classes in the Roger Stevens Lecture Theatre sit at small, trapezoid-shaped tables on tiered levels, working on group projects on a laptop connected to a video-sharing system. At the University of Hong Kong, students meeting at the Chi Wah Learning Commons collaborate with classmates on joint […]
College admissions teams now go beyond zip codes and SAT scores to micromatch students who are most likely to apply to, enroll in and succeed at their institutions. In this new era, administrators consider everything from a student's interests and non-school activities to what they like on Facebook and how long they spent on the […]
Remember the language lab? That room outfitted with rows of massive carrels, microphones, recorders, and an elevated teacher console? Its usefulness has been contested many times during its nearly 100-year history. Over the past few decades, colleges across the country transformed these language labs into language resource centers, filling large rooms with computers, DVDs, microphones, […]
A college or university's campus represents, physically, its environment for learning—its training ground for future thought leaders. Yet today, many U.S. institutions of higher education lack the appropriate resources and funding needed to develop new infrastructure or to upgrade existing buildings. To solve this problem, more are turning toward a public-private partnership (P3) model—a practice common […]
The closure of Amazon’s virtual bookseller at UMass Amherst underscores once again the need for campus stores to diversify services. It also highlights ongoing efforts by administrators to reduce the cost of course materials through online textbooks, open educational resources and other initiatives. “I don’t think anybody assumes Amazon isn’t a pretty sharp outfit,” says Bob Walton, […]
More than half of students at Indiana University’s seven campuses started the fall semester with at least one e-textbook loaded directly into their learning management system account—at about a quarter of the cost of a new print edition. And at the University of California, Davis, students in hundreds of courses use e-textbooks and take interactive, […]
It's no surprise that the black male college experience is often underscored by bias and a sense of not belonging. Derrick R. Brooms says more must be done—not only by colleges, but by secondary schools and communities to reverse these preconceptions. His book, Being Black, Being Male on Campus: Understanding and Confronting Black Male Collegiate […]
Purdue University surprised its faculty and the general higher ed sector this spring with its plans to acquire Kaplan University for a symbolic $1 (with a revenue-share plan spanning 30 years). Less noted is the opportunity Purdue has to learn from its new unit. Purdue, an Indiana land-grant institution, will form a new, public university […]
A campus bookstore director relayed a conversation he’d had with the administrator to whom he reports. “I asked my boss whether he expected the store to generate as much profit as possible, or whether he wanted the store to ensure prices on course materials and other necessities were as affordable as possible for students.” The […]
Online faculty at Castleton University don’t just dole out tests—they take them, too. Full- and part-time instructors who have no experience teaching online with Moodle’s learning management system work through a self-paced, six-module course created by associate academic dean Cathy Kozlik. The course resides on a Vermont State Colleges System Moodle Sandbox website, where professors […]
