Tag: 21st Century Learner

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Academic Digital

Online Learning: Not Second Class

Excellent piece in the Guardian today about how ‘online learning’ is not ‘second class’, but how it really aids learning in the 21st century:

Image Credit: SXC.HuThat’s something I share in common with my students. They aren’t unusual either. They just choose to study online because the flexibility suits them. Online higher education means students can combine education with employment – often fast-tracking their careers as a result – or fit study around family commitments.

These students don’t pursue online degrees as second best, nor are they students who have somehow been enticed away from traditional universities with promises of a better answer. They choose to study online because it simply works better for them. In most cases, it’s also a far more affordable option than a campus-based degree – and it’s clear that financial factors are increasingly driving higher education choices across the board.

Read full article.

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Digital

Brilliant Presentation by @timbuckteeth

Researching Social Media in Education: What can we learn?

View more PowerPoint from Steve Wheeler

Such a good presentation, it made it to the front page of Slideshare!

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Digital

Are Universities aware of open-learning models?

“Open learning and new technology are about to smash the structure of the modern university – and higher education is too distracted by its funding problems to notice.

Peter Smith, the senior vice-president of academic strategies and development for private US firm Kaplan Higher Education, said online access to university courses would end the model of higher education based on “scarcity” of places.

“Faculty and people who run universities are no longer in control,” he told an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development conference in Paris last week.

Dr Smith, a former assistant director general for education at Unesco, the UN cultural and educational body, challenged the focus on the financial crisis at the event, titled Higher Education in a World Changed Utterly: Doing More with Less.

Given huge growth in access to information, Dr Smith argued, the real challenge facing universities is “doing more with more”. He added: “The only ‘less’ is the resources available to traditional universities to do what they have always done.”

Read full story.

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Digital

You want to go to the library at 3am?

The University of Bath pioneered all-day opening during term-time when its library was refurbished in 1996.

Gavin Rea, the deputy librarian, said that for the past two years “it has been open 24 hours a day for 365 days a year, as many overseas students are unable to go home for Christmas”.

Since the library security desk doubles as the university reception, and there is sometimes only a single member of staff on duty, the extra expense comes to less than £20 an hour at night-time, he added.

Although he admitted that late-night occupancy can be “very low”, or dominated by overseas students using computer facilities to contact home, Mr Rea stressed the “unbelievable flexibility” that the policy offers students. They can “spontaneously turn up and do a couple of hours’ work when the mood takes them”.

Read full story. At the University of Winchester, we give out swipe cards on a 24 hour basis which can be used to access one of the open-access computing areas (most first year students, however, live in networked areas of the campus), but the library isn’t really required all night.

Categories
Academic Digital

The Culture of the Class of 2014

US college list claims to get under the cultural skin of the Class of 2014. Sarah Cunnane reports

Scholars wishing to keep their finger on the pulse – or simply to avoid being seen as an old relic by their students – have been given a helping hand by US academics.

Beloit College has released its annual “Mindset List” to help lecturers stay on top of the cultural references that will and will not resonate with the Class of 2014, “a post-email generation for whom the digital world is routine and technology is just too slow”.

The list, which is updated each year, was created in 1998 by Tom McBride, Keefer professor of the humanities, and Ron Nief, former director of public affairs at Beloit, to “remind faculty to be aware of dated references”.

Read full story, including a top 10: “John McEnroe has never played professional tennis”.