Filed under Curriculum …

These Colleges Are Betting That Culturally Relevant Textbooks Will Improve Student Outcomes

Millie González and her colleagues aren’t here to argue about whether open educational resources are on par with traditional textbooks一she says research has borne that out. González and Framingham State University, where she is interim director of Whittemore Library, are part of a consortium in Massachusetts looking to answer different questions. Like: What would happen if students … Continue reading →

California’s Community Colleges Can’t Live With Accreditor, Can’t Live Without It

A handful of California’s community colleges may have a problem offering new bachelor’s-degree programs, as planned, by 2017. The Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, one of the nation’s seven regional accreditors, had asked the U.S. Department of Education to allow it to accredit baccalaureate programs at two-year colleges. The change sought by the … Continue reading →

What Exactly is Personalized Learning?

It remains to be seen exactly how and where Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, will spend the estimated $45 billion they’ve declared they will donate to charitable ventures, including education. But their announcement this week made one thing clear: in education, the two are focused on the potential of “personalized learning.” For … Continue reading →

What Is the Point of College?

… [A]s higher education expands its reach, it’s increasingly hard to say what college is like and what college is for. In the United States, where I now teach, more than 17 million undergraduates will be enrolling in classes this fall. They will be passing through institutions small and large, public and private, two-year and … Continue reading →

Overcoming Online Persistence Challenges With The Trojan Café (Part 1)

Vincent Tinto’s conceptual “Schema for Dropout from College” correlated academic and social engagement with student success and learning. However, several factors make social engagement more difficult for non-traditional, online students. They don’t have the opportunity to participate in social engagement and institutional extracurricular activities that are afforded to traditional, on-campus students. Consequently, online students often … Continue reading →

State Gives Up On Public Schools, Turns To Community Colleges

Apparently teaching kids to read and do math is not being done very well by the North Carolina public schools system. And the state legislature is considering giving up on the public schools to educate children and turning over the responsibility to the community colleges, which, according to statistics, are doing a lot of it … Continue reading →

New Student Loans For A New For-Profit Education Sector

Coder boot camps. Accelerated learning programs. New economy skills training. Whatever you call them, these new players in higher education are multiplying. The intensive programs say they can teach job-ready skills in technology, design and related fields. In record time. In three or four months of really long days, students with little prior experience are … Continue reading →

Community Colleges Coming Live to California Prisons

Bryan Hirayama, an assistant professor at Bakersfield Community College, made a little bit of history this year. He became one of the first community college professors to teach inside a California state prison in roughly the last 20 years. Hirayama’s communications course at Kern Valley State Prison last spring led the way for hundreds of … Continue reading →

College to Experiment With Apple Watch as Learning Tool

Even before the Apple Watch was released, professors and pundits began speculating on whether it and other wearable devices might play a role in college classrooms. On Monday researchers at Pennsylvania State University’s main campus announced that they would be among the first to test the device’s usefulness in the classroom. The experiment will begin … Continue reading →